Leppard still has some bite
If I were a young rock star of today, I'd . . . well, there's a lot I'd do, but one thing would be to take a look at why it is that Def Leppard, which formed at the tail end of the first British invasion, is still recording and touring. In retrospect, they probably didn't deserve to be totally shunned by the cool kids of the mid- to late '80s, but they're surely not Aerosmith-level icons.
Could it be the songs? The first Leppard tune to pop to mind, Pour Some Sugar on Me, is hardly a well-knit pop-rocker, but it does have one key element missing from hard-rock outfits today — exuberance.