Rock music is often associated with catharsis—where everybody has a place to have some form of emotional release. But what happens when the very genre that was once considered the freest form of music is gatekept by its listeners?
Words Jin Hernandez
Art by Tristan Talon
October 28, 2026
Art by Tristan Talon
One may probably be familiar with the term “name five songs” in which when people wear merchandise from popular bands like Nirvana, ACDC, The Beatles, and the likes are asked if they can even name five songs from the band to be even having their memorabilia.
With the resurgence of rock music mostly through people from the Alt scene, more people become engaged in various iterations of the genre that it becomes a part of how they express themselves may it be through clothing or simply blasting songs out loud.
The thing is, who really cares if a person knows less than five songs?
Gatekeeping and its machismo roots
The term “gatekeeping” used to be passed around in the media whenever there’s information they need to filter or have to trim down before they share it to the public.
Art by Tristan Talon
Nowadays, the word is widely used in pop culture whenever one feels the urge to impose a sense of uniqueness.
But with the rock genre, it is far more than just gatekeeping, as for many years the genre has been associated with masculinity and the reality that rockstars are mostly men.
Sure there have been revolutionary developments with female rock artists over the years, yet the foundation of it being a male-dominated field makes every nuance of listening to the music be questioned whenever one does not fit the common criteria of usual listeners.
When a woman listens to rock, especially those classic bands, people tend to think that maybe they heard it from their father, grandfather, or even their older brother. It is rarely just because they happen to like it and are moved by it.
From there, masculinity becomes one with the genre and when it comes to gatekeeping, unconscious or not, it transforms the listening experience into always having something to prove.
Funnily enough, that is the entire opposite of the essence of the genre as it was originally formed to be nonconformist and welcome every nitty gritty of the humanness of music.
Self-expression is hindered by self-proclamation
So when one passes around the phrase “name 5 songs” or thoughts similar to that, it defeats the very purpose of the people who contributed to the genre that aimed to express their innermost turmoil, rage, advocacy, or perhaps even the joy in simple pleasures.
Art by Tristan Talon
For the people with every shred of guitar is another reason to live, gatekeeping becomes a hurdle in catharsis.
It doesn’t make one exceptional if they end up hindering a person to enjoy music just because they are not familiar with the musician’s entire catalog or obscure biographical information.
At the end of the day, what matters most is that the genre still rocks and serves its ultimate purpose—self-expression.
