Music subgenres revisited

Cafe Society
1

I downloaded the new Winamp program a couple days ago and spent a lot of time updating and correcting the tags for my 700-odd mp3 files. (One of the things about file sharing that you have to get used to is that some of the owners mislabel everything.) I wanted to be as accurate as possible, of course, so I entered “genre” info as well. (ID3v1 has a fixed list; ID3v2 allows you to enter anything.)

Now a slight problem…I have a lot of songs that could possibly fit into more than one genre, and the list of choices is, to put it mildly, long, so I’ll need a little help here. First off, here are the subgenres that I already know of:

Rave: Strong beats, usually briskly paced, not much melody, little or no vocals, repetitive, and usually very long. Meant to be played at (duh) raves.
Techno: Er…something that sounds like it came from an electronic keyboard. Electronica is “robotic” techno.
Euro Beat/Dance: Kinda like techno, but more energetic, lots of percussion, always fast-paced, and almost always has vocals. For some reason, many euro beat bands have two singers.
House: “Softer” than techno or euro beat (usually) and always has an acoustic element, usually piano. May or may not have vocals.
Disco: Refers only to classic disco, which, of course, is dead.
House Mix/Disco House: The modern term for disco, now that it’s supposed to be dead.
Trance: “Hypnotic” music; constant background with lots of percussion and little or no vocals.
Drum 'n Bass: Distinctive “break beat” (bump-badada-bump or some variant).
Dance: “Regular” dance music. Popularized by Janet Jackson, EMF, C&C Music Factory, Paula Abdul, Bus Stop, etc.
Soul, R&B: The main difference between them, from what I’ve heard, is overall tone. Aretha Franklin, Raydio, Marvin Gaye, and The Temptations are soul; Bobby Brown, Destiny’s Child, Force MDs, and TLC are examples of R&B. (Still not sure about En Vogue…)
Punk: Energetic, almost always fast-paced, and usually delves into…uh, widely varying subject matter.

Now here are the ones that have me baffled. Remember, these are all from the Winamp player (and I haven’t been able to find any of them on the Web).

Black Metal: Uh, this isn’t what I think it is, is it (“Afro-American” metal).
Booty Bass: Eep…
Chamber Music: What kind of chamber, I wonder.
Chanson: No comment.
Christian Gangsta Rap: Good lord, is this possible?
Club: I think this is a distinctive genre which is different from Rave. How, I have no idea.
Crossover: No comment.
Dream: Something like ambient or trance, I guess…
Fusion: I’ve heard maybe one or two of these kind of songs, and damned if I can find any difference from electronica.
Industrial: Bruce Springsteen built an image as a “blue-collar” singer with humble roots. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what it means.
Psychedelic Rock: My best guess - something like that long instrumental section of Magic Carpet Ride. I saw this attributed to All I Want by Toad the Wet Sprocket
Retro: World Taekwondo Federation?? (Sorry, I’ve been wanting to use that joke for a while.) I actually saw this attributed to Jeffrey Osbornes You Should Be Mine.
Show Tunes: That would be TV, right?
Porn Groove: Quintuple eep.
Pranks: …
Primus: …
Revival: “I see a bad moon risin’ / I see trouble on the way”…no.
Symphonic Rock: I know! The revamped versions of classics! Dream A Dream, Turkey March, Beethoven Virus, etc. All these are from dance games, BTW…
Trailer: I can think of a number of things “trailer” might refer to. None of them very flattering.
Vocal: Confusing. How is different from any of the dozens of other subgenres which employ vocals?

Some bands, frankly, puzzle me:

