Phil Collen had some interesting thoughts about the future of rock, and the Def Leppard guitarist might make some newer artists mad.
Collen was asked in a new interview with Listen Next! (h/t Blabbermouth) about which artist he thought would be the ones Def Leppard could “pass the baton to,” and he couldn’t name anyone.
“I don’t know. I’m still waiting, actually,” responded Collen. “You hear a lot of stuff out there, but it’s few and far between.”
As for his reasoning why nothing has resonated with him, Collen offered up a theory.”
“There’s a problem, I think, and I think it’s the TikTok and YouTube crowd,” he said. “When bands or artists would write before, it would be because they wanted to be an artist and wanted to express themselves and write songs and share them and go, ‘Wow. Check this out’, as opposed to, ‘Wow. Look at me. Please love me.’”
Collen added, “I don’t wanna sound like an old dude, but that’s what I noticed. And I’m still waiting for someone like Prince or [Led] Zeppelin or something that has a bit more something to it. There’s very little stuff.”
Collen would go on to name major rock artists that have blown him away like Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Foo Fighters and the Sex Pistols. However, newer acts just haven’t moved him.
“I hear derivative stuff and stuff that’s not inspired. You wanna get inspired,” he said. “So, yeah, I’m still waiting. It’s like in every genre of music. In hip-hop, it’s the same deal. You’re waiting to hear… Or R&B. You listen to the old R&B — you listen to Stevie Wonder, you listen to Marvin Gaye and stuff like that — nothing is like that anymore and that kind of soul and vibe and everything. I think we’ve kind of comfortably got into something else that doesn’t really demand that kind of excellence. It’s rare that that kind of talent comes along.”
