Will 90's rock ever be considered "classic rock"?

Honestly, I believe there is a line between 70's early punk (Ramones, Descendents) and 90's pop punk (Green Day, Offspring, etc.). It's a fine one, though.

Obviously plenty of folks would challenge me on this ... but it seems to me that speaking very broadly indeed, modern pop/rock music had two big creative flowerings where lots of original stuff happened, and that set the tone for the next few succeeding decades: roughly speaking, the 1960s and the 1990s.

You could consider them both "classic," in the sense of highly regarded and seminal ... but stylistically, it makes a kind of sense to divide rock music broadly into 60s/70s/80s, and 90s/onward. And as far as radio marketing goes, it's a highly useful way to divide up core listenerships into Boomer and Generation X markets. Maybe rather than the loaded word "classic," future stations will find some new terms to distinguish both respective formats.

edited 9th Jan '17 6:58:34 PM by Jhimmibhob

@Jhimmi: Makes sense. There honestly aren't huge differences between 60's, 70's, and 80's rock (though early 60's stuff does sound like 50's stuff).

Nirvana's breakthrough finally broke us out of the lack of innovation in rock since the 60's, but it's also been a double-edged sword as when Kurt died, a lot of musicians started to steer away from pure grunge and tried to combine elements with 60's-80's rock.

Now the rock of today is either driven underground or often barely recognizable as the rock pioneered by Elvis and the Beatles.

And the biggest names in modern rock that aren't rock in name only (stuff like Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons, and Paramore) are shit like Avenged Sevenfold, Five Finger Death Punch, and Volbeat, none of which are really going to make it to the classic rock format when the 2040s roll around. Rock just isn't a potent cultural force any more and the popular acts either skew towards pop or metal.

how is Paramore rock "in name only"

Hell, even earlier Fall Out Boy stuff, how is that only rock "in name only"

Plus, there are other pretty big names in modern rock that get tons of airplay on modern rock radio (Cage the Elephant, Grouplove, The Black Keys, arguably some of Twenty-One Pilots' stuff, etc.).

edited 11th Jan '17 5:38:41 AM by Odd1

Earlier Fall Out Boy and Paramore were pop-punk/power pop, I guess, but their more recent material is so pop-oriented that it's very, VERY debatable if you can even consider them rock acts in their current form.

I can totally see reclassifying newer Fall Out Boy as just pop, but Paramore is at least still firmly in the pop-rock territory of rock, which is still rock no matter how you look at it.

You can be surprised at what ends up being "classic rock:. Just look at the 80s hair bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard. All of them were derided by critics and seen as a fad once the 90s hit, yet now you hear them on those stations regularly. For that matter, the idea of "rock", at least relating to radio stations, can change as well (When's the last time you heard a newer Springsteen song on active rock radio?)

Problem is, it should have been the time for the 90's to become considered classic rock a few years ago, but that didn't happen.

Actually, i hear Nirvana, RHCP, Pearl Jam, Green Day and other 90s acts on my local classic rock station.

A classic rock station here in Malaysia plays Pantera, Blur and Nirvana.

To be fair, I never listen to the radio aside from NPR, but when someone's had a classic rock station going in the background, I have been hearing Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Primus, and Korn (blech) playing in between all the offerings from the preceding decades as of late.

Then there's definite hope.

Still, even outside of radio, it's hard to see people who put 90's rock in the same boat as 70's and 80's rock.

Personally I see classic rock as mostly stuff from the 60s and 70s like The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, The Grateful Dead, and The Doors. That said I'm pretty sure soon enough some stations will consider 90s rock bands to be Classic Rock, Uggghh. As it is I already started to feel kind of old when the local oldies station started playing 80s stuff too. I was like "Aww man these aren't oldies. I was in elementary school when these songs were new!"

Even before I started hearing grunge and post-grunge there, my local classic rock radio station would occasionally slip in a The Black Crowes track or two - that actually briefly confused me into thinking they were an older band than they actually were.

Lately the local classic rock station was playing late 90s songs like "Learn to Fly" and "Closing Time". It made me feel old cause those songs came out when I was in high school.

I've been hearing Nirvana on the classic rock stations my dad has as presets in his car. It kind of threw him for a loop when "Heart-Shaped Box" punctuated an otherwise homogeneous set of hard rock from 1973. 90s rock is already being considered classic rock now that the decade is twenty years passed.

edited 2nd May '18 11:38:19 PM by CrimsonZephyr

I wonder what happens when the rap-rock bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park become "classic rock". You cant really mix them in with The Cars or Van Halen without some major mood whiplash.