Why Greta Van Fleet Matters: A Proof to Rock Music’s Lasting Spirit
n an era dominated by algorithmically generated playlists and short-lived viral sensations, the question of rock music’s relevance continues become more urgent. Critics and cultural commentators alike have proclaimed the genre’s demise, citing declining sales figures and a diminishing radio presence as evidence of rock’s inevitable fade into obscurity. Yet in this story of decline, a young band from Michigan has emerged as an evocative counterargument, not simply as nostalgic revivalists, but as torchbearers of a tradition that refuses to be extinguished.
The assertion that rock music is dead has become a common refrain in contemporary music discourse. While it may be true that rock no longer commands the commercial dominance it once enjoyed, this shift indicates broader transformations in how music is created, distributed, and consumed rather than any innate decline in the genre’s artistic vitality.
Technology has fundamentally democratized music production, enabling anyone with a laptop and basic software to write, record, and produce songs from their bedroom. This democratisation is undoubtedly positive in principle, expanding creative opportunities past traditional gatekeepers. However, it has also created unprecedented content saturation, profoundly changing both what music is made and in which audiences discover it. The barrier to entry has never been lower, but neither has the signal-to-noise ratio.
Simultaneously, the rise of reality television and talent competitions has changed the music industry’s values and priorities. Shows like American Idol, The Voice, and The X Factor have cultivated an entertainment ecosystem where marketability often supersedes musicianship, where looks trump substance, and where pursuing fame eclipses devotion to artistic integrity. This represents a troubling manifestation of an age-old tension: the conflict between ease of access and quality, between what sells and what endures.
Major record labels, driven by stockholder expectations and quarterly earnings reports, have progressively prioritised marketability over raw talent. Their A&R departments search not for the next generation of groundbreaking artists, but for acts that fit predetermined demographic profiles and can be packaged, promoted, and monetised efficiently. In this paradigm, music becomes less an art form and more a product, something to be focus-grouped, test-marketed, and optimised for streaming algorithms.
The digital revolution has further complicated this landscape. Music discovery has migrated almost entirely online, creating a paradoxical situation where more music is available than ever before, yet individual artists face greater difficulty breaking through the noise. The vast amount of content uploaded to streaming sites daily, tens of thousands of tracks, means that songs can be released and effectively disappear within hours if they fail to gain immediate traction. Viral success has become the new metric, replacing the slow-burning album cycles that once allowed artists to develop audiences organically.
Of course, shifting cultural tastes also play a role. Rock music simply doesn’t command the cultural centrality it possessed during its golden age from the 1960s through the 1990s. Hip hop, pop, and electronic music have claimed much of rock’s former territory, both commercially and culturally. Yet commercial popularity and artistic vitality are not synonymous, and reports of rock’s death may be greatly exaggerated.
However, I don’t believe rock is dead; the proof lies with Greta Van Fleet. Emerging from the unlikely locale of Frankenmuth, Michigan, a small town better known for its Bavarian-themed tourism than its music scene, the band consists of three Kiszka brothers and their childhood friend: Josh Kiszka on vocals, Jake Kiszka on guitar, Sam Kiszka on bass and keyboards, and Danny Wagner on drums. Their journey from garage band to international recognition represents a remarkable path in an industry supposedly inhospitable to traditional rock music.
Signed to Lava Records in March 2017, Greta Van Fleet experienced a meteoric rise that defied conventional wisdom about rock’s commercial viability. Their debut EP, “Black Smoke Rising,” released in April 2017, introduced their sound to a wider audience, while the follow up double EP “From the Fires” (November 2017) achieved even greater success, reaching number one on the Billboard Rock Albums chart and eventually earning them a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2019, a remarkable achievement for a band barely out of their teens.
Their first full-length studio album, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army,” arrived in October 2018 and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, showing considerable mainstream appeal. The album showcased a band confident in its classic rock influences while forging its own identity through songs like “When the Curtain Drops” and “You’re the One.” Their sophomore effort, “The Battle at Garden’s Gate” (April 2021), saw the band expanding their sonic palette with more progressive arrangements and reflective lyrics, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200. Most recently, “Starcatcher” (July 2023) continued their evolution, featuring tighter songwriting and a more refined production approach that suggested a band maturing beyond their initial influences.
Yet success has brought scrutiny. Many critics have dismissed Greta Van Fleet as mere Led Zeppelin imitators, pointing to Josh’s Robert Plant-esque vocal wail and Jake’s Jimmy Page-inspired guitar riffs as evidence of derivative pastiche as opposed to genuine artistry. The comparison has become so ubiquitous that it threatens to overshadow any discussion of the band’s actual merits. While Led Zeppelin’s influence on their sound is indisputable and the band themselves have acknowledged this debt, reducing Greta Van Fleet to simple mimicry does a disservice to four genuinely talented musicians who have achieved something increasingly rare in contemporary music.
What critics regularly overlook is what Greta Van Fleet represents in the context of contemporary music production. These musicians are not the manufactured output of a reality television competition or a talent show’s assembly line. They are not the creation of a team of Swedish producers, professional songwriters, and image consultants. Instead, they are four young men, still in their twenties, who write and arrange their own music, play their own instruments with genuine proficiency, and create their sound through traditional rock instrumentation rather than through digital manipulation, sampling, or studio artifice.
