In other words, what does a rock star look like nowadays? In the late 50’s and early 60’s it was clean cut and suits with skinny ties. By the latter part of the 60’s and into the 70’s it was the “hippie” or “mod” look. By the 80’s glam hit the scene and spandex and big hair was de riguer for the day. The 90’s was dirty jeans, dirty hair, and lumberjack shirts. Ugh!
So what’s the style nowadays?
BTW, can’t really count metal in this because that has had a fairly consistent style all these years. Mind you, this isn’t a bad thing, either.
Based on the evidence I’ve seen, it pretty much involves finding the tightest pair of jeans you can find, and then add a tight shirt.
Its all a matter of perspective. Everyone has a slightly different definition of cool. Maybe its like the old saying if you have to explain it, you dont understand….. Maybe I dont understand… because by todays standards, there are people who don’t sing well (or sing at all) OR play an instrument, yet, they’re rockstars…I’m old school because I believe one or the other is a requirement. To answer you question, by today’s standards, it’s 90% packaging/image, 10% talent. Dont get me wrong, there are great exceptions..i.e. Los Lonely Boys, John Mayer, Brad Paisley to name a few.
Tweed, that’s probably a good assessment – lots of posers out there. But there are gems among the junk. It has always been like this. Remember the glam rock days? Not too much original talent then. And it seems that only Bon Jovi is left; but they were pretty good to start out with and wrote decent music – still do. It seems as if you only see the old glam-rockers on VH1 making commentaries on the “I Love the 80’s” shows. 🙂
Then there are enigma’s like Kid Rock. He’s not much of a guitar player although he tries sometimes. He can’t sing very well, although his ability so sing in tune is improving to the point of being adequate. But the sum of the collective marginally adequate parts form into something unique and fun to watch. Go figure.