(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / YouTube Still)
Sun 21 September 2025 1:00, UK
Music is full of intriguing ‘what-if’ questions: What if The Beatles never met Ringo Starr? What if Elvis Presley had an effective dietitian? However, one of the greatest unanswered questions in music revolves around rock and roll’s ultimate prodigy, Buddy Holly.
For a certain demographic, in the modern age, Buddy Holly is little more than the subject of that annoyingly catchy Weezer song, but the Texan songwriter was among the brightest stars of the first rock and roll age. As a teenager, Holly was already being noted for his country-focused musical skill, recruited as an opening act for Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, the harbingers of mainstream rock and roll, which he inevitably dove into too, and thank god he did.
By the time the young songwriter celebrated his 21st birthday, he was a rockstar in his own right, along with his outfit, The Crickets, achieving a transatlantic hit with ‘That’ll Be The Day’, topping the pop charts in both the US and the UK. Those hits kept on coming, too, with ‘Peggy Sue’ landing only a few months later. He was barely out of his adolescence, and yet he was a global phenomenon.
Sure, the rock ‘n’ roll boom of the 1950s produced a wealth of stars, ranging in quality from Little Richard to Pat Boone, but Buddy Holly was a special case. Rock was always a youth-focused movement; the young kids around the world tuning into radio stations couldn’t see themselves in the weathered features of Bill Haley, or the impossibly handsome presentation of Elvis Presley, but Buddy Holly was a relatable figure: he was just like them.
That fact is reflected in just how many future rockstars held Holly up as the pinnacle of rock and roll greatness; The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the list is endless, and they all owe a huge portion of their careers to the pioneering songwriting of Buddy Holly. Yet, in a tragic twist of fate, the young rocker’s success story was cut short just as meteoric had been his rise.
In a fatal plane crash, which changed the music industry forever in February 1959, the 22-year-old, along with fellow musicians Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, was killed. There was, of course, an outpour of affection in the wake of his death, and his work remained incredibly popular among the rock youth in the ages that followed. Ultimately, as is with business, the turnaround was fast, and it didn’t take the music industry very long to move on from the death of its golden boy.
Photo of the aviation accident known as ‘The Day the Music Died’. (Credits: Civil Aeronautics Board)
Not only did Holly’s death put a stopped in one of the greatest voices in rock history, but it has since inspired the hypothetical question, what would have happened if Holly had never gotten on that plane? For starters, the world would have been robbed of Don McLean’s finest hour, in the form of ‘American Pie’, but would Holly have really been able to continue his run of success?
Looking at the big picture, very few rock stars of the 1950s managed to adapt to the changing landscape as British invasion acts like The Beatles and The Stones commanded the attention of the youth, the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and even Little Richard began to fade away somewhat, so it is not impossible to imagine Holly doing the same. However, the songwriter differed from those contemporaries in his age and the fact that he wrote the vast majority of his own material.
Perhaps Holly would have been able to keep up with the young upstarts of the British invasion; he wasn’t that much older than them, after all. What’s more, the fact that the likes of The Beatles were so heavily inspired by his work could have spurred on co-headline tours between the pair, maybe even a few joint recordings.
Sure, he wouldn’t have remained at the top of the rock scene indefinitely; nobody could have done, but he could have lived out his years putting out great rock and roll material, taking his music across the world, and revelling in the influence he served for artists of multiple generations.
Ultimately, the unlived life of Buddy Holly is up for interpretation as his unfortunate fate was sealed on ‘The Day the Music Died’, but the quality of his songwriting still prevails all these years later.
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