Captain Jack - Technically they’re euro dance (at least according to http://www.eurodance.com), but at least one of their songs, Captain Jack, has a very techno feel to it, and another, Only You, is as poppy as anything by the Go-gos.
Limp Bizkit - Someone labelled Nookie “Hard Rock”. I see no reason to disagree with it, so I left it at that. Is Rapcore or whatever it’s called really that different than what’s come before?
Bon Jovi - I could create an entire thread about him. In some ways he’s totally mainstream, but at least a couple of his songs could pass for terrify-the-neighbors hard rock.
The Eagles - I heard Taking It Easy, and I was totally convinced that they’re country. Then I heard most of the Hell Freezes Over album, and I was totally convinced that I’m totally confused.
Creedence Clearwater Revival - They’ve definitely done at least some country (e.g. Sweet Home Alabama), but I’ve never heard them compared to the likes of Garth Brooks or Faith Hill.
10,000 Maniacs - Pre-alternative era alternative? Honestly, I must have heard at least ten of their songs and I still have no idea where they’re coming from.
The Kinks - Where to begin? Of the three songs that I have (Come Dancing, Superman, You Really Got Me), they ALL seem to come from different worlds. I’m pretty sure they’re primarily rock, but other than that I don’t have a clue.
Crosby, Stills, & Nash - I have them pegged “acoustic”, but not with any degree of assurance.
Aqua - They have tons of good stuff (IMHO, Barbie Girl is actually their worst song), and it goes way across the board. I’m inclined to call them “Britpop”, but only a few songs actually qualify.
Enigma - Okay, Enya is unmistakably New Age (not the lifestyle, silly, just the music), Loreena McKennit is Celtic, so is Clannad, and Enigma is…ambient? Techno? Acid Celtic?
Len - Neo-alternative?? Help!

I don’t have a problem classifying most of the songs, but I always wondered how record stores classify such genre-crossing artists like these.

2

Black Metal - Norwegian teenagers playing ropey Black Sabbath covers, worshiping Satan and stabbing each other.
Industial - Sample laden metal, dance music influenced drums - Nine Inch Nils, Ministry and Nailbomb are all industrial bands.
Psychedelic Rock - First time I’ve heard this one, but I think Hawkwind would probably be included.
Primus - I really hope the nice folks at winamp have chosen to give Les Claypool and co their own genre, but I kinda doubt it. It would at least get around what to call them other than weird

3

Chamber Music: Type of classical music
Show Tunes: Songs from musicals (odd considering there’s already a “Musical” category)
Pranks: Jerky Boys & such
Trailer: Music from movie trailers?
Vocal: I would say a cappella, but there’s already an “A Cappella” category, so ???

I think the winamp guys just threw in whatever they felt like, probably while under the influence. And now we’re stuck with them.

(Aqua can’t be Britpop, they’re not British!)

4

DKW, I think I can help with some of your “bands that puzzle you”. One thing to remember is that the genres extant now in popular music were not always around. Rock and Roll and Country, for instance, came from some of the same sources, and there was a lot of cross-pollination in the very early days.

The Eagles started out, IIRC, as Linda Ronstadt’s back-up band, back when she was a country/pop mainstream artist. There earlier albums would, I think, be considered country flavored pop, but they moved to more Rock. I know their music is still played today on Rock oldies stations, but I don’t know if they are played much on Country stations.

Bon Jovi: I gather you are talking about him as a solo artist, not the band Bon Jovi. The band was a prime example of 80s “Big Hair” metal. They had some pop licks, but tried to come across as a more hardore band. Poseurs, some would say.

10,000 Maniacs would probably count as “Pre-Alternative Alternative”. The term “Alternative” in the sense its used today wasn’t really common before the late 80s, as best as I remember. I first heard of them (Maniacs) in about 1982, when the term “New Wave” was falling out of use. They came from the same place, musically speaking, as such bands as the Cars, Talking Heads, and Blondie. New Wave was the more pop oriented cousin of punk rock which started in the late 1970s with such bands as the Ramones and the Clash, as well as dozens of others. U2 and REM are two extant bands that I can think of that started at about the same time as 10,000 Maniacs, with somewhat similar musical viewpoints. The whole punk/New Wave thing was rebelling against what Rock had become by the mid to late seventies…artsy bands with long hair and lots of keyboards, like Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes. Punk rock, in addition to being fast paced as you say, was also famous for minimal use of chords…many songs only used three…and no guitar solos.

The Kinks: Here we get back to the fact that there weren’t all these sub-genres around until recently. Remember, too, that the Kinks have been around forever (are they still recording as a group?). They would basically be classified as Rock, but since they have been around so long they have changed their style as musical styles have changed too. An even more obvious example of this would be the Rolling Stones…most people would call them a Rock band (although I remember reading or hearing that they consider themselves and R+B combo) but most people would admit that one of their old songs, like, say, Heart of Stone sounds nothing like, say, Mixed Emotions. And neither one sounds much like Tumbling Dice or Shattered. The movie “This is Spinal Tap” has a funny take on this phenomenon…it shows excerpts of the fictional band playing on TV shows and the like when they started in the early 60s…they have short hair, they are wearing suits and playing nice little melodic pop songs. In the 80s they wear leather and spandex with long hair, demonic props, etc.

