Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Power Of Rock; Music Can Do Anything 
Nothing can stand against an overdriven A Power Chord!
"I wish they'd bring back those 80s hair bands that rock so hard, they change the physical properties of things!"
"His chops are too righteous! The helmets can't handle this level of ROCK AND ROLL!!!"
In which the world is saved and the Big Bad defeated, not only through The Power Of Love or The Power Of Friendship, but through ROCK!!!
Yes, for some reason, music is the most capable form of creative expression when it comes to defeating the forces of evil. The battle often takes the form of a rock concert or music video. That in itself helps to explain why it's almost always music that saves the world. It'd take a very imaginative writer/director to defeat the villain with the power of Modern Expressionism.
Incidentally, it's only "The Power of Rock" because 99 percent of the time rock is the musical genre of choice for this Trope. Rock tends to be loud and theatrical, and therefore more powerful. As the examples below show, other kinds of music work too. ("Power of Music" sounded way too banal.)
The more evil the Big Bad is, the more potent musical attacks will be against him. In particular, Satan can't handle a good rocking. Ironic, no?
Can also refer to the many, many works of fiction in which characters fight for their right to rock (or party, or dance, or whatever as long as it involves music). Expect any video game involving musicians to have the "rocking heroes fight Culture Police" plot.
Seen quite a lot in shows that feature a literal Five Man Band or a Fake Band, and associated performances.
Note: Not to be confused with Musical Assassin. This trope involves actual music playing that the audience can appreciate, not just characters playing instruments with the sonic power to kick ass. There are few game examples of The Power Of Rock outside of music-based games.
A form of Magic Music. Very often involves The Power Of Love and/or The Power Of Friendship. See also Autobots, Rock Out!, A Little Something We Call Rock And Roll, Great Balls Of Fire, Brown Note, Rock Me Asmodeus and Make Me Wanna Shout. May cross over with Clap Your Hands If You Believe and Rule Of Cool. Very often crosses over with Crowning Music Of Awesome. Contrast Sex Drugs And Rock And Roll.
Not to be confused with Rocks With Powers, or Rocks That Grant Powers, Power Over Rocks or Music With Rock In. As for the Power of Paper and the Power of Scissors... you'll have to wait.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime
- Princess Tutu. The whole anime is based around the power of Ballet.
- Macross 7 is all about a spacefaring J-Rock band that fights giant space vampires by rocking them so hard they have orgasms (at least, Sivil does
 ). In transforming fighter planes controlled by guitars. It works.
- One of the Space Vampires rocks out so hard it blows up a planet.
- For that matter, the rest of the Macross series is about The Power Of Idol Singer Music (and of reaction warheads). It should be noted, it usually has a different justification every time; only in Macross7 is singing an actual source of superdimensional energy.
- Nerima Daikon Brothers.
- Subverted by Interstella 5555. While rock itself is not that powerful, the Gold Records from an award show are powerful enough to allow a man to conquer the universe.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch combines this with Magic Music. Later in the series, the villains fight back with their own songs, too.
- Mic Sounders the 13th of Gao Gai Gar uses rock music from discs, microphones, and a key-tar from his flying soundstage to attack, disable enemies, and power up his allies. His Disc X is actually able to rip enemies apart at the molecular level or shoot a gigantic laser beam at them.
- The Wave Motion Gun in Black Heaven is powered by a heavy metal guitarist's "groove". However, it's also partial to evil techno.
- It's worth noting that the original title is Kachou Oh-Ji ("Office Boss Ohji", referring to the main character). The subtitle? Hard Rock Save The Space.
- The Suzumiya Haruhi Drama CD had four-fifths of the Five Man Band face a musical monster, which first has to be weakened by singing badly at it, before commencing to rock out.
- The Science Ninja Team Gatchaman episode "Murder Music" had Galactor capturing a rock band, drugging and forcing them to play music personally created by Sosai X. With the recordings, a special ship with super speakers plays the music at a zillion decibels to create a devastating sound wave that can drive people insane and shatter matter.
- Haruhara Haruko, the resident alien of FLCL, wields an electric bass guitar as a blunt instrument in her battles with the show's Humongous Mecha. Said battles are also accompanied by appropriate rock music.
- In Ah! My Goddess, the demon Marller/Mara — on top of her weakness to good luck charms — can be forced to dance nonstop, and thus defeated, when she is exposed to Disco music.
- Similarly, Belldandy's half-demon sister Urd, who is otherwise one of the most Bad Ass characters in anime, can be put to sleep by the Japanese music genre of enka. She hates this.
- One episode of Keroro Gunsou had the team combating a "bad funk virus" with the power of an Idol Singer trio.
- How monster users in Buster Keel power up their monsters using guitars. Usually depends on what pick is used and what music is played.
Comic Books
- More than once, the eponymous protagonist of the Scott Pilgrim series has used the power of rock against his enemies, most notably at the ends of volumes one and three. Since he himself isn't that great a musician, usually other people are helping him out. And the music alone isn't enough to truly defeat the opponent, but it does weaken him sufficiently for Scott to take him out with some good old-fashioned fisticuffs.
- Additionally, Matthew Patel could summon hordes of minion girls with his Bollywood-style fighting, and Crash and the Boys, rival group to Scott's band Sex Bob-Omb, can put audiences into a literal daze with their music.
