The death of the mainstream band: Black Country, New Road reviewed

Twitter was awash with mockery last week, after Adam Levine, the singer of the American group Maroon 5, was interviewed on Apple Music and told Zane Lowe: ‘It’s funny, when the first Maroon 5 album came out there were still other bands. I feel like there aren’t any bands any more, you know?’ Out came the outraged, citing their favourite bands with fanbases numbering in the dozens. What about the fertile deep sludge scene based around Pimple Nose Records of Butt Wipe, Montana, eh? Then there were the K-Pop stans, demanding BTS — a seven-piece vocal group who, had they been formed in England in the 1990s, would clearly have been a boyband — be recognised as functionally equivalent to the Rolling Stones (there’s no moral judgment there, BTS stans. Just the fact that, to be a band, you have to play some instruments).

Taken in context, though, Levine’s comments were perfectly reasonable.