State of the Onion: Modern Rock Radio

Fellow music listeners,

I adress you today fully aware that most of you probably don't listen to modern rock radio, and neither do I. Several turns in the wife's Musk Mobile yesterday, in which there is nothing but radio led me to turn on the solitary rock station, and somehow I got stuck on it during my several trips during the day. So, how is modern rock radio doing these days you ask? Oh well. 

Let me say it like this: If one of the best tracks I heard yesterday on the rock station is "Hedonism (Just because It Makes you Feel Good)" from Skunk Anansie, there's trouble. That song is 25 years old. Still a great number, that nothing from the modern rotation could hold a candle to. What really struck me is how uniform everything sounded. Every single number had an electronic sheen and almost all of them soundd like they were made for a stadium crowd, with several having specific singalong sections that couldn't be any more obvious if they tried. 

OBG discussing modern rock music (artist illlustration)

Now I expect that shit from Coldplay, who were good for their first two albums - look at my list from 2002...they beat out Johnny Cash!. Seriously, before its singles got played to death and everybody got sick of them A Rush Of Blood To The Head was a great album. But from 2005's X&Y forward, the pandering stadium rock agenda was on. From what I can gather, they had a brief return to form with Viva La Vida, but since then it's been who-who-who choruses and the most obvious chords and melodies imaginable. This mirrors the way Kings Of Leon, one of my favorite bands from the Aughts turned, who around the same time as Coldplay decided to vy for the title of "most obvious U 2-imitating stadium rock band", while the original U 2 were still there fighting for that very same title! A quick return to form (2010's Come Around Sundown) and a slow descend into faceless midtempo singalong stadium pap hell. 

So, Coldplay's "Paradise" which has a literal handclapping section, so the crowd knows when to stop texting and livestreaming in the middle of the concert and throw their hands together - better be safe than sorry - wan't exactly paradise, but more of the same shit the band has been churning out for about twenty years. But The Offspring, third generation punk rock and ska doofuses, who still had a number of fun numbers when I was young ("Come Out And Play" and the inescapable "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)")? Same stadium rock sheen. The lyrics for "Ok, But This Is The Last Time" vaguely and no doubt purposely recall their breakthrough hit "Self Esteem" but there is no crunch to the guitars or drum, everything sounds like it has been processed to death. 

Ok, I admit, the animated imagined murder scenes are pretty nifty...

And don't even get me started on Alanis Morisette. We have come a long way from rock's golden age when I have to take Alanis freakin' Morisette as a gatekeeper for rock'n'roll, but man, when I heard "Reasons I Drink" with its big "Who-ho-ho" singalong chorus...it's like The Thing out here, baby, everyone has been assimilated to resemble the same thing. Mumford & Sons' "Rushmere"? Pure stadium 'rock' crap, basically the same as ever since Wilder Minds. When the band said "Fuck the banjo", I said "Fuck the Mumfords"and nothing I've heard from them since has made me want to change my mind again. 

Which brings me to at least one survivor from the rock'n'roll days of my youth with something useful to contribute. Placebo's "Try Better Next Time" is already three years old, but there was a real rush of nostalgia to hearing their classic sound again. Placebo still sound like Placebo, and amazingly Brian Molko has developed a sense of humor: "At the core of the earth / it's too hot to breathe / There's not much to eat / and everybody leaves". And then last night, while everyone had already peepled out of the car I stayed behind for three minutes (with the wife coming up at around the two minute mark, wondering what I was still doing in the car) to listen to Tracy Chapman's "Bang Bang Bang" from 1992. Today's rock music mostly sucks, but hey, at the end of the day, people still find a reason to believe. Someone said that in a song somewhere I believe. Because there's always a song to remember and a song to tide us over. 

So, is there a point to all this rambling? No, probably not. Which makes me probably a lot like a certain president during his state of the union onion union adress. But well, that's what can happen on a music blog, sometimes it's just a dude rambling about music... 

 So, be well, fellow listeners, 

and to those about to rock, we salute you!

Good night. And good luck. 

P.S.: No special music foreseen for this, but I figure if you made it through these ramblings you deserve something, so find a rocking, Jonder-approved surprise in the download...