We are all familiar with the talents of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, and Brian May. We’ve all praised their talents for decades and decades, and respectfully so, as they deserve it. However, at a certain point, and maybe that point is now, isn’t time to embrace and flatter the new guard. That being said, here are three contemporary guitarists who make us scratch our heads every time we hear them play.
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Billy Strings
If you’ve seen a Billy Strings show live, then you know that he has the best hands in music at the moment. In contemporary music, there are very few players who can play as fast and as accurately as Billy Strings. Furthermore, if you are familiar with bluegrass music, then you know just how crucial those two attributes are.
Even if you haven’t seen Billy Strings live, you can hear how much vitality and speed he plays with. In short, it’s remarkable, particularly the speed at which he plays. Truly, its on par with other speedy guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen.
Eric Gales
First and foremost, Eric Gales deserves to have some more respect put on his name, because this guy is a world-class guitarist. Thanks to his talents, this man is swinging with the same force as Clapton, Hendrix, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and essentially, every phenomenal blues player to have picked up a guitar.
Gales gained popularity throughout the 2010s and 2020s, yet it is still fairly underrated. Hopefully, this article will change that, even if it does so ever-so slightly. If you’d like to feel the musical confusion we’re talking about, then we suggest you start with these three tracks: “Break On Free”, “Kashmir / Back in Black”, and “Meditation”.
Marcus King
Marcus King can do it all. Whether it is country, rock, soul, blues, or even jazz, the man has a bag of licks that seemingly has no bottom. The only genre that he hasn’t proved he can play is bluegrass, but it seems a bluegrass track featuring him is probably inevitable.
We can go on about what makes Marcus King one of the best technical and tasteful guitar players of the current day and age, but we’ll just point you in the direction of several tracks that do the talking for us. For your listening pleasure, check out these three songs by King: “Mood Swings”, “Hard Working Man”, and “F—k My Life Up Again”.
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