Music genres that need to die
Submitted by darktremor on Sat, 07/29/2006 - 07:46
- This is a list of every genre that has stopped musically innovating, and become a sludgy retread to the point that almost all bands and artists can be mistaken for one another even on close listen. This is not a matter of opinion. Virtually every song in every one of these genres now has PRECISELY the same structure, theme, instrumentation and general vocal sound (if a voice is involved).
- Post-grunge
- Ah yes, one of my favorite bands, post-grunge. Wait, this is a genre, not a band?
- So who else here likes 3 Doors Down from Foo Nickel Theory of a Trapt HoobaStaind P.O.Default Mudd Creed Roach? How do you actually talk about this genre of music? "I love Nickelback's new song!" "Me too!" "I love how he puts gravelly angst over 3-guitar chords!" "It sure is great, and so different from his last song!" "Oh yeah! Was that the one where he put gravelly angst over 3-guitar chords?" "Yeah! He's a real innovator, isn't he?" "Uh, but I hate techno. It's like the same thing over and over again!" "I know! How does anyone listen to that garbage?" "It's a good thing we've got Nickelback!" "Hey, isn't this a Staind song?"
- Emo-pop
- Intro of 3-chord guitar melody. Verse. Chorus. Verse. Chorus. Verse. Chorus. Chorus. End slam on guitars. Whining about the horrors of their comfortable suburban life.
- Smooth jazz
- Recipe to make smooth jazz:
- 1.Add one cup of jazz.
- 2.Remove one cup of jazz.
- 80's trance remix
- Beats. Breakdown sans beats containing badly resung lyrics of original 80's song. Drumrolls leading to a big crash in which a big sped-up melody of the original 80's song is played on synths. Either end, or repeat once, then end.
- Electroclash
- Regurgitatied "electro-y" sounds. Tuneless, tactless, monotone, and stupidly raunchy lyrics (ie: fuck me. hard. In the ass. On my back. On the grass. In the sack. Fuck me. fuck me hard. fuck me. Get me drunk and fuck me.). The shock value is certainly retained after hearing this 50 time in a row. End. [I think this is dying already anyway, for those exact reasons)
- UK Hard house
- Stupid 4/4 circus beats. Stupid circus melody. Crowd cheering samples. End.
- Hardstyle
- Every producer in this style has forgotten one basic rule of creating music: "Being really loud does NOT instantly make you credible!!!" Formula:
- Insert fast detuned beats (which all sound precisely the same). Allow to play for a good minute. Breakdown to screeching hoovers. Reinsert beats with screeching hoovers on top. Possibly add a stupid faux-hard vocal sample (ie: WANNA FUCK WANNA FUCK WANNA FUCK WANNA FUCK...). This genre died the day it came into existence, it never even had a pretense of innovating. It was like 00's trance didn't want people to think it was sissy melodic tripe anyone, so it decided to do away with melodies and structural changes, and just be really loud.
- New Jack Swing
- This is what most people call "RnB." It's not. It's New Jack Swing. Formula:
- Intro: annoyingly slow beats standing alone. Verse: whiny diva sings about a)losing boyfriend, b)how awesome they are at getting guys. If a male singer: a)losing girlfriend (usually because they repeatedly cheated on her. My sympathy knows no boundary.); b)how awesome they are at getting girls.
- Also a verse, chorus, verse, chorus genre.
- People are probably going to request hip-hop and "pop music" (whatever that means anymore). However, I think these genres still have a lot of variety and innovation, and both still have real artists with real voices. While there are many formulaic sound-raping hacks (ie: can anyone really tell Nelly and Chingy apart?) in all three styles, there are artists who still push the style and create distinctive sound (ie: Outkast, Kanye West). I'm not a real fan of hip-hop, but I respect it. Pop, I actually like. Just not the radio pop.
I am going to take my chances and say that rap needs to die. Virtually nothing has been created that deserves credible mention as 'innovaiton' over the last, say, 3 years.
It is a hugely popular genre, no doubt. But pretty pointless too. I mean there's a limit how much you can bitch about your mom and your girlfriends or how erotic you feel about lovvvve. Yeah babay. I'm not speaking through any moral mouthpiece (that's pretty ambiguous anyways), but from the point of view of repetitiveness. It REEKS of made-for-horny-12-year-olds-with-guns. "Dude!50 Cent dah man!""YEAH FUCK MAN! HEEZ MMOTHAFUCKIN COOL SHIT!""YEAH!! LETS GET STONED!!"
Point being: it is in pretty much a sorry state.
This, of course, is true if your only frame of reference is Hot-97 hip-hop. There's plenty going on in the genre -- it's just not on Clear Channel's playlist.
