A decade ago, KISS frontman Gene Simmons made a declaration: rock is officially dead. This morning we woke up to electro-pop darling Charli XCX reporting: "I think the dance floor is dead, so now we're making rock music".
And who are we to argue with that? XCX has clearly had her finger on the pulse for a while now (who could deny the cultural relevance of an album like Brat?), but it also seems like other big names in the pop circuit have jumped aboard the rock music bandwagon. There’s a growing sense that something is shifting, perceptibly, within the upper echelons of mainstream pop. Beyoncé’s long-teased Act III of Renaissance has been widely speculated to lean into rock, while Olivia Rodrigo has been carefully staging a new era that feels increasingly indebted to the aesthetics and attitude of late-90s and early-2000s guitar music. Recent festival appearances had her wearing leather sets by Ludovic de Saint Sernin and vintage band tees, shredding a fire engine-red electric guitar, and bringing out Robert Smith of The Cure. She even helping to induct The White Stripes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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But before any rock'n'roll fanatics get up in arms – let us be clear: what’s emerging isn’t a simple revival narrative. Rock hasn’t been absent, so much as de-centred from the mainstream. For the better part of the last decade, it’s occupied an increasingly niche space in the mainstream ecosystem, edged out of the upper tiers of the Billboard charts by the algorithmic dominance of pop, hip-hop, and electronic music. But of course, the genre did not disappear – it simply mutated. And music culture tends to move in cycles of exhaustion and rediscovery – as we know – and we may be entering a phase where the appetite for rock has begun to return to the masses (particularly in Gen Z and Gen Alpha).
Part of that appetite, I think, is generational. Rock is such an inherited genre. For most of us, our earliest encounters with music were filtered through car stereos, hand-me-down CDs – childhood soundtracks piloted by the tastes of our parents or older siblings, many of whom were consuming rock music in spades. Whether it was the melodic tunes of The Beatles, head-banging to some Metallica, or the brooding introspection of The Smashing Pumpkins, these sounds tended to embed themselves early. I'd argue What’s happening now feels more like a rearticulation, or an attempt to translate those inherited sensibilities into something modern.
"Rock is such an inherited genre. For most of us, our earliest encounters with music were filtered through car stereos, hand-me-down CDs – childhood soundtracks piloted by the tastes of our parents or older siblings, many of whom were consuming rock music in spades."
You can see that translation most clearly in the current wave of emerging rock acts. Bands like Geese, in Brooklyn, are building incredible momentum folding indie rock, post-punk, and experimental textures into something that feels both referential and new. Meanwhile, artists such as Sleep Token and Wet Leg are finding unexpectedly large audiences, in no small part thanks to TikTok. Even more telling is the success of hardcore bands like Turnstile, whose crossover appeal suggests that heavier, less traditionally “radio-friendly” forms of rock are no longer confined to subcultural niches.
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And it's not just anecdotal – the numbers reflect this shift too. Midyear data from Luminate indicates that Rock was among the fastest-growing genres in the United States in 2025, outpacing both Latin and Country.
At the same time, legacy acts are finding second lives via film and TV culture and algorithmic drift (affectionately named the "Saltburn Effect", where film and show soundtracks propelling older songs to viral status). Creed, once critically maligned, has been reabsorbed into the cultural mainstream via TikTok – the same could be said about The Cranberries, whose songs Linger and When You're Gone have become unlikely anthems for a new generation. Television has played its part too. Shows like Stranger Things function as cultural conduits, reintroducing 80s hits like Enter Sandman or, more recently, Purple Rain by Prince.
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What’s perhaps most interesting is how little friction there is between these temporal layers. In the streaming era, chronology has largely dissolved as a meaningful organising principle. A playlist might move seamlessly from a newly released post-punk track to a decades-old rock power ballad without any sense of rupture. Which brings us back to the question of – why this moment, specifically? One explanation – perhaps the simplest – is that we’re experiencing a generational fatigue with perfection. Much of contemporary pop is defined by its polish: its clarity, its precision, its almost frictionless listenability. And increasingly, that polish is augmented (or even replaced) by digital tools and AI production. Rock’s imperfections are an antidote. It's always been, at its core, a genre that insists on embodiment – on the idea that music is something felt as much as it is heard. It's probably why generations before us have been so enraptured by seeing their favourite bands perform live, which has only trickled down to younger generations (another depressing trend that we won't get into here). It's a genre full of distortion, vocal strain – it's almost predicated on this sense of a lack of control; being "lost to the music". There's a humanness in the process.
If that's where we're headed next in music, the future looks bright. A rock renaissance could be exactly what we need right now. A little more humanity, a little less technology. It gets a little hard to film concerts on your phone if we're too busy head-banging anyway.
