What they probably mean is we’re not making Active Rock, a radio category, I think, besides like a few bands that never stopped doing that.
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One reason radio rock has been moribund for so long is because when women started making almost all of the good rock music, it just became "pop," reducing what would be played in the airplay category.
jul 21, 2025, 4:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Women could get to #1 on alt rock airplay around the Alanis Morissette boom (includes Hole and Garbage, and maybe Cranberries before that), and then again after Lorde breaks through in 2013. Both of these booms get integrated completely into the pop charts a few years later.
jul 21, 2025, 4:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Women were at least well represented as legitimate Rock at the height of things, but if you look now, that stuff isn’t given the same canonization. Heart, Hole, Pixies, Veruca Salt, Sleater-Kinney, etc., etc. were as interesting as everything else. Riot grrrl scene was big here (in Seattle).
jul 21, 2025, 4:23 pm • 1 0 • view
What I think is interesting is that there are times where this DOES tip over into legitimate radio channels, but these moments have historically been short-lived and the ensuing reaction has sort of razed the landscape: once in the 2000s (for the whole decade!) and again now
jul 21, 2025, 4:25 pm • 1 0 • view
I think what Rockists look for is a band. They think of Alanis and Taylor Hawkins and that’s built into a legacy they understand. When they think of Lorde etc. it doesn’t match what they expect and relate to their male-centric canon. I do prefer a band too re Rock music, but that’s preference.
jul 21, 2025, 4:26 pm • 1 0 • view
My line going way back was that single-name-performing-artist *is* usually a band (often a pretty consistent one) and is usually more about marketing than approach. (And by contrast men leading "bands" in name only.)
jul 21, 2025, 4:48 pm • 1 0 • view
Heck, even archetypal solo pop artists may be bandleaders of sorts, just most often a changing and/or electronic one (late-career Madonna the ur-example here, and Tom rightly likened her to James Brown in her highly conscious collaboration shifts)
jul 21, 2025, 4:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Which also isn’t true, it’s just that the radio has already locked in the old stuff, and so the person who wants it most doesn’t get to hear the new version they’re looking for, and think it’s still just the old stuff.
jul 21, 2025, 4:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Whereas other radio formats are adaptable and bring in the new stuff, nearly all Rock stations are now essentially Classic Rock.
jul 21, 2025, 4:08 pm • 1 0 • view
Now, this is a legitimate issue. The nostalgia-heads don't give the newer stuff a serious chance, which means new rock has to exist in the more broad stations. Since pop, country and hip hop are more popular over there, new-rock doesn't get as much exposure or prevalence like classic-rock gets.
jul 21, 2025, 4:31 pm • 2 0 • view
And that in turn creates incentives for young artists - let alone the labels that scout them - to go after these genres instead. Which often is more a matter of points of emphasis (and sometimes geography) than a sea change - arguably bro-country is the new Nickelback, for instance - but still...
jul 21, 2025, 4:53 pm • 1 0 • view
To me the most interesting development is in the indie/pop space where women doing what is basically just pop-oriented indie rock use their name, not a band name. There are almost no windowpane artists who go by a band name (men or women) www.otherdavemoore.com/p/the-rise-o...
jul 21, 2025, 5:01 pm • 0 0 • view
woops think I responded to the wrong thread, the perils of going semi-viral
jul 21, 2025, 5:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Now your posts are semi-pop too 😉
jul 21, 2025, 5:05 pm • 2 0 • view
the dream!
jul 21, 2025, 5:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Waxahachie, Big Thief go by band names, even though their pretty much one woman wrecking crews.
jul 21, 2025, 5:34 pm • 1 0 • view
This is one of the ways you can tell someone is making a play for old-school indie cred! And it's also not surprising to see the bands that make it in indie go solo soon after without breaking up the band. (This has always been somewhat true, but now it seems like solo act is the center of gravity.)
jul 21, 2025, 5:48 pm • 0 0 • view
They're...
jul 21, 2025, 5:35 pm • 0 0 • view