In 2025, rock persisted as AI reshaped the music landscape

In 2025, rock music continued to hang on even as artificial intelligence increasingly infiltrated music production and promotion. Bands such as Brooklyn’s Geese — whose third album, Getting Killed, was one of the most discussed rock LPs of the year — and Baltimore’s Turnstile released high-profile records that kept rock in public view.

The genre remains outside the commercial mainstream it once occupied, the article said, with pop, hip-hop, R&B, country and Latin music displacing rock’s broader cultural dominance and award shows treating rock as marginal. Yet that limited expectation may have freed artists to mix styles and work in band form: Geese provoked mixed praise and scorn for Getting Killed and singer Cameron Winter drew enough notice to inspire a Saturday Night Live parody; Turnstile’s Never Enough pushed the band away from hardcore toward electronics and introspective themes; other acts mentioned included the Armed, M(h)aol, Wednesday and the duo Water From Your Eyes.

The piece noted that now every computer can be an instrument or studio, and that an A.I.-generated band called Velvet Sundown offered a version of music some listeners found palatable but hollow. Still, rock’s appeal was framed as a humanist obstinacy — the value of hand-played imperfection, the physicality of a band in a room, and the catalytic chemistry that comes from musicians responding to one another in real time.

Key Topics

Culture, Geese, Turnstile, Getting Killed, Never Enough, Cameron Winter