AOL and Time Warner. Mrs. Melissa Etheridge and David Crosby. The year 2000 is clearly shaping up to be a time of strange combinations. Continuing a trend from 1999, things look to be getting bigger and weirder. Will it never end?

I refuse to speculate about future relations between lesbians and male classic rockers -- some issues stupefy even the most fearless cultural commentators. As for AOL/Time Warner, there are people who will tell you that the deal is going to end the music industry as we know it. That might not be a bad idea -- unfortunately, nothing remotely like it is going to happen.

Over the next few years, artists -- particularly (surprise!) platinum-selling artists -- will be able to exert a great deal more control over the distribution of their music. And they will (surprise!) make even more money. And the companies themselves won't do so badly either. Copyright issues will be sorted out among the major labels, and digital downloading will become far more common. It will likely be the primary means of distribution for singles, a format that has always favored big sellers.

Some people are saying that this emphasis on individual songs will mark the end of the album as a significant art form. Nonsense. True, there has been an emphasis in recent years on individual songs -- soundtracks and compilations are the two most notable examples of that, and those formats will continue to be important. Singles might enjoy a renewed prominence -- a prominence they enjoyed in the Fifties and early Sixties, and then again in the Eighties. But singles will essentially become promotional items, a means of publicizing far more profitable products like albums, movies and tours.

It's no accident, however, that all this talk about singles is coming at a time when pop music, hip-hop and R&B are dominating the charts. Pop music has always been driven by individual songs, at least in part because its young audience can more easily afford to buy them. Hip-hop and R&B get played in clubs and encourage remixes, another song-based form. Hip-hop, though, like rock & roll, has grown into an album-oriented form, with artists linking tracks with vignettes that provide thematic unity and clearly setting out to make major statements.

Which brings us to the final point: Just as people have been quick to announce the death of the album, they've been just as eager, for whatever reason, to claim that rock is dead. The first time I remember hearing that was in 1968 -- back then, the coffin nail was that psychedelic poofery had fatally drained the music's energy. Since then, rock & roll has died more times than I can count and somehow has always managed to revitalize itself -- most recently in the early Nineties.

But each time rock has "died," there have been good reasons why people were ready to read the last rites over it -- and there are good reasons this time, too. For whatever reasons, rock & roll has yielded much of its power to other musical styles, and has come up with relatively little to replace it. If you're interested in rhythm, in being able to move -- or even, gasp, dance -- when you listen to music, rock & roll doesn't have much to offer you these days. If you like songs that tell a story you can identify with, that's not really available either.

If you've always felt that dramatic, larger-than-life characters are part of what makes rock great, where would you find those characters now? And what about a sense that the music is important, that it can speak to the most profound issues in your life? That's hard to locate, too.

The prevalence of pop these days is more or less a demographic issue. There are lots of young people around now -- the members of the so-called baby boomlet are just about old enough to provide a fervent audience for all the teen acts crowding the air waves.

But the other qualities I just described have all found homes in other musical styles that may be related to rock & roll, but aren't the thing itself. Hip-hop, country music and female singer-songwriters have not been shy about seizing the ground that rock has so casually abandoned. Those types of music are, obviously, very different, but they've all been willing to address their audiences in ways that are powerful and moving.

What has rock & roll put forward in recent years beyond diffidence and irony, qualities that are hardly very inspiring? If you don't think that your music can say something important to people -- without pandering to them -- you shouldn't be surprised if they don't want to live and die with you. Hip-hop artists have stepped up big time by making their lives and music seem dramatic and compelling. Lilith Fair artists speak with fearless vulnerability to their audience.

Rockers, unfortunately, have been content to speak only to themselves. They've repeatedly refused to accept the challenge of a big audience. Until that changes, they will have only the limited following they deserve.

ANTHONY DeCURTIS
(January 14, 2000)