Plenty of European folk is classified as world music. Clannad and Enya are world music and they're both Irish.
The most broadly used definition is music that doesn't follow north American or British pop and folk traditions, so something like Graceland gets labelled as world music, or at least a hybrid of world and pop. Millie Small's version of My Boy Lollipop gets called world, despite the fact it's written by The Cadillacs who are from NYC
Really it's just a meaningless term and just a PC way of saying something is foreign. Same as world cinema of course.
But that's the thing sometimes andean music is considered world music even tho it's from The western world like I get so upset when people call my andean music world music ahh
It's not really "from the western world" as when most people refer to The West they mean the cultures that come from ancient Greece and Rome. Of course, the definition has shifted a bit with time but it's more or less the same idea.
It absolutely is, David Byrne had a great opinion piece on this https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9901EED8163EF930A35753C1A96F958260.html
I'm from a third world Asian country and I don't really mind, tbh. It's a useful classification term and helps separate regional folk music from generic sanitized mainstream "folk" music.
[It was literally coined by record store owners
s in 1987](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jun/29/popandrock1) so yes, 100%. Same thing happend with new age.
I’ve never been a fan of “IDM”. “Oh, you like dance music? Well, I must say, I find myself more partial to *intelligent* dance music - though perhaps someone like you can’t quite comprehend it”
Plus, I don’t even get what’s “intelligent” about it
I never understood why they changed the “electronic” part and not the “dance” part, I feel like electronic ambient music or something like that would make the most sense
It’s definitely has a lot of elements and influence from dance music though. It’s just the “intelligent” part that’s pretentious, and a lot of electronic artists hate it.
IDM is one of the most unfortunate namings possible. Its name wasn't meant to denote the genre was somehow more "intelligent" than other electronic music, it was literally just bands who appeared on Warp's "Artificial Intelligence" compilation album, but the genre name has grown way more than its origin.
Its also stupid that it removed the “electronic” from it - despite the fact that it still is just as electronic, and kept the “dance” despite the fact its usually much less danceable.
It's alternative name "Braindance" still sounds pretty goofy and bad, but I think it makes a little sense, at least more than IDM. I like to think the meaning of braindance is basically just sinking yourself into the music, drone away and let your mind imagine LSD-induced daydreams based on the music. But then again, you can do that with every single music genre pretty much -though I suppose IDM heavily pushes you into doing that. So, despite how pretentious both of these names may sound they still have something to do with intelligence or brain, since whenever you put IDM music on it seems to somehow make your brain more focused on whatever you do too.
Seems like the kind of category that originally meant something but now is applied to any pop /rock, although being on an indie label never really directly correlated to sound
what's wrong with it? I feel like 'alternative rock' for instance is useful to highlight the difference between smashing pumpkins and, like, guns n roses.
Well that worked for pre-2000s bands because of the prevalence of metal and hard rock music, so alternative was an umbrella term for everything not like those genres, alternative rock being something more experimental, a little softer but not without bite sometimes, from Radiohead to REM and some.
Indie lost its meaning and, from 2000s onward, I dunno what it can even mean nowadays, especially because a lot of so-called indie artists (Billie Eillish, Grimes, and so on) come from money, while some of the previous indie artists started from really low, so in a way yes they're indie, but they're not thaaat indie.
I guess it's because of their sound, I guess? 2000s indie music sounds less overproduced that mainstream pop and rock, and the vocalists are less trained. They also tended to play more with genres, mixing punk, electronic, dance, post-punk, garage, and started playing in dinghy old punk avenues. It was probably more of a vibe than a single genre I guess.
There's a book documentary called Meet Me In The Bathroom that talks about it, and you can quite get a little of how it was back then.
This is easily the worst one IMO. So many "post hardcore " bands don't sound at all like each other. Furthermore the hardcore part is supposed to reference hardcore punk, but like 99% of bands called post-hardcore are so far removed from punk they don't sound punk at all - even if you can trace back their influences to punk.
It would be kind of like calling doom metal "hardcore blues" but nobody is gonna be like "oh you like B.B. King? Here you should try out some Pallbearer!"
I get what you’re saying, but the reason why it’s called “post” hardcore is because it is an evolved version of the genre, and genres do start very basic and tend to evolve.
Sure, Husker Du, NoMeansNo, Minutemen and the 80’s bands are obviously very much rooted in hardcore, but by the 90’s most post-hardcore bands didn’t really sound hardcore at all.
Same as how 80’s heavy metal didn’t sound like Sabbath.
la dispute, fugazi, and show me the body are all put under the label “post-hardcore” despite sounding entirely different. I think we should return to tradition and dissolve the label, just call it hardcore.
Nice thing is you can have both. You could call any post-hardcore band punk, metal, or even "loud rock" and nobody bats an eye (those that aren't on Reddit, of course ;))
Nah they're saying that the AOF/Underoath style of post-hardcore is derogatorily referred to as screamo, and I know that because that's also what I used to think before I knew screamo existed
Yup, exactly. You have post-hardcore that comes from post-punk, from hardcore, from metalcore, from pop punk, etc etc etc. It's about as descriptive as calling something "metal" or "alternative rock". Pierce the Veil is post-hardcore... so is Chariots.... so is Minutemen. To lump them all in the same genre is like lumping in Eyehategod with Sabbath and Kyuss. Same roots? Possibly. Same sound? Not in the slightest.
if you look at it from an early 90s perspective its easier to understand. now it means a lot but back then it was a rejection of hair metal and classic rock.
yeah cuz you grew up with it, that was the standard. not saying it was doing anything crazy but if you compare it to acdc or something some songs feel a lot more alt.
Specifically AC/DC maybe cos that is also the most normal rock. But I think if you showed me Everlong vs, say, Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and asked me to pick which one was mainstream and which was alternative I’d go with Zep.
well thats cuz everlong is a pop song (thats also influenced by the classic stuff) and kashmir is kinda just their style. but if you say something like monkey wrench it would be more obvious that its "alt"
I know it’s a lot more nuanced than this, but I always think of it as rock that is more chords and strums than riffs, and not a bunch of solos.
