Will never meet.
And that’s a shame. And, of course, in real life they may meet, but what I mean by this is that the outstanding history of rock music, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, that Hickey has been painstakingly putting together since 2018 will never extend to cover Del Rey and musicians of her generation. As it stands, Hickey plans restrict himself to 20th century songs, and honestly in many ways that makes a lot of sense. It is perfectly possible to argue that rock ‘n’ roll and the forms that make up what is loosely classified as rock music ceased developing after 2000. It’s not an argument that convinces me on any level, although I will concede that electric guitar driven music in no longer in the ascendant – and this is often considered some sort of gold standard for rock.
But the reality is that rock has expanded beyond what you might call the guitar based rock and roll unit, and this is not a new expansion at all. Beginning in the 1960s but ballooning afterwards, rock has embraced and coopted all kinds of music and the form that underlies most of today’s popular music, electronic dance music or EDM, was almost wholly established as long ago as the 1970s by Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk and was thoroughly integrated into what was still classified as rock by the 1980s. And it never went away.
Which leads me to Lana Del Rey, a protean musician who incorporates the entire history of rock into her art and who is crying out for the kind of in-depth analysis that Hickey has so captivatingly extended to, say, The Grateful Dead. An analysis that we will never, as it stands, ever hear.
Hopefully, inspired by Hickey’s achievement, someone else will come along to give 21st century rock and pop that kind of deep analysis. Although to match Hickey they are going to have to be very special indeed. I wait for the next installment of Hickey’s survey, appearing every couple of weeks or so. As of the moment, The Band, is up next. But part of me aches for Hickey to feel free to break out of his chronological limitation and bounce all the way up to Venice Bitch.
No Longer The Only One 
Well would love to give this post the comment that it deserves but I confess to not knowing either. 😵💫 I don’t do critics as a rule, at least not since the late 70s and early 80s in the heyday of Rolling Stone.
Anyway, my only “new” band is La Femme. Enough said probably there as (Dan Ackroyd voice) “they are from France.” 😆
Although I did watch a very good documentary on Tubi last week about The Damned. 😊
Good to read one of your posts again though!
The Damned are a very interesting band and I don’t know La Femme myself. I recommend giving Andrew Hickey’s podcast a listen, he’s less a critic and more a historian and the thoroughness of his knowledge and his cross referencing is breathtaking. He’s been going for a while now, largely unknown, but is finally getting some real notice, such a recent article in The New Yorker.
Well if it’s history, you know me I’m all about that, so I will.
And thanks for putting up an interesting post. Does really indicate that bloggers almost all top the regular “quickie” social media sites.
And, just throwing this into the mix, have you ever wondered about future historians trying to cover all this online stuff? A daunting task surely, just due to volume!🥺
That’s a really good point (about future historians) – how anyone is going to be able to sort through all this stuff. Maybe that’s where the much-hyped AI algorithms will be useful? Or maybe not. As for Hickey’s 500 songs, you can start at the beginning which establishes a clear narrative and podcasts are relatively short, or, alternatively, as I did, you can search for a song that you particularly like and start out with that – mine was The Byrds’ Eight Miles High. Either way is rewarding.