Maligned Genres aka "I like everything except..."

lol one glaring omission:

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/413009/94-7-fresh-fm-promises-todays-best-hits-without-the-rap/

for some reason polka is the one i always think of, and the one that i believe i like the least. it would honestly be awesome to hear some really good polka though

Nu metal because every song is a sadness

showtunes also a glaring omission, rerun it with the missing options imo

xp re: polka, probably some freddy fender tunes that might knock your socks off

tough choice between Nu-metal and landfill indie, went with indie

no "brostep" option :(
though obviously music labelled "brostep" is usually good, not bad.

i don't even know what gabba is, apart from a band that plays abba songs in the style of the ramones.

I can appreciate at least parts of most of these, in fact all of them except electro swing.

Landfill Indie for the inbuilt conservativsm

Oh, good, an excuse to post the greatest music meme ever:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8YleB6WkAA55EW.jpg

i thought 'country' was the default answer for this, but I suppose that's US-centric

a whole lot of different terms for bad EDM

I'm with Captain Haddock on the opera hating

Ditto

If by Country & Western you mean Johnny Cash or Buck Owens, hell yeah count me in. Current bro-country, count me out.

I've seen Brave Combo more times than I can count, and repped for them on many threads. Polka but so much more. Amazing live band.

I've seen Caravan Palace palace several times and they are also amazing live. I don't think I've ever heard another electro-swing band/recording.

I'm too old to tell the difference between any of those dance music genres.

Opera it is. Have never seen a performance, own no recordings.

If by Country & Western you mean Johnny Cash or Buck Owens, hell yeah count me in. Current bro-country, count me out.

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 3:20 PM (forty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

We're still doing this?

I mean, I opened the thread expecting it, but even I was surprised to see "Johnny Cash and Buck Owens" held up as the last great vestige of Country & Western.

it's electro-swing.

to play devil's advocate, conservative landfill indie is something it's sort of okay for a 14 year old clueless kid to enjoy, as they'll likely grow out of it.

there is no growing out of electro-swing - it is exclusively for conservative adult estate agents.

picked electro-swing with zero hesitation

I love swing music and I love electronic dance music, but almost all of the 'electro-swing' I've heard has been terrible for reasons that I can't precisely articulate.

Happy Hardcore & Gabba are two cheeks of the same arse. How does one choose?

Write-in vote for Tamborazo.

electro swing it has all the fake olde timey sound processing that swing doesn't have, plus none of the queer/druggy/hedonistic context of electro

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-swvIGQmNCFQ/Tw0JjG7MVFI/AAAAAAAAAMY/nP52LQOrmwE/s1600/both_kinds.jpg

"We've got both kinds of music here. We've got Happy Hardcore and Gabba."

electro swing sound campy af, I’m picturing the singer taco meets starlight express or something

The idea of it sounds campy, I’ve never actually heard any I don’t think

was talking bout wardrobe not the actual music in any case

"We No Speak Americano" was probably most Americans' point of entry for electro-swing.

(...which I always thought of it like Gotan Project covering "Crazy Frog".)

Electro swing in a walk. I thought it was a myth until a dad I met at a party dm'ed me about his electro swing project.

Electro Swing is campy in a "circus crusties doing ra-ta dancing at the festival tent" kind of way. It probably does have a sort of queer following

I don't think I really even know what polka sounds like? Maybe it's more popular in the States? Is it current?

Gabba and happy hardcore are different imo

voted indie landfill in the absence of "ironic covers" and "whatever the music I have to endure during current tv commercials is called"

I think I'm going to go for the DnB option. I don't mind a bit of jungle but I hear so much generic DnB these days, it drives me nuts

'Indie landfill' seems like a loaded description compared to the others

voted electro swing

"landfill" is actually a corruption of "ladfail"

it's definitely electro-swing, that might just be completely irredeemable

there is no growing out of electro-swing - it is exclusively for conservative adult estate agents.

you forgot 'nerds who otherwise only listen to game soundtracks'

I don't think I really even know what polka sounds like? Maybe it's more popular in the States? Is it current?

