Kiss’ Gene Simmons thinks there are no new big name rock bands: “They don’t exist. Name one, if you can think”

It’s been about 50 years since legendary American rock band Kiss released such hits as “Detroit Rock City” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” and much has changed in the popular music landscape. Kiss frontman Gene Simmons shared his reasons for why he thinks rock music has waned in popularity since its heyday in a recent sitdown with the Greatest Music Of All Time podcast.

“You can’t find a new big rock band,” Simmons asserted. “They don’t exist. Name one, if you can think. Foo Fighters it’s a big band, and that’s 30 years ago. And that has to do with the fans, who’s buying it. So once you could get that music for free, the business model stopped working.”

Simmons added, “Although it’s still vibrant in stadiums across the world — Iron Maiden does very well live and Metallica and so on, but these are old, old bands.”

Simmons believes that the new generation of music fans’ tastes are more aligned with pop and hip hop. “Because [of] younger pop fans, predominantly — there are so many great pop singers; Ariana Grande is really fabulous — she can imitate anybody, a great artist. And there’s Dua Lipa, and there’s a lot of them. But the fanbase are young females. So a lot of it has to do with souvenirs.”

Simmons also believes that the music scene that has emerged today is more popular with fans because it’s not only a music genre but a culture that the fans are aligning with as well.

“I don’t wanna come off like Professor Of Rock, Professor Of Music, but if you study it, there are reasons why things are happening. If you like that music, ‘Oh, I kind of like that,’ and then they’re different business models. So you can actually sell some units if you’re a rap band, because it’s culture. Rap is culture, not just music. In fact, it’s more culture, often racial culture, because it talks about ‘us’ — ‘us against them’ or ‘the world against us’.”

Simmons also analogized today’s music scene as more rabid — like Beyonce’s “Beyhive” or Taylor Swift’s “Swifties” because it’s akin to one rooting ravenously for their favorite sports team.

“It is in your favor if you have a fanbase that feels like they’re connected and they have the flag, like in soccer. That is tribalism. It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited. It’s an identity.”

Simmons also made an analogy likening Taylor Swift to Jesus.

“The ‘Swiftie’ [movement consisting of fans of American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift] is a culture. They’re not just fans. She stands for something. When you think about it, above and beyond the music and the lyrics and so on — ‘This guy broke my heart’ — and these songs that Swifties love, above that is her as the Jesus of the movement, if you see what I mean.

“I mean, what’s Christianity as a movement, religion, without Jesus, right? So you need these leaders, these apostles at the top to encapsulate what the culture and that thing is about. So the thing that Taylor has is Swifties…”

Simmons also shared who he believes is the most talented singer in today’s music scene, Lady Gaga. He stressed that Gaga isn’t only talented but her music “means something” as well.

“Her songs and her are, ‘I was born this way.’ And so the music is not just — and I don’t mean ‘fluff’ in a bad way, because there’s some wonderful fluff stuff.

“A lot of the British Invasion was all these great songs that you sang meant nothing. But when a song is saying [singing] ‘you want a revolution’, the song is about something. And so if you have a body of work that’s about something, you get the beginnings of tribalism. And if you’re the embodiment of that tribe, now you’ve got something.”

Simmons added about Lady Gaga, “Yes, Gaga’s fanbase is about that. And of course, she’s widened her thing by doing pop, Tony Bennett, and all this stuff. She’s the real deal. She’s got the musical chops. She can play, sing; [she is a] chanteuse.”

What do you think of the fact that Kiss’ Gene Simmons thinks there are no new big name rock bands? Let us know in the comments.