I agree, there is some very exciting stuff happening in the world of hip hop that doesn't necessarily get much mainstream play. 50 Cent is not respresentative of the whole broad spectrum of rap (hip hop), thank goodness. The genre has a history of being politically charged and socially conscious, and there are those who carry on that tradition in innovative ways.
In that case, I'd be glad to know which artistes are side-streamed and innovative. As far as hip-hop/rap is concerned the arena for innovation is pretty much limited, as I see it. And it is solely the lyrics' prerogative.
These two labels are a good place to start.
For lyrical and genre-bending innovation, check out Buck 65. For innovation strictly within the genre but playing around with all sorts of musical elements, try Edan. And those are just for starters from someone who doesn't listen to a lot of hip hop.
I'm very picky about what I listen to - it can be in any genre but it better be musically interesting and it better be performed by someone with an iota of talent. From that perspective I have to say I find hip hop still one of the most interesting popular genres out there. You have to be careful when judging hip hop, because it's such a broad genre. It's like saying you don't like jazz, without realizing that jazz can be anything from uber-intellectual John Coltrane to swingin' Duke Ellington to smooth, cool and modern like Holly Cole.
Agreed, the "my bitches and my homies and my G-unit chronic, it's bubonic, fuckin' with my hos on gin and tonic...CRYSTAL poppin' on my wheels o' steel" hip-hop is a stagnant wasteleand, but but there is quite a bbit of musical innovation still in underground hip-hop, and even a little bit in the mainstream (such as the previously mentioned Outkast and Kanye West). I mean, if creating a catchy and upbeat song about difficult relationships (an almost exclusively depressing subject in music) full of obscure references in a layered polyrhythm-inflected 11/4 time signature containing 22-note phrasing with actual instrumentation and an accompanying marching band and no traditional pop structure, all while repeat overdubbing the voices and using electronica production techniques and effects isn't innovative, what is? (Especially considering the song was probably the biggest hit of the 00's: that being "Hey Ya!" by Outkast).
Besides, there are a HUGE number of hip-hop subgenres. Like, have you ever heard of "click-hop"? It's essentially glitch music turned into hip-hop beats. UK Grime is an almost completely new genre of hip-hop. "Screw" music (featuring chopped up and slowed down beats) is only now breaking through. Abstract hip-hop is still making interesting and eccentric music (ie Madvillain's [somewhat] recent hip-hop album about superhero villains). Hell, I'm only scratching the surface. Instrumental hip-hop is still doing all kinds of wacky and mutated things (lately an "ambient hip-hop" thing has been forming out of the Ninja Tune family of labels: see cLouddead) There's so much more hip-hop out there than on the radio, it's not fair to discard the whole genre because of a few idiots that appeal to the lowest common denominator (such as 50 Cent, Nelly, Chingy, etc.).
I'll have to strongly disagree with the premise that rap needs to die. For my last 2005 Listology disc I had enough new rap (discovered in the previous year) that I could've made a whole disc just devoted to rap. Some artists which I think are still doing good things in this format include Atmosphere, Beastie Boys, DJ Format (and the MCs he works with), The Go! Team, Jurassic 5, Lady Sovereign, MC Lars, Speech (formerly of Arrested Development), The Streets and I also got turned on to some older rap unheard to me from Little T and One Track Mike, Peanut Butter Wolf, just to name a few.
I mean if you don't like rap across the board then don't listen to it. But if you think it's just confined to the crap you hear on the radio then you've got to rethink that.
That's certainly not what I meant. And I think there's more to rap than radio.
I think the whole thing has progressed in a tangent perpendicular to my intended direction. It is least of my concern to listen to something I can't possibly respect, enjoy or love. Or understand. Radio Rap, or whatever you mean by the crap you hear on the radio , is so bad that it desrves no merit to be discussed. I know I am being self contradictory, but that's after listening to some of the more respectful suggestions by Buddy.
We have to define what we mean by 'dying'. Does it have to have to mean getting wiped out of the face of existence?
No.
Dying refers to a period of dormancy, and then rejuvenation, in my opinion. Music, no matter how lame or different, cannot 'die' as such in the sense of the word 'die'.
To make my point, I'll suggest read this and everything that happens afterwards.
It is for the good of the genre itself that it constantly innovates. Isn't it? But then again, the answer is every individual's prerogative.
I must apologize, though, for my limited knowledge of the 'so much more hip-hop out there than on the radio'. I am working on that.
Personally, I think the issue of radio needs an entirely different discussion.
