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Gig or Notes On A Nu Rockism

It’s the year 2005, and I am glued to the tube television in my parents’ living room. There is a music video playing that features a potpourri of archetypical aughts characters. A bunch of young, blonde women by a swimming pool – cut – a 13-year-old boy with a baseball cap – cut – a woman in a business suit – cut – some guys in baggy jeans in front of Times Square – cut. They are all facing the camera, lip-syncing the song’s lyrics: “Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar.” What would later be dubbed “one of the worst songs of all time” by several pop-culture listicles is, in that moment, alluring me with its display of collectivized aspiration: the single Rockstar by Canadian band Nickleback proposes a lifestyle at once accessible and out of reach, animating avatars of everyday life with its supposed sex appeal and magnetic cool. The song arrived at the tail end of a decades-long obsession over rockstar antics, soundtracking the end of an era by demonstrating an awkward self-importance that today could only be labeled “cringe.” (…)

Text by Nikolas Brummer (Full version in in the PDF)

Photos: Tereza Glazova

With kind support of: Pro Helvetia, Temperatio Stiftung, Stadt Zürich Kultur, DRUMS ONLY Zürich, Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur