Editor’s Note: All opinion content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
Rock bands don’t usually debut on Saturday Night Live anymore — at least not without a glossy image and a carefully engineered sound built for social media algorithms. But when Geese took the “Saturday Night Live” stage on Jan. 24th, they didn’t come with any of it.
For fans, it sounded exactly right; to everyone else, it probably sounded a little wrong. And that difference says everything about where Geese sits in the current music landscape.
Once a scrappy art-rock group operating out of a Brooklyn basement, Geese have quickly become one of the most talked about bands in the indie-rock community. They’ve been described as “Gen Z’s first great American Rock Band,” a title that speaks less to nostalgia and more to the way they’ve reinvigorated a sound many assumed had been left behind, making rock feel like it has a future and not just a past.
That lofty title sits in deliberate tension with their music. Geese don’t chase precision, instead tapping into an absurdist, off-kilter sensibility that has rarely explored in mainstream music.
Their songs feel unstable and jarring with performances that resist containment and vocals that prioritize feeling over control. Rather than smoothing themselves out, the band leans into imbalance, letting tracks feel volatile and unresolved by design.
At the center of it all is frontman Cameron Winter, whose unique performances have become a fixation in online music circles. Winter is known for resisting repetition onstage, often altering rhythms and lyrics mid-performance.
Winter did exactly that during Geese’s opening SNL song, “Au Pays du Cocaine,” stretching moments, pausing unpredictably and reshaping the song in real time. For some viewers, those shifts caused the performance to “never quite (find) its footing.” But that unevenness wasn’t a failure in execution; it was the point.
Most musical guests arrive on SNL with everything engineered to perfection, fleshing out performances with backing tracks, doubled vocals and production polished to a seamless shine. Geese didn’t make that trade. Their performance stood in sharp contrast to the show’s usual musical sheen, favoring rawness over refinement, and spontaneity over control.
In an era where music can be flattened by autotune, AI-generated lyrics and algorithm-optimized production, Geese’s chaotic and unquestionably human sound sound feels like genuine rock-and-roll, a rebellion
That rebellion helps explain why Geese’s SNL appearance landed so sharply. Breakout moments for bands no longer happen on national television; they happen online, filtered through viral social media posts and trend cycles.
For Geese to gain traction outside of social media — and on one of our few remaining monocultural stages — speaks to a generational hunger for authenticity that rock music has historically provided and that many young listeners are still searching for. In a world where increasingly nothing feels authentic, it feels good to turn the TV on and see someone strange, alive and unpolished.
Geese’s rise has also coincided with the cult reception of Winter’s “casually virtuosic” solo album, “Heavy Metal,” which expanded the audience paying attention to the band without pulling focus from it. Rather than distracting from Geese, Winter’s individual following seems to funnel listeners deeper into the group’s larger world.
That attention places Geese within a broader cultural shift happening in alternative music right now. Artists like MJ Lenderman have built devoted followings by embracing similar emotional bluntness, country rock influence and unbridled sincerity. This new wave of alternative rock borrows from blues and classic American songwriting traditions without slipping into the irony or revivalism, the favoring narrative or the rough edges and vulnerability over detached cool — a noticeable departure from the aloof sound that dominated much of the 2010s indie landscape.
Geese fits squarely within that movement, though they resist easy categorization. Their music pulls simultaneously from classic rock, post-punk and Southern influences, often within the same song. Rather than smoothing out those contradictions, the band amplifies them.
Some viewers were quick to label Geese’s SNL performance a failure — with detractors calling it chaotic or even one of the show’s worst musical appearances in recent memory. But rock music has never been about universal approval. It thrives on discomfort, division and argument.
Rock has been declared dead more times than anyone can count, but Geese seems determined to pull it out of the grave anyway. Geese’s rise doesn’t suggest a mass revival or a return to the past, but proves that there is still space for music that takes risks, invites disagreement and resists perfection.
As Geese continue to carve out their own uneasy space in the mainstream, one thing is clear: Rock isn’t finished reinventing itself, and it’s not asking permission either.
Reach Faith Blankenship at entertainment@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