- The infamously deplored weekly series Countdown had one good thing: when the Pied Piper uses The Power of Rock to destroy an entire planet.
- Occasional X-Men member Dazzler's powers work by converting sound to light (which she can then use as laser beams). Naturally, she picked a musical career. Fighting evil with the power of... erm... Disco.
- In Twentieth Century Boys, this song saves the world.
- An issue of the Marvel Comics The Transformers series had Soundwave taking this trope literally when he harnessed the sonic power of a
Bruce Springsteen Brick Springhorn concert to make energon cubes.
Fan Fic
- A Fan Fic example is found in the Symphony of the Sword arcs of Undocumented Features. The main character has a rock band that plays a cover of Rockin' in the Free World during a big, onesided space battle, broadcasting their music over the bad guy's comm frequencies. Another arc of the same setting has a group of mercenaries who use a similar tactic that they call the "Goldfish Warning".
- Subverted in With Strings Attached; though the entire book is about The Beatles, they play music just a few times, with only the effects one would expect from music on Earth. They even sneer a bit at the notion that their music might be magical.
Film
- In the short film that forms the climax of his movie Moonwalker, Michael Jackson fights... bad people... or something... and he turns into a Transforming Mecha... point is, it involves music somehow.
- He also saves an entire planet with music in the 3-D film Captain EO.
- He also has magical, musical powers in the totally insane short film Ghosts.
- We could go on for a very long time here, as Michael seems to like this trope a lot. But we can't forget the "Fight For Your Right" sequence that opened the original version of the Black or White short film.
- Jack Black loves this trope too. His onscreen persona (especially in the band Tenacious D) is most often of a Genre Blind believer in The Power Of Rock. To wit:
- As far as movies that play the "fight for your right" angle totally straight, Footloose is easily the ultimate example. "Dancing is not a crime!"
- Repossessed (a spoof of The Exorcist) has the devil being exorcised through rock and roll. With Professional Wrestling commentators "Mean" Gene Okerlund and Jesse "The Body" Ventura providing play-by-play.
- Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure begins because the titular garage band leaders will eventually save the world through their music.
- At the end of the Ralph Macchio film Crossroads, it came down to a blues guitar duel with the devil's servant, Jack Butler, played by and based on Steve Vai. In an oddly meta twist, Vai also who composed the piece that Ralph Maccio uses to defeat Jack, and dubbed the guitar part over Ralph's miming. So, essentially, Steve Vai defeated Steve Vai in a guitar duel.
- Back To The Future suggests that a competent performance of the song Earth Angel on guitar, combined with The Power Of Love, is enough to heal a rift in the space-time continuum which is slowly obliterating a time traveller from 1985.
- Having said that, The Power of Rock is most effectively parodied only moments later, when Marty McFly's 1980s-style guitar solo is met with indifference, apprehension and even fear from its 1955 audience.
- On the other hand, The Power of Rock — specifically the Van Halen variety — is also demonstrated in this movie as a most forceful method of compelling individuals to your will (and against theirs).
- Toys has a sequence where two of the protagonists distract the Quirky Miniboss Squad with a performance in front of one of their security cameras.
- And, of course, there's KISS Meet The Phantom Of The Park! No, really.
- In Trick or Treat, Sammi Curr returns from the dead by the power of playing his record backwards.
- Wild Zero! Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf fights off zombies and UFOs with the power of ROCK AND ROLL! It is awesome! ROCK!!!!!
- Parodied in Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. The mutant fruit are finally subdued by the Narm-tastic Silly Love Song, "Puberty Love".
- In Young Einstein, an atomic beer keg is going to go off because it has reached supercritical mass! What can our hero do? Why, plug an experimental electric guitar into it and rock out! What else?
- A physicist listening on the radio notes with awe: "Electrified music played in 4/4 time!?! That would drain the power out of anything!"
- Add heaps and heaps of The Power Of Love to this, top it off with a Bittersweet Ending, and you've got yourself Once. It's honestly a very good movie, mostly because they play this trope completely straight.
- Casablanca. Victor Laszlo overhears Those Wacky Nazis singing a patriotic (and anti-French) German song around the piano, goes over to the band, and gets them to play La Marseillaise, with Rick's approval. The entire bar joins in, drowning out the Germans and emphasizing the passionate political undertones of the refugees and is the beginning of Rick's redemption.
- Rock And Roll High School. The Ramones using rock and roll to take over a high school? It doesn't get much cooler than that.
- The climactic end of Ghostbusters II won by use of "Higher And Higher" and the Statue of Liberty.
- In The Blues Brothers 2000, when the Blues Brothers do "Ghost Riders in the Sky," they summon bad weather, the devil's herd, and the ghost riders; lightning even strikes down a sniper. And the "In the Blood/John the Revelator" sequence was certainly doing something.
- In Evolution, singing "You Are So Beautiful To Me" brings the flying monster to the main characters in the mall, only for the poor thing to be gunned down.
- As you'd expect, Six String Samurai is loaded with this, capping with an epic duelling duet between a katana-wielding Buddy Holly and Death (who looks suspiciously like Slash).
- Shrek the Third, when Snow White unleashes the power of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", causing the forest animals to attack the Huorns guarding the city gates.
