And that’s the answer. The social milieu changed completely. The last gasp of rock was in the late 1990s and early 2000s; rock died with Nickelback and Creed. To be clear, they were not responsible for its death, but rather were avatars of its last bare wisp of vitality, a withered plant in a desert of culture.

Rock-like forms continued, and some other good genres and sub-genres emerged, but rock qua rock was dead by 2005.