what's surprising is that, in an age in which tribal allegiances and genre boundaries among listeners are breaking down, the same isn't generally the case within most artists' recorded output

Discuss, with reference to contemporary music.

soo ur saying music is still very much divided into genres?

in an age in which tribal allegiances and genre boundaries among listeners are breaking down

dubious. not convinced that tastes are broader now than they were before this age supposedly began.

this is an m the g quote, not my own statement. but it would be interesting to discuss it, both as valid analysis and as challengeable opinion

the troll has opened up new relms of discorse

good post

Artists might have quite a bit to lose by switching up styles, even ones who follow a nominally non-commercial path. People who just listen to music... don't

xp the original statement was mine. it's not a concrete rule, but an impression based partly on accessibility (t'internet, etc.) and partly on observation from experience... for example, my nephews are in their teens and don't discriminate between pop, indie, R&B, house, punk, hip-hop. it's all accessible to them, so they take it all in.

similarly, I genuinely don't know anybody IRL who is into a single genre in a tribal fashion. even those who wear a tribal uniform, e.g. metalheads, will also profess a fondness for chart pop or jazz or folk or techno.

that was very much not the case when I was a kid. you stuck to your genre or two, as did your peer group. there was just not this casual omnivorous quality to youth culture that there appears to be now.

of course, your experience may differ...

my apologies, please continue with the ***deep thinking***

xp

Artists might have quite a bit to lose by switching up styles, even ones who follow a nominally non-commercial path. People who just listen to music... don't

reposting because it is a massive truth bomb

Most artists are lucky to find one thing they're good at. If Bon Iver suddenly decides to be a drill n bass producer, he's not gonna magically become an amazing drum programmer/MaxMSP overnight. Similarly, most singers are limited in the genres they can pull off by their voices. Don't hold your breath for Sufjan Steven's Barry White tribute.

I know all this sounds obvious, but I think a lot of people think in terms of artistic intent rather than basic craftsmanship.

xposts

this thread is an offshoot that comes from the freeform 90s thread.

def think that in the pre-soulwax, pre-electroclash, pre-Firestarter(?) pre-Eminem mid-nineties, you had a lot more people listening to "just trance" or "just r'n'b" or "anything with guitars". i know at my school you could easily divide a classroom into those who liked indie, punk and metal, and those who liked jungle, the Fugees and Wu-Tang. Like it or not, it was very straight-cut and I even remember being dissed and called a "raver" by rock pals for saying I liked Cypress Hill, which even then I found a bit o_O

Anyway, I noticed, around the early 2000s that the rock kids in the neighbourhood (the same who would have been heavy into Marilyn Manson in my time) weren't just listening to Staind or My Chemical Romance or whoever was popular in rock circles at the time. I guess via Eminem and Limp Bizkit these kids must have delved further into hiphop. Electroclash's flamboyant avatars were also drawing people who would have listened to bands like Placebo into the dance fold. If anything helped to bring rock and dance fans together it had to be 2ManyDJs and the DFA movement.

Of course it didn't happen all of a sudden - plenty of examples of dance acts who appealed to rock fans in the mid 90s - Underworld, Chems, Aphex, Bentleys, but I think these acts kind of only appealed to one or the other.

So yeah, I'm sure there was a certain amount of tribalism whereas today having a wide musical palate is pretty common. People who go around saying they don't like any rock music or hate all electronic music are becoming less and less common.

Most artists are lucky to find one thing they're good at.

Even massiver truth bomb

xxp i wouldn't mind an example that wasn't a personal one... but i don't think its a stretch to think that the amorphous blob that is the internet and all the information it carries with it has made liking more than one genre at a time really commonplace, and that the music being made by purists is in some way reacting to that genre-bending with conservatism. i've seen a lot of genre protectionism/conservatism in music writing lately, but i can't really pin that on being a result of the internet or because genre boundaries are breaking down elsewhere. i really haven't been paying attention long enough to really tell.

yes xp

whoops, i was responding to m the g in my post.

I see what you're getting at. Artists aren't being as varied & eclectic as they could be given the wide-open, increasingly genre-less nature of the music world. And this despite the fact that you had artists like Frank Zappa and Sun Ra that were all over the place before the CDR cottage industry age. Its a good question & I'm not sure if it can be answered...

Could it be that they (artists that is) are less ecelctic? Wasn't only guys like Zappa and Sun Ra who were all over the place.

it's not the responsibility of any one artist or group of artists to cater to the changing boundaries of music in the world. i mean, you find something you can do, and you do it. frank zappa, it just so happens, could do a lot.

