On the meaninglessness of music genre

iTunes theatre of the absurd

The absurdity of categorizing music by genre is evident on the iTunes website where “Bop” is a sub-genre of “Easy Listening”, while “Hard Bop” is a sub-genre of “Jazz”. “Punk” is a sub-genre of “Alternative” while “Psychedelic” is a sub-genre of “Rock”. “Pop” comes in sub-genres as well, including “Rock/Pop” which includes artists as diverse as Colbie Caillat, Quiet Riot, and David Allen Coe.

There is a genre known as “Alternative Rap”. There is a genre called “Disney”.

iTunes genres itunes.apple.com screenshot Jan 2012

And this is just (US) iTunes.

Every service or website has another version of this circus: a different set of genre categories, a different set of sub-genre categories, and very likely a different interpretation of what genre description fits which type of music. Add to that the fact that a single artist may make music that could be described by multiple genres, and that a single album may include tracks that could be described by multiple genres, and usually any given music could fit into a range of genres. Genre is an imaginary distinction, inconsistently applied.

Is there really a sonic distinction between pop and rock? Between pop and hip hop? Between blues and country? Between folk and blues? When Kurt Cobain referred to Hole as a “sensational pop group” on U.K. television, was he describing their music, their influences, their aspirations toward success … or was he just being ironic?

When The Rolling Stones appeared on the late night television show Saturday Night Live in 1978 introduced as a “pop” band, was that a description of their catalog, their success, or of their new direction with the Some Girls album? The American blues artist Howlin’ Wolf, a big inspiration for the Stones, had a song called ‘Rockin’ Daddy’. So I might call Howlin’ Wolf “rock” and The Rolling Stones “pop”. Others might say Howlin’ Wolf was “blues” and the Stones “rock”.

Those who stay safe within the lines around any particular genre have a guaranteed community, while those who cross lines are often punished for doing so, especially if they begin to fool with status quo in other ways. I believe this is one reason why artists like Kreayshawn catch so much heat. Drawing from a multitude of influences, Kreayshawn toys with boundaries around race, culture, genre, art, and sexuality. And for that she is both celebrated as an innovator and damned as an imposter.

Genres are for good academics and marketers, but not for artists. Any artist worth her salt resists being labeled and slotted into a database category because it is those who DO NOT allow themselves to BE DEFINED by others, who BUILD CONNECTIONS over those social, cultural, and racial lines, who have the greatest potential to break out AND SHINE not just for the moment, but across time.

Photograph of Bukowski headstone from Criminal Wisdom

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 3:23 pm. It is filed under Erika Meyer and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

10 Responses to “On the meaninglessness of music genre”

  1. styg says:
    January 24, 2012 at 1:45 am

    I remember Gorillaz winning “Best Dance Act” at the MTV Europe Awards one year, for Damon and Jamie’s subsequent ‘what the fuck?’ bemusement at being considered a dance act. Erika, are artists allowed to select multiple genre tags, or different genres for different songs, or anything like that? If I Fell is obviously not Hey Bulldog, Straight To Hell is obviously not Clash City Rockers, but would iTunes try and tell consumers that every Beatles song is a pop song, and every Clash song is a punk song?

    (btw, in my experience genres are terrible for academics, as they constrain, rather arbitrarily as you described here, what you are/aren’t allowed to focus your research on)

  2. Tamsin Chapman says:
    January 24, 2012 at 5:47 am

    Genres always confuse and annoy me, so I remove all the genre tags from my mp3s as soon as I download them, and in my head I just call anything I like ‘pop’

  3. Daniel says:
    January 24, 2012 at 7:58 am

    I always chose other when using Tunecore or a Bandcamp if available. Unfortunately, when Tunecore distributes your music to Amazon, iTunes et al, an unseen, sentient force (God?)labels your music and undermines all of an artist’s efforts to appeal to a diverse audience.

    Erika’s totally right about how functioning outside of genre allows you to connect with lots of different fans and musicians, opening doors otherwise closed. That only works to a point. In my experience it costs a band signing opportunities, licensing and bookings too.

  4. Brimstone says:
    January 24, 2012 at 9:12 am

    “I remember Gorillaz winning “Best Dance Act” at the MTV Europe Awards one year, for Damon and Jamie’s subsequent ‘what the fuck?’ bemusement at being considered a dance act.”

    Huh? They are a dance act.

    I divide the world into dance/pop and rock. Or evil and good.