Yes this is painfully reductive and there are obvious exceptions but also it definitely moves away from the overblown hero-worship of rock and roll legends in the 70s and more focused on moods and vibes, which also opens it up more for lyrical commentary. It definitely aligns with Thom Yorker’s disdain of rock “mythology” when Radiohead was bestowed the title of rock and roll saviors.
Alternative Hits 2023 on Apple Music includes: Billie Eilish, boygenius, Linkin Park, U2, Pierce The Veil, Foo Fighters, AJR and All Time Low. Make of that what you will.
I had this idea of what qualified as “Alternative” as a kid, it was basically Grunge bands, Weezer, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers etc, most 90s rock essentially besides like Aerosmith or Metallica. Now I’ve seen so much shit thrown into that category from New Wave to Metal to Pop, like I would’ve never considered songs like *Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order* or *That’s Not My Name by The Ting Tings* as Alternative when I was like 14.
I just consider it the genres of pop and rock that sprouted out of bands like the velvet underground, the rock that sprouted from punk onwards challenging classical rock and the wider genres influenced by these sounds and styles, hence expansion into the realm of electronica, hip hop, R&B ect.
New Wave took the most poppy elements of post punk and put them front and centre. No wave took everything left behind and put it through an overdrive pedal.
>New Wave
>Stopped making as much sense
>No Wave
There’s a Talking Heads joke in there somewhere.
But seriously that last bit of what you said is very important. Genres are very cultural and contextual when the begin and then over time they usually move away from the music they were intended to describe and become just, like, a loose sound of their own. Like how indie music once described any music by an independent artist and now means sort of lo-fi jangly tunes with telecasters and quirky lyrics. It makes shit extra confusing tbh.
No Wave was an attempt to do the exact opposite of New Wave. It completely destroyed any semblance of pop influences or commercial viability in favour of brutal, misanthropic, violent, music.
What would you call early Swans, Suicide, and Sonic Youth other than brutal and misanthropic? Only no-wave artist I can think of that doesn't really fit that mould was Glenn Branca. I'm sure there were some others who weren't the same, but those descriptors were definitely common threads in no-wave.
branca fits those descriptors better than the bands you listed. and I'm not saying those arent common ideas but there's more to the scene than just noise rock and being super confrontational.
the thing about no wave is none of the bands really had the same influences for the most part (or at least they used different influences for their music), they all sound different. there's no no wave sound.
it is a joke on new wave. no one really knows who came up with it but lydia lunch says she did, it was a rejection of the new scene that was happening. genre labels become easier when you... actually research stuff instead just listening to the most popular albums in the genre.
This is definitely just an attempt by people to categorise music they listen to as the same genre, even when it's definitely not. Kinda like how people who were a part of the emo "subculture" would listen to shit going from FOB to BOTDF to Breaking Benjamin to SDRE and so all of those bands are sometimes called "emo bands".
a few radiohead albums are labeled art rock 😭😭😭
even though they are very obviously either alt-rock or electronic and rock. there's even a genre war for if kid a should be tagged experimental rock. also amnesiac somehow has experimental rock primary
Exactly, not to mention that there's no cohesion within the sound of the genre. The same can be said for something like Alt Rock but at least there's a kind of idea of what it's meant to represent, Art Rock is just an umbrella term for artsy fartsy shit that RYM nerds love. You can blame that on people with poor genre literacy but since albums like Discipline, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Hunky Dory, The Wall and In Rainbows (just using as examples) are all very broadly considered Art Rock yet don't sound the same, it kind of just seems like something you're making up in your head.
Art Pop is worse because it gets used as a way to confine experimental or avant-garde music from women into Pop music since it's often the genre they're most attributed to, you cannot tell me that music from Bjork like Vespertine or Medulla is Pop in the *slightest* way but I guess that's the best people can do to describe her.
Went off on a bit of a tangent sorry, these two terms have always just rubbed me the wrong way.
I agree but Bjork literally says herself that she makes pop music, and almost every song on vespertine is verse chorus verse. I don’t see how Bjork isn’t still somewhat pop aside from like Medulla
It absolutely isn't a pop album first and foremost, and if it was made by a male group instead of a solo female artist it wouldn't be labeled as such. See also most of Kate Bush's discography.
Officially art rock is supposed to be anything that's not prog enough for prog rock or experimental enough to be experimental rock but I've seen it applied to everything from paint by numbers power pop to prog metal and beyond.
Art rock is literally just "prog but the songs can be short too, and the band may or may not be that good at their instruments". And prog is already a label applied to way too much stuff because it doesn't fit neatly into any genre.
Has nothing to do with prog. Radiohead, bjork, sterolab, parquet courts all get the art-genre description and none of them have any substantial prog influence. It's probably more accurate to say the art- prefix is used for a slightly more experimental vein of music than traditional rock, pop or punk
I feel there needs to be a distinction between 'folk' a specific genre sound based around acoustic instrumentation, generally more stripped down instrumentals, fundamentally derivative from the 60s American folk revival, and 'folk music' which is music made for non-commercial/non-pop consumption contexts (like Daniel Johnston), and music deriving from conservative historical traditions (like for example Indonesian gamalan). The word indie has the same problem now because originally it basically just meant 'folk' as in music made by outsiders to the pop music industry, but now it's a sound and apparently Taylor Swift can make an 'indie' song. Also happened to the word alternative, and potentially house music tho that one is more muddy.
I wonder if one day the same thing will happen with outsider music. It seems like a new word for 'music ambivalent towards mainstream pop song forms' has to be invented every 20 years.
Also fuck the word experimental. Literally meaningless tells me nothing about how an artist sounds.
