"Hey, Antichrist-a! Beelzeboss!
We know your weakness, our rockin' sauce!
We rock the casbah, and blow your mind!
We will defeat you, for all mankind!
You hold the scepter, we hold the key!
You are the devil, we are the D!"
We know your weakness, our rockin' sauce!
We rock the casbah, and blow your mind!
We will defeat you, for all mankind!
You hold the scepter, we hold the key!
You are the devil, we are the D!"
Describe The Power of Rock Here, and THROW UP THE HORNS!
In which the world is saved and the Big Bad defeated, not through The Power of Love or The Power of Friendship, but through ROCK!!!
Yes, for some reason, music is the most capable form of creative expression when it comes to defeating the forces of evil. The battle often takes the form of a rock concert or music video. That in itself helps to explain why it's almost always music that saves the world. It'd take a very imaginative writer/director to defeat the villain with the power of Symbolism, also known as Modern Expressionism.
Incidentally, it's only "The Power of Rock" because 99 percent of the time rock is the musical genre of choice for this trope. Rock tends to be loud and theatrical, and therefore more powerful. If the main character ever harnesses such power, expect them to do so with an electric guitar as their weapon of choice, in what is the musical instrument equivalent of Heroes Prefer Swords. As the examples below show, other kinds of music work too.
Can also refer to the many, many works of fiction in which characters fight for their right to rock (or party, or dance, or whatever as long as it involves music). Expect any video game involving musicians to have the "rocking heroes fight Culture Police" plot.
Seen quite a lot in shows that feature a literal Five-Man Band or a Fake Band, and associated performances. The weapon of choice of The Rock Star when he goes adventuring.
Note: Not to be confused with Musical Assassin. This trope involves actual music playing that the audience can appreciate, not just characters playing instruments with the sonic power to kick ass. There are few game examples of The Power Of Rock outside of music-based games.
Also not to be confused with Dishing Out Dirt or Gemstone Assault, which are about power over rocks.
A form of Magic Music or Disco Tech.
Compare Loud of War, Music for Courage, Care-Bear Stare, The Power of Love, The Power of Friendship, Autobots, Rock Out!, A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll", Great Balls of Fire!, Brown Note, Rock Me, Asmodeus!, Clap Your Hands If You Believe, Awesome Music. Contrast Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. May be presented as a form of Cool and Unusual Punishment.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films – Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
- Real Life
Other examples:
open/close all folders
Films — Animation
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters has Neil Peart, the legendary drummer/songwriter of Rush, raise Meatwad from the dead by performing the "Solo of Life". Tongue-in-cheek promotional material published before the movie's release suggested that the solo would be the climax of the film and would run 45 minutes long. In fact, it's closer to 45 seconds.
- In Barbie & The Diamond Castle, the protagonists defeat the Vain Sorceress villainess' flute-based evil spells by playing their own magical instruments and singing.
- In the climax of Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, this is the villain Forte's weapon of choice. Slightly subverted as it's not just the Magic Music, but also how loud it is.
- In Chuck Jones' lovely adaptation of The Cricket in Times Square, Chester, the titular musical Orthopteran, saves a tiny newsstand after he learns he has a talent for playing Classical Music. In the finale, Chester plays his last "concert", a musical farewell to the city. All of the jaded New York City residents, every one of them, stop to listen. The sequence is illustrated almost entirely with Jones' own sensitive sketches of the City, and it's one of the most downright moving moments in animation.
- In The Devil and Daniel Mouse, the protagonists use rock to win a legal case against the Devil.
- KPop Demon Hunters:
- The central conceit of the film is that every generation in Korea, three women with incredible musical ability are trained to fight demons and keep humans safe from them, the power of their music fueling their magic and fighting abilities, and the love of their audience strengthening them. The current iteration is the wildly successful K-pop girl group HUNTR/X, who squeeze demon-hunting missions in between live performances and promotional appearances.
- Unfortunately for HUNTR/X, the bad guys can use the Power of Rock, too; realizing defeating them in a straight fight is basically impossible, the demon Jinu recruits four other demons and forms a boy band, Saja Boys, to challenge HUNTR/X's position as the most beloved K-pop act in the world. They are genuinely really good performers, having an extremely catchy debut single that puts them on the map immediately, and are good at charming the masses—which means they can start luring public attention away from HUNTR/X, and use their newfound fame to steal people's souls for the demon realm.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks is all about this. It starts with a school-wide musical showcase, and when the siren-esque villains hear about it, they manage to turn into an all-out Battle of the Bands to feed off the developing hostilities of the student body, and only the protagonists' five-girl rock band can have any hope of saving the day.
