Brandon Flowers has declared we are living in a “post-rock world”.
The Killers frontman, 45, went down the country route on his latest solo album Thrasher and believes rock music is on its way out.
Asked if he thinks rock music is in a better place than we he started out, he told Pollstar magazine: “No. It’s almost dying. We’re living in a post-rock world. I don’t think it’s going to ever die, but we’re past it. You talk about how easy it is – I think it’s too easy to make content and to make music, and there’s just not enough self-reflection going on or enough growth happening before we’re trying to put ourselves out there. You’ve got to hone what you’re doing and make sure that it’s good enough, get out there and play, and know what it feels like to have something be great or have something suck instead of just releasing things. That would be one thought about it.”
Teasing a second country record, Brandon said: “There’s a follow-up record. We made two records in Nashville. We’re putting the feelers out there and doing these shows and seeing how they go. It’s just taking it one day at a time.”
The rock is dead debate has been ongoing for decades.
Last year, Yungblud didn’t hold back after Howard Stern told him “rock is dead”.
The Zombie rocker pushed back hard on the idea, insisting the genre is thriving in ways that older generations fail to recognise.
Appearing on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, the host declared: “I’ve been feeling lately like rock is dead, you know? And it makes me sad because I love rock and roll music.”
Yungblud disagreed, explaining: “Rock music is so brilliant, and it gets its flowers in hindsight because it’s such a sacred genre.”
He argued that the disconnect often comes down to nostalgia rather than reality.
Yungblud went on: “Every dad says, ‘I don’t like that band. It sounds like a band that they knew as a kid.’ You know what I mean? Every dad says to his kid, ‘I don’t like that. That sounds like what I knew.’ It always happens.”
The 29-year-old star went on to reject the long-running narrative that one artist must single-handedly “save” the genre.
