We all know the routine by now. When December rolls in, so do the endless hoards of ‘albums of year’ lists, quickly followed by an explosion of enraged forum posts along the lines of: ‘crikey, [some music publication]’s list doesn’t precisely correlate with my opinions’. And 2010 was no different. But whilst this annual charade deserves to be mostly ignored, last year’s lists did share one interesting feature. It was not uncommon to see the maximalist hip hop of Kanye West next to Arcade Fire’s orchestral indie, or the polite dream-pop of Beach House alongside Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus’ everything-to-eleven post-J Dilla ‘space-opera’. The placing of so many seemingly incompatible musical styles together in a single list, as we frequently saw last year, is symptomatic of the breakdown of genre divides that is occurring in today’s music scenes.
But this is by no means a new phenomenon; Brian Eno’s article of just over a year ago entitled ‘The Death of Uncool’ was a discussion on this very same subject. In fact, the process of musical desegregation has been in action ever since the internet came into wide use. The variety of free music journalism online meant that the musical exposure experienced by a typical listener was no longer governed by their chosen monthly publication and, in effect, a small team of editors. More importantly, though, the tastes of an individual became less influenced by the opinions of their immediate groups of friends. Via blogs and forums, music fans found new ways to communicate with each other, significantly reducing the impact of ‘coolness’ and local trends on the development of musical tastes.
These factors led to a huge coming together of music fans across the globe. And with the advent of Napster at the turn of the century, listeners suddenly had access to the libraries of countless others worldwide. The supply of free music made available by P2P technology afforded listeners the chance to take risks, sampling a wide variety of styles and genres at the click of a button. Rather than setting an allegiance to a specific genre, people began to identify as ‘music fans’, exploring all kinds of sounds that they would previously have ignored.
And now, as a result of this ‘death of uncool’, the wealth of disparate musical influences that has been embraced by music scenes around the world is giving rise to a vast tapestry of highly specialised sub-genres, or ‘micro-genres’. Take the loose genre of ‘indie’, for example; influences as eclectic as 80s new wave, African traditional, 90s shoegaze and 60s pop can be heard within the labyrinth of sub-genres that has sprung forth from this common starting point. Whilst most, myself included, will be of the opinion that it is largely academic to obsess over specific categorisations of music, the rapid division and subdivision of genres (whether you choose to label them or not) has nonetheless become a permanent feature of today’s music scenes.
Obviously, this environment in which nothing is out of bounds, in which uniqueness is actively encouraged, is an extremely fertile one for musicians. But this utopian musical society has not come without its costs to the average listener. The way in which music has begun splitting off into niches has introduced new divides between listeners, and music is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy socially.
Who, outside the few close followers of ‘hypnagogic pop’ (or ‘post-noise’ or whichever term is being used these days), will have ever heard of Oneohtrix Point Never? Yet his album of last year, Returnal, was a considerable landmark in that fledgling genre’s development.
With this ever fragmenting expanse of sub-genres, the audience for each style of music is constantly narrowing. And one could argue that Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the first record since Kid A that has really brought music communities together in the same way that Radiohead’s album did ten years ago.
So whilst the ‘death of uncool’ began as a brilliant coming together of previously disconnected music scenes, we are now seeing increasingly narrow sub-genres spinning off on different tangents. And the resulting musical landscape is, in many ways, even more difficult to navigate than before.