- The goblins and other creatures of the night in The Princess and the Goblin (1992) cannot stand music. They go mad having to hear it and will do anything to shut it out, but they aren't entirely helpless against it, so they can still will themselves through it if they must.
- The Return of the King: "Where there's a whip (crack!) there's a way."
- Rock-A-Doodle is a very loose re-imagining of the tale of Chanticleer, the singing rooster who believes he alone summons the sunlight with his voice. In this case, Chanticleer is an Elvis Presley Expy who (very) gradually learns that his golden tones are the only thing that can stop an evil wizard owl who wants to plunge the world into The Night That Never Ends.
- One editor said it best in her review of Rock and Rule: "A dark magician old-arse rock star's wicked plans are thwarted by Furries who sing early '80s rock music. Yes, that is the actual plot." To be more specific, the Power of Rock can summon a demon, and The Power of Love can send it back — specifically, the power of Debbie Harry of Blondie and Robin Zander of Cheap Trick singing a duet together.
- The climax of Rock Dog has Bodi using Magic Music to peacefully subdue the wolves who have been trying to attack the residents of Sheep Mountain.
- Rockin' with Judy Jetson, one of the made-for-television films of The Jetsons, has a Big Bad who is trying to destroy all music in the galaxy because she hates it so much. Even mentioning the word "music" causes her to have epileptic seizures. Naturally, Judy and her friends defeat the plan with rock music which causes the villain to have the aforementioned seizures which in turn causes her to accidentally sabotage her own space station.
- Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery: Not only do all of the members of KISS have superpowers, at the climax, they use them extensively to fight the villain.
- Shrek:
- Parodied in Shrek 1, where Princess Fiona's high note is enough to make the friendly bird singing with her explode in a puff of feathers.
- Shrek the Third has Snow White summon animals with her usual Disney-like singing, then stare down the Huorns guarding the city gates as the metal intro to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" plays. She then does the musical screaming intro, which launches the animals to attack the Huorns.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie involves SpongeBob singing a Twisted Sister parody, all the while saving the citizens of Bikini Bottom from Plankton's control with his guitar.
- Trolls:
- In Trolls, the Trolls' music seems to have a bit of magic in it. When Poppy becomes so depressed that her color drains out, Branch brings hernote back to normal with "True Colors". The ending features a peppy song-and-dance number to Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling", which convinces the Bergens to not eat them anymore, and even revives the withered Troll Tree.
- In Trolls World Tour, after it seems that Poppy completely destroyed music by destroying the strings, all the Trolls realize that music now comes from inside themselves. As this occurs, Poppy and the other tribe leaders get the entire crowd to start jamming out to "Just Sing", which results in Barb's Heel Faced Turn.
- "Tulips Shall Grow" ends with a folk dance that reverses the effects of an invasion of goose-stepping robots!
- In Turning Red, the female members of the Lee family can transform into a red panda form. Because this ability can be quite inconvenient in modern society, there exists a ritual to seal it away, in which a major component involves people gathering in a circle around her and singing. It is stated that the lyrics themselves don't matter, only that whatever is sung is sung from the heart. When Ming unleashes her kaiju-sized panda form at a Boy Band concert, the singing of Mei and Ming's relatives and Mei's friends isn't enough to fully seal it away... but when the boy band themselves join the ritual, the Power of Teen Pop turns out to be the extra boost it needs.
- In Wishology, Timmy uses the White Wand, which is essentially a guitar with magical properties (guarded by KISS, no less), on the Darkness.
- This is essentially the plot of Yellow Submarine, with The Beatles being called upon to save a magical land from the music-hating Blue Meanies.
Myths & Religion
- Classical Mythology:
- Orpheus, who had music to soothe the savage beast, trees, rocks, and Hades himself... but not the Maenads, unfortunately for him.
- It's also worth noting that there are, canonically, precisely three ways for a seafarer to escape the sirens' song. The first two, as seen in The Odyssey, are to stuff your ears with wax so you can't hear the song or be tied up so you can't go to them. The other, as seen in Jason and the Argonauts, is to bring along Orpheus and have him tune up his lyre and sing, enchanting the sirens themselves into shutting up and just listening.
