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- Rock isn't dead – it's just resting
Fans haven't given up on rock, despite the decline in sales. We're just waiting for the band that'll make the next leap forward
Few things have taken a battering quite like rock this week. After Music Week announced on Monday that the percentage of rock songs in the singles charts fell to the lowest level in half a century, commentators have been sizing up studded drapes to line the coffin of the genre all week.
Only a contrarian would deny 2010 was a year dominated by pop in its myriad forms (which may explain the large marketshare). But as a rock fan of 20 years, I can't help feeling like I've been here before. It was said in the 60s (memorably by Jim Morrison), the 70s (pre-punk), the 80s (pre-Nirvana) and the 90s (pre-Oasis). As a writer for Metal Hammer in the early noughties, I heard people say that the up-and-coming band the magazine was putting on the cover wouldn't sell because "new rock bands don't stand a chance". That band was called My Chemical Romance, and they did OK.
Despite the Music Week statistics, rock still maintains a healthy prescience within the live arena; the likes of Bring Me the Horizon, Bullet for My Valentine and Enter Shikari all play to 5,000-capacity crowds. But most rock fans will tell youthe really good stuff has crawled back underground. In some respects, many of these bands aren't so much gasping for air as overachieving. DIY punks Trash Talk regularly feature in NME – their singer even has a column. I spent a week last year driving around German squats with the band while their guitarist fielded calls from major labels, mischievously grinning. After six years of obscurity, they're having the time of their lives – try telling them their audience is dead.
Elsewhere, the traditional rock set up of vocals, bass, drums and guitars is assisting pop acts in their success like never before. Take That went from being a big band to a massive band by sounding a little bit like Snow Patrol. When he wasn't covering Elton John and the Beatles, this year's X Factor winner, Matt Cardle, did so by reworking a Biffy Clyro song (admittedly it's a shame he didn't have a pop at the Scottish band's art-thrash opus There's No Such Thing As a Jaggy Snake).
There's also an argument that rock barely registers in the stats because so few fans buy singles – Trash Talk's Flesh & Blood isn't going to trouble Rihanna at thetop of the charts anytime soon. It is, after all, a genre where kingpins Led Zeppelin never released singles. It's also worth considering how internet-savvy rock fans are, consuming music in ways that, legal or not, don't register on Music Week statistics. Yet the audience for rock remains hungry, and fans will buy as a means of registering their discontent. Just ask Joe McElderry, or Rage Against the Machine for that matter.
It's rock fans who are buying music magazines too. The healthly circulation of titles such as Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Kerrang! ensures they remain in business while pop-orientated magazines such as X Magazine sadly close down. Admittedly heritage titles make up most of these sales, but consider the breakthrough of a band such as Paramore, whose lead singer Hayley Williams saw her recent 22nd birthday commemorated as a trending topic on Twitter from morning until night. Bands such as these have an engaged fanbase; that's why one NME writer recently received a barrage of emails calling for his head on a plate after describing My Chemical Romance's Ray Toro as "doughty" in a recent cover feature. My mum loves Olly Murs, but I doubt she'll scold me for suggesting he looks a bit like a potato.
Most rock fans will concede they're waiting for the band that'll make the next great leap forward. But I remember feeling much the same thing the last time it was said rock is dead. Which was about three months before Nirvana came along.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Twelve tips for the Flaming Lips
So Wayne Coyne plans to release a song each month this year? My band the Wedding Present have been there before, and we've got a few tips for the Lips ...
Last month, the Flaming Lips announced they were planning to record and release a song a month in 2011. In 1992, the Wedding Present did the same thing with their Hit Parade project and entered the Guinness Book of Records, equalling Elvis Presley's 1957 achievement of 12 UK top 30 singles in one year. Here, Wedding Present frontman David Gedge offers Wayne Coyne's band month-by-month advice on how to survive ...
January: Plan your attack
"They should probably plan more than we did. We only thought about doing it in the November of the preceding year. When our bass player, Keith, first came up with the idea, we all got so excited that none of us wanted to wait 14 months before starting. So we didn't have any real strategy until after we'd started writing the songs. In hindsight, it probably would've been wiser to have them all written and recorded and ready to go, but then that sounds a little bit cynical and calculated. We definitely liked the idea of spontaneity – and we thought the songwriting might evolve over the year, too."
February: Don't feel the need to do a love song for Valentine's Day
"The idea of theming them did cross my mind; I actually thought that it might be quite cool. But I was outvoted on that one. The band thought it was too corny. We did have a summery single, California – which came out in June – but it happened naturally. The only time I did get my way was with the song Three, which I wanted to release in the third month."