Current to early to mid-19th century, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austrian Empire

I think Steve Lamacq tried to reclaim the term "indie Landfill" and make it cool. It didn't work

If polkas are good enough for Planxty they're good enough for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Blc3k16rE

when I was making mixes for the early 1900s I was still able to listen to every available cylinder or disc for a particular year, there would be around 1000 I could get hold of, around 50% would be what I would call landfill opera. just random selections, indifferently sung, badly recorded. I don't really like opera in any case, but think I found a few good records even from these years, maybe one in a hundred I would rate more than 7/10

Write in vote for "Noise".

Nu Metal is different from the metal that sounds like Cookie Monster in a blender, right?

If so, I'll write in Cookie Monster.

"We've got both kinds of music here. We've got Happy Hardcore and Gabba."

Thanks for the best laugh I've had today.

DTO ftw

While they carry the banner of “American-Slovenian” style polka and waltzes, the Dick Tady Orchestra's musical talents are not limited to polka music. They also play excellent Croatian-Dalmation, German, Serbian and Swiss arrangements, specializing in tremendous sounding four-part vocal harmonies, not to be matched anywhere in the polka industry.

I love a few of these and at the very least like examples of the others (although I dunno what backpacker hop is)

I wondered about that, especially in the UK.

Country & Western was huge in Scotland up until the 90s. It was a bit of an oldies as in over 30s thing (right up to great granny age) but basically anyone born before 1985 grew up with cowboy films on TV.

We also had to put up with shit like this tv show 'Thingummyjig' primetime on a friday in the late 70s and throughout the 80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HpNaY1G5tI

Yeah my dad's Scottish and I think country / cowboy movies was a bit of a big thing in his childhood

I don’t even believe electro swing is a real thing

It's real and it's coming for you

It’s the worst. I’d guess the US equivalent of the largely ex public school, slumming it all summer on the festival circuit electro-swing types is the tech bro / VC types that have supposedly infiltrated Burning Man?

Country & Western was huge in Scotland up until the 90s.

Same in Ireland too I believe. I mean, when you think about it, it makes sense given the origins of country music. There's a lot of (or there used to be a lot of) homegrown Irish and Scottish country artists, which definitely does not seem to be a thing in England.

The TV show Hamish MacBeth used to use bluegrass music.

still big particularly on the west coast of scotland. glasgow even has it's own grand ole opry - http://www.glasgowsgrandoleopry.co.uk/

I finally got around to skimming through an electro swing mix, and it is indeed extremely corny music. It's hard for me to imagine that it's gone far beyond fad status but maybe there are tons of electro swing true believers.

this lot seem quite popular - https://www.caravanpalace.com

they will of course one day end up in the hague, on trial for crimes against music.

Country was an important thing in Wales as well. And as far as I can tell a lot of the English North.

Country was virtually non-existent in Brookline, Massachusetts, as far as I can remember.

We had tons of country in Colorado, but in high school in particular there was a huge "us vs. them" divide between those who loved country (and emulated or aped the cowboy look) and those who did not.

my second ever big concert was a garth brooks / martina mcbride arena show. i was 12. it was very entertaining.

(this was reno nv and most of the radio stations in town were country, so it was everywhere)

We used to call 'em shit-kickers.

goat ropers.

what they do!

in Indiana the punk-hating rednecks were called "grits"

Couple things I've thought about since starting this thread:

1. Often when people think of a genre they're not especially familiar or fond of, they'll think of an imaginary low common denominator within that style. So if I tell a friend I like "indie music", they'll imagine some sort of midway point between Oasis and the Kooks - a muddy, mid-tempo dirge of guitars played by po-faced white boys singing variably cheery or dreary songs about the weather - they won't think of Big Thief or Parquet Courts or Golden Teacher etc.
When I tell another friend I like techno, they'll either imagine some faceless DJ playing an endlessly repetitive booming noise, or think of something that isn't techno at all, say "Encore Une Fois" by Sash!
When I say I like Country, they might think of linedancing music or some mid-80s AOR country rock or "That Don't Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain.

