Rock
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TikTok’s growing role in popular culture has caused countless songs to be resurrected over the past few years – including some recognizable rock from over a decade ago. While many of the app’s Gen Z users have been exposed to 2000s mainstays like Paramore and Arctic Monkeys thanks to recent releases, several tracks that were released years ago, and were classics to millennials, have found a new life on TikTok.
Some of these songs have soundtracked iconic television and film scenes, and now find themselves being discovered by a new audience; they’ve also inspired listeners already familiar with their charms to reminisce on simpler times, get up and dance. While some of these artists have taken breaks to embark on solo careers or focus on their mental health, their music lives on and encourages fans, new and old, to keep engaging.
Here are 10 rock songs from the mid-00’s that TikTok has revived.
Black Keys singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach‘s side project, The Arcs, will release their first album in 8 years in early 2023. Electronic Chronic — the follow-up to the band’s 2015 debut, Yours, Dreamily — is due out on Jan. 27 through Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label.
The band previewed the 12-track album on Thursday (Oct. 13) the the funky first single, “Keep on Dreamin’,” which dropped along with a psychedelic, pinball-themed animated video directed and illustrated by Robert Schober, with character design by El Oms. The collection was produced by Auerbach and bandmate guitarist/keyboardist Leon Michels and it features contributions from late drummer Richard Swift.
In a press release announcing the project, Auerbach said, “whether it was New York city or Nashville or L.A., or Swift’s hometown of Cottage Grove, Oregon, wherever we were, we would always get in the studio together. It was our favorite thing to do. It’s rare that you meet a group of people that you click with like that, who you instantly bond with. We were just having fun, making sounds, making music. It was an amazing time for me.”
Michels added that the band — which also includes bassist Nick Movshon and drummer Homer Steinweiss — laid down between 80 and 100 tracks in what he described as near-constant recording sessions after the release of Dreamily. “It was so so much fun to be in the studio once again, so we were just making music all the time,” he said. “I think there was always a plan to make a follow-up record.”
Auerbach said Chronic is “all about” honoring Swift, who died in July 2018 from complications from hepatitis and liver/kidney distress. “It’s a way for us to say goodbye to him, by revisiting him playing and laughing,” he said. “It was heavy at times, but I think it was really helpful to do it.”
Check out the “Keep on Dreamin’” video and the Electronic Chronic track list below.
Track list:
“Keep on Dreamin’”“Eyez”“Heaven Is a Place”“Califone Interlude”“River”“Sunshine”“A Man Will Do Wrong”“Behind the Eyes”“Backstage Mess”“Sporting Girls Interlude”“Love Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”“Only One For Me”
After teasing the discovery of a previously unheard song featuring vocals from late singer Freddie Mercury earlier this summer, Queen finally unwrapped “Face It Alone” on Thursday (Oct. 13). The dramatic, emotionally affecting song was recorded during the 1988 sessions for the band’s penultimate album with Mercury, 1989’s The Miracle.
Recorded three years before Mercury died at 45 from AIDS-related complications, the wistful track opens with Mercury softly singing, “When something so near and dear to life/ Explodes inside/ You feel your soul is set on fire,” over guitarist Brian May’s banjo-like plucking. By the second verse, Mercury climbs into a more forceful, urgent register with the lines, “When something so deep and so far and wide/ Falls down beside your cries can be heard/ So loud and clear.”
The singer then leans into the melodic, solitary chorus, “You life is your own/ You’re in charge of yourself/ Master of your home/ In the end, in the end/ You have to face it all alone.”
In a BBC Radio 2 interview in June, May and drummer Roger Taylor revealed that they’d discovered the song while working on the massive re-issue of The Miracle. “We did find a little gem from Freddie that we’d kind of forgotten about,” Taylor, 72, told BBC Radio 2 host Zoe Ball in the chat. “And it’s wonderful. Actually, it was a real discovery.”
May said he and Taylor have been considering the release of the song for a while. “It was kind of hiding in plain sight,” May said. “We looked at it many times and thought, ‘Oh no, we can’t really rescue that.’” But they went back again this year and with some help from studio wizards May said they were able to spruce up what he described at the time as a “very passionate piece.”
The song — the first new track featuring Mercury vocals in more than 8 years — is the lead single from the upcoming Nov. 18 re-release of the band’s 13th album, which will be available as the 8-disc Queen The Miracle Collector’s Edition box set. The collection will feature an hour-plus disc of previously unreleased recordings, including six unpublished songs, according to a release announcing the box.
The set will also feature audio of the band’s “candid spoken exchanges on the studio floor in London and Montreaux,” giving a peek into the group’s “creative process and the joy, in-jokes and banter on their return to working together”; it will also reinstate the song “Too Much Love Will Kill You,” which was removed from the original album at the last minute due to publishing issues. Other extras include outtakes, instrumentals, a 76-page hardback book with unseen photos, original handwritten fan-club letters from the band, press reviews, videos and interviews, including the last chat with former bassist John Deacon.
Watch the “Face It Alone” lyric video below.
“That was a burden to carry that secret for so long,” the rocker revealed in a new interview.