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As I’ve mentioned before, rock music’s having a real hard time right now. Rock’s fallen well behind country in terms of pop chart representation, and the little of it that’s on there does a bad job of representing the big, electric guitar-driven sound that essentially defines the form. By far the biggest “rock” band of the year is Imagine Dragons, which is basically the EDM version of Coldplay, and rock radio and Billboard‘s rock genre charts have been dominated by white rap, twee folk, and postmodern chanteuses like Lana Del Rey and Lorde who may have a lot of positive qualities but don’t exactly “rock.” Even Fall Out Boy’s smash “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” has more in common with Kanye and Drake than with the band’s own past material.
I have yet to see many people acknowledge “Still Into You” as one of rock’s few contemporary successes, despite its stylistic purity. Maybe it’s because the song’s slickly produced and its peppy mood doesn’t necessarily read as “rock.” Or maybe it’s because while the style has obviously gotten over its longstanding anti-keyboard bias, not many people are going to hold up a song fronted by a young woman—especially one who can appeal to the average Taylor Swift fan—as rock’s potential savior. But interestingly enough, Paramore’s achievement with “Still Into You” mirrors something similar happening in the underground, where most of the edgy, interesting rock music that actually sounds like it’s being made in 2013—as opposed to either the 90s or some mythology-soaked mashup of the 60s and 70s—is being made by women like Sky Ferreira and female-fronted bands like Perfect Pussy. As more rocker dudes get caught up in navel-gazing obsessive retro or bail for other genres, the responsibility for holding rock up and pushing it forward is increasingly being turned over to girls. And it seems like they’re doing a way better job of it.
