What Genre Are You?

JC sits in my general vicinity at the studio and runs his mouth a lot, so I get to hear most of the stuff that he says... even when my headphones are on and Coldplay is blaring. However, I must give him credit in that he triggered the idea for this blog.

A few days ago he was submitting metadata on Gracenote for a band's CD and was going through all of the different genres to choose from. Below is a very short list of the absolute best ones that he found:

Shoe Gazer, Dream Pop, Outsider Music, Post-Modern Electronic Pop, Jangle Pop, Paisley Underground, Folktronica, Turntablism, Queer Core, Mercy Beat, New Wave Quirk, Diva Style, Space-Age Bachelor Pad and Quiet Storm

A music genre is defined on the Art & Popular Culture website as "a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or 'basic musical language'". That's great, but it also goes further than that. It can be categorized by techniques, styles, context and non-musical things such as geographical origin.

Personally, I have a hard enough time just explaining what bands CONJOB sounds like. I don't need a bunch of other ridiculous categories to try and shove us into. Too many choices isn't usually a good thing as it often induces an anxiety attack, which provokes anger. It's gone from just being "Rock", "Reggae" and "Hip Hop" to "Midland China Rock", "Jawaiian" and"Mad Chester"!

My thought is that it is nearly impossible to classify all music in a consistent way, which is why all of the subgenres have popped up. I say be done with it. Don't define your genre. As the soulful Joss Stone says, "When I'm listening to the music I'm creating, it's not really in any genre, 'cause it hasn't been created yet. When it is (written), we just put it down and it's there and it's like, yeah, it's soulful and it's felt. Some may call it R&B. Some may call it blues. I don't really give it a name; this is just me singing, just me feeling it out."

Feel this out!

Cheers!
Creed