escape room essentials

what are the essential escape room tracks, albums, artists? is there an emerging canon? what, if any, pre-spotify music also qualifies?

https://miro.medium.com/max/2444/1*hrksxgENgGnb8TWE2wYH9w.png

Bands

this is still the absolutely most confusing 'genre' name from spotify/everynoise and it doesn't seem to particularly mean much except music that indie fans like that's on the more pop/r&b/rap/electronic side of things?

final jeopardy song
sonic 1 underwater countdown song

What a stupid term. I guess I like a bit of the music which falls under it though - the recent Sevdaliza album's got some great moments.

Spotify reported that this was my third favourite genre in 2020. I giggled a little. Kinda wonder how many Spotify users (amongst those who don't completely spurn pop music, at least) HAVEN'T listened to a few acts in that diagram...

I guess, for better or worse, such is the power of Spotify that one employee makes up a genre name for a nebulous bunch of artists and it gets pushed out to the world.

I mean, thinking about it, I guess this isn't terribly different from, say, one random British music rag writer from the '80s or '90s coining a new genre name, but given the overall distrust and skepticism about Spotify in general, this one feels particularly "forced" imo.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Glenn McDonald has too much power.

Is this the new term for "backpacker undie"?

Just noticed that the chart linked in the first reply includes Yung Humma of "Lemme Smang On It" fame so obviously that gets my vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE0m2XkaJaU

for the record, this is the genesis of the term, according to a recent Fader article (I know I can't be the only one googling to learn more this week):

Back when the genre first surfaced in 2016, Glenn McDonald, a data alchemist at Spotify, revealed that he actually named the genre himself.

"I made up the name myself, because I couldn’t figure out any existing one to apply. The vibe is kind of an underground-trap/PC-music/indietronic/activist-hip-hop kind of thing, and I thought of “escape room” both for the sense of escaping from trap, and for the ideas of excitement, puzzle-solving and indoorness implied by the actual physical escape-room phenomenon."

You can ask him about it here.

Until this morning I didn't even know it was him! I didn't even know of the term until I saw it here yesterday and I finally read the article about it this morning.

lol that is awesome

Glenn what’s escape room

I wonder if we say his name again will he pop up a la beetlejuice and claim his moment of glory.
Until this thread I had never heard of the term before.

isn’t this just tumblrcore

I don’t mean that as an insult necessarily

what, if any, pre-spotify music also qualifies?

Spotify can answer this question:

https://open.spotify.com/search/genre%3Aescape-room%20year%3A1860-2006/tracks

so basically just the entire discographies of a dozen or so acts

M.I.A. is the true queen of escape room. simon reynolds btfo