Unforeseen Consequences

It strikes me that every decade so far since the invention of rock has produced one or two rock bands who were head and shoulders greater in metaphorical stature than all the others — bands you could point to and say, “[Band name] was the band of the 80s” or whatever decade is appropriate.

Then I realized that I can’t think who the band of the 00s might be. For that matter, I can’t even think what the rock subgenre of the decade might be.

For historical context, let’s look back at previous decades.

Rock, in the way that I’m thinking about it, came into existence in the 1950s. Inasmuch as there was a rock musician of the 50s, it was Elvis Presley.

The 60s was the decade of The Beatles.

The 70s was the decade of Led Zeppelin.

The 80s are actually really difficult to pick a band for. So much happened in the world of rock; there are so many different subgenres (and gray areas that may or may not be termed rock) that there were a multitude of apparently larger-than-life bands having their breakthroughs. But the problem here isn’t the same as the problem I’m having with the 00s — I can’t think of any candidates from the 00s, whereas I can think of too many candidates from the 80s. The popular musician of the 80s was almost undoubtedly Michael Jackson, but I don’t categorize him as rock. If I really had to pick one band for the 80s, it would have to be U2.

The 90s was the decade of Nirvana and Green Day.

So what was the band of the 00s?

Now, I realize that a decade is a completely arbitrary period of time, and chopping up the history of rock into decades and choosing a band to represent each is a mostly-bogus thing to do. But it still seems odd to me that I can’t even pick out a single subgenre of rock that emerged or dominated in the 00s.

The cop-out answer is “indie rock”. I do agree that the indie scene gained prominence in the 00s, but this isn’t so much a subgenre in the musical sense as a subculture. And of course, by the nature of the subculture, indie bands aren’t household names, which is what I’m looking for.

Perhaps I’m just behind the times, and I don’t know about some awesome new feature of the rock scene. Perhaps this kind of analysis is impossible while the relevant cultural phenomena are still ongoing (and they very well might be — it’s not like the turning of the calendar from 2009 to 2010 put a stop to everything going on in the 00s). Or perhaps the 00s will just turn out to be a decade that defies attempts to assign icons to it, who knows. All I know is that the 80s is still definitely the best decade of music.