# Let's make up new genres/themes of music
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 12, 2005, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800 "2005-08-12T23:31:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2005, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/1 "2005-08-12T23:31:01Z")
For reasons I can’t quite fathom, aproximately 1/2 of the music I have on my hard drive is label as “blues.” Bands like Korn and Fuel, do they strike you as blues? Maybe they’d give you the blues if you disliked them, but… My wild guess is that blues is the default genre if no one picks another.
All this makes sorting music by genre sort of useless. I’m also not a big fan of subgenres either. Alt rock and Alternative, do they really need two different catogories? The only thing I’ve got under trip-hop is “Evolution, Revolution, Love” by Tricky, and I don’t even think that song is trip-hop anyway. Some of the genres leave me even more puzzled.
So I’ve decided that it would more practical to divide songs up by themes. So far I’ve got a few themes I’m working on, and would love to get some suggestions for more themes too. FTR, I don’t use peer-to-peer anything, so it’s not as though enteraining myself will affect anyone else.
Current themes and a few examples of songs within:
\*\*All in Your Head \*\*
Army Navy- Our Resting Heads
Mark Lanegan Band - Head
The Catherine Wheel - God Inside My Head
Garbage - Hammerin in my Head
**Could it be…Satan?**
Bright Eyes - Devil Town
Vacationland - Devil You Know
Silvertide - Devil’s Daughter
**Damn the Man**
Kill Radio - Do You Know?
Ben Harper - Excuse Me, Mister
The Urge - Played Out
Home Town Hero - Questions
**Desperately Wanting**
Kissing Tigers - Pleasure of Resistance
Jane Arden - I Would Die For You
Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name
Ben Lee - Ache For You
**Firearms**
Guster - Barrel of a Gun
Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun
Vixtrola - Gunboat
**Reluctant Sex**
Limp Biskit - No Sex
Stroke 9 - Make it Last
Snow Patrol - 100 Things You Should…
**So Haunted**
Manic Street Preachers - To Repel Ghosts
Poe - Haunted
Kristin Hersh & Micheal Stipe - Your Ghost
Superformy - Ghosts
**Drugs, Alcohol, Nicotine and Rock N Roll**
Ben Kweller - Drink Me Away
Queens of The Stone Age - Feel Good Hit of The Summer
The Dirty Pictures - Whiskey
Fast Ball - Slow Drag
**Pretty Things**
Joydrop - Beautiful
Flickerstick - Beautiful
Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful
VAST - Pretty When You Cry
**Paging Saint Anthony**
Trapt - Lost In A Portrait
The Clash - Lost in A Supermarket
Oleander - Lost Cause
Better than Ezra - Long Lost
Any suggestions for fun general themes? Has anyone else done this, by the way? 😛
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### Author:  [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2005, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/2 "2005-08-12T23:32:22Z")
Moving this to Cafe Society…
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2005, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/3 "2005-08-12T23:32:38Z")
I swear I started this thread in Cafe Society… oops.
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### Author:  [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2005, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/4 "2005-08-13T00:43:13Z")
But the thing is, informed listeners are actually capable of dividing most music into genres without getting “all confuzed.” It sounds like your ID tags are messed up, nothing else.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2005, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/5 "2005-08-13T03:29:18Z")
On a long road trip, one of my co-workers was both amused and impressed that I had labeled a CD mix. . .
**Really Long Songs**
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### Author:  [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2005, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/6 "2005-08-13T08:26:17Z")
I once went through a friend’s collections of records, in Germany, and found songs sung by the original artists, in GERMAN. It is a great tape…The Supremes, The Beatles, Connie Francis…it is amazing the number of famous names that did copies of their songs in German. I have played the tape for friends and they make a game of trying to figure out the orignal English title and song.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2005, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/7 "2005-08-14T00:01:55Z")
> [@VCO3](#):
>
> But the thing is, informed listeners are actually capable of dividing most music into genres without getting “all confuzed.” It sounds like your ID tags are messed up, nothing else.
The _genres_ themselves aren’t confusing, it’s the reasoning that went into someone picking such a tag for a song that are confusing. Does “Hands Down” by Dashboard Confessional strike you as folk music? “We Three Kings” by Bare Naked Ladies a ballad? “Hum” by the Sheila Devine metal?? I realize the tags are screwed up to the point of uselessness, hence I’d like to find some that are at least entertaining.
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2005, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-make-up-new-genres-themes-of-music/316800/8 "2005-08-14T00:30:18Z")
The next BIG THING: Lesbian Bluegrass!
(Be Good Tanyas might be IT!)