Current Events > Are guitar solos dead?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like guitar solos (especially in pop music) aren't really a thing anymore. At least in music you hear on the radio

For example this is 25 years old now, has a guitar solo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQW27sg1Omc

Do Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Beyonce, etc, feature guitar solos in their music?

UFO - Rock Bottom = the goat

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=xTE4NNqmnbw&si=RddPxNQGvwpM91e1&feature=xapp_share

Just their careers.

Guitar solos are absolutely still a thing, it just depends on who you listen to.

Cue Nick Jonas

I feel like actual instrumentation in pop music was replaced by synthetic composition long ago. Like, there are still a few prominent pop artists who actually play instruments but I don't think it's anything like the 80s or 90s where like 1 in every 4 solo acts or "lead" singers in a group played an instrument regularly.

El_Marsh posted...

I feel like actual instrumentation in pop music was replaced by synthetic composition long ago. Like, there are still a few prominent pop artists who actually play instruments but I don't think it's anything like the 80s or 90s where like 1 in every 4 solo acts or "lead" singers in a group played an instrument regularly.

It's not just that, it's that bands in "rock" were the mainstay of pop for most of the last three quarters of a century, and rock features more musicianship with band members often writing their own music.

Some purely pop artists wrote their own music like Neil Diamond, but most have music written for them, and those songs tend to be built around a vocal performance or simple musical hooks.