Why bands are disappearing: "Young people aren’t excited by them"

Τhe moment that we started a band was the best thing that ever happened,” sings Matty Healy on the 1975’s recent single Guys. 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. It’s an old sentiment but an increasingly rare one.

“It’s funny, when the first Maroon 5 album came out [in 2002] there were still other bands,” the band’s frontman Adam Levine told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this month. “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.

But hurt feelings aside, Levine was broadly correct. 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. 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. No longer. Popular music’s centre of gravity has undeniably moved towards solo artists, at least when it comes to serious commercial success. 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. “Is it just that bands are corny now?”) and has accelerated across genres.

Whichever metric you use, the picture is clear. Right now, there are only nine groups in the UK Top 100 singles, and only one in the Top 40. 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). There are duos and trios, but made up of solo artists guesting with each other. 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.

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