The death of the band

[Guy Rowland]

In the first 5 years of the 80s in the UK singles charts, there were 146 bands.

In the first 5 years of the 90s in the UK singles charts, there were 141 bands.

In the first 5 years of the 20s in the UK single charts so far, there have been 3 bands. One was The Radio 1 Live Lounge All Stars (actually a supergroup of solo artists). Another was The Beatles. That leaves just one true contemporary band - Little Mix.

This does make me sad. Rick Beato does a good run down of some of the reasons here (and adds plenty more supportive stats). But I can't help wondering if there's another societal factor at work. Many successful solo artists today - and I admire the hell out of a lot of them - are very strong characters, with a strong personal story and take on the world. With a band, you have multiple people, which dilutes things. You might occasionally get them so packaged you can't tell them apart - Westlife - but most of the time they were a disparate bunch, even in manufactured pop groups. The Spice Girls were marketed as 5 colourful distinct individuals, each with a single-word defining trait.

If feels a little like the Instagram / TikTok generation is all about a personal profile - a packaged and curated variant of seemingly every individual on Earth. Bands are ensembles, groups of people. Friends. There's no real social media profile of a group of individuals.

With the demise of (commercially successful) bands, I feel we're missing something.