The music industry is a strange old place. From unprecedented super villains (we’re looking at you NME) to surprising chart toppers like Bradley Walsh, music trends are about as predictable as the Great British weather.
Even as we speak, a ginger lad from Suffolk is hogging 9 spots out of 10 in the UK Singles Chart, crooning over an Irish girl who seems to have a drink problem and how some bloke’s got his eyebrows plucked and his arsehole bleached. It’s all rather romantic, reducing teenagers and middle aged housewives alike to tears with an acoustic guitar, obscure words like exponential growth, and an inoffensive sound that falls into the category of acoustic pop/rock/contemporary folk with a side of indie.
At the risk of sounding like I’ve past my use-by date, my issue here doesn’t lie with Ed Sheeran – or any other musicians take on twenty-first century love for that matter. It’s more the recent trend established by artists and PRs, requiring 200 genre categories to adequately describe a sound. And if they don’t like what’s already out there? Well, they simply create their own suitably edgy sub-genre.
As a music blogger, it’s safe to say you receive some weird submissions. One such press release landed in my inbox recently, citing “the most exciting band you’ll hear this year”. In the true spirit of originality, their sound was described as ‘nu-wave avant-garde pop rock’. Fuck me, that’s a mouthful. After listening for a grand total of 30 seconds, I must admit, I was left thoroughly disappointed. My visions of a radical, guitar wielding steampunk enthusiast, blending the creativity of Bowie with the ferocity of Slipknot, soon dissolved into some rough’n’ready garage band submission spattered with synths.
In the true spirit of originality, their sound was described as ‘nu-wave avant-garde pop rock’. Fuck me, that’s a mouthful.
This particular band weren’t alone in their creative attempts to define their sound. The vibrant array of sub-genres I’ve received over the course of the past week include: Progressive Heavy Electropop, Glitch Pop, Piratecore, Synth Soul, Conspiracy Rock, Ectofolk… you get the idea. I quite like the sound of Piratecore actually, I might have to go back and give that one a listen. I understand music categorisation is a very subjective business, but isn’t it about time someone did away with this flowery system altogether?
“Imagine if you woke up one morning, and you had your record collection, and the concept of genre didn’t exist,” The 1975 frontman Matthew Healy once remarked. “The purity of that experience of listening to music without those rules is a blissful idea.” Now, let me be clear, I don’t usually agree with most chart topping pop musicians – possibly out of some sort of ‘squeaky clean PR spiel over substance’ kind of principle. However, on this occasion, I sort of agree with the chap.
Music has always been a means of expressing the inexpressible… which is precisely why the music should do the talking and not feel constrained to the awkwardly shaped pigeonholes these bands slot themselves into. I freely admit to using the more basic genre labels on a regular basis – in part out of extreme laziness and the fact they’re served up so nicely on a platter by the respective PRs. It’s sheer convenience. So isn’t it about time someone created a new system? I don’t know, like a colour chart of emotion or something? I reckon that would fit perfectly alongside some sugarcoated Dream Pop. Just saying.
I agree – the super-genrefication is particularly tough for songwriters whose sounds can vary a lot from song to song. I end up just calling my songs ‘rock’!
exactly! If it’s rock it’s rock. The lack of sub-genres would attract a wider audience as they’d want to discover where it falls, and ultimately, let people interpret it for themselves.