Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock

by Steven Hyden

In another time, Taylor Swift would’ve been classified as a rock star—she’s a singer-songwriter who plays confessional songs in basketball arenas, like Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, or Sheryl Crow. But instead she’s called country or pop. The same could be said of Adele—she’s part of the diva continuum with Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Celine Dion, but she also belongs in the history of singer-songwriters with Carole King and Joni Mitchell, who were lumped under the rock umbrella in the seventies. That’s two of the biggest pop stars in the world with rock in their DNA, but they are almost never discussed as rock singers.

That’s the real reason why music critics and cool kids hate Phish so much—they operate as if punk never happened.

Right now, I’d like to give a brief lesson in how culture critics can rig the discourse. As a professional culture critic, I’ve been sworn to protect these trade secrets. However, circumstances have compelled me to be the Edward Snowden of pop criticism. At the risk of imprisonment in music-critic jail, I must be a whistleblower and leak this highly effective and oft-used three-point plan. Invent a genre that only critics care about or even know how to define. (This applies to dad rock, but also chillwave, seapunk, backpack rap, hipster metal, alt-country, or anything attached to the suffix “-core.”) Construct the criteria for the made-up genre in

“nostalgic.” Anybody who has ever read a record review knows that “nostalgic” is the worst thing an album can be, next to “problematic” and “by the Dave Matthews Band.” “Nostalgic” is code for “out-of-touch and conservative,” the