  5. Erika Meyer says:
    January 25, 2012 at 3:01 am

    @styg, someday someone should write a history of legal music distribution on the internet… there is no rhyme or reason, really. I think this all grew organically and haphazardly, just like so much on the web. I had to choose my genres with my primary distributor, CD Baby, and they’re little idiosyncratic system. I believe that when CD Baby started, they just distributed CDs. Eventually, they started distributing MP3s to iTunes, Napster, Spotify etc. Each of these organizations has their own database set up, their own way of doing things. Whatever I chose as a “genre” in CD Baby’s little system (who’s genre categories appears to not have been updated in a decade) is not necessarily what populates through to iTunes, who has a different system. Some offer you more than one (maybe 2, rarely 3) options. Other sites, usually the more user-controlled ones (SoundCloud and BandCamp I *believe*) handle genres with TAGS (key words) rather than database categories. That gives you more freedom to play, but you have to anticipate your audience too, asking yourself “what key word or tag will someone realistically search for (or browse) that should lead them to my music?” The complexity of all of this is pretty astounding… it really comes down to, “how can I help people who will potentially LOVE my music, FIND my music?”

  6. Erika Meyer says:
    January 25, 2012 at 3:11 am

    “…functioning outside of genre allows you to connect with lots of different fans and musicians, opening doors otherwise closed. That only works to a point. In my experience it costs a band signing opportunities, licensing and bookings too.”

    @Daniel, That’s a good point, and it goes not just for music but so many art forms. Unfortunately, it appears you can do a lot as an artist to break new ground and connect with, even astonish, an audience, that somehow makes you poison to the industry itself. Obviously it’s a lot easier to package something that you can label with a single word, or to push something out into a market that already exists.

  7. Mark Zian says:
    January 25, 2012 at 8:25 am

    It seems to me that the problem is a lot bigger than genre defining. It’s lanuage, people have different interpretations of so many words and these meanings seem to change over time. Lanuage is not a perfect form of communicating anything let alone defining an artists output. Unfortunately it is all we have and just have to accept it.

    Maybe in terms of music we could use actual discriptive words rather than genre names. For example soft, loud, dissonant or dynamic. But then people would be unhappy with these and the arguments would continue.

    On the topic of being an artist and trying to define yourself, I have always found this one interesting, everybody seems to think that the’re unique. They never really quite fit in anywhere, high school, work, social sects or musical genres. This attitude of nobody gets me seems to run through most artists. Myself included.

    I have a friend with red hair and one day we were questioned by police and the police asked for his hair colour and he said strawberry blonde.

    Maybe we should all stop chasing our tales and just make music.

  8. Erika says:
    January 26, 2012 at 2:42 am

    @Mark Wow, I absolutely agree: “we should all stop chasing our tales and just make music.”

    On the other hand I am a “non-target-demographic” individual making rock n’ roll music and determined to take it as far as I can. The record labels are not exactly beating down our door. So I not only have to make the music, but to get the music heard without investment money, no outside label, very few industry connections. So like the rest, I am helping to steer not just a band, but a DIY label.

    Sometimes I think about writing an essay or book called “The Dark Side of D.I.Y.”

    I:

    write songs
    learn parts to songs
    transport and maintain gear
    book shows, play shows
    create and mail out press kits
    write and send press releases
    research and mail CDs/LPs for review
    solicit radio play (internet and otherwise)
    attempt (usually unsuccesfully) to book and fund tours
    deal with band drama and legal issues
    fund, record, release albums
    maintain websites
    make music videos

    and so on.

    Those of us who’s art isn’t seen as marketable will either play the corner bar forever, or work very hard to be heard by a larger audience. “Genre” is one of many things that can work for, or against us, in that larger market.

    But really, what initially inspired this piece, was confusion at how CB writers (who span the globe) perceive genre.

  9. Mark Zian says:
    January 26, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    Yeah I totally get your point and enjoyed the post. I have been getting quite annoyed with how people perceive genre aswell. Which makes it interesting that you bring up “D.I.Y”. I feel like DIY is starting to be used as quasi-genre rather than just an ethic.

    In my city, I feel like that the D in DIY is starting to stand for deadshit and used to describe a loner, outsider or downtrodden style of writing or sound. But for me, even if Brittany Spears was completing your above list herself she would be DIY.

    I find the concept of DIY labels funny. I self release my albums, so I understand your pain, but it seems to me that there are these DIY labels popping up, where the label does everything and the bands just rock up to shows, doesn’t sound very DIY to me.

    After that tangent back to the genre question. I agree it is hard and can work for and against bands especially when some people see certain genres as dirty words like ‘country’. But if you find a better solution please let me know, as I don’t have the labels or listeners beating down by door either.

  10. Shaun says:
    February 19, 2012 at 9:46 am

    Just getting back into creating music and software has changed loads. I’ve been in bands and play guitars too. On learning tutorials they all seem to be of the essence of “a drum base tutorial”, “R&B Tutorial”, “trance Tutorial”. I can’t stand this, it’s almost as is if everythings bucketed into standard practice of doing stuff. I do lots of standard practice at work building software. When it comes to creating music what ever happened to making something of your own? I want my music to sound like it does in my head before I’ve made it. I don’t want to set out to deliberately create a specific genre track, surely that’s just going to limit your creativity? Also I’ve never purchased music based on Genre, I bought it because it sounded good and was original.

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