Artists might have quite a bit to lose by switching up styles, even ones who follow a nominally non-commercial path. People who just listen to music... don't

^^^ as HI DERE observes, truthbomb here. Lots of artists (raising hand here) would love to branch out beyond their safe constraints, but who wants to get clowned/get accused of changing styles for commercial gain/risk everyone saying they've lost their gift/face the hard fact that a large % of their fanbase would prefer they remain a known quantity? unless you've managed to get rich enough to not care what kind of a hit you take on these fronts, you're risking whatever career you've built up if you color too far outside the lines.

xp artists FEAR that they have a bit to lose, etc...

considerations of career prospects aside, this was really speculation about the relationship between listening habits and creative urges, i.e. whether there's a natural relationship between absorbing a broad range of genres and the desire to work in many styles.

as we were talking about on the FREEFORM thread, being a fan of lots of different music is now considered the norm, but back when Mike Patton was mixing up genres, even fucking Pitchshifter and Apollo 440 were being applauded for trying to mix dance and metal (awfully btw). It's actually much more plausible for bands to find a sound that encompasses influences in homeopathic amounts and stick to it. So The XX may display influences as varied as Mariah Carey, Young Marble Giants and minimal house, but it's all blurred into one sound - not some genre-hopping confuse-fest.

considerations of career prospects aside

easier said than done

people in the past listened to different sort of music

my nephews are in their teens and don't discriminate between pop, indie, R&B, house, punk, hip-hop.

they must on some level know that these are different things

dog latin's last post houses a good point - but 'finding a sound' can easily work out as regressive unless you craft that sound - merely coasting on it rapidly loses my interest

it is true that Beck has become a lot more boring in the past 10 years

I have always been fascinated by how people look at artistic livelihoods and mentally redact the word "livelihood" from them; a certain amount of what you are doing as a professional or even semi-professional musician is going to revolve around identifying the intersection between "things you're good at" and "things people want to hear you do" and pumping as much energy/effort into that seam as you can.

Given this, a big chunk of the speculation behind this conversation is barking up the wrong tree; artists don't stick to genres because they aren't interested in anything else, artists stick to genres because that is the safest way to make money, and most of them are doing this so they can make money.

lol Beck

genre boundaries have always been artificial constructs created by the market in order to maximize sales to particular demographics. with the destruction of the market and the flattening out of demographics, genre has become meaningless. the audience understands this.

gah, Modern Guilt was flat-out unlistenable

it is true that Beck has become a lot more boring in the past 10 years

I haven't been paying too much attention, but hasn't he hopped around from one genre to another?

He has, but he hopped into some genres where he just sucks.

"Lots of artists (raising hand here) would love to branch out beyond their safe constraints"

would totally buy your goth/darkwave metal side-project, just so you know.

http://colunistas.ig.com.br/obutecodanet/files/2009/07/alter3.jpg

SMC, that's idealistic! If only it were so. If only all bands operated to their ideal sound(s) rather than preset expectations.

Cornelius is better than Beck anyway

It's actually much more plausible for bands to find a sound that encompasses influences in homeopathic amounts and stick to it.

^^^this is what's happening. expect more of it. also don't expect most bands to last more than a few years, so once they hit on the right formula they will stick with it more or less until they get tired of it, give up, split up, quit, etc.

xp

He has, but he hopped into some genres where he just sucks.

Indeed. And that's a guy who's fairly talented too.

when i was growing up and had musical aspirations, I always wondered why if a band said they liked Metallica and the Cardigans and Squarepusher, then why didn't they try their hands at all of these? These days I admire bands for their focus. I mean, doesn't (random example) Thom Yorke wake up some mornings thinking "You know what, I fancy making a comedy record, how about that?". Doesn't Thomas Fehlmann sometimes think "I am soo sick and tired of ze same 4/4 beats - I'm going to take up guitar and write a soft rock ballad"?

@ scott - that'd make 1 sale, anyway! :)

@la senora: Agreed. However, all I'm talking about is a willingness to experiment a bit with different instruments, rhythms [or lack thereof], etc. Not necessarily something that you're predisposed to do or knowledgeable in...

I mean, doesn't (random example) Thom Yorke wake up some mornings thinking "You know what, I fancy making a comedy record, how about that?". Doesn't Thomas Fehlmann sometimes think "I am soo sick and tired of ze same 4/4 beats - I'm going to take up guitar and write a soft rock ballad"?

That way lies the (horrific) latter day career of Elvis Costello

the flaw here is that i dont think that the commercial success of a mr bungle or whoever the stand in for the former embodiments of this is all that far off of the commercial success of say a sleepytime gorilla museum or U1v3_r (thx dan) in the modern day. in other words, i think experimental boundary pushers are prob having about the same impact as they always have, its just that hindsight makes it seem like bungle or whoever you pick was REALLY IMPORTANT AND NOTICED, but iirc at the time basically me and 4 of my friends cared about them and that was about it.

personally, from my particular musicians' POV, it has always been part of my musical philosophy to jump around a lot stylistically but mostly people find this confusing. while audiences no longer feel allegiance to one specific genre, they do prefer their bands to be known quantities. they'd rather listen to a lot of different bands then one band that plays a lot of different styles, imho.

xp

sleepytime gorilla museum

felt genuinely offended having to watch this band perform fwiw. absolutely horrible.