- Apocalypse Now creepily deconstructs this, when "Ride of the Valkyries" is played as the American helicopters shoot up a little town. Because of the unpleasant connotations "Valkyries" has picked up, and the decidedly unheroic nature of the scene, it's not exactly rock-out material.
- Inverted in J-Men Forever (1979) where it's the villainous Lightning Bug scheming to conquer the Earth with Sex Drugs And Rock And Roll, and the
tight-assed straights straight-jawed men-in-tights trying to stop him with a combination of dubbed Republic Film Serial heroes, schmaltzy music, and an indiscriminate bombing campaign of all suspected marijuana stashes.
Literature
- In Mercedes Lackey's Urban Fantasy novel Music To My Sorrow, the protagonists stop a riot and defeat the villain by staging an emergency magical rock concert. It helps that the main character is an elven-trained Bard who can rip holes in local spacetime with his music and their lead singer is gifted with the ability to influence the emotions of anyone who hears her sing.
- Her earlier novel Jinx High contains a magirock battle between two demon-infested electric guitars supported by a dark sorceress and a hippie-infested guitar and a guardian/witch. It ends when the speakers, not intended for arcane use, explode.
- War For The Oaks is another Urban Fantasy novel in which the main character is a bard, though in this case she is an out-of-work rock band leader putting together a new band when she is recruited as the required mortal for the titular Faery war. In the course of things she discovers her magical powers and ends up challenging the Queen of the Unseelie Court to a musical duel to determine the outcome of the war.
- In the Spellsinger series by Alan Dean Foster, the most powerful force in the world is Fly Like An Eagle.
- In Gael Baudino's Gossamer Axe, the heroine's lover has been taken by the Fair Folk, and for centuries she's been trying to use her Magic Music to get her back. The trouble is, her enemies' greater age and experience always makes them ready for anything she tries... until she discovers heavy metal.
- Terry Pratchett. Discworld. Soul Music. However, although it saves the day at the end, Soul Music is more or less about something for which the Disc isn't quite ready.
- In John Dies At The End, the heroes disguise themselves as a band to get past security at a Las Vegas hotel in order to confront a demon. They end up facing a swarm of monsters that are "natural dischordians", meaning they can't stand melody due to their hellish origin. The heroes proceed to play an original song written by the titular John himself: Camel Holocaust!
- To which the lyrics go. "I knew a man No / I made that part up / Hair! Hair! Haaaairrr! / Camel Holocaust! Camel Holocaust!"
- However, in the original version, the heroes perform Guns and Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine." This was changed for copyright reasons when the story was physically published.
- The "Yahtzee" Croshaw short story The Spirit of Rock.
- In Songs of Earth and Power by Greg Bear, any sufficiently great piece of music (or art in general) has inherent magical properties. In particular, there's a piece called the Infinity Concerto which legendarily transported a group of people to another world; later in the book, Mozart (yes, the real one) improvises another piece to transport them all back.
- The Disaster Area concert in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Calculated to turn the planet Kakrafoon into, well, a disaster area, the inhabitants are only hosting it as a last-ditch distraction from their curse of telepathy. The effects are rather more wide-ranging. The band's agent afterwards labels it "a good gig".
- In World War Z, the Americans set up in a defensive formation, then blast Iron Maiden as loud as they can to attract the Zombies and fire up the troops.
- In 1632, the uptime forces get a Spanish army to surrender by demoralizing them with rock. Also country, opera, Shostakovich and a small amount of napalm.
- The extreme example is probably the opening of the Silmarillion, in which the Ainur create the entire universe by singing.
- The power returns when Lúthien raises Beren from the dead (usually impossible) by singing so movingly that Mandos (god of death) relents. The genre of the music is unspecified.
- None has ever caught him yet, for Tom he is the master / His songs are stronger songs and his feet are faster
- Also in the Silmarillion: The sorcerous duel between Sauron and Finrod Felagund takes the form of a song contest.
- In The Magician's Nephew, Aslan sings Narnia into existence.
- In John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor's newest Into The Looking Glass book, Claws That Catch, the crew of the Vorpal Blade II discover a giant artifact in a very strange star system that turns out to be a giant concert venue, they then proceed to defeat an attacking alien fleet with songs such as Freebird and Black Unicorn used to control the star system scale laser lightshow.
- In Esther Friesner's Unicorn U. the apocalypse is averted with the power of samba.
- Then there is L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Spellsong Cycle, where a classically trained opera soprano is transported to a world in which music is magic. And nobody there has any training. And combined with some fancy lute playing, is powerful enough to create a city-sized nulclear fusion explosion from thin air.
- In The Illiminatus! Trilogy, the Illuminati rock group American Medical Association intends to play an outdoor festival near a lake where Nazi Occultists sunk an invincible army. The power of rock will raise the army, which will slaughter the fans and allow the Illuminati to ascend to a higher plane of existence. It Makes Sense In Context — as much as anything in the book.
- In The Bible, the walls of Jericho fall after the Israelites march around the city for seven days blowing horns, "rock music" being Older Than Dirt.
- In Wrack and Roll, the power of rock is used to stop a nuclear war.
- The Kalevala has Väinämöinen singing his young (wanna-be) rival Lemminkäinen into the swamp.
Live Action TV
- Subverted in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Hush", in which only a human voice will kill the bad guys, which have taken away everyone's voices to prevent this. Willow offers to play a CD, but Giles informs her it won't do the trick.
