The trouble with genre

This is arising out of many things: Geir's usual nonsense on the Indie pop and Rockism thread; the fact that The Guardian categories today's Mogwai review as an 'electronic' review; and the fact that, for practical reasons, I've blitzed away my stupid genre tags in iTunes, and want help knowing what, say, Blur ought to be, and defining tactics for dealing with genre in a practical and pragmatic manner as a search tool in music databases.

Should each artist have a single genre? Should their genre change according to album? What about song-by-song genres? To The End and Song 2 are arguably not the same genre, but they're by the same band, how does one deal with that? If you were to play music from your iPod by genre, would you want the two of them to be in the same genre grouping?

How many genres is it useful to have? As few as possible, or as many as possible?

Why don't we do this for any other genre? Why are we so obsessed with genres?

I think you need some fresh air.

They haven't been too good since Talkie Walkie.

One new genre that seems to have sprung into recent being, i.e. I've just made it up: Mogwai joins the Streets in the genre of musicians I used to like who have new albums out and (a) I didn't know and (b) I don't particularly care.

Pocket Symphony was pretty good.

A bit "same old same old" for me, I'm afraid.

Are Elbow and Embrace the same genre? Are Snow Patrol? Coldplay? What genre are they in relation to Blur, or Oasis? Are they all Britpop, or is Britpop something time-specific? Are Radiohead Britpop with The Bends and something else with OK Computer and something else again with Kid A? Are Wilco the same genre as Spoon, or Pearl Jam, or The Shins? Are Talk Talk different genres at different stages of their career? Is Caribou the same genre as Orbital? Are Orbital the same genre as Prodigy? Where does Fennesz fit? What about N*E*R*D? Are they the same as Missy Elliott? The same as Cannibal Ox? Do I want an Aaliyah tune and a Wu-Tang tune coming up on the same playlist that's determined by genre?

Are MBV the same genre as Asobi Seksu? Am I lucky that I've not got Carnival Of Light, and thus Ride, to me, are the same genre as MBV?

Who would have foreseen that Janet Jackson would have been pioneer of the Oi! revival?

How do you deal with genre from a historical perspective? What genre are The Hollies? The Byrds? Led Zep?

Genre is both a useful shorthand and a blunt instrument, a universal signifier and a personal foible. I obsessively genre tag in Itunes - I see it as a way of organising large-scale playlists, "ooh today I want to listen to indie-rock" - but lots of my decisions are unavoidably based around my collection, like I half about half a dozen different genre tags for various electronic musics, but only one for hip-hop. And yet almost 10% of my collection is just "pop".

Lots of your problems above would go away if one could tag songs with multiple genres.

like I half have

What genre are The Hollies? The Byrds? Led Zep?

"Classic Rock", in my library.

I try to keep my genre tags in iTunes as broad as possible, then make smart playlists based on them narrowed down according to song rating, album rating and year.

Loose & halfbaked thoughts which will probably get us not very much further at all:

1. Genre does not actually exist. That is, it is not a property of a piece of music or an artist (if Alice Cooper plays "Für Elise" on a piano, it does not become Rock).

2. Genre is a property listeners & creators (etc) assign to pieces on music for a variety of reasons.

3. The genre assigned by a particular listener or creator (etc) to a particular piece of music is a function of the *use* to which the assignant will put his/her categorization.

4a. Example uses of genre for listeners:
-- Easy retrieval (cataloguing & sorting)
-- Playlist generation
-- Mnemonic device
-- Suggestions to others
-- Framing the music in a larger context & history to make sense of and talk about it (e.g. for critics)

4b. Example uses of genre for creators:
-- Helping creation by imposing constraints
-- Framing one's work in a larger context & history for inspiration
-- Framing one's work in a larger context & history in order to pitch oneself to media & public

4c. Example uses of genre for (etc):
-- Cataloguing, categorization, sorting (a "regular" record shop might be ok with putting all "classical" into a single genre, a specialist shop would probably split it into "early", "modern", "chamber" etc)
-- Making handwavy sweeping remarks about music ("hiphop nowadays is only about bitches and cash")

5. So, er, it varies, and the use of genre is the source of genre.

6. Bear with me, I'm not a philosopher or anything.

"Genre" is a man-made concept obv that people become scared of because it appears to take on a life of its own and become objective, something "out there" rather than simply a set of musical principles we discern in a bunch of records.

The above isn't particularly unusual though. Defining "rock" as a genre is not really qualitatively harder than defining US "Republicanism" as a set of political beliefs, because both are porous and internally contradictory.

The mistake people make is to assume that genre is (or should be) more Aristotelian in structure than it is; really though any particular "genre" is made up of a whole bunch of floating signifiers that are a lot less hierarchically ordered than many music critics presuppose.

