Patrick Carney of the Black Keys is not just a drummer. No, it's a known fact that the guy has a medical license as well. Hell, he made a diagnosis very recently. The patient? Rock and roll. While speaking with Rolling Stone, the magazine you use as lining in your cat's litterbox, the Black Keys stated that they think rock and roll is dying. Seems like the music genre got a bad case of the Nickelback. Carney explains after the jump.
People became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world. So they became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit – therefore, you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world.
Fuck that. Rock and roll is the music I feel the most passionately about, and I don't like to see it fucking ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous shit.
Not only is it crap, but it's also shit. Nevermind that both of those things are the same. Look, while I appreciate it when any artist speaks his or her mind (because it causes discussion), I have to argue that Nickelback isn't fully to blame here. Sure, they don't make the kind of music that I like, but I remember a time when we were all getting behind this song.
Nickelback are just a band making music that they like to make. People are spoon-fed the music they make by their record label Roadrunner's parent company Warner Music Group. WMG paid for that song above to get constant airplay on MTV when it premiered, and the kids ate it up as a new rock anthem. The other major labels had no choice but to take notice and oversaturate the market with similar sounding bands that caused all of them to sound generic. There were no more surprises to be found in rock music because major labels dictated this "post-grunge crap, horrendous shit" is what the masses wanted.
The Black Keys belong to the Nonesuch music label, which is another Warner Music Group subsidiary (oh, the irony). However, the Black Keys have not gotten the same marketing boost that Nickelback or Hinder or Theory of a Deadman or Saving Abel got in their heyday. That could be because that "sound" became what people considered rock music, and it became too common. WMG would ascertain that rock music isn't hot anymore, and they would lump Black Keys with those bands because they proclaim that they're a "rock" band. It's not right since the Keys have a different sound altogether, but this is how music label marketing departments think.
The Black Keys should be thankful that they have earned a name in the industry even though rock has been partially ruined by bad decision making. Still, rock is not dying or dead. I'll say that mainstream rock music is on life support, and it's hard for any innovative rock bands to break out. However, rock music is thriving well in the indie music community, which is why the Black Keys are often marketed in this niche. Yuck, Wild Flag, and Girls released some of the best rock albums last year, but most people don't know that because their labels don't have the bucks to push their artists to the extremes that the majors do. The Black Keys have that luxury, which is why you know them and think of them as indie when they're not.
But it's a good thing that the true indie labels don't have the means of pushing their artists too heavy. They're not causing an industry response to introduce similar sounding artists that will, in effect, kill any momentum of keeping rock music fresh and exciting. Over-marketing has adverse effects. Just let the bands do their thing. Don't push them too hard. And don't think any similar sounding band earns a spotlight just because they sound the same. Evaluate whether the music is truly good before causing a negative reaction by disillusioned listeners.
This post also appears in my 411mania column, The Music 3R's. Click HERE to read the other stories featured.
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