Blake Red’s new single is Scorpion, a wrathful, soulful ode to survivors and callout to predators in musical form. The guitar zings, the vocals blaze, there’s nothing subtle or refined about Scorpion, but the point it makes – both in terms of its communicative musical composition and as a statement – is potent and powerful. The song feels like a two to three minute rallying cry, symbolizing how rock-n-roll will forever live not just as a popular musical art form, but as a potent, political statement. Trace the history of rock, and shattering cultural times come with every innovation in the art form.
During the sixties, soft rock defined the sexual revolution – a formal rebuking of mores defining the fifties, often questioning key political events at the time, namely Vietnam. The seventies began to see a more violent and visceral form of rock, no doubt a result of the grief and rage in the post-Vietnam years, the continuation of the ’68 counterculture, and the birth of the conspiracy theory as a modern, countercultural artifact. In the eighties and the nineties, rock began to shift again – the Berlin wall falling, the cold war between the US and the USSR seemingly dissipating, and almost a sense of re-patriotism taking hold.
During the mid-nineties, alternative music acts qualifiable as rock began to emerge. Green Day, Motley Crue, Creed, Third Eye Blind were just a few of the notable pioneers of the Clinton years, music that not only provided entertainment and escape but seemed to compliment the scenery of the time.
As pop began to dominate the Top 40s chart in the 2000s, rock seemingly was starting to have its day. Seemingly doomed to become a relic of a time, perhaps in some ways a simpler time, pre-2008, pre-the economic crisis. Pre the mass mobilization of various movements perpetually at war with one another, resulting in the kind of tribalism and division so prominently featured at every angle of society today. Naturally, one has to ask, what does the countercultural spirit of rock still have to offer when other mediums offer the same kind of thought provocation? Well, in the case of Blake Red, a lot.
If rock no longer is one of the sole artistic forms capturing this kind of anarchic spirit, then as a successor to such a trait it can become a canvas to paint charged societal statements. If Jordan Peele reinvented the idea of the social thriller, it is only natural rock can step in as a barometer of the societal times – and ills – currently at play. Red seems aware of these shoes to fill, and she does so in her own unique, scintillating manner. Scorpion isn’t just a great song because it’s an exemplary piece of old-school rock-n-roll, but because like all of the masters in genre it has something to say.
Something immensely modern and contemporary, in a post-MeToo era where there is still much work to be done. While the song presentationally might not be for everyone, its points are, and that’s to be seriously commended.
Mindy McCall