The fuzziness of genre doesn't somehow cancel out its existence, just as Republicanism exists regardless of the impossibility of exhaustively defining it.

Those are all very good, salient points, anatol, but WHAT GENRE DO I PUT BLUR AS?

WELL HOW WILL YOU BE USING YOUR BLUR CATEGORIZATION?? :P

(ftr, I am hopeless at genring my tracks myself. Blur would probably simply go into "Pop", as would lots of things quite dissimilar to it.)

Should each artist have a single genre?

Not neccessarily. Plus the majority of acts are more than just one genre.

Should their genre change according to album?

Again not necessarily.

What about song-by-song genres?

They exist.

To The End and Song 2 are arguably not the same genre, but they're by the same band, how does one deal with that?

In the case of Blur I would say they went through a huge genre change at that time, which is something that always happens with bands. IMO they should have continued with the genres they were part of in 1995, but they chose not to.

If you were to play music from your iPod by genre, would you want the two of them to be in the same genre grouping?

I would say both could be classified as "indie/alternative", even though they are very different from each other.

Blur are either indie pop, Britpop or indie rock, depending on the album.

Something that OFTEN happens with bands, I mean.

Like, Status Quo change genre around 1970 but after that they have never change genre again. :)

Blur are either indie pop, Britpop or indie rock, depending on the album.

I would say their last two albums aren't really either. "19" is postrock, kind of, while "Think Tank" is... uhm... hard to categorize at all....

Britpop or indie. I sometimes tag individual tracks differently but I wouldn't bother with "Song 2".

If you wanna get really fancy then you have to drag in playlists - e.g. make a smart playlist for "indie" and "britpop". Or, tag "Song 2" as "indie;britpop;rock" and make playlists that split out the individual genres.

^^^ in fact that latter idea is totally the way forward and i'm totally gonna do it right now.

"Song 2" should be tagged as grunge.

Or just as "shit" plain and simple.

"Genre" is a man-made concept obv that people become scared of because it appears to take on a life of its own and become objective, something "out there" rather than simply a set of musical principles we discern in a bunch of records.

ehhhh.... it's kind of an industrial mode of production and the entertainment biz too.

Indie pop: Leisure, Blur
Britpop: Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape
Indie rock: 13, Think Tank

Genre tagging individual songs is a waste of time.

Haven't we already had this discussion in a thousand other threads?

ehhhh.... it's kind of an industrial mode of production and the entertainment biz too.

It is both, but usually a different set of genres. Commercial genres are wider, but also more rigid and harder to combine and crossover. Commercial genres are about radio formatting whereas the more interesting kind of genres are about music journalism, musicology or musical history.

Music journalism would certainly benefit from more synths and drum machines (e.g. Simmonds).

And those radio formatting genres tend to become so wide they become meaningless, like almost everything from the early 80s that wasn't either AOR or MOR/easy listening would be lumped as "new wave" by American radio programmers. Particularly if it hailed from other continents than the American one.

Tsk, everybody knows that Blur are "Alternative & Punk"!

As obsessed with MP3 tagging consistency as I am, I made an early decision to ignore Genre tags entirely. Aiming for perfect genre consistency is just chasing rainbows, really.

But if you must, then assign multiple genres in the Comments tag, then use smart playlists with "Genre contains Indie AND Genre contains Electronic" or whatever.

Bah, I meant "Comments contain Indie AND Comments contain Electronic"....

Everything I want to say here has already been said by anatol_merklich and Tim F tbh. My iTunes genre-tagging is for comedy purposes only these days. I still describe bands with rough genre descriptors in order to introduce them to people via a communal understanding of musical method, but my final word is always "listen for yourself".

(continued) ...and then you could assign your own personalised tags according to need, e.g. by assigning moods a la the Allmusic guide: contemplative, motivational, bleak, delicate, sociable etc.

Perhaps genres are of heightened importance in dance music, where there's a desire to demarcate different scenes, and where people who are immersed in one particular scene are in a sense always searching for an ultimate experession of their genre of choice: the "looking for the perfect beat" syndrome.

I stopped reading this after the first Geir post.

This - stereo.

This - CD.

This - Play button.

This - Enjoy.

That's life as I know and understand and use it.

Personally, I see genre as just a handle with which to lift a cup (to borrow a metaphor). It's shorthand to talk about music with other people, or shorthand to think about relationships between songs for yourself. There's no right or wrong genre, since there are no right/wrong conversations about music. There might be more useful or less useful conversations, tho. iTunes sorta exemplifies this. It's less useful to call all music Pop or Rock (because then you'd have thousands of songs in each category and have a hard time sorting through them). It's more useful to have broader categories. It's less useful to have way too specific categories (because then the genres become as numerous as the albums).

