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The biggest name to emerge from the New York scene was Moby, who in 1991 had reached No. 10 on the British chart with a rave-inspired dance track called “Go”. (This was a kind of triple crossover: a British hit by an American producer inspired by a British scene built on an American genre.)

But I can’t help but wince when people talk about hip-hop as the high-minded, Pulitzer Prize-winning genre they feel it should be, rather than the rowdy and messy genre it usually has been. And I wince partly because I’m not sure that a purely high-minded version of hip-hop would have lasted so long, or spread so far, or inspired so many. Kendrick Lamar’s rhymes are studied in school—quite rightly, too. But surely hip-hop benefits from the continuing existence of rappers whose music doesn’t sound remotely like homework.

But nowadays, rock history seems not linear, but cyclical. There is no grand evolution, just an endless process of rediscovery and reappraisal, as various styles and poses go in and out of fashion.

Elton John was also an exception in another respect: unlike most of the glitter-rock stars, he was not a traditional heartthrob. In 1974, he was described by NME as a ”balding, bespectacled plumpoid”.

In the 2010s, rock music in America—real, loud rock music, not some gentle or artsy variant of it, played by new or newish bands and not elderly veterans—was alive but relatively obscure, at least when compared to hip-hop or pop.