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2021 In Review: 8 Trends That Defined Rock

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It isn't just not dead; it's thriving. In 2021, rock became less male, less straight, more genre-fluid and further enshrined modern-day elders — all with a healthy reverence for the past
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Dec 29, 2021 - 11:37 am

By the looks of the 2022 GRAMMY nominations, rock in 2021 was about looking backward.

There's some credence to this idea: AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney, Wolfgang Van Halen, Weezer, Kings of Leon and the late Chris Cornell had banner years. Even Black Pumas' twice-nominated Capitol Cuts was something of another permutation of their 2019 self-titled debut — to say nothing of their retro-soul sound. But the real story is more complicated than that.

Beneath the stratum of these legacy acts (and, in Black Pumas' case, an up-and-comer), rock expanded in a multitude of directions. For one, the idea of it being a straight, white male's game was put to pasture: women singer/songwriters from Olivia Rodrigo to Lucy Dacus — as well as a host of acclaimed LGBTQ+ artists — took the wheel.

And when it comes to the sound of rock in 2021, things got more exciting than inclusion alone. Just beneath the mainstream and big-box indie, Turnstile blended floor-punching hardcore with wavy R&B and electronic textures, thanks in part to forward-thinking guest Dev Hynes, a.k.a. Blood Orange. Hardcore-adjacent bands like Fiddlehead and Militarie Gun wove the angular indie and emo of the '90s into their strongest songs to date.

Certainly, some cultural currents from prior years washed into 2021's rock sphere — namely, classic rock proving as sturdy as ever, pop-punk and emo riding high and Foo Fighters saturating all media. But here are a few other happenings more-or-less squarely in the province of 2021.

Women Stepped Forward

Female talent was uncontainable in 2021 indie and rock: Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Bachelor, Courtney Barnett and Pom Pom Squad all had strong showings.

Most importantly, their perspectives were front and center. And while Olivia Rodrigo's Sour was saturated in heterosexual breakup woes, women wrote songs about everything this year, from grief to joy to sobriety to solitude.

If the Bechdel test — which ascertains whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man — applied to guitar-based music, 2021 would pass with flying colors.

Representation Expanded Beyond Gender

Two-thirds of rising pop-punk trio Meet Me @ The Altar — who released their Fueled By Ramen debut, an EP titled Model Citizen, in August — identify as LGBTQ+, but that's hardly where queer representation in 2021 rock ended. 

Snail Mail's Lindsey Jordan, who is openly gay, put out her acclaimed album Valentine. St. Vincent's Annie Clark, who once said "I don't really identify as anything," released Daddy's Home to widespread praise. 

And Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner, who is bisexual, had a massive year with her new album, Jubilee — which contained the hit single "Be Sweet" — and bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart. 

Plus, the half-Asian, half-Latinx, all-female band the Linda Lindas (of "Racist Sexist Boy" fame) signed to Epitaph Records in 2021 — which bodes well for a women-first 2022 in punk.

The Old Became New

On Glow On, Turnstile interpolated Sly and the Family Stone lyrics and their aforementioned punk peers whipped up a noise akin to Unwound or Sunny Day Real Estate. But those and other bands didn't just dig around in music's past; they made sounds from the past new again.

Across the pond, English duo Royal Blood's Typhoons brought back a bass-and-drums stomp reminiscent of the White Stripes or Death From Above 1979, reminding listeners the world over that rock is rightfully dance music.

They're not the only ones mining the past to new ends — a tidal wave of nervy bands in the U.K., like Squid, Dry Cleaning and Fontaines D.C., are recalling the sounds of post-punkers like Wire and the Fall.

Plus, Olivia Rodrigo's interpolation of Paramore's "Misery Business" into megahit "Good 4 U" showed the new guard is bringing back Myspace-era emo. (Machine Gun Kelly did a lot to weave that connection, as evidenced with his successful 2020 album Tickets To My Downfall.)

Then, there's Måneskin's summoning of Bowie and Queen signifiers — but that's a whole other story.

International Sounds Resonated

Måneskin's ascent in 2021 seemed to come out of nowhere.

Led by conspicuously codpieced singer Damiano David, the Italian rock band managed to lodge Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' 1967 hit "Beggin'" into youngsters' imaginations via a big win at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest and, eventually, TikTok virality. This year, they dropped their second album, Teatro d'ira: Vol. I, to critical applause.