But the way you're asking the question is as if genre was some sort of Platonic Form. And you can figure out the RIGHT genre for a given song. You don't really believe that, do you?

(For the record, I put all Blur records on my iTunes under the Britpop genre.)

Genre exists/works on a song by song basis. Why the hell would you want to ascribe a single definitive genre to an artist's entire repertoire. It's ridiculous.

Then again, Muslimgauze, or the Nick Straker Band.

Why the hell would you want to ascribe a single definitive genre to an artist's entire repertoire

Because maybe you just want to be able to find that artist with ease and you associate a particular artist more firmly with one genre than another?

What's wrong with alphabetical order?

On my PC if I have enough worthwhile tracks by the same artist that artist has their own folder (hall of fame type thing). Then there's about 30-40 other folders with titles that are either genre-based (as defined/understood by me) or more vague context that makes sense to me that all other worthwhile tracks go into. Unlike lousy iTunes in MediaMonkey you can view these folders within the app so it's easy to search, organise and place new stuff (create new folders if needed). I could take the songs based on the folders they're in (and maybe then do away with the folders) but can't be bothered yet.

I could take the songs

I could tag the songs rather

Can't you just tag Blur as indie and be done with it?

Why all this talk about tagging Blur? Did they rob a bank or something?

What's wrong with alphabetical order?

When you've got hundreds of albums, alphabetical order is a pain in the ass to scroll through. It's easier to scroll through 20-25 genres, and then 10-30 artists in each genre.

What's wrong with alphabetical order?

Simple example: Alphabetisation by artist (executor) works for popular stuff, but not for classical. Alphabetisation by composer works for classical stuff, but not for pop. Mixing these alphabetisation criteria together feels wrong somehow. Hence a very coarse concept of "genre" (popular vs classical) occurs -- which could actually be said to be *defined* by whether one feels a particular disc should be alphabetised by artist or composer.

My actual CDs are in alphabetical order. And never listened to.

Does anyone use the Grouping field on iTunes? Does anyone even know what it's supposed to be used for?

I actually sort my cds by (loose) genre. it makes for an interesting mental exercise when i'm very bored.

This - stereo.

This - CD.

This - Play button.

This - Enjoy.

That's life as I know and understand and use it.

Unless the act behind the CD is white and/or a Tory voter, that is....

You are incorrect. If the music is sufficiently strong I am inclined to overlook the Rightness tendencies of such popular Conservative entertainers as David Essex and Patti Boulaye.

Where do we put Can?

Krautrock. Where else?

'krautrock' really is silly as a genre. it is a kind of marketing thing i guess. but things like 'new york garage' or 'delta blues' are useful enough.

It is silly because the actual term is way too connected with a nationality (and even a very rude word for it), but it is rather consise in that you know very well at once what kind of genre is associated with it.

If you put Can into the "Wire" or "Dissensus" genre, then it is fitting, given their occasional tendencies to amelodic, rhythm dominate workouts. If Jackie Lebiziet had played more drum Simmonds (e.g. synths) maybe they would have made a record as great as "Ruff Mix."

Where do we put David Essex? Colchester?

I liked the line about Blur robbing the bank.

Indie pop: Leisure, Blur
Britpop: Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape
Indie rock: 13, Think Tank

aaargh, 'Indie pop' traduced again

Britpop is not a genre. It was a movement, or a moment.

'britpop' is more of a genre than 'indie rock'. you have a clearer idea of what it will sound like.

it's like Dubstar yeah

Yes. Britpop was more overtly melodic and more smartly produced. It wanted to make lots of money instead of eating day-old Allinson's crusts in a squat in Sudbury. This is where Guru Josh falls down.

Guru Josh knew when to quit, unlike fookin John Squire

indie rock could mean my bleedin' valentine or, like, something that doesn't sound them.

Joe Pasquale makes a better Seahorse than John Squire ever did.

Anything was better than Chris Helme

i'd use three genres pop/rock, classical and jazz. world music would be in pop/rock. that's it.

actually i am thinking of reorganising my cd racks. right now they are in alphabetical order. i'd like to separate jazz and classical from pop.

spose it depends on context. if i were -- or, really, if you were -- trying to describe a record to a friend, saying "it's pop/rock" would be needlessly obfuscatory.

File it under "all sorts" since that's what we invariably say to everyone at work etc. who asks what music do you like.

FOLK MUSIC
ART MUSIC
POP MUSIC

^ i like it

Calm down man. It's just a way to explain to your friends the jams.

just do it like the record stores do and put all the black people in one section and all the white people in another

...

i'd use three genres pop/rock, classical and jazz. world music would be in pop/rock. that's it.
― alex in mainhattan, Friday, 19 September 2008

wow, this and Hongro on the same thread!

where does hip-hop go in that formulation?