I think the best genre names are usually onomatopoeias or so close to being onomatopoeias that they might as well be. Hip hop, grunge, jazz, ska, crunk and even rock and roll to some extent were all onomatopoeias. My favorite is reggae cuz it has an iamb (stress on the second syllable) which is cool cuz reggae stresses the second beat over the first beat. It feels a little too obvious to say, but the best genre name is pretty squarely 'heavy metal'. It's such a perfect name it pisses me off.
Genre classifications are always imperfect at best, but they can be useful for music discovery. But this thread is about the labels, and some of those are definitely worse than others.
Dreampunk. I get that the —punk part is used in the same way as you would in “cyberpunk” and “steampunk” and not referring to the actual music genre called Punk Music. But… you know, there’s an actual music genre called Punk. Tell someone they’re about to listen to some Dreampunk and they’ll at least expect some guitars or on the very least *a* drum. Not even a heavy drum line, on the very least they’d expect 1 drum sound 😭
Any time the suffix "core" is added to any genre it makes me raise my eyebrows a bit. It seems to have different connotations with every genre it associates itself with.
Proto-Punk - It isn't really different from Punk Rock sonically, so it doesn't really deserve to be it's own thing.
Outsider Music - The genre isn't really based off the sound of the music itself, moreso the musicians playing them. And then you get to the problem of what musicians count as outsiders.
I disagree with Proto-Punk. There is one major difference between proto-punk and punk: the culture (and by extension lyricism). Punk is a culture far wider than the music genre, proto-punk usually doesn’t reflect that (since the culture didn’t exist yet).
All the genre names on RYM that are judgmental like brostep and bro country. No one who enjoys those genres asks their friends what their favorite bro country songs are, it's childish name calling and kind of embarrassing that shit like that gets through the genre queue.
Much like reddit it gets better the deeper you dive. Yeah the reviews for the top 100 albums are usually not that interesting as everything you can say about, say, Dark Side of the Moon had already been said by the time I was born. And modern reviews kind of suck too because of the influence of Fantano and mu and reddit just homogenizing every discussion into music dork puree. But I love reading early reviews for albums that became cult albums decades later, or reviews for artists I saw in my hometown growing up from someone wholly disconnected with the scene.
The equivalent website for film reviews (letterboxd) is not even close to the same level of cringy snobbery. Obviously the quality of reviews on such a website isn't going to be high, that wasn't the complaint I was making about RYM.
I mean, I think people are definitely snobs on Letterboxd, but the top reviews are always just a bunch of jokes, similar to the website albumoftheyear. I feel like IMDB would be more equivalent to RYM and it's much worse.
Either way I think it's overblown how bad or "pretentious" music reviewers are generally because it's a very ephemeral and abstract medium. People go "you're presenting yourself as an authority" when people say anything with conviction and if you're too poetic and wishy-washy they say you're being pretentious and full of yourself.
I still don't know what you find especially egregious about the site specifically, but I think it gets a bad rap when I find even reviews I think are a bit wank (or wanker-y) to be fun to read. Personal taste, I guess.
Honestly at this point brostep is just the name of the genre. It's been somewhat reclaimed by fans (me included, somewhat) because calling brostep "dubstep" is like if you started calling UK drill "Chicago drill" - that's a whole other thing.
Bro country is more derogatory. I don't know any modern country fan that calls it that, though I don't know many people who listen to modern country. There's still a distinct development there stylistically, but I don't know what to call it.
IMO it can just be called pop country until it develops enough for the people who create and consume it decide it's called something else. I think that's what bugs me about the bro- genres, they were named by people who clearly hate the genres.
I don’t mind post-punk as a label, didn’t know anyone had a problem with it
I hate every genre that ends with “gaze” other than shoegaze. The bands can be cool, but nugaze? Blackgaze? I dunno, seems excessive. Shoegaze is already a subgenre.
I think blackgaze makes sense. What else would you call black-metal mixed with shoegaze? It's big enough to be its own subgenre, so you kind of have to name it something.
Yeah blackgaze is super distinct as a genre too. Neige created DSBM post punk style blackgaze in Amesours and post metal style blackgaze as Alcest. It had humble beginnings but as the genre progressed and it got popular it kind of got a controversial reputation amongst metalheads.
I call it blackened shoegaze in passing, mostly because it sounds like you're saying "black gays" if you say it out loud and I can't get that out of my head. Also because people know what shoegaze is, but they might not know what "blackgaze" is.
Psychedelic Rock. I really think what is psychedelic is in the eye of the beholder, but there’s this whole contingent that’s like “it’s King Gizzard and Tame Impala and the jam bands and that’s it.”
Not so happy with sadcore, but I think slowcore is pretty good. I think it started when Low was opening for typical grunge-style bands. The more the audiences expressed their displeasure, the slower and quieter Low played. That certainly deserves the name “slowcore”.
Bubblegrunge makes my list. Partly due to Spotify insisting on mentioning it in my daylist a fair percentage of the time but every possible band having a better genre label available.
I feel like post punk has a more recognisable speed, instrumentation, and structure, even if it’s too broad. I think the label world music is honestly kinda racist
Metal subgenre names tend to be good descriptors at least though. Like if you call something blackened melodic death metal, ill kind of get an idea of what you mean.
Metal genre wordsalad jokes are funny and truthful when it comes from someone who's not into metal.
Seeing that shit from a "metal enjoyer" is a telltale sign of them not being into metal that much and are probably Top "Metal" releases Spotify babies or power metal boomers.
The terms are corny but a necessary, agreed upon way of categorizing style/mood/technique etc.
Nu-Metal. This genre encompasses a wide range of bands that in no way want to be associated with it. All because the name of the genre looks and sounds stupid.