And the year-end critics' polls featured another geographic outlier: Nigerian guitarist Mdou Moctar's new album Afrique Victime burned an indelible impression of Tuareg desert-blues into rock fans' consciousnesses.

Genres Became Elastic

Weezer tested the boundaries of their tried-and-true power-pop on 2021's OK Human, and it paid off — especially on the single "All My Favorite Songs," which swapped buzzsaw guitars for chamber orchestration.

There's also a separate discussion to be had about how emo — originally a rock subgenre — has come to subsume almost everything from hip-hop to pop to trap, from Juice WRLD to The Kid Laroi and beyond. (Pop-punk, its sister style, turns up in K-pop bands like ENHYPEN and Tomorrow x Together, too.)

A whole article could be dedicated to Glass Animals' genre fluidity — something they've been known for since their start with 2014's Zaba. But their psychedelic smash, "Heat Waves," launched the UK indie-rock group onto pop radio and beyond.

The track made Glass Animals arguably 2021's biggest rock success and scored them their first hit on the Billboard Hot 100, where it reached No. 7. (Spin its parent album, 2020's Dreamland, and Glass Animals' 2021 single, "I Don't Wanna Talk [I Just Wanna Dance]" for several other permutations of their sound-bending stylings.)

Finally — to bring up Turnstile's Glow On one more time — has a hardcore album ever veered so close to Arthur Russell or PinkPantheress territory without betraying its roots?

Bands Embraced Traditional Song Structures

Is this exactly a 2021 rock phenomenon? Maybe not, but it arguably reached a new apex this year.

After years of "vibes" in indie rock — from slacker-songwriters like early WAVVES and Best Coast to the noise storms of No Age and Bass Drum of Death — it seems like songs are back in style.

Check out pretty much any of the 2021 offerings cited above — they offer verses, choruses, bridges and/or legible lyrics. Is it possible that while textures and references are an integral part of memorable songs, listeners are demanding a little more meat to the bone?

A Rock Veteran Mentored The Next Gen

Travis Barker is precipitously becoming far more than Blink-182's drummer. These days, he's nurturing young rock talent left and right.

After high-profile collaborations with Post Malone and Machine Gun Kelly in 2020, he partly spent 2021 mentoring the 24-year-old rocker KennyHoopla (the pair collaborated on SURVIVOR'S GUILT: THE MIXTAPE) and helping Willow Smith transition from alt-R&B to pop-punk by featuring on three cuts from her album lately i feel EVERYTHING.

In addition, he hopped on tracks with MOD SUN and grandson, and furthered the emo rap craze with features on songs from blackbear, Trippie Redd, Sueco, LILHUDDY, and Jack Kays, among others.

The rock veteran also helped a fellow longtime punk star begin a new chapter, too: Barker signed Avril Lavigne to his label, DTA Records, in November, also featuring on her first single on the imprint, "Bite Me."

These Rock Heroes Saturated Everything

Even after decades of making influential rock music with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, how does one encapsulate the year that Dave Grohl had?

Grohl was just about everywhere this year. Not only did Foo Fighters release their 10th studio album, Medicine at Midnight; they performed at Biden's inauguration, entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received the first-ever global icon award at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards. (Plus: a bestselling memoir, an upcoming horror-comedy… the list goes on.)

If it's possible to ascertain a future classic rock artist, Grohl is probably your safest bet. And even if Foo Fighters want to take it easy after such a whirlwind year, the irrepressibly enthusiastic hitmaker clearly isn't going anywhere in this decade.

2021 In Review: 8 Trends That Defined Country Music

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Trini Lopez in London in 1965

Trini Lopez in London in 1965

Photo: Stanley Bielecki/ASP/Getty Images

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Trini Lopez, Who Revitalized American & Mexican Folk Classics, Has Died From COVID-19 At 83

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The GRAMMY-nominated singer/guitarist's biggest global hits were lively covers of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary's "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree"
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Aug 12, 2020 - 3:18 pm

GRAMMY-nominated singer, guitarist and actor Trini Lopez, whose lively blend of American and Mexican folk songs with rockabilly flair earned him worldwide fame in the '60s, has died at 83. The Mexican-American artist died from COVID-19 at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif. yesterday, Aug. 11.

Beginning with his 1963 debut studio album, Trini Lopez At PJ's, Lopez found success bringing new life—and a raucous, danceable beat and vocal delivery—to other artists' songs, including folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary's hits "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." Both songs would be his biggest, with his versions out-charting theirs both on the Billboard Hot 100 and international charts.

