Is There a Rock Revolution Coming? Chris Cornell Thinks so
Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell was a guest on the ‘Howard Stern Show’ the other day and the veteran Seattle rocker gave his candid opinion of what he thinks about at least some of the music that is coming out these days. He compares the EDM craze to the disco craze that swept the music world in the 70’s and he points out that it was swept away with a resurgence of rock and roll. Cornell predicts that another rock revolution will come and surpass the current trend.
Cornell called into the show from Israel to gush about getting to tour with Black Sabbath, the current state of music, the upcoming tour with Nine Inch Nails and what it’s like playing in other countries. Said Cornell, “When you’re in a rock band it’s about the regular people, that get up in the morning and do regular things. It’s not about politics, it’s not about anything else that is going on that those people that are your fans can’t control.”
Click on the video below to hear the full interview and listen to Cornell expand on the idea of the rock revival that he predicts.
There is a certain plausibility to Cornell’s words and if you think about it, it’s happened before.
Rock ‘n’ roll music overtook the popularity of doo-wop back in the ’50s with artists such as Elvis Presley. The 1960s saw yet another rock revolution thanks to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, while the genre evolved yet again with Jimi Hendrix and the psychedelic movement. Then, when disco was arguably the most popular type of music in the early 1970s, genres like punk, heavy metal and other forms of rock and roll showed it the door.
Of course the 80’s was full of pop until hair metal rose up and made it’s presence felt, although it didn’t kill pop-music, it was no doubt a worthy contender. And then we had grunge, with bands like Soundgarden and Nirvana which some say killed hair metal and grunge began to give way to Alternative rock which made a big showing in the ’90s, but for the past decade and a half, boy bands, girl groups, pop singers, hip-hop, rap and EDM have filled the airwaves and dominated the charts.
“I actually heard somebody quoting a percentage the other day, that 70% of people polled nowadays, and it must be young people, are into Electronic Dance Music, and that it goes up every year, which I don’t know how much more it can go up,” Cornell begins. “The only thing I can say, is that tends to be the beginning of like a really great new movement in rock, which is the same thing that kind of happened when disco was dominating. All of the sudden then you had punk rock, that came as a reaction to it, where everyone said: ‘You know, this sucks.’ So maybe that will happen now.”
Cornell added, “Now people will be looking at each other a rave, their E will kick in, and they’ll go: ‘This sucks.’”