Early 90's radio was a collage of quirky oddities. You'd hear a reggae song next to some eurodance beside a grunge track, followed by lite singer-songwriter, preceding a metal throwback, right before some southern party rap and "new swing jack" RnB (a la New Kids), and so on and so forth. There was a large blend of music, and, while not necessarily the best out there, it was at least varied, and it evolved. Nowadays, it's a flat and unchanging landscape. It's extremely rare to hear anything but post-grunge throwbacks (Nickelback, 3 Doors Down, Our Lady Peace) , "new-swing jack" RnB (Alicia Keys, Ashanti), ganster rap (50 Cent, Chamillionaire, Chingy, Nelly), or emo-pop (Good Charlotte, Simple Plan). Occasionally some eurotrance or MOR songwriter gets played too. The radio has sounded like exactly this for 6 years now, without even the slightest change. In the past, radio changed around far more often; I don't think it's ever been stuck in a rut like this ever.
As for radio rap, again, there is that small percentage that does innovate and make interesting music. MOST radio rap is meritless and "undiscussable." Howveer, again, Outkast, Kanye West, K-Os, and likely others too are still making intersting music and getting radioplay. So even in the mostly dead world of "radio rap" (not really a genre anyway, just the rotting tip of the hip-hop iceberg), there is some hope.
When I said they need to die, I meant exactly what you mean, taking a period of dormancy.
Reading the whole discussion again makes me feel like such an ass. I owe you an apology.
Nah. It's all good.
I have to disagree that the value of a song or genre depends on how "innovative" it is
This is a post-modernist obsession and post-modernism artistically has been one of the most stagnant and snob era
Music is first of all a language (it's interesting to read that certain old cultures used words to express concrete concepts and music to express sentiments i.e. there were no words for feelings or subjective emotions) and as a language it's not important to reinvent the wheel each time but what you want to express with it
Being it a language it is also almost impossible to have a passion for music and being uncreative in music making. You don't need to create new sounds or devices to be "original" as originality is just that particular and unique way you have to think of melodic progression and sounds and that's why even when an artist mimics another style it remains unique. We all have absorbed musical information we have collected in our life and we all have unique brains and emotions which process those information in unique ways. We can't help but being original (if there's passion) because we're nothing but original and don't need to invent new sounds of reform a genre to show our unborn originality. Creativity is spontaneous and it needn't be seeked at all cost.
Actually seeking to be "creative" at all cost by avoiding certain sounds or musical ideas and artificially creating "innovations" destroys the spontaneity and artistic quality of the creation
The innovations we have experienced like going from 80's discos to 90's trance were just spontaneous and steady, it was cultural fruition of music that shaped them not the conscious effort to be fakely creative
Like language what is important is not to invent new letters to add to the alphabet or to form new meaningless words no one understand, but how you use words that everyone know and use to create your own unique concepts and ideas to convey
The conscious effort to be "innovative" by avoiding spontaneity in artistic creations and adding easy-created "strange" as an "innovative characteristics" is what destroys music, painting, sculpture and poetry. The real creativity is just creating what you feel like creating in that moment of inspiration free from bondaries, limitations or pressure to be innovative or not to be derivative (the best operas of Mozart, Beethoven and Scarlatti [just to name few] were derivative ... and absolute masterpieces of originality
I think the best analogy of music as a language, would be that writers are akin to musicians. While writers need not invent words to be innovative (and probably shouldn't), it is possible to be a good, innovative writer, versus a bad derivative writer. There are weak, uninteresting uses of music just as there are weak, uninteresting uses of language. You see, it isn't a post-modernist obsession that everything must be innovative (in some way), it's a modernist idea - modernism values innovating, progressing, and pushing the boundaries, while post-modernism believes that this is a futile practice, and we're going to be eternally trapped in the same boring rut no matter how much we advance, as there's no cure for the human condition.
When I say innovative, I don't mean the "forced creativity" you're talking about. Mozart WAS innovative. it's the unique way music creates new feelings and emotions that makes it innovative. These new and different sounds do create original atmospheres, but the best music is usually that which puts together old ideas and new interesting ways, that is true innovation and genius (ie Mozart did this. And think of acid house: it used the same small set of sounds over and over for the longest time, yet still created very interesting music). These genres on the list have, for the most part, stopped doing this "new emotional expression". Every song has the same feeling and atmospheres, conveys the same messages, has the same texture, making every new release entirely redundant. The evolution of these styles has stopped, and the innovation has stopped. A genre does not need to create new sounds continuously, but it DOES need to create different emotions, and evoke different ideas.
