RIP rock music - Final Boss
OK not literally ! here is a list of th
here is a potentially exhaustive and potentially non-exhaustive lists when rock accomplished part of what it was meant to accomplish and could maybe have called it a day. it is in chronological order to make you take it more seriously. |
| 1 |  | The Velvet Underground
White Light/White Heat
Sister Ray
1968
Rock has famously been a haven for sloppy disorganised musicians ever since white people took the reins, and whether or not there will ever be a sloppier, sexier, more disorganised or more awesome mess than Sister Ray is a matter for debate. This is a hint. Please debate it, if you like.
FINAL BOSS: big ding-dong |
| 2 |  | Pink Floyd
Meddle
Echoes
1970
The ambitious prog epic has maybe lost some of its credentials as a reputable subgenre, but Pink Floyd pinned down this kind of songwriting early in the game and brought in some non-rock sounds for iconic value. Since then, people have done it better, done it longer, done it shorter, done it more interestingly, and done it with more time signatures - but did anyone ever make it squeak so well?
FINAL BOSS: longform progressive seagull noises |
| 3 |  | Neu!
Neu!
Hallogallo
1971
Rock's relatively basic structures, melodies and arrangements have given it a knack for saying a lot with very little. TVU were pretty good at this, with the exception that Lou Reed was cool without ever being laconic. The dude had a lot of shit to say. Neu! succeeded in being more laconic by having no words at all and the most wryly unexpressive drum beats in the game - a great foundation for cool jams that focus on doing less rather than more.
FINAL BOSS: laconic motorik |
| 4 |  | Queen
A Night at the Opera
Bohemian Rhapsody
1975
An essential feature for obvious reasons. As an epic fantasy that everyone can sing along to, Bohemian Rhapsody is a high watermark for both the imaginative and communal depts or the rockverse that will improve 10 karaoke evenings out of 10 and enable you to talk to your parents whenever you're out of ideas. Big classic.
FINAL BOSS: epic |
| 5 |  | The Fall
Grotesque (After the Gramme)
C 'n' C-S Mithering
1980
The Fall talked a lot of idiosyncratic bullshit, and rock's potential as a shitpost genre has never been exploited quite so magnificently Some Fall fans will argue Mark E. Smith didn't shitpost. This is probably true, but it doesn't change the fact that no-one has successfully talked trash so expansively or bemusingly. What a man.
FINAL BOSS: nonsense rhetoric |
| 6 |  | The Sisters of Mercy
First and Last and Always
Some Kind of Stranger
1985
Rock music is melodramatic as hell. This is sometimes because it is an outlet for (often male) young musicians to express often destructively-directed things they are otherwise incapable of expressing, but sometimes it is because the iconic Role of Front Man is a draw for performatively minded creators. Over time this has necessitated a huge amount of production accessories, including but not limited to dry ice and dry ice. The '80s had a huge quantity of dry ice. I'm hazy (ha!) on the specifics of when it was supposed to run out because some fucker kept replacing it, but The Sisters of Mercy are as good an example as any for when rock *might* have run out of dry ice.
FINAL BOSS: dry ice |
| 7 |  | The Jesus Lizard
Goat
Monkey Trick
1991
Its value as the music of rebellion waxes and wanes, but rock music is a l w a y s supposed to be cool (or, *sigh*, ironically uncool - I hear you, Weezer fans). Whether or not there will ever be a rock song more caustically enigmatically sweatily badassly capitalC Kool than the Jesus Lizard's magnum opus Monkey Trick. These bois grooved like no-one's business and vamp the stakes up to ugly-as-sin heights that generate, absorb and reward intrigue as timelessly as many things that are not rock music.
FINAL BOSS: kool |
| 8 |  | Slint
Spiderland
For Dinner...
1991
Not putting Good Morning Captain on this list is a reasonably bold shout, but while it's the better song, For Dinner... is the most mesmerically subtle track in Slint's canon and pretty much untoppable when it comes to rock minimalism and dynamic nuance. Next to nothing happens here beyond some skeletal drumbeats and Dave Pajo teasing undistorted chords at various intensities. It's a masterpiece.
FINAL BOSS: minimalism |
| 9 |  | Polvo
Today's Active Lifestyles
Time Isn't On My Side
1993
This is a sloppy noisey abrasive 6/8 BANGER that catches the final form of slacker guitar rock for suburban nerds. Similarly to 20 and 23, it heralds rock's demise on the dinner plate of video game music, but this one is close enough '90s slacker vibes for it's arcade qualities to feel like a natural subcultural offshoot.