- But played upon in the literal sense in "Once More With Feeling", where everything happens according to the Power of
Rock Showtunes.
- The Monkees episode "The Devil and Peter Tork" uses a The Devil And Daniel Webster-style Deal With The Devil plot. Demonic pawn shop owner Mr. Zero claims he gave Peter the talent to play a golden harp in exchange for Peter's soul. However, Zero is defeated when Peter demonstrates that the true source of his ability to play the harp is his love of music.
- MTV's Sifl And Olly had several of these. One, "Hellfire" ('it rocketh you!') had the titular heroes in a song-vs-song challenge against the Devil. (Subversion: The last words of the song are "Dude, that sucked, RUN!")
- A The Kids In The Hall sketch had an aspiring young guitarist face off in a rock duel with Satan, ultimately defeating him with a barrage of Power Chords. While Satan is portrayed as being a much better guitarist than the hero, using six arms to play a blistering solo, the youth nonetheless manages to blow the Devil's mind simply by playing the opening riff of "Smoke on the Water". With a wah-wah pedal.
- Sapphire And Steel loved to do this, although they mostly used traditional songs such as sea shanties, army chants, and murder ballads. No Cosmic Horror can resist a rousing rendition of "Drunken Sailor" with the Soul Brotha on lead vocals and the Emo Teen The Scrappy on backup!
- I was working in the lab, late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight, for my monster from his slab began to rise, and suddenly, to my surprise he did the mash! He did the Monster Mash!
- In the Doctor Who story Revelation of the Daleks, the DJ turns his rock albums into an intense sonic beam that he blasts Daleks with.
- In the subsequent Doctor Who arc Silver Nemesis, The Doctor had built a tricked-out boom box for Ace. At one point The Doctor and Ace use the boom box to broadcast jamming frequencies which disrupt communications among a fleet of Cybermen vessels, while listening to some jazz tapes(the Seventh Doctor is a jazz afficinado).
- Horribly subverted in the failed VH1 show Strange Frequency. The series was basically The Twilight Zone/Outer Limits with MUSIC! It was a good source of Narm (John Taylor vs. a hotel room! The cast of That Seventies Show vs. an evil disco!) for the week or two it was on. But there was one genuinely eerie episode: a rock star attempts to get out of a Deal With The Devil by playing an impossible score that is being written by his own falling blood drops as his ill-gotten guitar's strings snap and slice at his fingers. He barely manages to finish the song when the (very irritated) devil points out that he missed a tiny symbol at the end, which means "repeat from the beginning". Cue evil laughter/Big No.
- This trope also provides a kick-ass example of Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the Ho Yay-laced band Jeffster in the second-season finale of Chuck, when Chuck and Morgan (who are Heterosexual Life Partners, and how!) that 'We Need A Distraction' so he can get his sister out of danger - and Morgan has the band (backed up by a string quartet) do a world-class cover of Styx's 'Mr. Roboto' in the wedding chapel! They rock the church so hard, nobody hears a bit of the running gun battle in the reception area between a Special Forces team and the bad guys! The absolute most kick-ass moment - when one of the group sets off fireworks in the chapel. A reviewer of the episode said that the episode had so much concentrated awesome that it may be illegal in several states.
- Kamen Rider Hibiki has music as the series theme and the Riders use music based attacks to finish off enemies. When he visits Hibiki's world in his own series, Ditto Fighter Decade joins the fun by finishing off a literal Giant Enemy Crab in an epic jam session.
- The Tenth Kingdom easily shows that We will rock you is the best song about sheep ever. Despite having nothing to do with sheep.
Music
- U2: Elevation video shows Bono and The Edge fighting the Big Bad from the first Tomb Raider movie with a shockwave created by Edge's guitar.
- The Darkness: I Believe in a Thing Called Love has the band fighting off a tentacled alien monster on their spaceship using the power of Rock.
- Jason Forrest: War Photographer both uses and then ultimately subverts this trope by having a duel between humongous transforming viking mecha with laser-shooting electric rock guitars being decided by an acid-spewing marching band.
- DragonForce: Operation Ground and Pound shows the band fighting off a fleet of enemy spaceships with the power of metal. (Yes, that guy did just shoot a bolt of lightning from his keytar.) There's also a guitar duel. Subverted, because most of the actual fighting takes place inside a video game played by guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman.
- Also, in the video for Heroes of Our Time, the band appears to power a fleet of rockets with their music.
- And then in The Last Journey Home, they blow up part of Los Angeles by rocking out too hard.
- The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: "Burn It Off" has the band members using The Power of Blues-Influence Rock 'n' Roll to defeat various Ray Harryhausen monsters.
- Using the power of rock to lead humanity into Nirvana would have been the plot of Pete Townshend's Lifehouse film, had it been produced when he first conceived of it in 1970. The project was ultimately released as a radio play in 1999, but its story was vastly different.
- During live performances of "Octavarium" and "The Dark Eternal Night", Dream Theater shows short films of their animated selves fighting monsters with their musical prowess (or in the case of drummer Mike Portnoy, the power of his saliva).
- The Styx Rock Opera/Concept Album "Kilroy Was Here" featured a dystopian future where the Culture Police have outlawed rock and roll. Dissident Robert Orwin Charles Kilroy, newly freed from prison, sets out to spark a revolution the help of an electric guitar, a synthesizer, and an arsenal of 80s power chords.