In an industry increasingly dominated by collaborative songwriting camps where a single track might credit a dozen writers and producers, Greta Van Fleet’s approach comes across almost anachronistic, and that’s precisely the point. They represent a model of musicianship and artistic development that the modern music industry has largely abandoned: young musicians learning their craft, developing chemistry through years of playing together, and honing a distinctive sound through practice and performance rather than through algorithmic analysis of streaming data.
The criticism that Greta Van Fleet sounds too much like Led Zeppelin raises a wider question about influence, innovation, and the anxiety of influence that pervades discussions of contemporary rock music. There’s a pervasive but flawed assumption that music must constantly progress, that each generation must sound radically different from what came before, that influence must be carefully obscured rather than openly embraced.
This perspective misunderstands how musical traditions actually function. The blues artists of the 1960s British Invasion, who revered Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson, didn’t criticise their white interpreters for sounding “too much” like the blues; they recognised that homage and reinterpretation were how musical traditions remained vital. Led Zeppelin, in turn, was heavily influenced by blues artists and faced accusations of appropriation and imitation. The Beatles wore their love of Chuck Berry and Little Richard on their sleeves. Every generation of musicians builds upon what came before.
The music of the 1960s and 1970s achieved a kind of perfection within the rock idiom; this much is true. Those decades established templates, sounds, and approaches that have proven remarkably durable. But this doesn’t mean that subsequent generations are doomed to mere imitation or that rock music has exhausted its possibilities. It means that artists working within this tradition will inevitably be compared to their predecessors, and that this comparison is both unavoidable and, ultimately, beside the point.
The more productive approach is to evaluate Greta Van Fleet not against Led Zeppelin, but against their actual contemporaries. Compared to the current scene of popular music, the trap-influenced hip hop, the algorithmically optimised pop, and the bedroom producer electronic music, Greta Van Fleet offers something genuinely distinctive: the sound of a rock band, playing together, creating music rooted in a tradition that stretches back decades. In this context, their achievement becomes clearer. They’re not trying to change rock music; they’re demonstrating that it still has vitality, that young musicians can still find meaning and purpose in this form of expression.
Greta Van Fleet should be embraced not as rock music’s saviours, a burden no band should bear, but as four talented young musicians making compelling rock and roll in an era when such a pursuit is unfashionable and commercially risky. Their success, modest by the standards of rock’s golden age but impressive by contemporary metrics, suggests that an audience for this music still exists, that the genre still connects with listeners seeking something beyond what dominates the charts.
The criticism will continue. The Led Zeppelin comparisons will persist. Some will never be able to hear Greta Van Fleet on their own terms, will never move past the surface-level similarities to acknowledge what the band does well. But the band itself seems to understand that its responsibility is not to its critics but to its craft and its audience. With each album, they’ve shown growth, experimentation, and a preparedness to expand beyond their initial sound. “The Battle at Garden’s Gate” incorporated more progressive rock elements and philosophical lyrical themes. “Starcatcher” demonstrated tighter songwriting and more confident performances. This is what artistic development looks like: gradual, sometimes stumbling, but genuine.
For those who care about rock music’s future, Greta Van Fleet represents something worth supporting. Not because they’re perfect, not because they’ve surpassed their influences, but because they’re keeping a tradition alive at a moment when it could easily fade away entirely. They’re inspiring younger listeners to pick up guitars, to form bands, to investigate the rich history of rock music. They’re demonstrating that there’s still an audience for this kind of music, still venues willing to host it, still a cultural space for rock and roll.
If we, as fans and advocates of rock music, want it to continue energising future generations, we must support the artists who are keeping it vital. We must create space for young musicians to develop, to make mistakes, to grow beyond their influences. We must resist the cynicism that dismisses any new rock band as derivative or irrelevant. The alternative is to watch the genre become a museum piece, preserved in classic rock radio formats and nostalgia tours, but disconnected from living, breathing musical culture.
Greta Van Fleet may not be perfect. They may wear their influences conspicuously. They may never achieve the legendary status of the bands that inspired them. But they’re here, they’re making music, and they’re proving that rock and roll still matters. In 2026, that alone is worth celebrating. The bands they inspire, the musicians who see their success and decide to form their own groups, the young listeners who discover Led Zeppelin by first discovering Greta Van Fleet, this is how musical traditions survive and evolve. This is how rock music endures.
Importantly, Greta Van Fleet does not stand alone in this revival. They are part of a wider movement of young bands bringing new life into rock music. Dirty Honey, hailing from Los Angeles, has appeared as another torchbearer of the classic rock sound, combining bluesy riffs with contemporary energy and becoming the first unsigned band to reach number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart with their single “When I’m Gone.”
The Warning, a powerhouse trio of sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, brings a different perspective to rock with their combination of alternative rock, progressive elements, and punk attitude, proving that the genre’s appeal crosses borders and demographics. These bands, alongside Greta Van Fleet and others, represent not isolated phenomena, but a genuine rock revival spearheaded by young musicians who refuse to accept that their chosen genre is obsolete. Together, they are building a brand-new chapter in rock history, one that honours the past as it forges boldly into the future. The movement they represent suggests that rock music’s story is nowhere near finished; it is simply being rewritten by a new generation.
