The early-2000s New York rock revival failed to reshape mainstream pop music.

Evidence

Despite the hype, the rock revival struggled to dominate the airwaves as grunge had in the nineties. The Strokes earned the label of “last real rock stars” but could never match the popularity of their critically loathed post-alternative contemporaries like Creed, Nickelback, and System of a Down. Electroclash fizzled as its artists rejected the categorization, and downtown’s influence on the music market waned. Overall, the pop music of the subsequent decades owes very little to downtown New York. The rock revival’s most enduring legacies may be the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” and the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” being repurposed as jock jams. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 57

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the counter-case the reader plans to build: the era did have a signature, but the author identifies how the downtown revival failed to become it.