- Subverted in "Fashion Zombies" by the Aquabats. The superhero band is chased around by teenager gangs dressed in various fashion trends: 80's, goth, punk, prep school, etc. When cornered they whip out their instruments and proceed to rock. Once they've finished with the song, the teenagers descend upon them. When the crowd recedes, the Aquabats have been transformed into fashion zombies.
- Let's not forget the Charlie Daniels Band song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"!
- Rush's 2112. However, the protagonist doesn't succeed by himself and ends up killing himself before seeing the Solar Federation overthrown.
- In Hammerfall's video for the song "Hearts on Fire", they defeat an army of skeletons by using their music to summon a circle of runestones and cast a rather apocalyptic-looking spell.
- Finnish band Lordi in the video for their song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" use the Power of Rock to knock down part of a school gymnasium, transform a cute Goth girl into a sorceress, and, most importantly, kill people and resurrect them as zombies.
- "Rock the Casbah" by the Clash is about a rock band inspiring a military coup in a middle-eastern country very similar to Iran.
- In the music video for Dokken's "Dream Warriors", the band fights off Freddy Kruger.
- We would be remiss not to mention one instance of the Power of Rock being an evil power, in it's capacity to bring the dead back to life...for one of the most awesome music videos ever. Michael can't get enough of this power he seems to have over the dance floor.
- British comedy jazz-funk-lounge-rock merchants Pillow Talk have a song called "Doctor Roland Parker Versus the Defibrillator", in which Dr Roland Parker (their bassist) defeats a monstrous killer defibrillator with "the awesome power of the bass".
- Roger Water's song "The Tide is Turning" was a tribute to Live Aid, and perhaps a tribute to this trope. "I'm not saying that the battles been won / but Saturday Night all those kids in the sun / rescued technologies sword from the hands of the warlord". Does equal time as a Protest Song as well
Mythology
- Orpheus, who had music to soothe the savage beast. And Persephone.
- It's also worth noting that there are, canonically, precisely two ways for a seafarer to escape the sirens' song. One is to stuff your crew's ears with wax and have them tie you to the mast. The other is to bring along Orpheus and have him tune up his lyre, turn every dial on his amp to 11, and totally rock the hell out so loud that nobody on board your ship can hear the sirens.
Tabletop Games
]
- Warhammer 40000. Slaaneshi Noise Marines. Power armored Super Soldiers armed with daemonic killer guitars, who blow people apart with their power chords. More accurately, Power Armored Super Soldier sex fiends on combat drugs. They are literally "Sex, Drugs, and Rock N' Roll" taken to lethal extremes.
- Starchildren: the Velvet Revolution has glam rock aliens come to the future where the danger of emotions means that Rock has been suppressed by the Culture Police. The titular Starchildren want to free the mass of humanity from their emotional blinders with the power of rock, and their alien magic powers.
- Cyberpunk 2020 has the Rockerboy "class", who's special skill is "charismatic leadership". It allows him to influence ever greater crowds of people.
- Dungeons And Dragons has, for some years, sported a Bard class. Bards do a little bit of everything... and also boast The Power of Rock.
- Indeed, an epic level bard has at least a 30% chance of secretly being Freddie Mercury.
- At the highest levels, they can kill you with their music. The concept is that they can rock you so hard that there's nothing left for you to live for. So you don't.
Theater
- We Will Rock You! If you've guessed that the protagonists fight an oppressive government using the music of Queen, you win a cookie.
- The Big Bad of the show, Killer Queen, was defeated by having the band play an instrumental version of Tie Your Mother Down.
- The lovable gang in Rent brings Mimi back from death by HIV, exposure and drugs through the power of song.
Video Games
- Naturally, Rock Band and Guitar Hero are all over this trope like jam on toast:
- The intro movie for Rock Band involves a band singing and keeping their balance on top of a moving car that appears to take turns at a near right angle on 2 wheels. The sheer power of rock kicks up debris in an old west ghost town the car flies through, and the band members fly off a cliff only to land on another vehicle.
- Then there's the intro to Rock Band 2. Rock band duel on speeding cars, anyone? The one dude has a mic attached to a flail.
- Guitar Hero II had an animated TV commercial in which a band plays "Woman" by Wolfmother. A giant asteroid headed straight for them is withered away to a pebble by the sheer power of their rock, capped with a Crowning Moment Of Awesome when the guitarist catches it before slamming into the next phrase. The message appears to be that even an actual rock is no match for this trope.
- Guitar Hero III has you battle the devil with, of course, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". The intro has a guitarist literally climbing Mt. Olympus and defeating the gods of rock.
- The intro movie of "Guitar Hero World Tour" has that same devil, this time in league with a Lawyer Friendly caricature of Kenny G (?!), defeated by an all-star rock band.
- And the upcoming Lego Rock Band is finally going to include it in the gameplay itself — one of the promotional promises is the opportunity to defeat a giant robot with your music
- Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, or its American counterpart, Elite Beat Agents. Elite Beat Agents ends with the Agents blowing up the aliens by having everyone on Earth dance to The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash.
- Taken to nonsensical extremes throughout the franchise, in which the Power of Rock is used to destroy asteroids and even rekindle the sun.