Back at the 6th GRAMMY Awards in 1964, following his epic breakout year, Lopez was nominated for Best New Artist.

If I Had A Hammer: From Aretha Franklin To Public Enemy, Here's How Artists Have Amplified Social Justice Movements Through Music

His rocked-up rendition of "I Had a Hammer," released in 1963 on his live debut album, hit No. 3 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 in 36 countries. The song was originally written by political activist/folk icon Pete Seeger and Lee Hays and recorded as a protest song by their band The Weavers in 1950, reemerging as a GRAMMY-winning No. 10 hit from Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962, the year prior to Lopez's breakout success with the classic song.

Popular '60s West Hollywood star-studded venue P.J.'s, where the Dallas-born singer recorded his first two albums (which also put the club on the map outside of Los Angeles), was where he got his big break, from none other than Frank Sinatra. After catching a few of his shows, the Rat Pack leader signed him to his Reprise label.

"I remember reading in the trades that Frank Sinatra frequented P.J.’s a lot so I moved over there so I could meet him," Lopez said. "I was hired for three weeks and I stayed a year and a half. I played four or five shows every single night and I never repeated a song. I just kept waiting to meet Frank Sinatra, and within a month he came with an entourage and to my surprise he offered me an eight-year record contract on his label. I put P.J.'s on the map with my live albums since they were recorded for Sinatra's record company."

Read: Sin-atra City: The story of Frank Sinatra and Las Vegas

A self-proclaimed "proud" Mexican-American born to immigrant parents in Dallas in 1937, Lopez also performed and recorded many songs in Spanish at a time when artists, including himself, were asked by labels to hide or Whitewash their Latin identity. Trini Lopez At PJ's included a rendition of traditional Mexican folk song "Cielito Lindo" and in 1964, he released The Latin Album, filled with of Spanish language classics. His father, Trinidad Lopez II, was a ranchera singer who made his living as manual laborer.

As The Guardian notes, "in the mid-'60s he was releasing as many as five albums a year, though that slowed in the late '70s. While he continued performing, he released very little music until 2000, when he began recording again and released a further six albums." His final album, released in 2011 and titled Into the Future, was a nod to Sinatra, featuring songs from his catalog.

Save Our Venues: Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues

At the peak of his musical fame in the '60s and '70s, he also found moderate success in film and TV, with roles in films The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Antonio (1973) and a variety show special on NBC in 1969, "The Trini Lopez Show."

A talented guitar player—he started playing at age 11—Gibson Guitars had him design two instruments in 1964, which remain highly sought after to this day. Dave Grohl and Noel Gallagher are both fans of the vintage models. Grohl paid tribute to Lopez on Twitter today, underscoring that he's used his on every Foo Fighters album ever recorded.

His electric live performances and hit records made him an in-demand artist in the Las Vegas circuit, as well as around the globe, including one jaunt he found most memorable—stealing the show as the Beatles' opener in Paris in 1964.

"I used to steal the show from them every night!" he said in a 2014 interview. "The French newspapers would say, 'Bravo, Trini Lopez! Who are the Beatles?'"

Ivan Barias On Silence As Complicity, Holding Major Labels Accountable & How To Be A Non-Black Latinx Ally

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Dave Grohl in 1995

Photo by Niels van Iperen/Getty Images

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He Stuck Around: Foo Fighters' Eponymous Debut Album Turns 25

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In his post-Nirvana 1995 debut, Dave Grohl launches his legacy as a creator of truly great, mood-stabilizing alternative rock
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 21, 2020 - 10:37 am

You could call Dave Grohl rock's greatest survivor, and have an uncomfortable laugh, but that doesn’t make the question go away. Robert Christgau once put it even more darkly by referring to him in passing as "Nirvana’s most successful member." You'd be hard-pressed to find happier post-tragedy endings in the genre, though, than two albums with significant anniversaries this month. One is AC/DC’s now-40 Back in Black, in which their new singer Brian Johnson sang "Forget the hearse, ‘cause I never die" on the title track, which is supposed to be a tribute to the late Bon Scott, and somehow winds up one of the most tasteful things on the record. The other is Grohl’s first time in the spotlight himself, 1995's Foo Fighters, which turns a more robust 25, and was keyed to the early hit "I'll Stick Around," a promise the drummer's made good on since his last singer killed himself and in some ways took a whole generation with him.

