I've been thinking a lot lately about the subject of "labeling" music, ie. attributing genres and sub-genres to a particular band or piece of music for categorization purposes. This is something that nearly every musician feels obliged to hate, though I would argue that, in order to discuss their work intelligently, some form of short hand is necessary... one can't reasonably be expected to launch into an impromptu, 400 word review every time they want to describe an artist's music, and even if they were to do so, saying a band plays "angular riffs" with "clean, melodic leads" and "a propulsive backbeat" in lieu of, say, using the substitute term deathcore, does little to place said band in context with contemporary trends in music.
Let's face it: the real reason an artist gets belligerent whenever the subject of what genre they play comes up is because they like to believe that they're inventing a brand new sound, a wheel that may look like other wheels but is nonetheless one that they invented sans influence, ostensibly out of whole cloth. Well, fuck that, if it looks like a wheel, drives like a wheel, and the tread is usually worn thin by the third or fourth time you take it out, it's a goddamn wheel. We're not going to invent brand new nomenclature to describe the same shit every time some asshole gets their skinny jeans in a bunch.
That said, as a fellow journalist - basically the group of self-appointed experts typically responsible for creating this artificial taxonomy in the first place - I fully admit that my field doesn't always pull its weight as far as making a case for the validity of categorization. To wit, I present the following list of genre and sub-genre labels that are egregious to the point of uselessness for one reason or another, whether it be because they're so broad they don't really describe the music meaningfully... or the opposite, in which case they nitpick to the point where whatever taxonomic hierarchy exists immediately above them should have been sufficient without having to coin more specific terminology.
Here we go, in no particular order... they're all pretty bad, so singling out any one as being worse than another would be to succumb to the same breach in logic I just mentioned:
10. Alternative: arguably the godfather of taxonomic redundancy, the term "alternative" evolved in the early 90s out of the 80s term "college rock"... not that the latter was particularly useful to begin with, but it at least had a connotation of being one of a handful of styles that picked up where punk and new wave left off, whatever that meant. In a practical sense, it typically identified contemplative strains of rock and pop with sophisticated lyrics and skewed, postmodern takes on traditional forms of melody and/or harmony; the jangle pop of REM, Paisley Underground like Dream Syndicate, dream pop such as Cocteau Twins, etc.
Then along came "modern rock", a similar distinction that was almost single handedly popularized by the Billboard chart of the same name (introduced in 1988). "Modern rock" was essentially just a more egalitarian term for college rock, designed to make you feel like you were neither too young nor too old to be listening to the music in question. However, by the time "modern rock" morphed into "alternative rock" in the early 90s, it had expanded to include everything from the Boredoms to the Pixies to Stone Temple Pilots... bands which had nothing in common aside from the fact that they played guitars (and some of them didn't even do that). It wasn't long before the umbrella term became so all encompassing that it no longer even made a distinction between bands that were intentionally toiling underneath the mainstream's radar (Sonic Youth) and those that were label created with the sole purpose of charting hits (Bush). That whole process is being recycled as of this writing with the term "indie rock", which is why there's not a separate entry for that. (see also: Electronica)
9. AOR: short for album-oriented rock (nobody said "orientated" in the 80s, asshole), this term was coined in the 1970s to identify radio stations that strayed from label-dictated singles and played DJ-selected album tracks instead. Somewhere along the way, the definition evolved - as these things are wont to do - into being synonymous with the styles of music these stations played instead, which tended to be predominantly arena-friendly, melodic hard rock (the stuff hair metal would later evolve out of but not altogether supplant).
Today, the term "AOR" does its job in identifying a common denominator of what we now refer to as "classic rock", ie. catchy, melodic guitar-driven staples by the likes of Journey, REO Speedwagon and Rick Springfield. The reason the term makes this list is not because of its lack of applicable specificity, but because the literal meaning of the term could denote pretty much anything. Any given cut from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew could be an "album track"; so could Isaac Hayes' version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"... but no AOR station played these songs. Actually, AOR became identified with an exclusively white, guitar rock format that, by the late 70s, had become just another singles-driven format and no longer had any interest in bringing deep album cuts to the masses. Basically, take any adjective I've used in this section and insert it into the formula "____ Rock" and that would make a more precise description for a genre that is actually fairly constrained, well documented and distinctly of an era.