2. There are styles out there where artistry is ulterior to the general fun and theatre of the thing. Think about the endless Donk nights that are springing up all over the place. DJs with joke names like Dairylea Donkers, Count Donkula, Oxford English Donktionary (I made that last one up).
These are enormously popular with people who just want to dress in garish clothes and listen to daft, fast music. You're there to have fun and bounce around to nightcore and hard house versions of pop songs. It's not meant to be taken seriously.
And I think that's more-or-less the idea with things like Electro-Swing - it serves more as a "functional" soundtrack, possibly for people who aren't really serious music fans but just enjoy costume dress-up and play-acting. Again, it's hard for me to imagine someone being really deeply into electro-swing, but maybe they are?

i don't know, some of the most interesting and creative music ever made has been "functional" or "workmanlike", and artistes with lofty airs make dreary shit all the time. i don't think this is a useful distinction in the way you're applying it.

Yeah, but it's not functional in the same way as, say early Chicago footwork. It really is the soundtrack for people who probably don't care about the music to get dolled up and go for a campy night out to. Whether it's good or interesting or not is beside the point - I'm not defending it

they won't think of Big Thief or Parquet Courts or Golden Teacher etc.

i guess it comes down to what is indie? but to me there is literally zero indie-ness to someone like Golden Teacher. in fact i'd describe them as in opposition to indie

okay, Golden Teacher is strongly pushing it

I was trying to think of a British indie band I like from recent years and coming up thumbs

sorry to be so pedantic. i do get the point you were making though.

As someone whose musical taste was heavily influenced by my two older sisters and their milieu of friends, when I witnessed music snobbery, it was nearly always from fellow dudes my age who would dismiss any genre that had too high a % of women fans. Hell, it would even serve as justification for hating songs by bands they otherwise liked.

As mentioned in this thread, a similar snobbery was closely echoed towards genres/artists who appealed to too many redneck-leaning bro-types. However, the dude-heavy music consensus, in my eyes anyway, seemed more dismissive towards the preferences of women than those of the bros - it was a convenient method for seemingly "progressive" guys to launder their misogyny and homophobia via pop culture preferences. It's great that such attitudes are now viewed as antiquated and outre, however I fear that we men we'll just find more gamergates and other areas of society to express those toxic, retrograde ideas.

Yeah, there are a lot of hard/soft divides in genres that tend to end up with music women prefer being dismissed by male fans—hair metal vs. thrash, crossover rap vs. boom bap, countrypolitan vs. honky tonk, etc.

...which always struck me as really odd when I was young, because (as a straight dude) I vastly much rather go to a show that had women at it than a sausagefest.

Bands that take a popularizing turn at some point in their careers (Genesis being the ur-example) have been known to reflect on this. "Dude, there are GIRLS in the audience! Awesome!"

That's a verbatim Tony Banks quote!

Indeed. Recently on Reddit there was a goofy fantasy thread about whether you'd rather have been in Rush or Led Zeppelin, and someone (not me) said "Zeppelin, because they had girls at their shows."

i'd rather be in rush and not be haunted by the things i did in zeppelin

Ums: Well, yeah, I completely agree that aesthetically unforgivable shit is preferable to ethically unforgivable shit. Just trying to address the immediate topic at hand.

Fortunately none of us has to actually choose. We can carry on with our lives and strive to be better.

Returning to the Nu-metal and popularity discussion upthread:

It was the popular skater boys in middle school who were into Korn, Limp Bizkit, etc. I was deeply into punk, hardcore, and crusty stuff, and they just couldn’t understand why I didn’t like the bands that they liked. What it seemed like then, and which I have more tolerance for now, is that the pain and anger expressed by Davis and etc seemed canned to me, it felt like pre-packaged rebellion (akin the Warped Tour stuff, which I also mostly hated), and I just couldn’t get over how falsely it rang. The angst of Submission Hold or Capitalist Casualties was more my thing, I guess.