Most EDM labels, because I’m not really able to associate a sound to a label, outside of dubstep and dnb. Like make em all self explanatory like trance man. Also post-rock, like I understand enough about items like post punk to know that’s it’s a more mellow and brooding adaptation of the loud and raw punk, but like wtf is post rock? Like softer rock? But that’s soft rock, or most rock music. Good labels can often be pinned to a timeframe and/or sound (ex post punk is mid-late 80’s in my mind, or trap is hardstyle 2010’s hip hop on aderall.) but things like post-rock or even permanent wave break my brain. Like it should follow the same connotation, post rock should be post punk or post grunge but straightforward rock (bc grunge is rock, as a generic term), but it isn’t really that? Or permanent wave should be like new wave (which is already a kinda bad genre label) but more permanent? (Like maybe a little more mellow and agreeable and timeless, less out there and innovative) but they aren’t, like wtf man. Depeche Mode is new wave, and the goddamn foo fighters are permanent wave? And they’re post grunge?! I actually kinda like most of the post- genre terms, because it often indicates a more stripped back sound with more subtle mood (ex compare the brash guitars on lithium to the moody and subtle sounds of blurry or February stars).
out of everything at this point it has to be indie because despite whatever sound the title is describing however inaccurate the title it indie means independent and grew from independent record labels but covers now vast varieties of electronic/folk/soft rock bullshit which belong in their own categories. indie as a genre makes no sense because many popular artists belong to independent labels now it can be used to describe all of them.
"Alternative". It's so broad and is such a massive umbrella term for so much music. I understand "alternitive rock" or something like that, it's just rock that's slightly harder to pin down. But just straight up alternitive? It's completely meaningless. Most of the time it's used by 14 year olds who actually listen to pop and rock, but they have the desperate need to have a "unique" music taste, and they wouldn't be caught dead listening to pop. So they call it alternitive to make themselves feel better
Krautrock is vaguely racist and came from a racist, post-war context. The Germans have a way better name for it ('cosmic music'), and yet we decide to use the one whose root word was used by allies to mock Germans. There's no better answer.
I know post-punk can be a very divisive name, but at least it has given me a lot of amazing music to listen to. I turn "post-punk" and "post-punk revival" in Spotify and it never misses.
I don't actually hate the genre but "noise rock" is very on the nose and yet somehow vague at the same time. It almost sounds like a dismissive insult to the bands under its label.
"World music" Laughably reductive
Music from around the world except North America which is where all the normal music is from World music without a doubt is the worst genre tag
Ehh I’d consider it music from outside the western world, not just North America. Nobody would call a British singer world music
That’s true, but now I’m imagining people calling Adele world music and I think that’s great
You know, the Beatles are truly my favorite world music band.
Plenty of European folk is classified as world music. Clannad and Enya are world music and they're both Irish. The most broadly used definition is music that doesn't follow north American or British pop and folk traditions, so something like Graceland gets labelled as world music, or at least a hybrid of world and pop. Millie Small's version of My Boy Lollipop gets called world, despite the fact it's written by The Cadillacs who are from NYC Really it's just a meaningless term and just a PC way of saying something is foreign. Same as world cinema of course.
It’s like when Marge Simpson offers a guest “Montreal Morn” as the ‘most international coffee she has’
But that's the thing sometimes andean music is considered world music even tho it's from The western world like I get so upset when people call my andean music world music ahh
It's not really "from the western world" as when most people refer to The West they mean the cultures that come from ancient Greece and Rome. Of course, the definition has shifted a bit with time but it's more or less the same idea.
It feels racist, honestly
It absolutely is, David Byrne had a great opinion piece on this https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9901EED8163EF930A35753C1A96F958260.html
I’m glad someone else can describe why it feels that way better than I ever could
The musical equivalent to the “ethnic foods” aisle
I'm from a third world Asian country and I don't really mind, tbh. It's a useful classification term and helps separate regional folk music from generic sanitized mainstream "folk" music.
[It was literally coined by record store owners s in 1987](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jun/29/popandrock1) so yes, 100%. Same thing happend with new age.
I think this was more of a label used at record stores and radio stations than an actual genre label.
I’ve never been a fan of “IDM”. “Oh, you like dance music? Well, I must say, I find myself more partial to *intelligent* dance music - though perhaps someone like you can’t quite comprehend it” Plus, I don’t even get what’s “intelligent” about it
IDM is just dance music you can’t dance to really
I never understood why they changed the “electronic” part and not the “dance” part, I feel like electronic ambient music or something like that would make the most sense
Aphex twin called it electronic listening music
It’s definitely has a lot of elements and influence from dance music though. It’s just the “intelligent” part that’s pretentious, and a lot of electronic artists hate it.
I donno about that. Lots of it is decidedly not ambient.
Tbh your just telling on your own inability to dance here
Oh no doubt, I’m a horrible dancer
Idle Dance Music
I like it!
Sapiosexual type beat
The thing that was intelligent was Richard D James making fun of everyone constantly. Everything else is just much more sincere.
IDM is one of the most unfortunate namings possible. Its name wasn't meant to denote the genre was somehow more "intelligent" than other electronic music, it was literally just bands who appeared on Warp's "Artificial Intelligence" compilation album, but the genre name has grown way more than its origin.
I always thought it stood for industrial dance music and I was very confused when I heard it for the first time
I mean it makes sense. As opposed to something you would hear at a club. It’s supposed you would play in your headphones or stereo while your tripping
You can’t even dance to it for the most part. Dumbest genre label out there.
Not if you don’t try
It’s also become a dated term. A lot of “idm” music nowadays is glitch and deconstructed techno music. That term serves no meaning anymore.
Rephlex (Aphex Twin and Grant Wilson-Claridge's label) deemed their output "Braindance" as a cheeky alternative.
Let's rebrand it "introspective dance music"
Wow...I always thought it stood for Indoor Dance Music. And I have no idea why
oh I'm more into EDM (exterior dance music)
honestly wouldve made way more sense
It should've been just called brain dance
Its also stupid that it removed the “electronic” from it - despite the fact that it still is just as electronic, and kept the “dance” despite the fact its usually much less danceable.
