A new song or two appeared, but for the most part the same tunes played ad nauseam. There were few ballads, and fewer rock songs. The music sounded more like disco than rock. I thought disco was dead. Turns out disco had simply gone underground, where it became House, only to eventually reemerge, cicadalike, as the backing track to the CHR music and to bludgeon rock senseless with synths. Weirdly, the only place I consistently heard new guitar-driven rock music was on the girl-power cartoon shows my youngest watched on Nick Jr. There, guitar gods were still aspirational figures, albeit for
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