Now, I don’t mind a lot of nu-metal, but don’t really listen to it at all outside of when the Zoomers play it at their after-school shifts at the climbing gym where I go.

I should also say that an older friend— a former ilxor whose dn on here was “eppy” back in the day— was the one who turned me away from crust and hardcore. He made me a tape in 1999 that just changed everything, so cheers to that.

Also, I should say, they also didn’t understand why I didn’t like nu-metal because I was actually clearly a fag, whereas they were just wearing lipstick and nail polish to freak out their parents and the jocks. Unlike this latter population tho, they didn’t call me a fag, and were actually nice to me.

the only kid in my high school class who i'm aware was into Slipknot (though not nu-metal more broadly) was kinda pocket-protector nerdy, he played me "It's not unusual" on laserdisc or something the one time i went to his house. might have been his dad's Tom Jones collection, idk. he was mostly into showing off the tech.

all the nu-metal fans i knew growing up lived in the burbs, otherwise they were not a monolith. the ones who skateboarded were more likely to be into 3rd wave punk i guess (can't recall a city kid who was into that stuff either). the person i know who was most deeply into nu-metal was a much younger kid who my buddy in LI used to babysit, and is now the drummer is his HC band, so there ya go.

10 years ago i ran into an "ostensibly untroubled and popular" girl from my hs at a coffee shop and we exchanged info, which led to her emailing me about how painful her experience of high school had been. some of it was relatable to me, but she also felt a lot of social pressures that i was oblivious to or untroubled by. sorry to go all breakfast club on you, ilx. but i came away from that exchange feeling like, as hellish as hs had been, a lot of kids who i'd perceived as coasting had it much worse.

i think Slipknot had a lot to offer the tech geek kid in my hs- outwardly, a way to sidestep an identity he felt uneasy with, and to endorse more violent expressions of rage than he might have been uncomfortable making overtly. inwardly, i have no doubt that the hostility and angst was relatable to him.

Obvs Fred Again being the grandson of the former owner of the Daily Mail tips the scales for whatever scene he falls in but I’m more referring the the wealth disparity of the fan base ;)

― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl), Friday, May 19, 2023 6:39 AM (five months ago)

Fred Again is great name for the Nu Metal revival. Congrats.

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Friday, May 19, 2023 7:23 AM (five months ago)

He did an album with Eno, which I think was mentioned on the Eno thread.

Based on his Wikipedia page, he’s known Eno since he was a teen. Industry plant!

he is massive, ie festival headlining cross generational massive in the uk.

Well he is apparently playing 5 sold-out nights here in L.A. (starting tonite).

Oh, sorry, those are just the remaining nights of an 8-night residency(!)

Boy you lot really hate this electro-swing genre that I’ve never heard of.

Fred Again is massive, and while his stuff isn't awful there's nothing about it which inherently seems to explain his huge crossover popularity

it's almost like posh kids get a hidden leg up in their endeavours

rightly said

the blissful life of never having heard electro-swing.... but one day... one day you'll be in a cafe and an electro-swing cover of Waiting Room will start playing, and you'll drop into hell like your man in Get Out, and never recover

Fred Again is inoffensive but I can see the appeal. Yes, his music seems to rely on the same formula and is on the simple side, but he really knows his gear, and if you see videos of him performing live - specially the boiler room set and his live studio videos he made during lockdown - it’s easy to see why he’s so popular, the precision in which he uses his sample pads in particular is mindblowing.

the blissful life of never having heard electro-swing.... but one day... one day you'll be in a cafe and an electro-swing cover of Waiting Room will start playing, and you'll drop into hell like your man in Get Out, and never recover

― Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz)

...the genesis song?