skullaria wrote:
I always thought that MTV and the music video format killed it. Suddenly, you had to be a good dancer, good looking, with a good production crew and good editing to become popular. As MTV played fewer videos, fewer stars rose, and add to that the grunge movement and people started looking closer in to their own communities for their musical heros. Top that with the Internet, which introduced all sorts of new world music, in case you didn't like what was being played locally, and we have ended up with one big mess of everyone going every which way.

All of that played a part, but I think the primary cause of this change the democratization of transmission technology. You're now exposed to a thousand or a million times as much information as your forebears were in the 1960's. This necessarily alters your relationship to it. Such bombardment almost assures that stardom is, if not antiquated, then transformed into something more fleeting, more limited and, perhaps, more arbirary.

At any rate, to me this all is good news, because I see more value in 10,000 second tier stars than 10 first tier stars. This is an judgement I'm willing to admit is subject to personal opinion.

Rock was dead for sure when Paris Hilton went into a studio drunk one night with a good soundman and come out a singer, following that with a sexy video...and the nail was in the coffin.

I'd rather not call that "rock", but "pop" and that fragmentation happened long ago. Go back to the majority of 70's and 80's music and honestly tell me that we're worse off now. No fucking way is 2007 worse than 1987 in terms of the quality and vibrancy of the music scene.

RE: Where Have All the Rock Stars Gone?