Dave Grohl's stuck around so long that the entire guitar-loving world has watched as he became the genre's new benchmark act, the very horizon itself. The Foo Fighters founder's hard and friendly guitar-bass-drum attack redefined radio's idea of rock especially, a hard rock dad's idea of punk and R.E.M. condensed into one easily swallowed pill. You could call them the most streamlined band ever, and you might not be wrong. Oftentimes, the grain of Grohl’s swollen, jangling guitar sound recalls the unstoppably melodic fuzz of Bob Mould, another major alt-rock figure with two careers, one being a similarly legendary band that was never revived. You could even say that Foo Fighters brought Mould's noise-tune synthesis full circle, playing out its every possible combination before letting emo take over as the new standard for commercial rock. Again, Foo Fighters rarely elicit strong opinions from tastemaker types; they're generally accepted as a part of the ecosystem. But their early records are truly great, if you can imagine the band being considered for the first time and not taken for granted as a reliable AOR staple.

Foo Fighters wasn't even a band's work; save for one guitar solo, Grohl sings and plays every instrument on the entire thing, and gets a surprising variety of colors out of it. "Weenie Beenie" and "Wattershed" honored Nirvana's desire to put a killer riff to bed by simply throwing garbled screaming over top. But "Big Me" is a pop jingle far more squeaky-clean and crowd-pleasing than any Nirvana song, more akin to Weezer's "Buddy Holly." And like Weezer, he couldn’t put forth such a sincere piece of craft with a straight face, so he made the video a Mentos commercial like Weezer simulated a "Happy Days" episode.

Grohl exploited the quiet/loud dynamic even more casually and shamelessly than Kurt Cobain, because Cobain's clean verses still utilized chord sequences as jagged and misshapen as the choruses they'd explode into. You could tell they were going somewhere dark and punk. Foo Fighters on the other hand, starts with the innocent strums of "This Is a Call" as a pump-fake before launching into its reaffirmation of grunge's loudness. Its follow-up, 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, was even more Jekyll-and-Hyde, treating "Hey, Johnny Park!" and "Up in Arms" like outright prom themes plunging into waterfalls of expensive distortion, and especially the 90-second "Doll" into the rip-roar of "Monkey Wrench." Even when Grohl is as abrasive as his hardcore inspirations (which is more often than "My Hero" or "Learn to Fly" haters think), he rarely sounds too disturbed or dangerous, which is probably his legacy: mood-stabilizing alternative rock. Foo Fighters sounds like the work of a middle-class, well-balanced individual; its most enraged moment, the famous "I don’t owe you anything" refrain from "I’ll Stick Around," falls well south of, say, Billy Corgan's contemporaneous "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" on the breakdown-o-meter.

More often, Grohl comes off like a soft-spoken riff-painter who digs shoegaze as much as Corgan did, with broad-brush tones on "X-Static" and "Exhausted," the dirge-y latter of which somehow becoming the very first Foos release. But he allows a little cocktail swing into the funny tantrum "For All the Cows," and hop-skip-waltzes through "Floaty," one of the debut’s most underrated tunes. The incinerating drive of "Good Grief" has improved with time; in fact, most of Foo Fighters is comprised of extraordinarily solid tunes. It wouldn't be a Nirvana album in any way, shape, or form if only, say, "Oh, George" or "Alone + Easy Target" asserted themselves. But post-grunge was rarely so graceful and consistent, so enamored with its own textures and dynamic shifts, so confident of its melodic worth while skirting punk's obnoxiousness. It’s rarely mentioned alongside the '90s' most auspicious debuts, and it’s not like Grohl doesn’t have enough to brag about. But in more than half its songs you can hear a second banana transforming into a headliner-god without making a big deal about it, and doing it all by himself in a realization of purpose that recalls Prince's Dirty Mind. That guy was a Foo Fighters fan, too.

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Dave Grohl

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Dave Grohl Tells The Story Of Jamming With Prince, Talks Growing Up To His Records

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Foo Fighters' tribute to the Purple One, plus many more, will air on CBS on April 21 as part of "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince"
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Apr 6, 2020 - 10:01 am

There probably isn't a musician on Earth who hasn't dreamed of jamming with the one-and-only musical force of nature known as Prince. For Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, this dream came true during Prince's now-famous 21-night residency at The Forum in Los Angeles in 2011.