March: Don't keep one eye on the charts
"The fact that each of them was a hit single was an exciting by-product, but we did have this feeling that we wouldn't let the project take over what we do, which is write songs and make records. If we'd felt we were continuing just because we wanted to have hit singles I'm confident that we would've stopped the series. Naturally, we quickly began to anticipate that they might all be hits, but if you listen to some of the later ones they're not even remotely poppy or commercial. If they hadn't all been hits it wouldn't have been the end of the world."
April: Turn each release into a cult event
"They might need to find a way to make each release exclusive. I was genuinely taken aback by how successful the Hit Parade singles were; we never anticipated such a demand. But the reason they sold out so quickly was that they were limited editions of 15,000 7in singles and after the first couple sold out, people began to realise that if they wanted to get the complete set they had to get in there straight away. When the series became successful RCA wanted to increase the number they were pressing, but we didn't allow them because it would've been unfair on people who were collecting the whole series. But it's a different world now – it wasn't the song that was the collector's item, it was the piece of plastic. There's a certain romance attached to a 7in single; it's not really the same, downloading a file on to your computer."
May: Make each track surprising
"For us, that came automatically. The whole thing was quite eclectic, there was no pattern to it, which is why I never thought it would hold together as an album. There was no general feel to it – four different producers, 12 songs written over a long period."
June: Don't worry, the novelty won't wear off
"It was an extremely media-friendly idea and I think, because of that, the novelty never really wore off. Every time we released a single there was renewed interest from the media. From some people it was a renewed lack of interest because it gave them a chance to say, 'Not another record from the Wedding Present?'. But we never had a problem with people becoming less curious in the series. On the contrary, by the summer we were starting to get worried that the music was being overlooked because the series had become so successful. We'd say: 'And there are actually some quite good songs in there, if you'd care to listen!'"
July: Keep the visuals interesting
"It'd be great if the Flaming Lips could do a different costume concept for each one. We didn't do Top of the Pops every month because we were on tour a lot, and by the time we were on the show the single wouldn't have been available for a week and a half, anyway. But after we'd been on a few times we did think we should do something different, so for Flying Saucer we dressed in these industrial radiation suits that were left over from the video. It made it a bit more surreal."
August: If it's not working by now, stop
"They shouldn't lower their standards of songwriting and recording. We agreed that if we felt the music was suffering, we would stop because it wasn't that important to us."
September: Autumn's here – make your songs season-friendly
"I suppose it'd be quite interesting to hear someone adapt their songs through the seasons, but there's always the risk that they might end up looking a bit pretentious, which is why we didn't do it. As long as the songwriting is good, which it usually is from the Flaming Lips, I can't see how aiming songs for certain times in the year would be a problem."
October: Don't think of the project as an 'album in progress'
"I never did, and I still don't. Our website lists Hit Parade as a compilation album because it's not like we went in and recorded everything in one go with one person in one studio. I think they should look at theirs as a Greatest Hits of 2011. I'm a huge fan of singles."
November: Push through the 'song fatigue' wall
"It did become exhausting. There was the stress of 'can we continue and complete the project?' I always feel pretentious using the phrase 'hard work' because it's not like I'm working down a mine or anything, but there was definitely a self-imposed pressure. You normally have the freedom to work on something for as long as you want – and that's not always a good thing – but the opposite of that is 'OK, it's Friday, we've got to have this finished tonight'. As a musician you hardly ever see those kind of deadlines, which was a new phenomenon for us. But I think it was all part of the game. If you're going to set out to do this you might as well do it properly. It influences you to write in a different way and changes the way you work, which is not always a bad thing."
December: Do a Christmas song
"I think you probably have to. A lot of Christmas songs are naff, so you have to take care. The only themed single we did was the December one. I like Christmas songs but ours, No Christmas, was more of a melancholy anti-Christmas song because it was all about guilt, loneliness and loss. But it was also about something coming to an end and I think Christmas is kind of a full stop to the year."
David Gedge was talking to Mark Beaumont
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Alex Winston - Sister Wife
Sickly sweet but with a dark core, here's a tip for 2011 that (hopefully) won't collapse under the hype
You may have read about Detroit-based singer Alex Winston in one of the many "big in 2011" features that are doing the rounds. And while she's not as hugely hyped as Jessie J, there's a still high level of expectation. Sister Wife – the first taster from her forthcoming EP of the same name, produced by the Knocks – continues her rich vein of chart-friendly pop with an edge that started with last year's Choice Notes, a song so laden with plinky-ponk pianos that it wound up soundtracking an escapist car advert. Over airy, intricately arranged drums and distinctive vocals, Sister Wife seems sickly sweet on the surface but, like all good pop, hides a dark core.
The Sister Wife EP is available to download on 7 February (with a physical release on 4 March). The Sister Wife single can be downloaded for free here.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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