As to every person being able to create unique music, this is technically true, but not so true in practice. While there will be subtle, tiny changes in music due to small personality and playing variations, 3 guitar chord pop structured songs about being dumped melodramatically sung by disaffected teenagers on the same 3 instruments (mainstream emo) can only provide so much variation: all of the songs will have a very small range of emotion that will be continuously expressed ad nauseum. When a genre gets encoded to that sort of level, that's when I say it "needs to die." (rule of thumb: if the majority of artists in a given genre are very easily confused with one another, and there are none that stand out as having great personality or as sounding very different whatsoever, even after repeat listens, the genre has hit this level).
This artificial creativity you mention has nothing to do with this list, and I agree, is usually destructive (ie: think of that terrible "genre cookbook albums" trend of the 90's, in which bands with no more ideas would attempt to look innovative by making songs across-the-board in different styles [ie a reggae song next to a metal song next to eurodance on an artist album]).
As for the "effort not to be derivative," that has nothing to do with REAL innovation either, I agree. However, the problem is when artists take steps to actually BE derivative upon looking at the successes of other artists, and entire genres get named after the resulting homogenous sound, which further limits music all around it as artists get the golden glimmer of cash in their eyes, and better music goes unnoticed. Think of mainstream radio today: most of the styles on it have niched themselves to this point, leading the stations to niche themselves to these genres, leading more artists to niche themselves further into the strangling format of these stations, and so on.
Have you ever heard of "The Chrysalids?" It is a novel about a future in which any human with a mutation outside of the "true human form" is killed, or sterilized and exiled. I think a similar thing occurs when purposely derivative genres begin taking over the mainstream.
The only solution? The complete elimination of these stlyes, either through a logical evolution that carries on regardless of record label pressures, eventually breaking through to replace the old style; through the labels moving on to other styles; or through all the artists of a certain style moving on to other things (all rare occurances).
You must agree: none of the genres on this list have any variation in feeling or ideas.
Ummm...no. I don't agree. Just because it's not your type of music makes it black soulless garbage that needs to be weeded off the radio? I mean that entire fake-conversation about post-grunge could be turned around easily for techno. Obviously the point of post-grunge isn't the variety in the songs that hit the airwaves. It's kind of a narrow view of music; all music must be epic, must provoke deep emotion, must be unique...certainly these are great qualities, but it doesn't really fit the needs of the radio. I'm sorry you don't like the music on the radio. I really really don't either. But saying the genres they're associated with suck and need to die? If people said that electronic music needed to die after the "funk soul brother" how would you feel?
I don't think I implied that my issues against these styles were that they weren't "my type of music," and that they aren't epic and don't provoke deep emotion. I can name dozens of styles that aren't really my thing that I don't feel are artistic wastelands (and other styles that ARE my thing that aren't epic and that don't provoke deep emotion). My problem is with creating music from templates. I do believe that music should aim to be unique. Also, most of the styles on this list have legitimate artistic sister genres that create interesting, unique music - all of which despise the styles above as insults to the real music
(IE: cool jazz to smooth jazz, grunge and grunge-influenced indie to post-grunge, minimal trance and progressive house to dutch trance and 80's remix trance, Motown RnB to New Swing Jack, etc.).
Maybe I'll clarify this by adding these sister styles to the list. Although this is admittedly one of my poorer lists (badly written, etc.) and perhaps not worth updating.
I think my issue here is mainly that I hate when music/movies/art/etc. is made for the sole purpose of making money.
I don't think it's really pretending to be anything else. Pop art or not, it's still art, and there's still a certain level of craftsmanship that goes into writing a catchy but worthless tune (for example I really hate "How You Remind Me", but I was able to remember how it went after hearing it just once, and there's something to be said for that). No one shoves this down your throat; you can always change the station. Pretty much none of this stuff is going to last anyway - the only real long-lasting garbage genre has to be mainstream hip-hop, which seems to have just gotten simpler and stupider to the point where Soulja Boy can be famous. I think the post-grunge stuff is on the way out already.
When I read this i ROFL. Some of my ex-friends would get soo pissed if they saw some of the things on this list. So, of course, I'm sending it to them!
Also, check out the rabbit list I made. It has nothing to do with music, but hey. I can't make a professional list on something that I am not a professional in! Let me know what you think! I am totally gonna show all of my friends this list... XD!
And of course I agree with this list. Especiallly Emo-pop (and I used to listen to that crap!)
Nice, definitely spread it around! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
i love your recipe for making smooth jazz....
but what i wanted to write to you about was some writing you may like; you commented on a list of mine, that no longer exists, about something i wrote (and since lost), which is an amateur version of this. i think that Stein's style can be MUCH better and maybe she has better versions of that style.
if you do read it, be sure to click through to the other sections of the book if you do get to the end of the first page and want to continue - there are 3 sections which my english professor failed to make clear for my class....