Last night a Mixtape saved my life

Trap, Italian hip-hop, the explosion of Dubstep with "Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites". The long wave of the eurodance revival led by the likes of David Guetta, Calvin Harris, soon merging into the omnipresent sound of Max Martin and his most prominent disciples. Reggaeton-pop from "Despacito" onward. K-pop's landing in the West. Adele and Bruno Mars; Taylor Swift and the hits of Pharrell Williams. Justin Bieber. "Somebody That I Used To Know", "Call Me Maybe", a long string of summer anthems (from Shakira to Fedez + J-Ax).

Is there anything else, beyond this, in the spectrum of Nineties mainstream... sorry, of 2010s mainstream? I understand that for some the list above is already enough to kill any further interest. Others, meanwhile, I can already picture ready with their "what about X!" or "why not Y?". But, beyond the many individual names, the list above leaves out an entire strand - not too clearly defined and, on closer inspection, lacking even a shared name, yet hugely present in the charts and in musical memory. What if I say Coldplay? Imagine Dragons? OneRepublic? Bastille?

Don't run away, I'm not trying to convince you to listen to them. Or rather, yes, but mostly so we can see their music in perspective, identifying it for what it is. Namely, one of the decade's dominant sounds, equipped with a striking, clearly identifiable aesthetic and set of traits. And perhaps also the recent current that, in the collective imagination of the decade, has been most associated with the word "rock" as well as (believe it or not) the adjective indie - at least before, here in Italy at any rate, that word was claimed by adverse possession by Calcutta, Motta and the rest of their ilk.

A list published in 2018 on RateYourMusic tried to bring some order to the matter and sketched out a rather effective name: stomp rock. Quoting an article from the Daily Beast about Imagine Dragons, the page's introduction reads (attributing the thought to a hypothetical record executive):

We need a sub-genre built on Coldplay and hip-hop, mixed with EDM and Autotune, and let's throw in some Eighties synth effects too. We need to add echo and handclaps! Drench it in reverb! And pull the right strings so it gets used during National Football League games.

Energetic rhythms and electronic crossbreeding, then, but not only that: the artists working in this territory have a rather chameleonic approach, drawing freely from the most varied eras to maximize the impact and grandeur of their sound. From the Eighties come synth pads and the booming hits of the gated drum; from later decades, the boom-bap pulse and the use/abuse of dance-style risers.

But there's also a lot of the Seventies in it, and the earliest tracks clearly show an attention to muscularity and grab-you riffs, owing much to arena rock/AOR but also to that power-pop which perhaps in that very era perfected its own immediacy. A more recent connection, meanwhile, is the one linking several names here to that choral-pop current that had swept through the indie galaxy in the years before: it's not uncommon, especially in the second half of this playlist, to come across acoustic-to-fortissimo build-ups, rousing choruses that crank the "communal" feeling up to the max, essential yet prominently displayed vocal harmonies, and chord progressions that could easily be repurposed as "beach" anthems.

Whatever the specific angle - more geared toward AOR (or even heartland-rock excursions), toward hip-hop/electropop, or toward indie-folk - one element is central to almost every track: the driving, propulsive character of the rhythmic constructions. Drum rolls and full-marching-band pounding, four-on-the-floor kicks seasoned with folky little guitars (thank you, Avicii), interlocking percussion and handclaps that at times sound bold and at others simply cheap tricks: the emphasis on relentless, driving rhythms is an essential ingredient for the genre's effectiveness, and it's well captured by the very name chosen to describe it. The onomatopoeic "stomp", in fact, denotes an energetic, cadenced step, every bit as showy as the sound of what, more cynically, some might call bald-faced workout music.

And yet, with its brazen eclecticism and its knack for pairing the fads of the moment with timeless tricks straight out of the pop/rock handbook, this trend has given rise to a sound that is, in its own way, encyclopedic; a mixed grill of influences that plays like the musical counterpart of blockbuster franchises or films like Ready Player One, Wreck-It Ralph, Guardians of the Galaxy. Shiny yet dependable like a refurbished used car, it's a risky blend of conformism and swagger, capable of slipping dizzying singles into albums that are often bland if not downright grating.

The names involved range from figures with a certain indie credibility (Florence + The Machine or Arcade Fire, the latter in some sense the genre's "noble fathers" and who, coincidentally, made a comeback right while this article was being written) to artists that many alternative-music fans regard as an eyesore (Imagine Dragons or Ed Sheeran). Sometimes the artists themselves are the main architects of their sound; other times the songs are engineered by teams of big-name songwriters. For some, stomp sonorities are the very cornerstone of their output, while others have deployed them only for sporadic, if often deeply iconic, forays. In every case, though, the music in question remains distinctly white, despite the occasional featured guest and the explicit borrowing of Black musical elements in the vocals or rhythmic framework.

The tracks selected here try to capture both the defining traits of the genre and its variety: most are massive hits with hundreds of millions of streams (for a few, the word "generational" wouldn't be out of place), but all of them made the cut because, first and foremost, they're thrilling songs. Terrible taste, some might say, but each to their own. Then again, if you're looking to update your shower-singing repertoire, Bastille and Killers seem like a far more credible option than Fontaines Dc.

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13/12/2025