Dave Grohl Tells The Story Of Jamming With Prince

Prince's L.A. takeover kicked off on April 14 that year and also included intimate performances at the Troubadour, House Of Blues. The town was abuzz, as tickets for the Forum shows were only $25, a nice gift to his fans. But even local rock stars took note of the special occasion.

"He did this 21-night run at the Forum in Los Angeles, so of course me and my friends are like, 'of course we've got to go to at least one show,'" said Grohl backstage at "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince."

So naturally, Grohl and his friends piled into a party bus to head down to Inglewood, taking advantage of L.A. traffic to have a few (too many) drinks. When they arrived, Grohl's security person, who also worked with Prince had some news for Dave.

According to the story, his security guard told him, "'Hey, he knows your here, he's gonna call you up to jam,'" Grohl recalled. "And I was like, 'no no no no no, I've had one too many already, I'm not going up there with Prince like this. Anybody else I would jump up on stage and make a mess, but Prince? No way."

After the show, Grohl would be led back behind a velvet curtain to meet Prince and the great Sheila E., a double thrill. Prince asked him when he wanted to jam, then told him to come back the next week on Friday. To arrange the details, Grohl's manager gave Prince Dave's phone number.

"I sat with that phone in my hand for a week, on vibrate, sleeping with it near my head, the whole thing, waiting for him to call, and he never called," Grohl said.

By the time that Friday came around, Grohl showed up at the Forum not knowing quite what to expect.

"I walk out into the arena... it's empy. I'm talking to my guitar tech and all of a sudden, just like that 'SNL' skit with Maya Rudolph, he just appears," Grohl said. "He goes, 'you wanna jam?'"

Grohl then recalled sitting behind the drum kit as the band started joining in with Prince on bass. After the first song, everyone is high-fiving and Prince told him he had a heavy foot, a compliment Grohl took to heart.

"Then he picks up a guitar and starts playing 'Whole Lotta Love' by Led Zeppelin," Grohl said. "And it was awesome. It sounded so good, amazing. We do that for like eight minutes and I'm like, 'Oh god, this is the best band I've ever been in."

Dave Grohl Lauds Prince Ahead Of Tribute Special

Due scheduling conflicts, Grohl never got to join Prince on stage during a show, though he was invited back. Unfortunately, he never saw Prince again, but the experience is that of a dream and one Grohl will never forget.

"I'm an '80s kid, so I grew up with all of his records, and as a popular musician, he was the most talented of anybody," Grohl said. "He was the best bass player, he was the best guitar player, he was the best drummer, he was the best singer, he was the best dancer. He was just the best."

You can catch Foo Fighters' tribute to the Purple One, plus many more, can be seen as part of "Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince." airing on Tuesday, April 21, the four-year anniversary of Prince's death, from 9–11PM ET/PT on CBS and streaming on CBS All Access.

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"Let's Go Crazy: The GRAMMY Salute To Prince" To Air April 21 On CBS Featuring John Legend, H.E.R., Usher & More

 

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Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters

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Foo Fighters' D.C. JAM Fest 2020 Lineup: Pharrell, Chris Stapleton, The Go-Go’s and More

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The fest is set to take place on July 4th at FedExField
Onaje McDowelle
GRAMMYs
Mar 3, 2020 - 3:11 pm

Rock heroes and 11-time GRAMMY-winning band the Foo Fighters have announced the lineup for their inaugural D.C. Jam Festival. Headliners Chris Stapleton, Pharrell Williams and The Go-Go’s will perform at the festival set to take place on July 4th at FedExField in Landover, Maryland. The band has previously hosted festivals twice before (their 2017 and 2018 Cal Jam Festival).

Additional artists including Band of Horses, The Regrettes, Durand Jones & The Indications, Beach Bunny, Radkey and other special guests will round out the one-day festival’s lineup.

In addition to celebrating Independence Day, Jam Fest will also help the Fighters commemorate the 25th anniversary of their self-titled debut. Earlier this month, the group announced that it would mark its quarter-century feat by heading out on a North American van tour, with stops in Phoenix, Oklahoma City and Knoxville among others.

D.C. Jam Festival pre-sales begin today, (March 3) at 12 p.m. Eastern Time and public on-sale will kick off on Friday, March 6. Tickets are available here.

For more information on full lineups and festival admission, visit dcjamfest.com.

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