Creedence, like the Eagles, would be considered country flavored Rock, although again genres were more fluid back then, and CCR might have been played on country stations back in the day. The band the Band have a similar sound, from the same period. I don’t think Creedence recorded “Sweet Home Alabama”, by the way…that would be Lynyrd Skynrd. They (Skynyrd) were what used to be called “Southern Rock”, along with 38 Special and the Allman Brothers.

Show tunes, by the way, usually refers to songs from Broadway musicals.

5

Nu Metal - Metal with hip-hop tinges (turntable scratching, a few electronic beats) and with a very good vocalist (as opposed to the metal roar you sometimes get). Examples: Alien Ant Farm, Deftones, Linkin Park, Incubus.

6

Milo, have you actually heard Nailbomb? Im guessing no because they are as far from industrial as you can get. They are pretty much straight metal.

Nailbomb=not-industrial

Thank you.

:wink:

7

Yes I have, and I heard a lot of sampling going on, which most people would agree pushes a band towards the industrial pigeon hole. These guys seem to agree with me and I’m pretty sure at the time Max Cavalera often refered to it as industrial.

What’s your beef Philip, you a Venom fan or something?

milo

8

“Chanson” is just French for “song.” In classical music, it’s sometimes used to distinguish French art songs from German (called lieder.) Not sure why it rates its own category when lieder doesn’t.

“Christian Gangsta Rap” = joke.

“Crossover” probably has a million meanings, but two over the more prominent are: country mixed with regular pop (think Shania Twain), and jazz mixed with pop (think George Benson.)

“Fusion” also has a million meanings. In jazz, it usually refers to jazz-rock fusion, which first emerged in the late 60s. (In the 1950s, though, “fusion” referred to jazz-classical fusion.)

I’m not sure why Winamp has separate entries for “Psychedelic” and “Psychedelic Rock”, but think late 1960s – sitars, backwards guitars, cosmic lyrics, and 20-minute guitar solos.

“Retro”: Could refer to the fad for cheesy music of the late 50s/early 60s we saw a few years back (think Dean Martin and Esqiuvel.) But of course nowadays you can apply “retro” to anything more than a couple of years old.

“Revival”: Lord knows. Could be anything from Roots Revival (think Los Lobos) to revivals of Broadway shows to Gospel.

Of course, the typos make figuring this out even more difficult. The dopes at Winamp have misspelled “bebop” as “bebob” since the beginning. And I’m still trying to figure out whether “Polsk Punk” is just a bizarre typo for “Post Punk” or they really think Polish punk rock needs its own category.

9

The Ramones? New Wave?

The Ramones wear definatly a departure from the punk rock of the day, but they were not New Wave by any definition. New Wave implies a certain amount of sythesized music, which The Ramones certainly did not dabble with. The Ramones were the beginning of the pop-punk subgenre. This subgenre is alive and well today, and features such illustrious bands as The Mr.T Experience, The Groovie Ghoulies and The Queers. Although those bands all sound different (and indeed, punk rock is a tricky thing to catagorize- there is plenty of punk rock that doesn’t sound punk and plenty of punk-sounding music that isn’t punk) The one thing that pop-punk bands have in common is the hertiage of The Ramones.

Not that this usage of ‘pop-punk’ differs from the, errr, popular usage of the term, which denoted modern American punk rock bands with less serious upbeat lyrics, a penchant for skateboarding, and frat-boy behaivor (think Blink-182)

The Subgenres of punk rock is a little understood thing, despite it’s importance to National Security and the protection of our youth.

10

Milo,

Nailbomb is about as industrial as Slayer or Sepultura. Just because some website puts them into that category does not make it so. They just slap those labels on there so uninformed people can find new bands to hear. Show me a song other than World of Shit that has any sampling in it. And that sample is just a loop that plays during the chorus.