FINAL BOSS: lazy noise |
| 10 |  | Stereolab
Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements
Crest
1993
Sometimes rock music is brutishly simplistic. Sometimes it is surprisingly elegant. Crest is both of these things. The vocal motifs + harmonies here are quaint as they come, but the flat-handed pounding of one firmly weighted chord over another sounds like a parody of whatever caveman antics rock was destined to devolve into for its final form.
Stereolab being more tasteful than that, the track's head-to-wall rhythm and primitive delivery are a foundation for an ongoing build so excellent that it conveniently checks post-rock off the list too.
FINAL BOSS: splitting the atom + climaxcore |
| 11 |  | Drive Like Jehu
Yank Crime
Luau
1994
This and Space Cadet (12 (the next entry on the list)) are something of a 1994 double-bill for Big Attitude repetitive badass things that, combined, make a meta final boss for testosterone rock on this list. Luau is the first phase of the meta final boss, wherein it is layered in so much distortion that its final form has not yet become clear. Similarly to Crest, Luau focuses on such brutally simple individual phrasings to the most reductive level. Unlike Crest, it is covered in enough noise and dissonance to kill a horse and doubles down into its own incarnation of feedback hell rather than doing any of that post-rock fanciness.
FINAL BOSS: noiz |
| 12 |  | Kyuss
Welcome to Sky Valley
Space Cadet
1994
Rock musicians have done many things with acoustic guitars. Many of them have been craftful and beautiful and hugely worthwhile. Most of the good ones have come from playing folk music under the guise of rock. Space Cadet is rock music with an acoustic guitar that is not folk music. It is a meandery hazy stoner heavy daydream. It is awesome.
FINAL BOSS: acoustic guitar |
| 13 |  | The Gathering
How to Measure a Planet?
Probably Built In The Fifties
1998
By the '90s, rock had already been through many twists and turns, and was established enough to be convincing as a vehicle for retro portraits other than hilarious oldieworldy progfests. While they became increasingly introspective and personal, The Gathering had a knack for brewing up highly imaginative music from a mature range of gothic, psychedelic, metal, alternative and trip-whatever influences that seemed equal parts retro and futuristic, ticking the box for mobile footing in creatively minded rock.
FINAL BOSS: r e t r o f u t u r e |
| 14 |  | Sonic Youth
A Thousand Leaves
Heather Angel
1998
This creepy discordant psychedelic weirdfest may not be up with Sonic Youth's classics, but it's a freaky reminder that being a great band equipped with Guitars gives you the potential to do whatever you like and make it sound good if you, like, want to.
FINAL BOSS: do it your way |
| 15 |  | Judy and Mary
WARP
Motto
2001
This one has two subreasons that turn into one reason:
1) basic bitch rock guitar is heavily reliant on a highly recognisable and widely repurposed set of guitar licks
2) rock as radio pop was throughly cemented as throughout the 90s
Judy and Mary made some of the best pop-rock bangers in the game (and also many not-so-good ones), and for their final album they thought it would be a good idea to trot out one of their fastest bangers over a wildly overdriven showcase of every long-established rock riff in the game. The vocal performance is so overpowering that a few listens are in order before this one's full pyrotechnic scope becomes evident, but Motto riffs harder than any other rock popper you have access to + gets bonus points for never once touching the E-string
FINAL BOSS: pop_rock |
| 16 |  | Life Without Buildings
Any Other City
The Leanover
2001
We've already covered slacker jams and nonsense, so this one is kinda cheating, but what neither of those FINAL BOSSes (or any other album on the list so far tbh) accomplished was a viable sense of Chill. Life Without Buildings' vocalist speaks her undiluted thoughts like a parrot watching Mean Girls and a überrelaxing emopostpunk whatever jam carries things away. It's the only song you'll ever need.
FINAL BOSS: chill parrot |
| 17 |  | Radiohead
Amnesiac
Knives Out
2001
People who don't listen to Talking Heads, Stereolab, Supercar or Coldplay(loljk) will tell you that a list like this ABSOLUTELY NEEDS a Radiohead song for one reason or another, but none of them would pick Knives Out as the song in question because they are all wrong.
While no-one's favourite, Knives Out is probably the most perfect rock song Radiohead ever made. Everything about this song ties itself up so cleanly that it might as well be used as promotional music for bathroom cleaning products - it's that watertight. The 373 days taken to round this one off were clearly not in vain; attention to detail, forensically precise songwriting and general patience may be the opposite of many rock tropes, but Knives Out is such a meticulously crafted counterexample that it's as good a place as any to lay things to rest.
FINAL BOSS: no loose ends |
| 18 |  | Unwound
Leaves Turn Inside You
October All Over
2001
Other than Slint, I don't think we've had any huge downer songs so far. Rock is about emotions and short fuses and expression and hormones and stuff. It is about downers. October All Over is ultimately a reasonable disconcerting downer song that is to down to have an exclamative downer, so instead it has an utterly delicious psychedelic jam and mumbles relatably dour phrases over a catchy drumbeat. The final form of the I Am So Sad powerballad.
