K-pop owes much of its existence to so-called “dad rock”. In the early 1990s, Seo Taiji (and his group Seo Taiji & Boys) was the first to fuse American-style hip-hop, rock, and R&B creating the template for what would become today’s K-pop juggernaut. In fact Yang Hyun-seok who was a founding member of Seo Taiji & Boys would go on to start YG Entertainment which is now one of the biggest K-pop labels.
For anybody interested in the early history of K-pop and how it led to groups like BTS becoming global success stories should read this:
Right after my last post this showed up in my news feed. I was never a fan of Miley but recently she has a way of covering the classics, making them her own, and not destroying them. This was yesterday at the NCAA. In my opinion they also know their audience unlike the Super Bowl. Queen, Blondie, Stevie Nicks, her own stuff, and wrapping it up with The Guess Who. Some good dad rock right there. No fancy choreography and no lip sync. I gotta say I did not hate this.
I was at a kid’s birthday party where the parents were playing one of these CDs. One of the other parents said what a great idea it was, and why pay full price for the actual recording? It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut – not my friend, not my kid’s party, not my guest, just let it go…
Re: rock artists of color, it does seem a narrow definition of rock to ignore the tons of soul or funk tinged pop hits that are maybe one degree removed from “proper rock”. Besides tons of stuff from the 70s I was thinking of Screaming Headless Torsos which is classified most often as as fusion but first time I heard Word to Herb I was googling for Vernon Reid because I was sure it had something to do with people from Living Colour.
Also don’t forget Slash was in a pretty popular rock band. Back in '91 I picked up out of the free demo drawer of a record store a little played CD by Vinnie James. Isley Brothers could rock. Among many other Japanese rock bands The 5.6.7.8 s, popularized in the US by Kill Bill.
I remember hearing about the Black Rock Coalition back in the day, and always wished they’d had more success post-Living Colour. TIL Me’Shell Ndegeocello was a part of that scene. Essentialism is a constant thorn in the side of musicians who are always struggling against getting pigeonholed by the corporate marketing machine.
Wish I’d come across these at the time, I would have enjoyed them:
Speaking of Brian May and dad rock, I consider his performance of Since You’ve Been Gone live at Brixton Academy to be about the best one can get out of that song. This is pretty dad-rocky.
Most of the songs (at least the ones I recognized, which were admittedly a minority of them) seemed to be not so much the lamest songs by the bands, but just the most over-played ones, that were so overplayed that you just don’t care if you hear it ever again, unless you happen to be listening to the whole album it came from.
For example, “We Will Rock You” is just the opening number which (along with “We Are The Champions”) you listen to if you put on News Of the World, while waiting for “Spread Your Wings” or “It’s Late” to eventually play. If you heard the songs while scanning the stations on your car radio, you’d say “hey, I recognize that”, and keep scanning.
Exceptions for a couple of songs like “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”, which you would stop scanning until the song finished. And then probably go grab the CD/LP/8-Track when you get home to listen to the whole album now that you’ve been reminded of it.
My guess (just a guess, because I am not curious enough to investigate the other releases of this lame company) is that in addition to [Lame White Suburban] Dad Rock, they also have releases more geared towards various other demographics, with names like “Hip Hop Hots”, “Rap Rhymes”, “New Wave Classics” and “80s Dance Hits”. Probably even a “Disco Fever” and “Flower Power Favorites” in there somewhere.
However, I’d be somewhat surprised if they had “Nu Metal Mayhem” featuring songs by Marilyn Manson, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, and Type O Negative.
We saw the Back To The Light tour in 1993 in a small theater in Detroit. Less than a 1,000 people. I wish Brian and Roger would back away from the big stadium tours and do some shows with just the two of them and a small back up band. I love the stadium shows with Adam Lambert and Paul Rodgers but they could pull off an awesome show without the million dollar stage.
Yeah, but it would be the most overplayed single from each of those bands, the one song most fans would least need to hear.
Ever heard the Rick Rubin remix from (I think) 1991, where we get to hear the rest of the truncated guitar solo? Go look it up, I’ll wait here.
For mine it would have been Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood and In A Gadda Da Vida; those on vinyl, cranked up louder than she would ever normally approve of, were how I knew growing up that we would be cleaning house all day long.
That one came up on my workshop iPod the other day, first time in a long time. But just like most songs here, there are way better tunes by those same artists, often on the same albums, that weren’t “hit” videos.
If there is anything more gratifying to belt out than Wig In A Box, I ain’t found it yet.
And if you listen to Aerosmith’s work from the seventies, you’ll find that Steven Tyler had been intermittently rap-adjacent for years.