- Before Inis made Ouendan, they made Gitaroo Man for the PS 2, a technicolour daydream about a superhero fighting aliens with his lightning-shooting guitar-weapon-thing. It was awesome.
- Devil May Cry 3. Dante uses a guitar as a weapon to send electric bats flying at demons every time he shreds on it!
- On that subject, in Gungrave: Overdose, you could play as Rocketbilly Redcadillac (no really, that's his name), a rockabilly ghost haunting an electricity-shooting guitar, who could fry enemies by playing it, even morphing it into an angel arm-esque beam cannon during one of his special attacks. Yeah, it's that kind of game.
- Let's not forget the video game based upon the aforementioned Moonwalker. In it, Michael could turn into a Mecha using Bubbles the Chimp as a power-up, and he defeated enemies by leading them in a dance sequence and by Moonwalking. In case you doubt us (and we wouldn't blame you, really) watch this. Ah, the 90s.
- In The Eye, the main character rebels to the tune of Queen.
- Bust A Groove.
- Space Channel Five.
- The Puzzle Boss battles in Brave Fencer Musashi, Final Fantasy X-2, and Kingdom Hearts 2.
- In Final Fantasy IV, there is a dark elf that is powerful enough to cast a field that makes anyone wearing anything metal unable to move or fight, making your party nearly useless against him. The only way to break his spell? Is a song played by the original Spoony Bard himself.
- And in Final Fantasy V, you have the choice of making all your characters into Bards.
- And then there was Aerosmith's arcade shooter, Revolution X, which featured a more practical example of this trope by including a gun that shoots exploding C Ds. Needless to say, it was So Bad Its Good.
- In the little-known PC game Total Distortion, the entire plot is revolved around making rock music videos in a Dimension based on Rock. Combat with your evil Guitar Warrior enemies is also carried out via sonic blasts from electric guitars.
- In the music-themed Guilty Gear series, where everything under the sun is named after or in reference to a rock band, artist, or song, the antagonist and part-time boss I-no uses an electric guitar as a weapon by both physically smacking her enemies around with it and using it to make a number of musical special attacks.
- Link in The Legend Of Zelda series has used music to work magic ever since the series began, but in Majora's Mask he saves the universe from annihilation by summoning four gods with his ocarina. When he's wearing a Zora mask, he literally uses an electric guitar instead.
- Brütal Legend is this trope incarnate. Starring the aforementioned Jack Black as Eddie Riggs, a roady for a pretentious nu-metal band who wishes he lived in a time where the music was actual heavy metal ("like, the early seventies"). He soon finds himself Trapped In Another World, which is practically based around this trope, right down to literally being able to melt faces with the power of rock.
- Each of the five characters in Donkey Kong 64 has a musical instrument that can be used to instantly defeat all lesser enemies in the ape's vicinity. Naturally, this power comes up in the Final Exam Boss battle, although it's used more realistically as a way to get K. Rool's attention.
- In Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, Globox, having swallowed Andre, visits Dr. Otto to have him removed. Otto plays what sounds like a rock guitar solo using Globox's arm instead of a guitar but this has no effect. The second doctor they visit, Romeo, plays a drum solo on Globox's belly, but this doesn't work either. The third doctor Globox visits conducts a classical piece, performed by Otto and Romeo (again, using Globox as an instrument). This is too much for Andre, who finally leaves.
- In EarthBound, the only way to pass through the tunnel to Threed is to befriend a blues band, who will give you a lift on their tour bus, allowing you to barrel through the tunnel full of ghosts while playing happy music, preventing said ghosts from grabbing you and throwing you back to Twoson.
- Not to mention the main character's special attack is by default named "PSI Rockin." This is why it's very important to imagine Ness playing air guitar with his bat when you use it.
- A mod in Doom lets you unleash the most powerful weapon ever forged. Not so much rock as Easy Listening, but it still kills the demons.
- One of the custom weapons in Garry's Mod is a radio. Which plays a song of your choice (Comes with Never Gonna Give You Up), which will cause enemies to spontaneusly combust.
- One of the characters in Chrono Cross is your typical Musical Assassin in league with the Spoony Bards of previous RP Gs, but what brings it in line with this trope is the mandatory sequence that has him stage a Rock Opera in order to wake the dead, revitalize a Ghost Town, and wake up a sleeping dragon. At the same time.
- If you play as Achmed Khan in Backyard Skateboarding, doing a Big Air Guitar Solo beats the final boss challenge and starts the concert.
Webcomics
- Erfworld has a literal rock battle. Between Italian vampires and death metal midgets riding
dragons dwagons.
- Dancefighting
zombies Uncroaked Troops led by a Croakamancer. Familiar?
- Apparently, rocking out is even more powerful than standard dance-fighting, since rock music is the music of the Titans. Makes sense, since the Titans are mile-high Elvis impersonators.
- My Name Is Might Have Been is the story of The Power Of Rock After The End.
- Inspired by Rock Band, of course. They cover pretty much everything. Character creation, DLC, buying new clothes, earning the tour van (and, by implication, the other vehicles), losing fans when you screw up, even Overdrive/Star Power is made into a major plot point.
- Attack by German Composer in Not Quite Daily Comic.
- An early Dresden Codak that's no longer on the site parodied this, by showing how well it would work in a realistic setting — i.e., not at all.
