Gene Simmons, the bassist and frontman of Kiss, reiterated his earlier remarks that “Rock is dead”, saying that “the new bands haven’t taken the time to create the glamor, excitement and stuff. epic ”.
Gene Simmons thinks the Rock is dead
While Rock ‘N’ Roll has been the king of the music world for decades, in recent years it has been eclipsed by the growing popularity of hip-hop. This has led many pundits to declare the genre “dead” from an industry perspective, noting that it has been eclipsed in every measure by pop, hip-hop and EDM.
Gene Simmons opened up about The Rock’s supposed fall in status in a recent interview with Gulf News. Gene said:
Rock is dead – and that’s because the new bands haven’t taken the time to create glamor, excitement, and epic stuff. Foo Fighters is a great band, but it’s a 20-year-old band. So you can go back from 1958 to 1988. It’s been 30 years. During this period we had Elvis [Presley], The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, etc. In disco, there was Madonna, then there was Hard Rock, AC / DC, maybe us [Kiss], some others. Motown, all that great music. From 1988 to today, it’s been over 30 years. Tell me who the new Beatles are. Well, no one. There are popular groups. BTS is very popular. All kinds of groups are very popular. That doesn’t mean that they are iconic and have a legacy forever. It’s different.
Asked whether he thinks time will tell if certain bands will be icons in 30 years, Mr Simmons replied:
I doubt. The peculiarity of the Beatles is that they wrote their own songs, which arranged and produced them themselves, and, above all, they all knew how to play several instruments. No accompaniment. No digital enhancement. No voice correction. Yeah, that won’t happen again. You know, modern artists rely a lot on technology. If you hear your favorite artist singing in the shower, chances are you won’t recognize them. You would be shocked. And none of the rappers play an instrument. They don’t write songs. They just write lyrics. It doesn’t mean that rap isn’t important. It’s very important, but it’s not The Beatles.
Gene went on to say that he loved all contemporary pop artists:
I think Billie Eilish is fantastic. She is interesting because she and her brother compose their own music and they are one of a kind. Lady Gaga is fantastic in the female category. She writes her own music, she can sing like no one else. Besides, she’s a musician, she writes her own songs, plays the piano, she can really do all that. The rest of the world follows a lot of pop divas, although most of them don’t write their own songs or know how to play an instrument. And besides, it doesn’t particularly bother me. You have the right to like whatever you want – but it’s not The Beatles.
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Is the Rock really dead?
The “Rock is dead” argument has resurfaced several times over the years, after in 2018 Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine told Variety magazine:
Rock music is nowhere. I don’t know where she is. If she’s around, no one has invited me to the party. All the innovations and the amazing things that happen in music are in hip-hop. It’s better than everything else. Hip-hop is weird, avant-garde, flawed, and real, and that’s why people love it.
A few years ago, Gene Simmons told Esquire magazine:
Rock did not die of old age. He has been murdered. A certain genius, somewhere, was going to speak and now he won’t because it’s much harder to make a living playing and writing songs. No one will pay you to do it.
A number of hard rock and heavy metal musicians have leaned into the subject over the past few years in various interviews, some delving deeper into what Mr. Simmons is saying and others just going under. silence the headlines.
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