Yes. Britpop was more overtly melodic and more smartly produced. It wanted to make lots of money instead of eating day-old Allinson's crusts in a squat in Sudbury.

Britpop was like 60s psych pop, 70s symphonic rock, the more subtle 70s glam rock and 80s new romantics/synthpop in that it didn't want to choose between commerse and art. It say "Yes, please" to both. Just like The Beatles, Yes, David Bowie and Human League had done previously.

This is a very typical British thing as American acts tend to choose either commerse all the way or uncompromised experimentation.

where does hip-hop go in that formulation?

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, September 19, 2008 8:07 PM

it would go into pop of course.

As a letter to the NME circa 1980 succinctly put it, there are but two genres:

1. Rockin' songs.
2. Smoochy songs.

louis armstrong, "ain't never heard a horse sing a song", etc

as usual, he was wrong

The mistake people make is to assume that genre is (or should be) more Aristotelian in structure than it is;

Still a bit confused about this part (outside of it I think we agree?). Does person saying this (Tim F) actually talk about Platonic stuff (but see caveat 6), or does person actually *mean* Aristotelian (ie he is talking pile of rubbish)?

My actual CDs are in alphabetical order.

I don't believe you blueski. OR DO I?

Bump.

I went very broad with my taxonomy in iTunes and it's essentially useless and also irritating. Should I go back to my album-by-album approach?

like you, i blitzed out all my genres in itunes some time back. i like the idea of repopulating it and using it as a playlist generator, but i have some 10,000 songs in there, so i never get around to it.

I seem to have had a number of genre tags imposed on me on my most recent walkman. I'd initially specifically removed genres so that i didn't get random playlists ghettoising bands together, prefering an across the board selection. Now I'm finding that in atransfer from sonicstage severaln things have picked up random seeming tags.
For example I checked what was polaying yesterday to discover it was Manassas who the player were calling punk. I think Buffalo springfield had something siomilar, not sure3 where the categorisation was generated.

Also because there was a bigger display on this unit I had added genre names of my own device to the selections I had ripped specifically for this device. came up with quite a few. Will remember the later no doubt.

Genre in iTunes has nothing to do with genre in ... the classification of music. It's just a shorthand of "stick these songs together" for creating playlists or more importantly for importing to my iPod.

My tags would probably make no sense to anyone else, but I don't expect anyone else to use them. You can probably figure out what "Big Gay Disco" or "Art School Damaged Glam" is but what you reckon "Barneywaves" or "Limb" is?

The latter is for artists that have multiple moods or even era and I want to pick out only the songs that fit that specific mood. But it grows organically, it's not a strict taxonomy I ever imposed, just stuff that arose as needs be.

I went very broad with my taxonomy in iTunes and it's essentially useless and also irritating. Should I go back to my album-by-album approach?

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 11 April 2012 05:42 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you should conk yourself on the head with a medium-to-large stone and then jump in a swiftly flowing river

I keep my records loosely together in, well, probably feel rather than genre but obviously that's unnamed anyway I don't have a labeller

Music I don't let itunes sort and I have no tags but I sort by year bought (not released) so the 2010 folder is stuff I was playing that was new to me at that time

Mp3 player I only really have new (to me) music on there, it's only a 2gb one

That's sorted in finder not itunes

make it sound more organized than i actually am - basically every 6 months ago downloads folder is kinda big so i just make a new folder in music called music 2011 (or music 2011 part2) and just dump all the most recently bought music in there - intention was just to kinda tidy it up but it works pretty good as a system, when i look at my music it never looks samey and its good for backing up externally etc

does the "genius" feature of itunes make their playlist based on genre tags? i use that sometimes, but my genre tags are all over the place because I never edited them.

lol thomp

i use the genre category to note what label released an album. and it's way less involved and better at creating correlations than any genre tagging scheme you can dream up

ha thats actually quite a good idea dunno why i didnt think of that

Subject: Taxonomy & Universals
Issue: whether genre taxa (prog, kraut, punk pathetique etc.) represent actual existing universals.

In the heyday of taxonomy, systematists expressed a need to "carve music at its joints" in an apparent attempt to discover (rather than construct) the natural categories of living artists. Even today people speak as though entities such as "genres" are real. The nominalist deflates this view of taxonomy by only allowing that individuals exist, rather than universals.

Is there a realist bias in present day taxonomy?

the trouble with John Rah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skG7mtas4io&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL2DCAB67A21672DF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1LbnkllgTg&list=PL2DCAB67A21672DF8