The genre wasnt just resuscitated it was up and walking around, no signs of atrophy.
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Days later, the song debuted at No.
1, before spending 11 more weeks at No.
2, tying the record for most weeks in the runner-up spot.
The last time a guitar-driven song topped the charts was 2009, when Kelly Clarkson hit No.
1 with My Life Would Suck Without You.
1 hits, after Clarkson herself had already refined the formula with her 2004 No.
2 hit Since U Been Gone.
The title of Ozzis essay boldly declared, Rock Is Dead, Thank God.
That song, I Think Im OKAY, kicked offa new wave of pop-punk that crested in 2021.
Malone first hit No.
1 in 2017 with a trap song called rockstar, before his career would prophetically travelfurther from rap.
1, this time actually built around a looped guitar riff.
Flickers of rock crept into the mainstream elsewhere.
None of that couldve predicted one of the biggest rock gambles of 2021.
Ozzi buried some hope for rocks future in his essay.
Two things can exist at once, it seems.
The hard-core band Turnstile recruited hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo andDev Hynes, a.k.a.
That enthusiasm for rock reverberated through all corners of the genre.
The toast of the year wasMichelle Zauner, who performs lush, dream-pop-inspired rock music as Japanese Breakfast.
The same could easily be said ofthe Beatle who inducted him.
Wet Leg is just the freshest evidence.
All to say, you didnt have to look far to find bright, exciting rock music this year.
As for the boring stuff?
Each bands record debuted at No.
Neither reinvented much on their 2021 follow-ups: twenty one pilotsScaled and Icydebuted at No.
3, and Imagine DragonsMercury Act 1debuted at 9.
(Machine Gun KellysTickets to My Downfall, by comparison, is about to log its 64th week.)
Imagine Dragons and twenty one pilots succeeded for a period by tempering rock with pop elements.
The band earned a No.
Its clear how that would inspire skepticism;it already has.
Poptimism came later as a response, arguing that there was merit to those pop stars too.
This gives way to some hope for the future.
I didnt want the entire record to be sad piano songs, shetoldVarietyearlier this year.
And she made it clear that millions of others didnt, either.