I am reasonably certain Mr Bungle at least initially did better than Sleepytime Gorilla Museum if only due to bleedover from Vaith No More fans following Mike Patton to his new endeavor.

ps: ULVER ULVER ULVER ULVER HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

He has, but he hopped into some genres where he just sucks.

― Marriage, that's where I'm a Viking! (HI DERE), Thursday, April 29, 2010 5:20 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rofl on the inside

i mean i remember boredoms opening for lollapalooza one go around and the big ol' alternative nation mostly yawned and wandered off with the exception of 2 dudes going fucking nuts because they were seeing the boredoms and a small crowd of peeps basically pointing and going "look at that funny japanese guy running around with a cardboard box on his head"

xpost jesus christ shakey u r insane

also dan yer prob right but man oh man did that drop off once disco volante hit the scene.

sorry goth clown metal with some Tom Waits thrown in is like having a vomit cocktail poured into my ears

what's surprising is that, in an age in which tribal allegiances and genre boundaries among listeners are breaking down

specious opening statement imo

but also misses the point that listening to music (passive) and making music (active) are two diff things

plus when people try to mash up genres the results often suck for reasons pointed out above

Guess I don't hear how artists are being any less eclectic / more genre-bound than they've always been (and eclecticism has been a cliche in rock and pop music for nearly half a century now.) If anything, seems like pop/rock/r&b/dance/country barriers have broken down some. Also skeptical about the "listeners are suddenly listening to stuff from all over the map" claim; I'm not sure most listeners were ever tied to just one genre -- if they were in, say, the past couple decades (which I'm not convinced of), that was a new development. (And "metal heads," say, are not the same as the population as a whole.) Also seems curious that, in this age when listeners are suddenly supposed to be so open-eared, the list of top finishers in the world's biggest poll of music critics was actually less varied than it's ever been, in the previous 30 years. (Of course, critics might not be representative of listeners as a whole, but part of me does think that, to a certain extent, at least for younger people who consider themselves serious music afficiandos, the Internet has a tendency to prevent fans from finding out about music outside of their chosen stylistic sphere, since stumbling across songs by accident isn't as easy as it used to be when everybody just listened to car radios or watched MTV or whatever.)

Yeah it'll never happen again, that would be preposterous.

we will never see the likes of the beastie boys again what with their beats and activist guitar samples bringing us all together.

If only there were more visionaries like Mr Bungle we could have ended the conflict in the Middle East by now.

total minor point here but:

many of these crossovers were motivated by a conscious and often successful attempt to unify disparate human cultures. black and white, to put things in simple terms, but also punk and metal, rock and hip-hop, pop and "alternative".

the punk/metal hybridization all happened in the 80's - hardcore/grindcore for sure, but y'know death metal and speed metal are overlooked synthesis points too.

like all things everything eventually comes back to S.O.D.

was S.O.D. also responsible for there no longer being distinctions between parody bands and non-parody bands?

(was kinda kidding about the Sui generis sod thing tbh, but they were certainly vocal about the punk/metal distinction of the time being kinda dumb)

this thread has me revisiting some jams from Toxicity, so thanking u all for that

the 90s saw a great many attempts to bridge the gap between ostensibly black and white musical cultures, to produce (specifically) rock music that reflected and could speak to heterogeneous, multiracial and multicultural audiences.

Except I don't like the use of "white" or "black" (I prefer "song oriented" vs. "rhythm oriented"), I think this is basically impossible. It may be partly possible to get "rock" audiences into hip-hop to a certain extent (that is, the live instrument feeling must be kept, and it sort of requires the song structures to be kept, at least to be able to appeal to those of us who care about melody and harmony), but it seems completely impossible to get fans of rhythm oriented music interested in melody oriented music other than as a source of possible sample material.

I don't like the use of "white" or "black" (I prefer "song oriented" vs. "rhythm oriented"

keep yr racist codewords to yrself nazi

but it seems completely impossible to get fans of rhythm oriented music interested in melody oriented music other than as a source of possible sample material.

hahahahahaha this is so dumb

This is hardly unique to the 90s.