- In Finnish folklore, Väinämöinen creates the first Kantele and his singing and playing is magically powerful and beautiful, such that he can charm the beast and birds. In fact, one of the most famous scenes of the Kalevala is the song battle between Väinämöinen and Joukahainen. When angered by the arrogance of the latter, he sings songs so powerful that lakes swelled up and mountains trembled. With his song he then turned Joukahainen's sled runners into saplings, turned his horse and dog into stone, turned his sword into a lightning bolt and crossbow into a rainbow, and far more. This, of course, led to the younger hero admitting defeat to keep from dying.
- In The Book of Joshua, the walls of Jericho fall after the Israelites march around the city for seven days blowing horns, "rock music" being Older Than Feudalism. The Clash referenced this in their songs "Jericho" and "The Sound of Sinners".
- Raijin/Raiden, the Shinto god of lightning, causes thunderstorms by playing taiko drums.
Pinball
- Foo Fighters (2023): The Foo Fighters' rock is powerful enough to rid people of their Hypno Trinkets and attack the Overlord all by itself.
Puppet Shows
- A more realistic depiction in Thunderbirds: a series of bomber prototypes is being destroyed when a certain song is performed live over the radio, leading the heroes to believe that the signal may be interfering with the aircraft's systems. Lady Penelope talks to the band involved, who are frustrated that their manager keeps changing the song subtly between performances. She and Parker find he has a device Brains identifies as a Cham-cham, a computer which encodes information into the music. This allows him to reveal the prototype's location to an unfriendly nation, which scrambles fighters to take it down. Lady Penelope steps in as lead singer (the song was originally an instrumental) as the heroes modify the music to lure the fighters into friendly airspace where they will be shot down.
Roleplay
- TV Tropes Roll To Dodge: Chaostryke is channeling it. More recently, and mildly, Xiphoniii, Demyx Style.
Theater
- We Will Rock You! If you've guessed that the protagonists fight an oppressive government using the music of Queen, you win a cookie.
- The Big Bad of the show, Killer Queen, was defeated by having the band play an instrumental version of Tie Your Mother Down.
- The lovable gang in RENT brings Mimi back from death by HIV, exposure and drugs through the power of song.
- In Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime, apparently the primary form of entertainment in the future is watching cowboy/rock star/gangsters fight each other using rock's power.
Web Animation
- In Star Wreck V: Lost Contact, the Vulgars discover Earth after they hear a very powerful rock concert broadcast.
- Used in the student film God Slayer; in the end, the title superhero, driven mad by self-doubt and an evil talking moon, shatters the earth with a high note.
Webcomics
- Basically all of Nova 44.
Web Originals
- The music video for Lindsey Stirling's "Moon Trance." There are not many places (internet or otherwise) where you can see a violin-wielding girl duking it out with breakdancing zombies on electric keyboards and drums.
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-1987-J. A piece of sheet music which can be played, irrespective of any known ability to play the guitar or lack thereof, by anyone who knows how it is supposed to sound and has access to an electric guitar and amp (playing on any other instrument causes mild revulsion in onlookers). Playing causes apparently permanent effects, from the player simply appearing more attractive; through the spontaneous manifestation of various stage effects; vehicles in the area of effect being polymorphed into classic hot rods or muscle cars, motorcycles becoming custom bikes; female observers being regressed to around 18 years old, with 68% of cases also experiencing transmogrification of clothing into lingerie, G-string bikinis and leather fetish gear; manifestation of female 18-year-olds if none are present, as well as large quantities of alchohol, dinosaurs, dragons and female angels; resurrection or reanimation of nearby corpses; spontaneous pregnancies... However if played too long, a being known as SCP-1987-J-1 will appear, and demand you stop playing or challenge him to a guitar duel he calls an "Epic Rockdown of Rocktimate Rockstiny" for the title of "ultimate Rockness". Noone knows what that is, as noone has won, and the penalty for failure is being polymorphed into a middle-aged guy named Earl who works in a garage. These are now being classified as D-class, as there are far more of them than is needed for the site's motor pool.
- SCP-298, on the other hand, is a pipe organ which will literally drive the blood right out of your body.
- SCP-1987-J.
- In The Onion article "Clinton Threatens To Drop Da Bomb On Iraq," George Clinton threatens to "tear the roof off Baghdad" and liberate uptight Iraqi asses with the Power of Funk. The Mothership, 5,000 bop gunners and 2,500 Aquaboogie Amphibious Assault units are prepared for deployment.
- The Remarkable Journey of Higgins von Higgings: Higgins von Higgings! Your incredible journey ends TODAY!!
- The Real Trailer, Fake Movie April Fool's day prank from IGN re-imaged Mass Effect as a circa 1986 animated series. And yes, this was how they destroyed the Reapers.
