Can prog rock again?

Has any genre of music ever suffered so cataclysmic a decline in popularity as progressive rock? Disco comes close: in 1979, a shock-jock DJ named Steve Dahl blew up a crate of records by the likes of Chic and The Bee Gees in front of 50,000 excitable haters at Chicago’s Comiskey Park Stadium. But by the mid-Nineties, disco was back in style and Barry, Robin and Maurice had been thoroughly rehabilitated. Prog’s redemption arc is a lot more complicated. Certainly, there’s an annual Caribbean cruise where surviving stars of the genre perform their classics to aging fans, and in 2026 you can see Rush in concert or buy a new album by the latest incarnation of Yes (which contains no original members). But compared to disco, prog rock is a decidedly niche taste — like building model railroads. A