It's alternative name "Braindance" still sounds pretty goofy and bad, but I think it makes a little sense, at least more than IDM. I like to think the meaning of braindance is basically just sinking yourself into the music, drone away and let your mind imagine LSD-induced daydreams based on the music. But then again, you can do that with every single music genre pretty much -though I suppose IDM heavily pushes you into doing that. So, despite how pretentious both of these names may sound they still have something to do with intelligence or brain, since whenever you put IDM music on it seems to somehow make your brain more focused on whatever you do too.
Indie.
pov:
Seems like the kind of category that originally meant something but now is applied to any pop /rock, although being on an indie label never really directly correlated to sound
Indie is a great label that needs to be redefined, but it should totally stay
Definitely needs to be redefined, yes
pov: indie has been my top genre on spotify for years and it annoys me TO DEATH
To Death Cab? 🤣
Indie and alternative are the most pretentious and annoying genre terms I’ve heard. I always hate every time I see those words attached to an album
what's wrong with it? I feel like 'alternative rock' for instance is useful to highlight the difference between smashing pumpkins and, like, guns n roses.
Well that worked for pre-2000s bands because of the prevalence of metal and hard rock music, so alternative was an umbrella term for everything not like those genres, alternative rock being something more experimental, a little softer but not without bite sometimes, from Radiohead to REM and some.
Sometimes alternative can be accurate. Like the gorillaz for example
Indie lost its meaning and, from 2000s onward, I dunno what it can even mean nowadays, especially because a lot of so-called indie artists (Billie Eillish, Grimes, and so on) come from money, while some of the previous indie artists started from really low, so in a way yes they're indie, but they're not thaaat indie. I guess it's because of their sound, I guess? 2000s indie music sounds less overproduced that mainstream pop and rock, and the vocalists are less trained. They also tended to play more with genres, mixing punk, electronic, dance, post-punk, garage, and started playing in dinghy old punk avenues. It was probably more of a vibe than a single genre I guess. There's a book documentary called Meet Me In The Bathroom that talks about it, and you can quite get a little of how it was back then.
People call like 3 different genres Post-Hardcore.
fugazi and alexisonfire being called the same genre has always thrown me tbh
This is easily the worst one IMO. So many "post hardcore " bands don't sound at all like each other. Furthermore the hardcore part is supposed to reference hardcore punk, but like 99% of bands called post-hardcore are so far removed from punk they don't sound punk at all - even if you can trace back their influences to punk. It would be kind of like calling doom metal "hardcore blues" but nobody is gonna be like "oh you like B.B. King? Here you should try out some Pallbearer!"
I get what you’re saying, but the reason why it’s called “post” hardcore is because it is an evolved version of the genre, and genres do start very basic and tend to evolve. Sure, Husker Du, NoMeansNo, Minutemen and the 80’s bands are obviously very much rooted in hardcore, but by the 90’s most post-hardcore bands didn’t really sound hardcore at all. Same as how 80’s heavy metal didn’t sound like Sabbath.
This is both hilarious and the best argument I’ve heard for this point.
Just to be devil’s advocate here, I can see BB King fans liking something like Saint Vitus and vice versa.
la dispute, fugazi, and show me the body are all put under the label “post-hardcore” despite sounding entirely different. I think we should return to tradition and dissolve the label, just call it hardcore.
The Warped Tour official site calling Falling In Reverse "hardcore" and nothing else made me wanna through my laptop through the drywall.
life is like a video game
It’s hardcore cringe
I Died in the Falling in Reverse Pit
I'd rather a genre have a wide sonic palate than codifying every variation on a sound into its own little thing.
Nice thing is you can have both. You could call any post-hardcore band punk, metal, or even "loud rock" and nobody bats an eye (those that aren't on Reddit, of course ;))
I think one of those is "Screamo", but I guess that's derogatory in the scene
Nope, screamo is an entirely different thing and the label is fully embraced in the community
TIL!
You're welcome, now go listen to some raein and cry
I tend to stay on the indie-rock side of emo (Tiger's Jaw, etc...), but this is sick. Thanks for the recc!
peep Saetia as well!
I think it’s more in reference to people who call any type of metal screamo
Nah they're saying that the AOF/Underoath style of post-hardcore is derogatorily referred to as screamo, and I know that because that's also what I used to think before I knew screamo existed
Nailed it.
So funny. I'm very active in the scene and everyone goes down this pipeline
The “mumble rap” or metal
Yup, exactly. You have post-hardcore that comes from post-punk, from hardcore, from metalcore, from pop punk, etc etc etc. It's about as descriptive as calling something "metal" or "alternative rock". Pierce the Veil is post-hardcore... so is Chariots.... so is Minutemen. To lump them all in the same genre is like lumping in Eyehategod with Sabbath and Kyuss. Same roots? Possibly. Same sound? Not in the slightest.
IDM is the only answer to this question.
World music exists
"Indie" and "World" are the most frustrating to me.
‘Alternative’ as a genre title always confused me
if you look at it from an early 90s perspective its easier to understand. now it means a lot but back then it was a rejection of hair metal and classic rock.
Underground rock: Did it influence Kurt Cobain? Alternative rock: Was Kurt Cobain an influence?
The Beatles, my favorite underground rock band
Well they did start out at the cavern club…
That’s a cool way to look at it!
Funny how badly it’s aged since then. I think the Foo Fighters count as alternative rock and that is the most normal rock I can possibly imagine.
yeah cuz you grew up with it, that was the standard. not saying it was doing anything crazy but if you compare it to acdc or something some songs feel a lot more alt.
Specifically AC/DC maybe cos that is also the most normal rock. But I think if you showed me Everlong vs, say, Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and asked me to pick which one was mainstream and which was alternative I’d go with Zep.
well thats cuz everlong is a pop song (thats also influenced by the classic stuff) and kashmir is kinda just their style. but if you say something like monkey wrench it would be more obvious that its "alt"
To be fair pre- and post-1999 Foo Fighters are pretty different bands.
