As surely as the Stones keep rolling, Mick Jagger does know that he will eventually have to pass on the torch to a new generation of rock music icons. Surprisingly, his first-round draft pick is none other than Machine Gun Kelly — the artist also known as Weed.
The Rolling Stones bandleader opened up about his hope for the genre's future in an interview on Swedish radio station P4, as initially reported by The Independent.
"In rock music, you need energy," Jagger said, "and there have not been a lot of new rock singers around." He added: "Now there are a few. You have Yungblud and Machine Gun Kelly — that kind of post-punk vibe makes me think there is still a bit of life in rock 'n' roll."
This is not a long quote by any means, but there is certainly a lot to unpack here. Yes, needing energy is a fact of rock and, unfortunately, much of life. Then: the only rock singers around are old — though Jagger is not admitting to being such, as that would go directly against the band's ethos of refusing to show signs of aging, with Keith Richards recently proclaiming the Stones wouldn't sell their publishing rights for this reason.
But wait! Things are different now. There are some new rock singers, and their names are Yungblud and Machine Gun Kelly — the former being a 24-year-old English pop-punk star and the latter being the notorious wrestler-turned-rapper-turned-Mr. Megan Fox.
While we've been major proponents of the pop-punk renaissance — especially on the Canadian side, with the return of icons like Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, Sum 41 and Fefe Dobson, as well as promising newcomers like Sophia Bel — over here at Exclaim!, this feels like a bit of a stretch on Jagger's part. (It also feels like he doesn't really know what post-punk is.) But glad to hear that he deems rock music to still have a bit of life in it yet!
Gene Simmons of KISS is less optimistic: citing the Stones in an abridged history of popular music to prove his point, he recently said that he still thinks rock 'n' roll is dead and blames the fans for killing it.
Now the real question is: was MGK's cover of "Aerials" by System of a Down factored into Jagger's statement?
The Rolling Stones bandleader opened up about his hope for the genre's future in an interview on Swedish radio station P4, as initially reported by The Independent.
"In rock music, you need energy," Jagger said, "and there have not been a lot of new rock singers around." He added: "Now there are a few. You have Yungblud and Machine Gun Kelly — that kind of post-punk vibe makes me think there is still a bit of life in rock 'n' roll."
This is not a long quote by any means, but there is certainly a lot to unpack here. Yes, needing energy is a fact of rock and, unfortunately, much of life. Then: the only rock singers around are old — though Jagger is not admitting to being such, as that would go directly against the band's ethos of refusing to show signs of aging, with Keith Richards recently proclaiming the Stones wouldn't sell their publishing rights for this reason.
But wait! Things are different now. There are some new rock singers, and their names are Yungblud and Machine Gun Kelly — the former being a 24-year-old English pop-punk star and the latter being the notorious wrestler-turned-rapper-turned-Mr. Megan Fox.
While we've been major proponents of the pop-punk renaissance — especially on the Canadian side, with the return of icons like Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, Sum 41 and Fefe Dobson, as well as promising newcomers like Sophia Bel — over here at Exclaim!, this feels like a bit of a stretch on Jagger's part. (It also feels like he doesn't really know what post-punk is.) But glad to hear that he deems rock music to still have a bit of life in it yet!
Gene Simmons of KISS is less optimistic: citing the Stones in an abridged history of popular music to prove his point, he recently said that he still thinks rock 'n' roll is dead and blames the fans for killing it.
Now the real question is: was MGK's cover of "Aerials" by System of a Down factored into Jagger's statement?
