The Guitar Has Made A Major Comeback

The Guitar Has Made A Major Comeback

By Martine Ehrenclou

If there’s anything positive to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s that the guitar has made a major comeback. Not that it ever left, but you remember the flurry of articles in 2017 that claimed the slow death of the guitar.

When I read them, I was crushed. How could this be? The beloved guitar going by the wayside, giving way to the mechanical sound of pop and hip-hop? There’s something so special about its resonance, whether acoustic or electric. How many guitar-driven bands did we grow up on, even revere?

What the media didn’t know at the time of those negative articles in 2017 is that the guitar has more staying power than they’d thought. People love it. The pandemic gave new life to its popularity, a renaissance of sorts, with people staying home and either learning to play or more experienced guitarists playing a lot more. Sales shot through the roof in 2020 and the same is expected in 2021. I think I know some people who contributed to that, myself included.

According to Brian T. Majeski of Music Trades “The rapid, Covid-19 pandemic growth in guitar sales is likely to continue for years.”

I hope that’s true because that signals demand and popularity.

Fenders guitar sales exploded during the pandemic and are expected to top 700 million this year. Gibson also experienced a boom in guitar sales. James ‘JC’ Curleigh, Gibson CEO stated in a Forbes interview, “We literally couldn’t deliver enough guitars. A few months into the pandemic, people started looking into learning to play guitar.”

Online music retailers such as Sweetwater, Guitar Center and Reverb reported skyrocketing online sales. They still say business is booming, so much so that they can’t keep up with demand. Sweetwater revealed one billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s 40 plus year history. Even though Guitar Center filed for bankruptcy to reorganize debt, they saw an uptick with sales more than doubling in 2020 in comparison to 2019.

Sweetwater, Guitar Center and Reverb report that the guitar is the most popular item they sold in quarantine. Let’s just think about that for a moment. It wasn’t pianos, drums, violins or horns. As of July 2021, manufacturers are still trying to keep up with demand. Music retailers noticed an increase in younger and female customers which extended their reach well beyond pre-pandemic times. A good sign of growth.

So, who are the guitar players behind the instrument? To find out Fender did a study called “Fender’s New Guitar Player Landscape Analysis” in October, 2021. The results revealed that 7% of the U.S. population (16 million people) started to learn the guitar over the last two years. They surveyed 10,644 guitar “beginners, aspirers and appreciators” between the ages of 13-64 in the US between May and June of 2021. 62% of those surveyed chose to pick up the instrument during the pandemic, half of new guitarists are women, and two thirds are between the ages of 14 and 34.

But for the guitar to maintain popularity, people have to stick with it. Playing guitar is like any other musical instrument. It takes practice, plus your fingertips hurt until you build calluses. It’s not always fun until you discover a sense of competence and confidence. That’s when the joy kicks in. If I’m struggling or stressed, my husband asks me, “Have you played your guitar?” The answer is usually no. The daily practice anchors me somehow.

Sticking with playing requires some form of ongoing learning support by way of a teacher or online instruction. Both Fender and Gibson created apps with guitar learning instruction. Gibson App even integrated exclusive access to Gibson TV and a virtual guitar tech. Fender is on TikTok with its Fender Play, capturing younger guitar players.

I asked Carl Brown of GL365 Guitar School if his guitar instruction website also experienced an uptick in popularity during the pandemic. Carl said, “We definitely did. My monthly views on YouTube doubled and my online guitar academy saw a HUGE increase in subscribers at the beginning of the pandemic.” See my interview of Carl Brown in 2017 in response to the media coverage of the decline of the guitar.

When asked if he thought the six-string’s renewed popularity would last, Carl explained, “There will definitely be a good amount of players in the future that started during the pandemic. I have a lot of people in my academy that started playing and others that maybe picked the guitar up again during the pandemic”

Is this rebirth of the guitar simply due to people wanting to play while at home during the COVID pandemic? Or is it partly attributed to the popularity of rock guitar-driven bands such as Greta Van Fleet and the return of AC/DC with their hit album, Power Up featuring Angus Young and his Gibson SG?

There is a new generation of guitarists and you don’t have to be on TikTok to find them, although many young guitarists are flocking to TikTok for inspiration to find new guitar players or to feature themselves.

Guitar fans might be asking themselves, “But are there guitar players who might be the next Duane Allman, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Eddie Van Halen? Or even the next B.B. King or Albert King?”

Some say they’re already here. You just have to look. Innovative rock and blues/rock players just need more attention from the mainstream. In light of pop and hip-hop’s domination of the airwaves, that might be asking a lot. But according to Guitar.com “TikTok is a home to a diverse and unique community of guitarists.”

Even if you’re not on TikTok, there’s plenty of contemporary guitarists who are garnering recognition, not the least of whom is two-time Grammy nominee Christone Kingfish Ingram who at 22 years old is making a name for himself. Hailed as the future of the blues, he’s that and more, integrating other genres into his music. He mentioned that in my 2021 interview.

Among other notable younger rock and blues/rock guitarists are Gretchen Menn, Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, Jackie Venson, Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet, Jared James Nichols, Joey Landreth, Mateus Asato, Marcus King, Molly Tuttle, Larkin Poe, Chris Buck, Tyler Bryant, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Eric Gales, Philip Sayce, and many more. The renowned guitarists such as John Mayer, Vince Gill, Joe Walsh, Joe Bonamassa and many others, are obvious.

With the resurgence of the guitar, we might just see an uptick in popularity of rock and blues/rock as well. I’m pulling for that.

The guitar, in my opinion, is to be treasured, whether acoustic or electric. You can’t fake it on guitar—you can’t make yourself sound like a virtuoso if you’re not, unlike with pop or hip-hop where vocals and certain instruments can be transformed given the right producer and technology.

The guitar is here to stay no matter what the trends are. Those of us who love it, knew that through all the past negative buzz about it dying off.

I welcome your comments.