ROCK CRISIS AS ART CRISIS: MUSICAL COMMUNICATION AND POPULAR CRITIQUE

This article proposes how contemporary popular music opens a critical and creative space for social communication. In the case of rock, the collapse and crisis of this genre since 1980 also supposes a space for the renewal of the forms and codes of both rock and pop, affected by a new social and musical context, and by the rise of new expressive resources. like electronic music. Using the analytical perspective of cultural studies, and reviewing the critical contributions on the subject, it can be observed that the relationship between rock, art and culture is not a natural or stable relationship but, rather, a tension of conflict and constant dialectics. This hypothesis applies to the pioneering case of the Depeche Mode band. In Depeche Mode's discography, associated by specialized critics with electronic rock, elements of musical communication can be detected that question both conventional notions of rock or pop, as well as the traditional premises of the idea of art.