“We’re actively trying to sign bands,” he says. Not so, says Jamie Oborne, whose Dirty Hit label has found success with bands (the 1975, Wolf Alice) and solo artists (Beabadoobee, Rina Sawayama). One theory is that major labels avoid bands because solo artists are cheaper and easier to handle.
Rock and pop now exist in different spheres – even the biggest bands struggle to crack the streaming-driven Top 20 – but bands are on the back foot within alternative music itself. Music has been compartmentalised a lot more.” It could be anything next: R&B, alternative rock, whatever. “We did Top of the Pops with Amerie and the Scissor Sisters. “Bands were alongside pop acts on the radio and on TV,” says frontman Paul Smith. In the era of sales-based charts and Top of the Pops, they had eight Top 40 hits. So what happened?Īrt-pop band Maxïmo Park broke through in 2005, during the huge post-Strokes boom in rock bands. The album charts are still regularly topped by bands thanks to loyal fanbases who still buy physical formats – such as Mogwai, Architects and Kings of Leon in recent weeks – but not since 2016 has one hung on for a second week. Only one band, the Lathums, appeared on the BBC’s annual tastemaking Sound of … longlist this year, which is not unusual: bands haven’t been in the majority since 2013. That’s the 1975, Haim, alt-J, Rudimental, Bastille and Tame Impala, and the last of those is effectively a solo project. Of those that have emerged in the past decade, only half a dozen have headlined either Coachella, Reading/Leeds, Latitude, Download, Wireless or the main two stages at Glastonbury. Of course, radio and streaming are dominated by pop, rap and dance music but festival lineups don’t point to a golden age of bands, either.
In Spotify’s Top 50 most-played songs globally right now, there are only three groups (BTS, the Neighbourhood, and the Internet Money rap collective), and only six of the 42 artists on the latest Radio 1 playlist are bands: Wolf Alice, Haim, Royal Blood, Architects, London Grammar and the Snuts. There are duos and trios, but made up of solo artists guesting with each other. Two are the Killers and Fleetwood Mac, with songs 17 and 44 years old respectively, while the others are the last UK pop group standing (Little Mix), two four-man bands (Glass Animals, Kings of Leon), two dance groups (Rudimental, Clean Bandit) and two rap units (D-Block Europe, Bad Boy Chiller Crew). Right now, there are only nine groups in the UK Top 100 singles, and only one in the Top 40. Whichever metric you use, the picture is clear. “Is it just that bands are corny now?”) and has accelerated across genres. This paradigm shift has been obvious for a while now (“What happened to all the bands?” asked Rostam Batmanglij after leaving Vampire Weekend in 2016.
Popular music’s centre of gravity has undeniably moved towards solo artists, at least when it comes to serious commercial success. In the realm of pure pop, meanwhile, talent shows such as The X Factor became a reliable incubator of girl groups and boybands, from Girls Aloud to One Direction. When Maroon 5 broke through in the 00s, there were new bands forming all the time, many of which quickly proceeded to go platinum and headline arenas. “I feel like there aren’t any bands any more … I feel like they’re a dying breed.” Levine was quick to clarify that he meant bands “in the pop limelight” but the internet doesn’t really do clarification, so his remarks sparked bemusement and outrage among the literal-minded, from aggrieved veterans such as Garbage (“What are we Adam Levine? CATS?!?!?”) to fans of newcomers such as Fontaines DC and Big Thief.īut hurt feelings aside, Levine was broadly correct. “It’s funny, when the first Maroon 5 album came out there were still other bands,” the band’s frontman Adam Levine told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this month. It’s an old sentiment but an increasingly rare one. The song is an ardent love letter to the band, and to the romance of bands in general: the camaraderie, the solidarity, the joyous fusion of creativity and friendship. “T he moment that we started a band was the best thing that ever happened,” sings Matty Healy on the 1975’s recent single Guys.