Whoa whoa. Ok! Looks like I've got a lot to go back and read here
There seems to be a very active community here of music lovers who have many different opinions. I think that's a good thing. So since there's been so much interest in my question, I'd like to share more of my opinion and see what people's takes on it are.
This is coming from someone who is a guitarist and aspiring rock musician. Lately I've been spending most of my time in pursuit of the next big thing. The new rock'n'roll I guess. I find my inspiration in the people/artists who I think "broke the mold" and were responsible for finding that one key sound and style that sparked revolutions. To me, there were a handful of these people. I might name The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, and Eddie Van Halen as pioneers of styles and sounds that made real changes in popular music (you could also say Kurt Cobain, but I don't really like him so that's why I didn't list him).
So in essence, I believe that if anyone were to make such a revolution, to cause real change and spark a new wave of music, they would have to break away from most of the stuff that is still in vogue now that has been in vogue for half a century. Mainly in rock music. As much as I love the electric guitar, its hard to deny the statement that the electric guitar has pretty much reahed the end of its creative possibilities. Sure, there are still technically new things that could be done with the guitar, but at this point anything more extreme or amazing than what has already been done would just be overkill and would lose all its appeal. Do you kind of undertand what I mean? I think its time a new instrument took over.
The other day I was driving to work and I turned on the radio. It was on tye local rock station that played everything from modern to classic rock. I remember Shinedown came on, and then after that it was Judas Priest. And for the first few seconds of Judas Priest's intro I was thinking "is this still Shinedown? Is this a new song from them?" and then the singing came in and I realized it was an old song by Judas Priest. But even after I ha realized it was Priest, I sat there thinking of how there is virtually no difference between today's rock and the rock of the yesteryear. It uses that same formula. Distorted guitars, riffs, powerful vocals etc... Then Seether came on, and AC/DC after that, and I began to realize just how little variation there really is between different brands of rock and how it is delivered and performed, and also the instrumentation. The only thing I will say on the flip side of this is that for the most part, older rock bands seemed to all have their own distinct sound, whereas its sometimes hard to distinguish between newer bands.
So what I'm getting at is that I believe that nothing TRULY new has been created in a long time. To me, the last guitar innovation came from Eddie Van Halen. Since then the guitar has kind of stagnated. Once grunge came around, the guitar kind of went downhill. Then we started getting all these watered-down alternative bands and artists and kickass/dynamic music kind of fell to the side, and thus, we have the uninspiring popular music world we have today.
That's just my opinion.