Top 10 Things That Killed Rock and Roll

Rock and Roll is finally dead and here are the top reasons it died. You will realize by this list that Rock and Roll was systematically assassinated because it was a threat to free thinking people everywhere.
The Top Ten
1 MTV MTV is an American basic cable and satellite television channel which is a part of the "Viacom Music and Entertainment Group" which is the flagship Property of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom, of which it is a subsidiary.

EmpTV. The moment when imagery reigned over substance. No wonder hair metal got so big up the the late 90s, where the way your hair and makeup looked dictated how big your video got. Where wearing literal womens' makeup was now the way rock stars were attracting chicks, ironically enough, and legions of fans who were convinced that that was somehow badass. Grunge killed it off swiftly, but then started to become a parody of itself by the mid 90s as well with the whole repressed image. Originality was pretty much suppressed as both upcoming and established artists were now jumping on the bandwagon of whatever the trending style was at the time.

2 Rap

I don't think that rap killed Rock and Roll. Rap was when it started strictly black ghetto music. It was the expression for the misery (like blues music did it in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s) of black people. When the media made it big and popular in the late eighties and nineties it became more popular amongst white kids. Nowadays it's 70% white American kids who are listening to rap music. Rap music itself didn't killed Rock because it was just another whole type of music. Popularity made by the media for trying to "reach" a white audience (which they unfortunately succeeded) killed the "popularity" of rock music but not rock music itself.

3 Autotune

Autotune ruined music. Hip-hop was no worse than disco. Rock survived alongside disco, it could survive alongside rap and hip-hop, too. But, autotune made sure music fit a formula that the big labels and radio stations that play the same few songs these days could make a quick profit from while locking out good music.

Imagine Led Zeppelin using autotune. I don't think so.

Allowed corporations to push nobodies into music while holding the proceeds of the contracts for themselves. Real talent had to be bought, the corporations cheaped out.

4 American Idol American Idol is an American talent reality television series that first aired in 2002. As of May 2019, there have been seventeen seasons.

Your from Europe. Well I thought these idol shows where in most countries or where most of them cancelled. I think it started when Pop Idol started a show in Britain but that only had 2 series, then it was Popstars the Rivals (Female or Male band would win - Girls Aloud won, 1 series show) then The X factor. But it all started probably with Popstars which had 1 series it had two groups male and female similar to S Club 7 and Steps they where Hear'Say and Liberty X. Hear'Say won but Liberty X where the real winners. Then a year after it went to Pop Idol first series Will Young won, the second series Michelle McManus won, but then it was cancelled. American Idol started around the time of the second series of Pop Idol. BBC also had Fame Academy which had two series and then had 3 charity spin offs called Comic Relief Does Fame Academy.

5 Michael Jackson Michael Jackson (Michael Joseph Jackson; August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, dancer, and songwriter. He passed away from cardiac arrest caused by a propofol and benzodiazepine overdose on June 25, 2009. He donated (at least) a remarkable 500,000,000 dollars to charity. Michael... read more

It seems that many very jealous and sad people are commenting on here, it's actually sad but also funny. Sorry, but Michael is widely recognized as the greatest and most famous artist ever. The most revolutionary, most awarded, best selling, best vocalist and dancer ever. He dominated the 80s, and 2 of his albums in the 90s are all time best selling albums, in '97 he was found to be the most famous human on Earth by far. His success was only curtailed in the 00's by the court cases, and in 2009, 40 years into his career was about to launch the worlds biggest tour, but passed away. Apart from being the biggest pop culture icon ever, he WAS music for the most important decades in music the 80s and 90s.

6 Drum Machines

I remember the Linn Drum and how Steve Gadd had been recorded to make the sound on it. Steve, What were you thinking? You have it made, but we poor drummers out here still need to work. This was the begining of the end for Rock and roll as the technology got cheaper to make and eventually keyboards could emulate any sound except for singers. and Now their is Vocoder for all the crappy singers out there. The Advent of the Drum machine was the start of DJ's playing the clubs and taking all that work from Rock and Roll.

