Rock me Amadeus: Ahh, you are arguing literal relevancy, I'm arguing Grammy relevancy, meaning who can still sell records. The Boss still can, for some reason. Bowie sort of still can, and if he can't he has this aura about him that make people still look at him, if not listen. Again, Costello keeps popping up (did you see The Simpsons "Rock and Roll Camp" with the Stones, Petty, Kravitz and Costello [among others]? - they really gave it to Elvis, which was fun), but only in Vanity Fair. Plant and Gabriel are just walking corpses. Your bigger point is simply inarguable, but I refuse to say that there has been no innovation if perhaps in less dramatic fashion. Simply put, the Beatles mastered the 4-person band, and in terms of melody, lyrics and arrangement, they're unbeatable. So, anyone playing a band with 3-5 members, featuring guitar, drums and bass, cannot escape comparison. However, what we all see today is that music, in the popular sense, will never be born of four guys (or girls) working the small clubs up to fame based on a loyal following and good music. Today, music is created in a lab, and then reproduced, given asthetically pleasing faces, and sold to Clearchannel for distribution on the airwaves.