FINAL BOSS: seasonal depression |
| 19 |  | Number Girl
NUM-HEAVYMETALLIC
Num-Ami-Dabutz
2002
Rock and hip-hop had a relatively longstanding paldom that brought some very cool things and some very uncool things into existence. I should probably have put something by the Beastie Boys or RATM here, but both those acts feel like they started something rather than ending it. As a goofball math rock song with claws and swagger from a Japanese band, Num-Ami-Dabutz is probably a reasonable moment to term the end of the line.
FINAL BOSS: hip-rock |
| 20 |  | Melt-Banana
Cell-Scape
Key Is A Fact That A Cat Brings
2003
This track has more intensity, more special effects and more frequencies than were originally intended to fall into the rock handicap bracket. Highly overpowered, devastating for attention spans and deserving of warning signs for crossing the frontier of whatever succinct gratification rock was create to provide
FINAL BOSS: adhd |
| 21 |  | Boris
Pink
Just Abandoned My-Self
2005
A wise cookie once said that silence speaks louder than words. Boris made the great discovery that drones speak louder than silence. They demonstrate this by wrapping the most barnstorming rock track in their canon with around 10 minutes of one-note disintegration into abyssal feedback. Guess which part is best.
FINAL BOSS: long painful death |
| 22 |  | Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene
It's All Gonna Break
2005
For some people, rock is a kiss of life or a wholly uplifting shot of energy. Some people are jaded as hell and recognise neither of these really contain the redemptive power they once promised in the '60s and '70s. Cynical and glib as the '00s post-Pavement indie gang may have been, Broken Social Scene at least understood the value of kinship alongside their jadedness. It's All Gonna Break is a big dumb ode to feeling downtrodden and doomy about who really knows what, and in many ways it's one of the most honest snapshots of the millennial rock spirit as such.
FINAL BOSS: why are you always fucking ghosts? |
| 23 |  | Tera Melos
Untitled
melody 5
2005
Time signatures were never a true final boss for rock, and so having a math rock song here at all feels a little token. However, melody 5 is notable for how it burns through a gleefully dysfunctional composite structure before evaporating into a mesmeric 8-bit refrain that goes on for who knows how long. This is maybe an apt snapshot of how rock should have died: with multiple bangs followed by a good ol' gameboy binge.
FINAL BOSS: polymetric bleep bloop |
| 24 |  | Oceansize
Frames
Only Twin
2007
Okay, I lied: time signatures are a final boss for rock, and this song is it. Not only is it borderline impossible to keep track of whatever the hell is happening with that rhythm, but its broader progression sounds like a polyrhythmic revision of Bohemian Rhapsody based in a rough point in Trainspotting. Whether or not that completes rock is up to you, but it certainly ticks the box for something.
FINAL BOSS: complex emotions and emotions and complexity |
| 25 |  | Mass of the Fermenting Dregs
Mass of the Fermenting Dregs
I F A SURFER
2008
You'd hard-pressed to find an unconventional song that finds as perfect a balance between modest experimentation and flat-out high-octane r o c k as I F A SURFER. Pick out your favourite vanilla overdrive banger, chances are it wishes it could evolve into this.
FINAL BOSS: ROCK |
| 26 |  | Midori
Shinsekai
凡庸VS茫洋
2010
I'm not sure anyone would have counted a manic punk girl from Osaka screaming over the unstable foundation of a jazz trio utterly losing their shit as a foreseeable Must for rock, but Midori sure as hell made that extra mile count.
FINAL BOSS: jazzcore |
| 27 |  | My Bloody Valentine
m b v
If I Am
2013
Anyone chronologically or catatonically minded probably noticed there was no MBV in the 90s section and complained to themselves, potentially audibly. Let's set things straight: Loveless was innovative enough to inspire a load of mostly mediocre shoegaze bands, but layering a few middle of the road indie pop skeletons with an overpriced production job that somehow missed out the low EQ regions almost entirely didn't end rock. If I Am, on the other hand, is more disorientingly modulated, more harmonically interesting and (probs) more relaxing than anything on Loveless and doesn't really sound like anything else. MBV finally did something convincingly amorphous and ethereal as a rock band, so all can stop here.
FINAL BOSS: atmospheric washing machine |
| 28 |  | Otori
Digitalized Human Nature
null
2019
I'm not sure what boxes remain to be ticked here (and tbh neither are most rock bands), but if there are any, then whatever the fuck this is probably ticks them
FINAL BOSS: ???? |
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