Listen To 'The Eye,' A New Song By Brandi Carlile — npr.org

Brandi Carlile's fifth studio album, The Firewatcher's Daughter, will be out on March 3. David McClister/Courtesy of the artist hide caption Brandi Carlile's fifth studio album, The Firewatcher's Daughter, will be out on March 3. It's been common for a few years now to dismiss rock and roll as a shadow of its former self. Usurped by dance beats and hip-hop samples, lost amid the pop spectacle that dominates the Distraction Age, music centered around electric guitars and liberated voices can now seem staid. But maybe we need a new definition of rock and roll; maybe we should return to the original one. In the mid-1950s, when Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Little Richard were inventing the practice, to rock was to make a genre-defying leap that connected country to R&B to teenage Top-40 music. Most of all, rocking meant being willing to chance a little rawness.

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