Western Animation
- Quite a few of George Pal's Puppetoons. "Tulips Shall Always Grow" ends with a folk dance that reverses the effects of an invasion of goose-stepping robots!
- This is essentially the plot of Yellow Submarine.
- And Rock And Rule. One editor said it best in her review of the movie: "A dark magician old-arse rock star's wicked plans are thwarted by Furries who sing early 80's rock music. Yes, that is the actual plot." To be more specific, the Power of Rock can summon a demon, and the Power Of Love can send it back — specifically, the power of Debbie Harry of Blondie and Robin Zander of Cheap Trick singing a duet together.
- And the series Kidd Video. The show, deftly summarized in this article, is a cavalcade of I Am Not Making This Up.
- Appropriately enough for one of the best singers in the Disney Animated Canon, Ariel defeats a Big Bad through singing in the The Little Mermaid series.
- Well, that and her boyfriend ramming her with a giant pointy stick finishes the job.
- Parodied in Enchanted, where Princess Giselle can summon friendly animals and kick off an elaborate Crowd Song in Central Park just by singing.
- Also parodied in Shrek, where Princess Fiona's high note is enough to make the friendly bird singing with her explode in a puff of feathers. Oops.
- On The Simpsons, The Who were able to use their amps to blow up a huge wall.
- In a similar vein, the velvet-smooth bass of Barry White is used to lure snakes to safety during "Whacking Day".
- Bubbles, in an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, reversed the evil effects of Mr. Mime's color and happiness draining magic by kicking off a cheery concert in the Townsville park.
- In The Devil And Daniel Mouse, the protagonists used rock to win a legal case against the Devil.
- Used spectacularly in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, complete with a Twisted Sister parody and Patrick in suspenders.
- The series also has a good relationship with this trope. Note the episode where Sandy rampages through Bikini Bottom, accompanied by Pantera!
- Not to mention the hair-metal in the surrealistically awesome ending of "Band Geeks".
- One of Plankton's evil plans involved a rock band and unedited music.
- Parodied in Family Guy. Three words: KISS Save Santa.
- Parodied in South Park, where Korn relied on Scooby Doo-style detective work to solve the mystery. The one time they tried using thematic powers, it failed miserably. ("Korn Powers Activate! Form of... CORN!!!")
- In "Mecha-Streisand", Barbara Streisand used a magical crystal to turn into a huge robot-dragon. That she was defeated by Robert Smith of The Cure (he turned into a parody of Mothra) certainly warrants a mention here.
- And then there was the "World-Wide Recorder Concert" episode. Let's just say it's the one where Cartman learns about the original Brown Note...
- Also Cartman managed to disperse a huge crowd of hippies with a Slayers record in "Die Hippie, Die" episode.
- The Real Ghostbusters episode "Play Them Ragtime Boos" involved the guys facing off with a bunch of ghosts whose swing music turned time back to The Roaring Twenties... Yes, the boys played Rock and Roll. With specially-programmed instruments and a visual trip from fifties to eighties. (Yes, folks, Egon's hair got more insane.)
- The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres has Neil Peart, the legendary drummer/songwriter of Rush, raise Meatwad from the dead by performing the "Solo of Life". Tongue-in-cheek promotional material published before the movie's release suggested that the solo would be the climax of the film and would run 45 minutes long. In fact, it's closer to 45 seconds.
- There's also the episode "Revenge of the Mooninites", where the Mooninites trick Meatwad into helping them acquire the Foreigner Belt, which gives the wearer super-powers based on songs by the rock group Foreigner. For example, Ignignokt freezes Carl alive by singing a snippet of "Cold As Ice" and brainwashes Meatwad into acting like a "Dirty White Boy". Carl gets his hands on the belt near the end, and drives the Mooninites away by nearly boiling them alive with "Hot Blooded".
- "I don't need no instructions to know how to Rock!"
- It backfires on him in the end, when his head is turned into a Connect Four board. "Alright, who left this on 'Head Games'?!"
- And then there's Rock A Doodle (which Don Bluth fans normally do NOT like to talk about). The movie is a very loose re-imagining of the tale of Chanticleer, the singing rooster who believes he alone summons the sunlight with his voice. In this case, Chanticleer is an Elvis Expy who (very) gradually learns that his golden tones are the only thing that can stop an evil wizard owl who wants to plunge the world into eternal nighttime.
- Metalocalypse is all about this here trope. Dethklok rock so hard they can raise ancient Finnish trolls and cause volcanoes to erupt.
- In Storm Hawks, the villainess Ravess built a massive sonic cannon that channeled the sound of her orchestra into blasts that could blow ships out of the sky. The heroes countered this by converting their hangar into an amp that similarly channeled Finn's electric guitar. The result can only be described as a Rock vs. Classical Beam O War.
- In Chuck Jones' lovely adaptation of George Seldon's A Cricket in Times Square, Chester, the titular musical Orthopteran, saves a tiny newstand after he learns he has a talent for playing classical music. In the finale, Chester plays his last "concert", a musical farewell to the city. All of the jaded New York City residents, every one of them, stop to listen. The sequence is illustrated almost entirely with Jones' own sensitive sketches of the City, and it's one of the most downright moving moments in animation.
- Lest we forget, Hammerman. (In this case, it's the power of dancing, but it still counts.)
