One of rock’s veterans has claimed that the gig is over: only rappers have anything to say now. Roger Daltrey, the singer with the groundbreaking British band the Who, said he was saddened that rock had “reached a dead end”.In an interview with The Times Magazine, conducted as the band played the Desert Trip “festival to end all festivals” in California, Daltrey suggested that because of his band’s innate aggression they still had a tang of danger.
Daltrey spoke to The Times recently,Reflecting on the genre shift in the current musical climate, Daltrey said: “The sadness for me is that rock has reached a dead end… the only people saying things that matter are the rappers and most pop is meaningless and forgettable.”
Daltrey added: “You watch these [new pop stars] and you can’t remember a bloody thing.”
This follows previous comments Daltrey made in 2014, when he bemoaned the current generation of music artists for lacking “angst and purpose“.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, the singer claimed there is no current musical “movement” comparable to seventies mod and punk, singling out boy band One Direction for criticism.“Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction,” said Daltrey. “Where are the artists writing with any real sense of angst and purpose?”“There are no movements at the moment: we had mod and then there was punk, but it’s so hard to start a movement now. "
With the 60-year anniversary of The Who frontman Daltrey has been reflecting on the continued popularity of the rock ‘n’ roll band.
When asked about new music from The Who, he laughs. “What’s the point? What’s the point of records? We released an album years ago (The Who’s twelfth studio album, WHO was released on 6 December 2019) and it did nothing. It’s a great album too, but there isn’t the interest out there for new music these days. People want to hear the old music. I don’t know why, but that’s the fact.”
You play some of our records today and they sound as modern as they did the day they were released.”
“I think it’s the style that (Pete) Townshend writes in and the position of his psychology that you wrote from, this is so different than anything else that’s out there.”
He cited the band's classic song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which appeared in the recent movie Top Gun: Maverick. “That’s the beauty of [Pete] Townshend’s writing: You can put any kind of action film behind the pulsating music,” he said. “
