American rock music was in serious trouble in the 2000s. Post-grunge and nu metal bands grunted and screamed their way through angry song after angry song. And each time you thought the grievance tunes had run their course, modern rock radio would premiere yet another artist imitating Eddie Vedder minus everything that makes Vedder great: lyrics, melody, emotion, instinct, and taste.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t just the bands. Producers were taking full advantage of computer recording and seemed to be on a mission to remove anything human from the albums. So as the calendar flipped over into the year 2000, a new crop of bands emerged. Some mixed garage rock, punk, post-punk, and new wave. While others traveled back farther and found inspiration in early American blues and folk music. <\/p>\n
Though they recycled old sounds, it felt like a dawning. And these three bands helped revive American rock music in the 2000s.<\/p>\n
The Strokes<\/strong><\/p>\n By the time The Strokes released \u201cLast Nite\u201d, the New York City band was riding a wave of critical hype. Singer Julian Casablancas wrote his breakthrough single around the riff from Tom Petty\u2019s \u201cAmerican Girl\u201d and helped ignite a garage rock revival in the U.S. The Strokes looked and sounded classic. Perhaps trying to finish what The Velvet Underground started. Their debut, Is This It, is about as perfect a first album as you\u2019ll get. And remains one of the decade\u2019s best rock releases.<\/p>\n Yeah Yeah Yeahs<\/strong><\/p>\n Many bands from the early 2000s had \u201cThe\u201d in front of their names, but Yeah Yeah Yeahs were different. But most strikingly was singer Karen O, an iconic figure in a male-dominated scene. With guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase, Karen O\u2019s band created indie dance-punk in the vein of Blondie and Siouxsie and the Banshees. \u201cMaps\u201d is the trio\u2019s defining song. But it became such a cultural breakthrough that it also influenced the direction of pop music. See Kelly Clarkson\u2019s \u201cSince U Been Gone\u201d.<\/p>\n The White Stripes<\/strong><\/p>\n When The White Stripes arrived, there was all this funny business about whether Jack and Meg White were siblings, married, or simply bandmates. Adding to the intrigue was the duo\u2019s color-coded aesthetic and a childlike whimsy that seemed straight out of Dr. Seuss. But none of it mattered once you heard the ferocious riffs and blues howl of Jack White<\/a>. And Meg\u2019s anti-drumming was crucial to The White Stripes\u2019 minimalist garage rock. They are missed, and they never put out a bad record.<\/p>\n Photo by Nicky J. Sims\/Redferns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American rock music was in serious trouble in the 2000s. Post-grunge and nu metal bands grunted and screamed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":212993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[75409,171,116620,975,4185,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-212992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2000s","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-garage-rock","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rock-music","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115174752199172269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}