7 Yoko Ono Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist who is also known for her work in performance art, music, and filmmaking. Singer-songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles was her third husband.
8 Clear Channel Radio Stations

a big cog in the corporate music business. Diverted listeners away from Rock music any way they could, much willing to play autotuned and snap-to-grid music which required absolutely no talent, and increased profit margins of greedy music corporations

Really any more of this top 10... Lost art my friends. Rock overcame disco, 80s synth pop and pop rock, but the internet and auto tune and mtv and EDM and cell phones and vevo and YouTube and every song being made solely on a computer with no instruments... That cannot be overcome.

9 Billboard

Thanks to this chart of crap, you are basically being told what to listen to. The painful thing is that most of it is trashy pop music. Whenever rock music pops up on there these days, it's just pop music with a barely audible guitar.

A list made by corporate idiots to tell people to listen to that song, which eventually is nothing but cheap beats and bad lyrics

10 One Direction One Direction (commonly abbreviated as 1D) were a British-Irish pop boy band based in London, composed of Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and previously, Zayn Malik until his departure from the band on 25 March 2015. The group signed with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records... read more
The Contenders
11 Nickelback Nickelback is a Canadian post-grunge band formed in 1995 in Hanna, Alberta, Canada. The band is composed of guitarist and lead vocalist Chad Kroeger, guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist Ryan Peake, bassist Mike Kroeger, and drummer Daniel Adair.
12 The Internet

The internet has changed everything in the world and rock music is no exception. Its made obtaining and listening to music so much easier and more convenient than ever. As a result, people are no longer confined to what the radio plays. Instead, they can listen to hundreds of bands and/or artists in an instant. This should be #1.

Currently I'm listening to Judas Priest on Youtube. For me personally, Internet hasn't killed rock and roll, quite the reverse - sometimes it's the only place where you can find rare records. Rock records.

13 Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.

Whoever said that Miley and the Jonas are crap just took the words out of my mouth! I think there's not a single person in this world worse than them

I hate disney particularly because of Miley Cyrus and who put Michael Jackson on this list? You bastards! Michael Jackson is pure pwnage!

Ralph Breaks the Internet, enough said!

14 Justin Bieber Justin Drew Bieber (born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer. He currently resides in Ontario, Canada and is Christian. He is the son of author Pattie Mallette... read more

He brainwashed society and ruined everyone's lives.
And a new genre was born: Retarded baby pop.

Rock was already dying and this guy came and smashed it..

He killed everything, including my erection.

15 Mainstream Music

Mainstream is the equivalent of popular. While popular can change ( fifties Rock became popular during the sixties, later on it was Disco that was the most popular, then Rap, Techno etc... ), mainstream means the category of a certain type of music who went to popular to a kind of accepted music by all. It usually becomes mainstream when big money can be done by record companies, radio stations or by promoters for concerts. When something new, fresh and gets many bad critics ( not accepted by all ) becomes an acceptance by cultural standards, it becomes at the same time commercial. Rock and Roll should be for a elite, should be dangerous against the political correctness and most of all, it should be property for singers, songwriters, instrument players and fans and not for some executives who decides what all people should hear and buy ( the commercial aspect of music ). Mainstream Rock began in the late sixties and in the seventies it was so mainstream that it opened doors for other kind of musics to take over Rock.

16 Grunge Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is a subgenre of alternative rock and a subculture that emerged during the mid-1980s.

Particularly Alternative (all of it) every radio station that came before payed homage! "Best of the 60's, 70's, and 80's your Rock Station!" Alternative denied everything else even if it was amazing, they brainwashed people to think there was something better. As a result I don't accept the last 5 years of Generation X to be a part of Generation X, they are sellouts, just like Metalica.

Let's make one thing clear, grunge did not help rock and roll. Many great sounding bands, including definitely Leppard and The Outfield, suffered and got buried because that stupid grunge became popular. I like some alternative stuff but I would agree that grunge and alt rock helped kill rock and roll.