Every band that uses some samples is NOT industrial. Some intro samples do not make a band industrial either. Ministry is industrial. Nine Inch Nails is industrial. Nailbomb is not industrial. Is Metallica industrial because of the helicopter sample at the begining of One? Nailbomb has been one of my favorite bands since there short lived life started.

I understand that you made a generalization about the bands you described and I can accept the mistakes. But dont come and argue the point when you obviously do not even have either of thier CD’s.

As far as Venom goes, I can appreciate them. Dont particularly like them though.

Phlip da Troll

11

Good god, look at what that site claims is “similar” music. Krokor? Obituary? Coal Chamber? lol.

Come on man, there has got to be better sources than that.

12

Not sure if this is in reply to my post. If it is, then re-read it. I never said any such thing.

13

There’s a lot of samples on the album, some spoken word and others are obscure noises. How did you go about collecting and recording them?

Max: Every day we came up with something different, both Alex and I, I did the one from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Alex really liked it alot. Another one is me beating up on my washing machine, and some really fucked up crazy shit like that. Alex has this really fucked up car in Phoenix, you know, a real junky piece of shit and he’d be flying down the street and then slam on the brakes, and he almost crashed, but I would record it.(laughs) It turned out good, nothing like a car but more of a fucked up noise.

Your brother Igor(of Sepultura) plays drums on several of the songs, did you use a drum machine on the others?

Max: Yeah. That was Alex, he plays the drum machine. If Igor played the whole album it would of sounded too much like Sepultura, so with the drum machine it sounds different.

Full interview is here

Wow, thanks for your tolerence, any opinion that differs from yours is clearly BS huh?

One gungy old tape and mp3’s as it happens, but it comes to much the same thing. If I hadn’t heard them, I would hardly have given them as an example, and tell you in my last post that I had, now would I?

You said it.

The fact is that Nailbomb, like most bands, had influences from a number of styles and subgenres. While they didn’t set out to be a carbon copy of Ministry or Nine Inch Nails, to try arguing that they weren’t influenced by these and other industrial bands is pushing it a bit IMHO. But hey, if you love them so much that you’re gonna get your panties in a bunch over it, I’m not going to agrue endlessly with you. Call 'em whatever you want, its all pretty subjective anyway.

milo

14

Laughing Lagomorph -In my defense, I haven’t lived all that long, and I’ve been to maybe two or three live performances ever. Thanks for your insights.

I was not aware that “Bon Jovi” was originally a band which used the singer’s name. Yeah, I figured he was a poseur, at least regarding traditional ear-bleeding metal. C’mon, anyone who can get famous on Nickelodeon (Living On a Prayer was a huge Nick Rocks hit for the better part of a year) can’t be that hardcore.

Creedence Clearwater Revival never did Sweet Home Alabama? Hmm, looks like I got another mislabeled file. You’d be amazed as to how ridiculously some songs get mislabeled (I recently deleted a Crazy Town song that was credited to Limp Bizkit. I wish this was a joke.)

even sven - The Ramones are as punk as Donna from Pop 'N Music. Probably more so, come to think of it. (Pop 'N Music, of course, is where I got subgenres such as “penta-mode”, “coquettish”, “night-out”, and “akiba”, which I will not even try to get explanations for anymore.)

I thought new wave was supposed to be early 80’s European-influenced or outright European techno-ish music. E.g. Falco, Flock of Seagulls, and Billy Idol. (Well, maybe Idol was more punk…)

everyone - I’m not too concerned about the extremely specific subdivisions, but I want to make sure I’m not making any big mistakes. For example, I’ve named all my Ayumi Hamasaki songs “house”, and, under further consideration, re-specified my Captain Jack songs “eurodance”, even though there might be some techno in there somewhere. (I’m still not quite sure what to do with 10000 Maniacs…)

One question (and in retrospect, I should have asked this sooner): Is anyone here familiar with the new music games? Hiphopmania, Dance Dance Revolution, Para Para Paradise, etc. This is where I got my impression of nearly all the dance genres from.

15

DKW,
Don’t apologize for being young…you have a much better grip on the more recent musical genres than I ever will!

I’m not saying Creedence NEVER recorded Sweet Home Alabama, but it is practically a signature song for Lynyrd Skynrd, and they first wrote and recorded it in the late 70’s, after (I think) Creedence had already broken up. Is the file you have a live track?