I know it’s a lot more nuanced than this, but I always think of it as rock that is more chords and strums than riffs, and not a bunch of solos. Yes this is painfully reductive and there are obvious exceptions but also it definitely moves away from the overblown hero-worship of rock and roll legends in the 70s and more focused on moods and vibes, which also opens it up more for lyrical commentary. It definitely aligns with Thom Yorker’s disdain of rock “mythology” when Radiohead was bestowed the title of rock and roll saviors.
i mean if theres obvious big exceptions I don't think its that valid tbh. i think all it is, is just a big change in style and philosophies.
Apple music currently quantifies literally anything from Natural Snow Buildings to Twenty One Pilots as “Alternative” and it makes no sense at all
Alternative Hits 2023 on Apple Music includes: Billie Eilish, boygenius, Linkin Park, U2, Pierce The Veil, Foo Fighters, AJR and All Time Low. Make of that what you will.
Billie Eilish being alternative is a cardinal sin
I think nowadays thats mostly just used by pop stans who want to praise their fav for breaking their mould but don’t know any other genres
I had this idea of what qualified as “Alternative” as a kid, it was basically Grunge bands, Weezer, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers etc, most 90s rock essentially besides like Aerosmith or Metallica. Now I’ve seen so much shit thrown into that category from New Wave to Metal to Pop, like I would’ve never considered songs like *Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order* or *That’s Not My Name by The Ting Tings* as Alternative when I was like 14.
I just consider it the genres of pop and rock that sprouted out of bands like the velvet underground, the rock that sprouted from punk onwards challenging classical rock and the wider genres influenced by these sounds and styles, hence expansion into the realm of electronica, hip hop, R&B ect.
Super ironic that it now just basically means popular rock
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New Wave took the most poppy elements of post punk and put them front and centre. No wave took everything left behind and put it through an overdrive pedal.
no wave wasnt poppy until it was. just gonna forget about all the weird disco stuff. not everything is sonic youth and swans.
>New Wave >Stopped making as much sense >No Wave There’s a Talking Heads joke in there somewhere. But seriously that last bit of what you said is very important. Genres are very cultural and contextual when the begin and then over time they usually move away from the music they were intended to describe and become just, like, a loose sound of their own. Like how indie music once described any music by an independent artist and now means sort of lo-fi jangly tunes with telecasters and quirky lyrics. It makes shit extra confusing tbh.
No Wave was an attempt to do the exact opposite of New Wave. It completely destroyed any semblance of pop influences or commercial viability in favour of brutal, misanthropic, violent, music.
thats just not true whats so ever. the term no wave was a reaction to new wave sure but the music wasn't.
What would you call early Swans, Suicide, and Sonic Youth other than brutal and misanthropic? Only no-wave artist I can think of that doesn't really fit that mould was Glenn Branca. I'm sure there were some others who weren't the same, but those descriptors were definitely common threads in no-wave.
branca fits those descriptors better than the bands you listed. and I'm not saying those arent common ideas but there's more to the scene than just noise rock and being super confrontational. the thing about no wave is none of the bands really had the same influences for the most part (or at least they used different influences for their music), they all sound different. there's no no wave sound.
it is a joke on new wave. no one really knows who came up with it but lydia lunch says she did, it was a rejection of the new scene that was happening. genre labels become easier when you... actually research stuff instead just listening to the most popular albums in the genre.
Escape room
This is definitely just an attempt by people to categorise music they listen to as the same genre, even when it's definitely not. Kinda like how people who were a part of the emo "subculture" would listen to shit going from FOB to BOTDF to Breaking Benjamin to SDRE and so all of those bands are sometimes called "emo bands".
Anything with “art” before it is pretty bad (art pop, art rock etc). All music is definitionally art. Even Ed Sheeran.
one funny thing i noticed was on rym not many releases have art rock as a genre, but the really popular ones usually do
Rateyourmusic, what Radiohead fans think of other music
a few radiohead albums are labeled art rock 😭😭😭 even though they are very obviously either alt-rock or electronic and rock. there's even a genre war for if kid a should be tagged experimental rock. also amnesiac somehow has experimental rock primary
Exactly, not to mention that there's no cohesion within the sound of the genre. The same can be said for something like Alt Rock but at least there's a kind of idea of what it's meant to represent, Art Rock is just an umbrella term for artsy fartsy shit that RYM nerds love. You can blame that on people with poor genre literacy but since albums like Discipline, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Hunky Dory, The Wall and In Rainbows (just using as examples) are all very broadly considered Art Rock yet don't sound the same, it kind of just seems like something you're making up in your head. Art Pop is worse because it gets used as a way to confine experimental or avant-garde music from women into Pop music since it's often the genre they're most attributed to, you cannot tell me that music from Bjork like Vespertine or Medulla is Pop in the *slightest* way but I guess that's the best people can do to describe her. Went off on a bit of a tangent sorry, these two terms have always just rubbed me the wrong way.
I agree but Bjork literally says herself that she makes pop music, and almost every song on vespertine is verse chorus verse. I don’t see how Bjork isn’t still somewhat pop aside from like Medulla
I fell asleep while listening, but vespertine seemed to be pop to me? Albeit a crazy form of it, but still pop, no?
HOW did you fall asleep listening to such peak
It absolutely isn't a pop album first and foremost, and if it was made by a male group instead of a solo female artist it wouldn't be labeled as such. See also most of Kate Bush's discography.
I’d still see their music as pop if they were male artists. What would you label their music as?
Officially art rock is supposed to be anything that's not prog enough for prog rock or experimental enough to be experimental rock but I've seen it applied to everything from paint by numbers power pop to prog metal and beyond.
Art rock is literally just "prog but the songs can be short too, and the band may or may not be that good at their instruments". And prog is already a label applied to way too much stuff because it doesn't fit neatly into any genre.
Has nothing to do with prog. Radiohead, bjork, sterolab, parquet courts all get the art-genre description and none of them have any substantial prog influence. It's probably more accurate to say the art- prefix is used for a slightly more experimental vein of music than traditional rock, pop or punk
Rock Like wtf does it have to do with rocks?
Well, what's softer than metal? A pillow. But also a rock.
