I'm late to this thread, so it's likely no one will read this, but here goes. This is my opinion and is the result of my personal experience -
For me, pegging songs as belonging to the genre "rock" is a kinda inherently flawed. The term really began to see a spike in popular usage at the end of the 60's to refer to popular music that was heavily guitar based but not traditional "Rock and Roll". This latter was a f*ck phrase (much in the way that the term jazz began) that was used to describe early small group R&B, doo-wop, and country/R&B cross-over songs (basically small-group black dance music for all ages reformatted for a mixed audience of teenagers). Along game the Beatles (who morphed into pop pretty quickly), the mid-60's more progressive (e.g, not based on traditional blues forms) bands, advanced keyboards, and the move from simple dance hall music to large shows and the term "Rock and Roll" seemed very outdated. This is when it was shortened to "Rock" to accommodate the rise of bands like "Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes" etc. who had little in common with previous dance hall time tunes on the pop charts. This began a little earlier with what we now call Baroque Rock (e.g., some Yardbird's tunes), but at the time no one really called it anything other than Rock. It also coincided with the replacement of 45s with LPs, introduction of popular FM radio stations, and the beginning of the "Oldies Tours" (with a corresponding rise in other popular culture media such as Sha Na Na, American Graffitti etc to more specifically differentiate "Rock and Roll" from "Rock" both musically and generationally).
A lot of pop music using more or less traditional song structures, (although some moving beyond into asymmetric rhythms and more abrupt chord changes, and now played at increasingly loud volumes with more deliberate/refined distortion) rolled into this category (Led Zep, Who, Rolling Stones etc). This forms the bulk of what is now called "Classic Rock". Fast forward to the late 70's with the rise of punk, and the emergence of the "80's bands" all lumped in the same category (although some of the punkers preferred to refer to themselves as "Rock and Roll"). Then came what we call now Grunge, then the internet began to blow everything part, and the concept of a top list of rock songs started to seem last decade.
Is it dead? I don't know what dead means here, but I don't hear many popular songs anymore that evoke the instrumentation and chordal structure of these tunes that sound like anything new to me. There are lots of new rock bands, but to me I rarely hear anything new. People mentioned RHCP, White Stripes, Black Keys etc. but these are not new bands. So I think the number of people in the US who self-identify as preferring "Rock" music is on the decline. When my generation goes, I don't think anyone will even care except the historians. FWIW, the current genre that sounds to my ears most like what was called "Rock" in the mid-70's is modern country. I hear that it's pretty popular, but I'm too old school with country to muster the energy to give it a try.
One thing I have noticed is that practically every single local rock bar band I have auditioned for, or have considered auditioning for, in my area, seems to play from the same list. This also makes me feel like not much is happening with the genre.