17 Green Day Green Day are an American pop punk/punk rock band formed in East Bay, California in 1987. The members include Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals and guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass), Tré Cool (drums) and Jason White (guitar). Green Day are associated with punk rock, pop punk and alternative rock. Some of their... read more

Rock could have survived if it had somewhere to go. Green Day is the ultimate symbol of the lack of new ideas in rock after grunge faded; when rock is stuck in a rut of repetitive and derivative crap like the stuff Green Day writes, it is bound to go underground.

They play a few power chords sing like 14 yearolds who couldn't play a guitar solo to save there life
I'm not saying there bad per say but its not my cup of tea. smashing guitars and whining isn't what id call music its just sad to watch listen to

18 Lil Wayne Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. is an American rapper from New Orleans, Louisiana. He was discovered by Brian "Baby" "Birdman" Williams at a very young age, and was signed to Cash Money Records, where he would be one quarter of the rap group Hot Boys. In the years to follow, he would go on to find his own... read more

Saying that he killed Rock is like saying that he changed music. That all what became before him is obsolete and all that comes after him is his legacy. He is just one of the many bad artists of today's music with no importance in the history of music. Will be forgotten in a couple of years.

19 Vevo

It ruined the art of music video in ways I can't describe. Idiots.

20 Kurt Cobain's Death
21 Corporate Radio

The greed! Idea is elliminate anyone who has talent, their expensive! Use Alternative, Rap, HipHop and Grunge to reduce listeners of Rock and Roll. Replace talent with autotuned and snap-to-grid junk, begin it with talent like Cher and even new talent like Katy Perry, but eventually you will not need anyone talented, you can modify the sound in the studio and make billions for the corporation.

Especially Rock Stations: By playing the same late 70's early 80's songs over and over an entire generation of great artist were lost to the mainstream. For example when have you ever heard Clutch on the radio.

22 Drug Abuse

Drug abuse was always part of music. All or almost Jazz musician in the 40's and 50's was a heroin addict. Is Jazz dead? No. Same in rock, in the fifties and sixties amphetamines were common and without drugs like LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs we would never had psychedelic music in the late sixties. Rock didn't die after the " psychedelic " era. It survived the seventies ( the punk movement in 1977 ), the eighties and so on... What made rockmusic less popular wasn't drugs. Disco in the seventies, Rap in the late seventies / early eighties and Electronic music ( Techno, House... ) became more and more popular and replaced the Rock in the nineties.

23 The Death of Freddie Mercury

Freddie was the reason I came here, I really expected him to be at number one. there's no one else like Freddie and there never will be, he was just such a happy loving man that no one could ever compare to in voice nor personality. I know your birthday isn't until the fifth but HAPPY BIRTHDAY FREDDIE! We miss you SO much xoxox.

Fred you were the best! Your music has inspired us all. RIP.

Real Rock music died when Freddy Mercury died.

24 Glee Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that aired on the Fox network in the United States from May 19, 2009, to March 20, 2015. It focuses on the fictitious William McKinley High School glee club, New Directions, which competes on the show choir competition circuit while its disparate... read more

Slaughtering your favo (u) rite songs since 1999. Thankfully, some artists (e.G. the Foo Fighters and Slash) heve prevented their songs from appearing in this mayhem.

25 Disco Music

Disco played a HUGE part in killing rock. Basically, people liked disco because it was FUN. So when the rocker crowd decided to come out and say that disco sucks (and so does everyone who listens to it), all they did was alienate a TON of people. People associated rock with mean, judgmental, closed minded people, and wanted no part of it.

Of course these sort of dimwitted people went on to do this again and again and again over the subsequent decades when it came to various other music (ie various pop, new wave, techno, etc), and just made 'rock' an ever more dirty word in the process. People who might otherwise enjoy rock just had no interest as a result. Nice going, folks!

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