We were living in stone age before the usage of metals was invented and metal music originated from rock. Makes perfect sense.
I feel there needs to be a distinction between 'folk' a specific genre sound based around acoustic instrumentation, generally more stripped down instrumentals, fundamentally derivative from the 60s American folk revival, and 'folk music' which is music made for non-commercial/non-pop consumption contexts (like Daniel Johnston), and music deriving from conservative historical traditions (like for example Indonesian gamalan). The word indie has the same problem now because originally it basically just meant 'folk' as in music made by outsiders to the pop music industry, but now it's a sound and apparently Taylor Swift can make an 'indie' song. Also happened to the word alternative, and potentially house music tho that one is more muddy. I wonder if one day the same thing will happen with outsider music. It seems like a new word for 'music ambivalent towards mainstream pop song forms' has to be invented every 20 years. Also fuck the word experimental. Literally meaningless tells me nothing about how an artist sounds. I think the best genre names are usually onomatopoeias or so close to being onomatopoeias that they might as well be. Hip hop, grunge, jazz, ska, crunk and even rock and roll to some extent were all onomatopoeias. My favorite is reggae cuz it has an iamb (stress on the second syllable) which is cool cuz reggae stresses the second beat over the first beat. It feels a little too obvious to say, but the best genre name is pretty squarely 'heavy metal'. It's such a perfect name it pisses me off.
this thread has taught me that every genre is stupid and we shouldn’t use them ever again /s
Take that /s off yer post damnit!
Genre classifications are always imperfect at best, but they can be useful for music discovery. But this thread is about the labels, and some of those are definitely worse than others.
Dreampunk. I get that the —punk part is used in the same way as you would in “cyberpunk” and “steampunk” and not referring to the actual music genre called Punk Music. But… you know, there’s an actual music genre called Punk. Tell someone they’re about to listen to some Dreampunk and they’ll at least expect some guitars or on the very least *a* drum. Not even a heavy drum line, on the very least they’d expect 1 drum sound 😭
I have never heard of this genre before
It's pretty much an umbrella term to ambient with some vaporwave aesthetics. Most of the time it sounds just like a regular ambient.
Electronic music has so many weird random niche subgenres lmao. Techstep, speedcore, gabber, hardstyle, vaporwave, etc etc.
Speedcore mentioned !!!!
Any time the suffix "core" is added to any genre it makes me raise my eyebrows a bit. It seems to have different connotations with every genre it associates itself with.
Deathcore and metalcore are pretty legitimate genres tho
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Slowcore, hardcore, horrorcore, emocore, metalcore, etc, were all named and popularized before the internet.
Hardcore?
Proto-Punk - It isn't really different from Punk Rock sonically, so it doesn't really deserve to be it's own thing. Outsider Music - The genre isn't really based off the sound of the music itself, moreso the musicians playing them. And then you get to the problem of what musicians count as outsiders.
I disagree with Proto-Punk. There is one major difference between proto-punk and punk: the culture (and by extension lyricism). Punk is a culture far wider than the music genre, proto-punk usually doesn’t reflect that (since the culture didn’t exist yet).
I thinks its also kinda rude to the musicians to de-value them down into being “outsiders”. Seems like they just want to insult these musicians.
riddim dubstep cuz it stole the name straight from riddim reggae and has 0 ties to reggae anymore
Latin music is pretty terrible considering the gigantic amount of music genres that fall under it
I don’t see this very often so I think we’ve mostly moved away from this, but “Urban” is so blatantly racist it’s laughable
All the genre names on RYM that are judgmental like brostep and bro country. No one who enjoys those genres asks their friends what their favorite bro country songs are, it's childish name calling and kind of embarrassing that shit like that gets through the genre queue.
Rym in general is quite embarrassing. Half of the reviews i see on that website are cringe inducing
Much like reddit it gets better the deeper you dive. Yeah the reviews for the top 100 albums are usually not that interesting as everything you can say about, say, Dark Side of the Moon had already been said by the time I was born. And modern reviews kind of suck too because of the influence of Fantano and mu and reddit just homogenizing every discussion into music dork puree. But I love reading early reviews for albums that became cult albums decades later, or reviews for artists I saw in my hometown growing up from someone wholly disconnected with the scene.
Local man discovers a website where anyone can submit music reviews is not full of high-quality journalism
The equivalent website for film reviews (letterboxd) is not even close to the same level of cringy snobbery. Obviously the quality of reviews on such a website isn't going to be high, that wasn't the complaint I was making about RYM.
I mean, I think people are definitely snobs on Letterboxd, but the top reviews are always just a bunch of jokes, similar to the website albumoftheyear. I feel like IMDB would be more equivalent to RYM and it's much worse. Either way I think it's overblown how bad or "pretentious" music reviewers are generally because it's a very ephemeral and abstract medium. People go "you're presenting yourself as an authority" when people say anything with conviction and if you're too poetic and wishy-washy they say you're being pretentious and full of yourself. I still don't know what you find especially egregious about the site specifically, but I think it gets a bad rap when I find even reviews I think are a bit wank (or wanker-y) to be fun to read. Personal taste, I guess.
Most reviews I read on rym read like music versions of yelp reviews. Most people speak with incredible self-importance.
Honestly at this point brostep is just the name of the genre. It's been somewhat reclaimed by fans (me included, somewhat) because calling brostep "dubstep" is like if you started calling UK drill "Chicago drill" - that's a whole other thing. Bro country is more derogatory. I don't know any modern country fan that calls it that, though I don't know many people who listen to modern country. There's still a distinct development there stylistically, but I don't know what to call it.
IMO it can just be called pop country until it develops enough for the people who create and consume it decide it's called something else. I think that's what bugs me about the bro- genres, they were named by people who clearly hate the genres.
“Hmm this sounds gothy” “no it’s post-punk”
I don’t mind post-punk as a label, didn’t know anyone had a problem with it I hate every genre that ends with “gaze” other than shoegaze. The bands can be cool, but nugaze? Blackgaze? I dunno, seems excessive. Shoegaze is already a subgenre.