- Val Hallen, from the Dexters Laboratory Show Within A Show "Justice Friends," is based around this concept. He's the Viking god of Rock, and the local parody of the Marvel Comics version of Thor. Too bad he can't actually make it work.
- Four words for you: Jem And The Holograms!
- In the WITCH episode "S is for Self", Matt is able to fight off a Demonic Possession by blasting his possessor Shagon with a series of love-fueled guitar chords.
- Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi.
- In the Duck Dodgers episode "In Space No-One Can Hear You Rock", the Martians use the power of easy-listening jazz against Earth. Dodgers enlists the help of Dave Mustaine of Megadeth to destroy their saxaphone-ray. See for yourself.
- British TV series Freefonix is set in the future, where, apparently, The Power of Rock can be used to make the musician fly, control people's minds, and reverse time.
- The ReBoot episode "Talent Night" featured a guitar battle that faked the viewers out. Megabyte enters the stage and pops out of a coffin, sinister-looking musical equipment unfolds seemingly out of nowhere, and he turns his guitar to eleven. Bob confronts him, with Glitch taking the form of a guitar, and they have an epic rock fight. Then, after it's over... Megabyte hands his guitar to Enzo, says "I've always wanted to do that," and leaves peacefully.
- The all-but-forgotten Stone Protectors were a toy line and short-lived cartoon series released on the heels of the troll doll revival in the mid-90's. These trolls were a literal Four Man Band who protected the Stones of Power from an evil troll using The Power Of Rock.
- In Transformers Animated, Soundwave can use music to control machines and can also overwhelm with the sheer volume of the sound. The show's version of Laserbeak transforms not into a tape, but a guitar and he can hack into computers (as well as mind-control both humans and robots.. Unfortunately, he hasn't appeared yet.
- He has now. And it's awesome.
Sari: "I've heard your music, Soundwave. I'm not impressed."
Soundwave: "I have upgraded my instruments."
*he plays a power chord on Laserbeak that sends Sari hurtling into the far wall*
- And did we mention the guitar duel between Soundwave and Optimus Prime at the end of the episode?
Soundwave: "Your Axe is useless, Autobot"
Optimus Prime: "But yours isn't!"
- The original Transformers had the episode "Carnage in C Minor". This featured a planet of beings who could use music as a weapon, which catered to original flavor Soundwave's musical abilities. It's also regarded as one of the worst episodes in the entire franchise.
- In Barbie And The Diamond Castle the protagonists defeat the villain's flute-based evil spells by playing their own magical instruments and singing.
Other
- Used in the student film God Slayer; in the end, the title superhero, driven mad by self-doubt and an evil talking moon, shatters the earth with a high note.
- This trope has found purchase in quite a few internet meme macros, such as a .gif taken from The Empire Strikes Back with Darth Vader clenching his fist, captioned with "I wanna ROCK!"; a photoshop of Gimli holding his axe backwards, the weapon itself turned into an instrument, captioned "And you shall have my axe!"; a screencap of Boromir from the extended edition of The Two Towers during his speech to the troops at Osgiliath, altered so he's holding a guitar and throwing up the horns, subtitled, "One does not simply ROCK into Mordor"; and a picture of Doctor Strange firing a blast of magical energy, photoshopped so it's being shot from the neck of a guitar.
- Higgins von Higgins! Your remarkable journey ends TODAY!!
- Dad's Home
Real Life
- Music has been used surprisingly often as an instrument of siege warfare:
- During the US military's invasion of Panama to oust Manuel Noriega, psychological warfare specialists blasted acid rock at the building he was holed up in, which ran counter to Noriega's personal taste for opera. He eventually surrendered.
- Ironically, he reportedly surrendered before they could play Van Halen's "Panama".
- During the 1997 Tupac Amaru hostage-taking at the Japanese Embassy in Peru, police blasted martial music and opera around the clock to hide the sound of their teams tunneling into the embassy.
- During both Gulf Wars, American tank crews would blast heavy metal with their loudspeakers, generally causing the Iraqis to run away or surrender.
- At the siege of Waco, Texas, the National Guard blasted the holed-up terrorists with Barry Manilowe songs.
- Heavy Metal in Baghdad
- The power of rock—or rather, the power of rock fans—was enough to win Finland the 2006 Eurovision contest. Traditionally the voting is done around political boundaries regardless of actual music quality, but the year Finnish rock/metal band Lordi entered, Finland not only won their first victory but got a record 292 points.
- The Singing Revolution
- A lighter use of Power of Rock involved Tina Turner songs being used as bird distress signals in Gloucestershire airport.
- A town in Nevada repels cricket invasions by blasting the music of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones at the marauding insects.
- According to Mythbusters, plants in fact do grow better when exposed to classical music... but grow even better when exposed to rock!
- This Troper has had two characters bouncing around her head for the years now. I wanted to write a story about them, but was unsure of what they'd actually do. One day I was listening to Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" ... and I KNEW I had a story to write!
- Not quite rock, per se, but the Red Army during the Battle of Stalingrad used a variant of this trope: as they closed the noose around the Germans, loud speaker phones were set up to play tango of all things, mainly because it was felt they sounded sinister enough to demoralize the Germans. They would periodically interrupt with demands for the enemy to surrender, and then went right back to playing more tango tunes.
|
|