Well, basically all rock music builds upon it. Rock itself is a fusion of "black" and "white" styles of music. And 60s R&B (such as Motown) would also get a considerably slice if influence from "white" music styles.
And then, maybe the truest fusion happened in the UK in the early 80s where a lot of UK groups (some of them interracial, others just whites) were mixing traditional "white" new wave and pop songwriting with funk and disco elements, some even adding the occasional reggae or latin element. So I guess the only unique thing about 90s is they were trying to fuse rock with "purist" genres such as hip-hop and dance/house/techno. Which is harder, after all, because fans of the latter will not accept anything that doesn't keep to its purist values (including lack of melodies)

keep yr racist codewords to yrself nazi

Shut up! This has absolutely nothing to do with racism. There is no race in music.

ok wait that is even more dumb xpost

Well, I know I am right. If somebody wrote a strongly Beatles-influenced song with traditional verse-bridge-chorus, plus a middle-eight and a lot of vocal harmonies, and then added a hip-hop beat, it might appeal to pop/rock fans, but never to hip-hop fans.

I mean, just look at Jesus Jones, who did exactly that. How many hip-hop/dance fans enjoyed Jesus Jones?

This is the first time I've ever seen Geir get angry and tell someone to shut up.

hey guys remember when the rhythm purists caught jay-z letting beyonce sing on those tracks and they dragged them out behind the shed and turned them into the romanovs of hip hop

xxpost uh raises hand shamefully

Beyonce is hardly Beatles-influenced.

yes she has a dreadful lack of melody i am undone

Mostly, yes. Although some of Stargate's later work for here is a partly successful marriage of "black" soul and "white" melody.

geir there is no race in music

Thus, the quotation marks.

For instance, Lionel Richie and DeBarge were great examples in the 80s of black people making great, melodic pop music. But I know some funk/R&B fans disliked them because they weren't purist enough.

pretty sure no one disliked debarge

They weren't as famous as Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, so they didn't have to put up with the same criticism, but I was around, and I know a lot of 80s black pop (which for me was mostly brilliant) was criticized for not being "black" enough. As if music has a skin colour.

Anyone who saw The Last Dragon and doesn't like Debarge, doesn't have a soul.

Btw. back to the original subject, I guess "Speakerboxx/The Love Below" may be the answer (it was at least eclectic enough to appeal to me as a non hip-hop fan while still being obviously hip-hop)

nobody liked jesus jones.

Well, a lot of people bought their music back in 1990-91.

that's an interesting point. on the other hand, you're a creep.

This is the first time I've ever seen Geir get angry and tell someone to shut up.

O_O

"Shut up! This has absolutely nothing to do with racism. There is no race in music."

new board description!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2024/1554413832_9ea7953457.jpg?v=0

I'm just sick of Geir's bullshit. at this point, it just derails threads.

"but I was around, and I know a lot of 80s black pop (which for me was mostly brilliant) was criticized for not being "black" enough."

on the mean streets of oslo, debarge got no respect.

I'm just sick of Geir's bullshit. at this point, it just derails threads.

otm

'at this point' = 'always' but it's esp annoying w/ an otherwise interesting thread.

the joke just isn't funny anymore

I'm just sick of Geir's bullshit. at this point, it just derails threads.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Mz46ZJA5p0o_KM:http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloud.jpg

i don't hear much of that kind of radical openness in american rock anymore. especially not in heavier, harder rock

Just out curiosity, Contenderizer, what do you think of Kid Rock? Who pretty undeniably continued to combine most of the genres you're talking about, all through the '00s, and managed to connect them with country's opening up to hard rock and even (at least tentatively) rap. And he kept selling records, too -- last album went triple platinum.

I mean, I get the idea most people here don't like him much. And guess you could argue that he never had anything to do with "punk" or "alternative," not that I care. But the music he first hit with definitely evolved out of the whole Aerosmith/DMC juncture you talk about. He just figured out somewhere else to take it from there (and what he wound up with, as often as not, wasn't really all that far from the open-ended funky '70s hard rock that people rave about upthread.)

accept that kid rock is an important link in the chain i was describing. left him out cuz i've never been a fan and don't really know what his deal is, but he clearly helped push that 90s rap/rock conversation through to country. i dunno, maybe he did it singlehandedly. who else?

eminem, who was mates with kid rock and came through the Michigan MC circuit together, combined rap with dido.

if genres were not clearly distinguished from one another then the concept of the "omnivorous' consumer whose tastes span multiple genres would be impossible/nonsensical (has this been mentioned already?)

also known as "the cultural logic of late capitalism"

my scare quotes are even scarier when they're half real quotes

have we talked about the interweb yet? cuz i think it does a lot to strengthen existing genre cults and this may have something to do with uniformity within genres. but i'm kinda drunk and yak snot are playing in my record store, so i'll have to elaborate more later.

I think on balance the internet has done more to break listeners out of their genre straight jackets, but I'm not drunk so I could be missing something.

i'm kinda drunk and yak snot are playing in my record store

Would like this on a t-shirt.