re: Did rock skewing too much to the “hard” side kill its mainstream appeal?

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I’m a young dude so I don’t pretend to know why tastes really changed but I feel like grunge and the inability for rock to return to “good time” music may be the reason it fell out of mainstream. Seems like it just kept getting darker with a few bright spots. I hate how people say “listen to the new stuff it’s still alive as ever” and then play some Avenged Sevenfold. Back in the day rock was all about having fun and cutting loose, it’s like somehow that job was just handed to country and rap when there was still space for Rock and Roll. People still love to listen to the classics if any band would realize they don’t just have to make baby-making music for methheads.

ETA: Seems like a lot of rock bands these days are just easy listening Metal acts

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I don’t know how you can fault the one tentacle of rock that is still producing high level music for its death.

That “hard rock” genre is what’s keeping rock alive, not killing it. People supporting Mumford and Sons, Kings of Leon. Imagine Dragons etc. are what killed rock music. Where are all those bands now? Those bands and similar were your faces of the genre for the last decade. It’s not shocking to see the mainstream appeal fall off a cliff.

As someone else said too, we are not representative of the global population when it comes to musical taste. Linkin Park before Chester passed was an amphitheater act in the states and a main headliner overseas.

And then there’s just the “get off my lawn” attitude and refusing to find new music that appeals to you and grow with the genre. I suspect we will look at these years much like the 80s. We’ll look back and see some bright spots in a largely forgettable mainstream scene that weren’t huge at the time, but found a way to hang in long enough to become relevant eventually.

Rock isn’t dead. It’s just on life support.

******This is going into BMTH text wall territory now ******

told y’all a few years ago BMTH is coming for that rock throne. Look at how they’re getting there. Working with mainstream acts and other popular versions of “art” and “storytelling” in the modern world like partnering with Kojima on Death Stranding. They literally told everyone, “we are trying to bring the mainstream music fan back into rock when they created ‘Amo’”. And it didn’t work. It just alienated fans. So they just tried something else. And they’re finally creating music that is bringing in the haters. Fans of Babymetal listen to “Kingslayer” and are like “ok you got me there. Or fans of Evanescence listen to “butterflies” and them do Evanescence better than Evanescence has in a long time. Amy Lee has even credited them with reigniting that flame in her again.

I dunno. I have an 17 year old son and he and his friends are big rock music fans...the problem, they say is that there just aren't the amount of acts that are promoted.

They have a point really, bands like GvF really were languishing until Matt Drudge started promoting them. I know you'll pooh pooh that, but I didn't find out about them until he started weaving in exposure to them in 2016 or 2017