8. New Age: this genre heading is actually one we should be thankful for, in that it singles out artists that are somewhat influenced by legitimate artistic movements like ambient and world music, but for whatever asinine reason insist on running those influences through the unwelcome filters of smooth jazz and elevator music (see also: Easy Listening). What's offensive about the use of "new age" as the nomenclature of choice is that it carries connotations of underground spirituality which 0% of these musical hacks address beyond some treacly yoga-espousing, crystal-wearing chill out mumbo jumbo; acid rock and alternative hip hop do a lot better job at espousing the benefits of alternative spirituality than Yanni or Enya would ever have the balls to attempt, making "new age" effectively useless except as background noise to get massaged to.
7. R&B (modern usage): a once venerable descriptor that has fallen on hard times, R&B initially stood for an upbeat combination of jazz and blues that directly led to Rock & Roll. Even after Elvis and the Beatles had their way with it, 60s Brit groups like the Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers were discovering authentic African-American music 20 years their senior and putting their own spin on it, re-gifting it back to America where it became garage rock. The common ground between 40s/50s American R&B and the 60s UK version was that it was all inherently uptempo, blues-driven music.
Bridging the gap between these eras, artists like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke were popularizing a smoother blend of doo wop, gospel and urban blues dubbed "soul" music. The problem with the way 21st Century audiences use the term R&B is that the shit they have chosen to describe as "R&B" since at least the early 80s is almost entirely soul, not R&B, albeit too often sanitized and watered down to the point where there's nothing particularly "soulful" about it. Nonetheless, if we're to derive any use out of genre constraints the least we could do is remain consistent about the definition we assign to each.
6. Anything with a Nu- or Neo- prefix: for fuck's sake, we're all aware that new styles of music directly emerge from existing strains, is it really necessary to be so goddamn uncreative and merely functional when naming these new offshoots? The best genre names are those that are somewhat of an inside joke, ones where an understanding of how the appellation was arrived at are what make them colorful and enlivening to begin with (examples: shoegaze, C86, jazz or any other genre named after black slang for fucking). The worst are those that just say "hey, this is the current trend in that older genre that you may have heard about".
5. Post-anything: while we're at it... I admit that I grudgingly employ the term "post-punk" to refer to bands like Wire and Gang of Four, but it's not because I like it. At this point, though, there is 30 years of literature on the subject that guarantee we're not retroactively rechristening that style of music. But why must we continue to refer to every modern experimental form of music as "post-rock", "post-metal", etc? These tend to be so misleading that, if ever the disgruntled artist had a legitimate argument that he/she was not creating "rock" or "metal" at all, let alone a posthumous eulogy for either genre, this would be where the journalistic taxonomists have absolutely no defense.
4. Math Rock: this term wouldn't fly back in the 70s or 80s, when being good at math made you a social pariah and was not at all a badge of honor; but we live in an era where "geeks rule" so every aspect of our culture has to be filtered through some self-congratulatory nerd obsession... hence "math rock". In case you're blissfully unaware of the term, it refers to a complex, technically demanding form of indie rock, the most common style deriving from post-hardcore (fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!! Did you see what they just did???). There's nothing intrinsically mathematical about it, it's just that math and this style of music can both be complicated, so hey... fuck not?
3. All the -core derivatives: once upon a time, this denoted a style of music that was a cross between hardcore and... something else. For instance: metalcore. Bad enough in its dull banality, right? But no, during the 90s a handful of early hipsters got together and formed twee, neutered bands that were the exact opposite of everything that hardcore stood for. But hey, shy estrogen cases can still be bratty and smart assed too, right? Even if it's just behind closed doors or in the safe anonymity of liner notes. So they started referring to their style of music in such preciously obnoxious terms as "sadcore", "slowcore", etc. There's even a record label called Kindercore that sounds like its acts would attempt atavistic feats of anti-authoritarian rage that go almost back to the womb, but sadly this is not the case.
2. Goregrind: gonna make this short. There is absolutely no difference between grindcore and goregrind except for the morbid predilection of the latter's lyrics. Do you know how many fucking sub-genres we'd end up with if we assigned a different moniker for every possible thing there was to sing about?
1. IDM (Intelligent Dance Music): I was going to go with "art rock" for this final entry but IDM just flat out takes the case in terms of sheer pretension. I mean, I appreciate the fact that its practitioners eschew the boring four-on-the-floor tempos and excruciating would-be diva vocals of house for skittering breakbeats and circuit bending, but on the other hand it's completely erroneous to refer to anything Aphex Twin or Autechre have ever done as "dance music" in the first place. (see also: Drill & Bass)
In closing, it should be mentioned that there's nothing particularly gratuitous about a journalist (or pundit) coining any of these expressions as a one off adjective to refer to a specific band or artist... it's only when other people pick up the ball and decide to run with it, thereby legitimizing it as documented terminology, that shit gets out of hand. Let it die, people.
Any errors or omissions? Leave 'em in the comments.
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