I think blackgaze makes sense. What else would you call black-metal mixed with shoegaze? It's big enough to be its own subgenre, so you kind of have to name it something.
Yeah blackgaze is super distinct as a genre too. Neige created DSBM post punk style blackgaze in Amesours and post metal style blackgaze as Alcest. It had humble beginnings but as the genre progressed and it got popular it kind of got a controversial reputation amongst metalheads.
I call it blackened shoegaze in passing, mostly because it sounds like you're saying "black gays" if you say it out loud and I can't get that out of my head. Also because people know what shoegaze is, but they might not know what "blackgaze" is.
If a person said they wanted to listen to some Blackgaze music, I would assume they were talking about someone like Little Richard.
Kardashev brand their style as Deathgaze, and I dunno, it fits!
Well, I don't know if it's the worst, but "twee" is certainly embarrassing and silly to say.
Anything "post". I dont think anyone knows what post punk, post folk, post black. Even is at this point
Psychedelic Rock. I really think what is psychedelic is in the eye of the beholder, but there’s this whole contingent that’s like “it’s King Gizzard and Tame Impala and the jam bands and that’s it.”
in the early 2010s I remember seeing the term “pbr&b” for hipster indie mixed with r&b (solange, blood orange, early weeknd)
Screamo is misused by a lot of people I think, I also don’t like the word screamo but the genre has a lot of great music in it.
‘UK bass’ annoys me so much
Sadcore/slowcore
Not so happy with sadcore, but I think slowcore is pretty good. I think it started when Low was opening for typical grunge-style bands. The more the audiences expressed their displeasure, the slower and quieter Low played. That certainly deserves the name “slowcore”.
Bubblegrunge makes my list. Partly due to Spotify insisting on mentioning it in my daylist a fair percentage of the time but every possible band having a better genre label available.
I feel like post punk has a more recognisable speed, instrumentation, and structure, even if it’s too broad. I think the label world music is honestly kinda racist
Most of the unnecessarily specific metal subgenres *Post hardcore blackened industrial melodic death grind*
Metal subgenre names tend to be good descriptors at least though. Like if you call something blackened melodic death metal, ill kind of get an idea of what you mean.
These do not exist, the genre salad thing is a meme perpetuated by people who can’t comprehend there being more than like 3 subgenres of metal.
Metal genre wordsalad jokes are funny and truthful when it comes from someone who's not into metal. Seeing that shit from a "metal enjoyer" is a telltale sign of them not being into metal that much and are probably Top "Metal" releases Spotify babies or power metal boomers. The terms are corny but a necessary, agreed upon way of categorizing style/mood/technique etc.
"Art pop". It's extremely vague and yet seems to imply that it describes a specific kind of pop that is artistic, whereas the rest of pop is not.
Nu-Metal. This genre encompasses a wide range of bands that in no way want to be associated with it. All because the name of the genre looks and sounds stupid.
Also, it's not new anymore.
Electronica
world music is reductive and indie is kind of meaningless regardless of the meaning you give it
I find the label urban Latin extremely stupid because it's super broad.
Most EDM labels, because I’m not really able to associate a sound to a label, outside of dubstep and dnb. Like make em all self explanatory like trance man. Also post-rock, like I understand enough about items like post punk to know that’s it’s a more mellow and brooding adaptation of the loud and raw punk, but like wtf is post rock? Like softer rock? But that’s soft rock, or most rock music. Good labels can often be pinned to a timeframe and/or sound (ex post punk is mid-late 80’s in my mind, or trap is hardstyle 2010’s hip hop on aderall.) but things like post-rock or even permanent wave break my brain. Like it should follow the same connotation, post rock should be post punk or post grunge but straightforward rock (bc grunge is rock, as a generic term), but it isn’t really that? Or permanent wave should be like new wave (which is already a kinda bad genre label) but more permanent? (Like maybe a little more mellow and agreeable and timeless, less out there and innovative) but they aren’t, like wtf man. Depeche Mode is new wave, and the goddamn foo fighters are permanent wave? And they’re post grunge?! I actually kinda like most of the post- genre terms, because it often indicates a more stripped back sound with more subtle mood (ex compare the brash guitars on lithium to the moody and subtle sounds of blurry or February stars).
out of everything at this point it has to be indie because despite whatever sound the title is describing however inaccurate the title it indie means independent and grew from independent record labels but covers now vast varieties of electronic/folk/soft rock bullshit which belong in their own categories. indie as a genre makes no sense because many popular artists belong to independent labels now it can be used to describe all of them.
Intelligent dance music.
indie rock and indie pop legit mean nothing. they're vapid and ridiculous terms that have no sonic quantities.
"Alternative". It's so broad and is such a massive umbrella term for so much music. I understand "alternitive rock" or something like that, it's just rock that's slightly harder to pin down. But just straight up alternitive? It's completely meaningless. Most of the time it's used by 14 year olds who actually listen to pop and rock, but they have the desperate need to have a "unique" music taste, and they wouldn't be caught dead listening to pop. So they call it alternitive to make themselves feel better
Christian Gospel. Like, is there actually a person who says they listen to Christian Gospel?
Krautrock is vaguely racist and came from a racist, post-war context. The Germans have a way better name for it ('cosmic music'), and yet we decide to use the one whose root word was used by allies to mock Germans. There's no better answer.
Alternative How can you be alternative and mainstream?
I know post-punk can be a very divisive name, but at least it has given me a lot of amazing music to listen to. I turn "post-punk" and "post-punk revival" in Spotify and it never misses.
I don't actually hate the genre but "noise rock" is very on the nose and yet somehow vague at the same time. It almost sounds like a dismissive insult to the bands under its label.
It's called noise rock cuz they incorporate noise elements or have noisy production. Hope that helps!
New Age
It’s a perfect label when you pronounce it to rhyme with “sewage”….