Re: New Wave being Euro influenced. It might sound that way in the context of today’s music, but I think it might be more because bands you consider “Euro” sounding were influenced more by New Wave than were American bands. New Wave was never as popular in the States as it apparently was in England. But Blondie, the Cars, and Talking Heads (all American bands) were considered New Wave. Billy Idol (a Brit) started out as a punk rocker, but his solo career could at best be described as punk-influenced dance pop.

Re: Bon Jovi. Yeah, Living on a Prayer is by the band Bon Jovi, fronted by John Bon Jovi. Kind of analagous to Van Halen, I guess.

The Ramones practically invented punk rock.

16

I would classify this as almost Goth, but with an early 80’s feel, and more pop sensibility.

groups like OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Cure, Psychedelic Furs. If this is not a genre, what genre do the above belong in?

note that vis a vis Goth, which some would put the Cure in, i would hesistate to put them in Goth. The Smiths, OTOH, i would put in Goth, because they ask the same questions as Goth does, i.e. the spiritual dichotomy of indulgence versus redemption, although they provide a different answer than most Goth acts do: a lot of the Smiths work implies a revulsion of carnality, whereas most of Goth revels in it, but at least it is on the same dialectic.

17

By the way, DKW, the important thing is to not get too caught up in classifying music. If it sounds good to you and you enjoy it, who cares how someone else defines it?

18

Musical Hairsplitting: The act of classifying music and musicians into pathologically picayune categories:

“The Vienna Franks are a good example of urban white acid folk revivalism crossed with ska.”

  • Douglas Coupland, Generation X

Sorry, it just came to me. I can be smug - all of my friends stopped buying new music in about 1986. Anything past that date is, “turn that shit off”, so it doesn’t matter what I call it.

Good luck. BTW, “Polka Punk” is a genre. But one so old I only have it on vinyl and can’t remember any band names.

19

Black Metal - Emperor, Nile. Unintelligible lyrics, hurricane drumming, and technical riffing, lyrics dealing with religious and fantasy.

Speed Metal - Megadeth, Anthrax. Fast-as-lightning guitar, quick drumming, generally political lyrics.

Death Metal - Death, Entombed. Style varies but definitely heavy metal. Lyrics generally concern death and dying but this genre is usually identified by guttural lyrics.

Grindcore - Napalm Death, Carcass. Hardcore-oriented, highly political and radical lyrics. Vocals are unintelligible and usually delivered with a smirk. Blast beats abound. Heavy underground record trading.

Melodic Death - In Flames, Arch Enemy. Name is a misnomer as lyrics span the spectrum. Clean and growling vocals. Heavy on the melody.

Thrash Metal - Slayer, Testament. A lot borrowed from punk. Chip-chop riffs over efficient drumming. Lyrics span the spectrum but usually stick to the offensive and unpleasant.

Power Metal - Helloween, Blind Guardian. With much borrowed from Iron Maiden these bands have clean vocals and lyrical subject matter sticks with D&D, fantasy and the silly. Varies greatly.

There are others, but these are the ones I like best. Obviously a lot of cross-over between genres but these are my thougths on the matter.

20

Industrial Music has been used to mean many things. Einstürzende Neubauten is industrial. So is Skinny Puppy definitely industrial. Interesting industrial bands include: Throbbing Gristle, which was one of the first bands to call their music industrial,frontline assembly, who actually do not use guitars, but only samples of guitars on most of their albums (I haven’t kept up with their newest stuff…)Laïbach who have albums that are extremely minimalist, and others with humongous arrangements,Ministry who have gone from entirely electronic to mostly guitars with layers of samples and Front 242 which is mostly electronic, and a bit more clubbish than the other bands on this list…:wink:

There is also a trend which is Industrial Metal, like Nailbomb, Fear Factory and others I can’t remember right now. But in most cases, the operative word remains metal.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against industrial metal, I actually enjoy Nailbomb, Fear Factory, Ministry, Godflesh and the like, but they don’t represent all there is to industrial music. Neither is my list of industrial bands in any way exhaustive, there are a lot of fantastic industrial bands, but already this will give you a taste of the different flavors industrial music can take.