One of the most infuriating aspects of modern music is the need to pigeon-hole and categorise certain genres, then there are sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and before you know it you find yourself saying wanky phrases like Future Garage or Nu-Disco. There is a necessity to differentiate between similar music, to describe a certain night out to your friends or to recommend a certain band. However another reason the aspect of defining a musical style is essential is to distinguish when one musical genre starts and another ends, and this leads me to look at a death of a genre.
I am going to have a look at what constitutes the death of a music genre, many people have been heralding 2013 as the death of dubstep, and I recently read an article about the ‘Death of Pop-punk’, I thought I would have a quick look at what causes a death and what it really means.
‘The Croydon dub guys’ helped create the genre back in 2003 as Skrillex claimed in his Grammy winning speech but recently it seems that they have all jumped ship with Skream currently working on a disco album. Dubstep caught the attention of the pop songwriters and it was clear that the London based bass genre was infiltrating the charts with different pop stars using some dubstep sentiments, and now some people won’t touch dubstep with a barge pole. Around the early 2000’s the charts were ridden with Pop-punk songs with Blink 182, Sum 41, Bowling for Soup and The Offspring all getting a lot of radio play. Years just before that, Nu-Metal penetrated the pop consciousness with bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Papa Roach garnering both critical and commercial success. But both these trends had their time in the sunny mainstream and then quietly and humbly sneaked off out the backdoor with many music critics calling for their heads as they are currently doing with Dubstep.
Some music genres are very niche and circumstantial, there were genres called Nintendo-core at the birth of the Myspace age and Horror-core consists of bands such as Insane Clown Posse and are based on one act and when they break-up, so does the genre. However for me, a music taste is a personal thing, just because it hit it big and then people got tired of it, this does not spell the death of a genre. With the Internet age, if you have a particular musical leaning, be it as obscure as Japanese Jazz Speed Metal, you can find it on the internet. Genres such as Happy Hardcore or Pop Punk that existed in the mainstream for a short time still exist in the realms of the interweb and I believe that because of this, someone out there is making this genre of music and releasing it on the web, in the modern age no music genre really dies.
Listening to Zomby’s latest album it possesses some elements of dubstep, and if Burial was to releases a follow up to ‘Untrue’, the ‘Death of Dubstep’ would be very short-lived. Similarily with Pop-Punk bands such as The Wonder Years, The Dangerous Summer, Fireworks and I Call Fives making some of the best and truest forms of Pop-punk in the last 10years, just because it isn’t topping the charts doesn’t mean the genre’s not making great music. I think just like the economic cycle, a strong genre like Disco/Soul/Rock has a boom and a recession where it will slip in and out of the mainstream over a period of years. For lesser genres such as Pop-punk, punk, Metal and dubstep the music has a sort of ‘outsider’ quality and when it gets flung into the mainstream it cannot stay there for long, but somewhere out there, someone is pioneering and adding their own originality to these genres allowing for it to remain alive.
Dubstep at It’s Best/Prime
Burial-Etched Headplate
Dupstep at It’s Worst
Pop-Punk back in 2000’s
Lit- My Own Worst Enemy
Pop-punk in 2013
The Wonder Years- Devil In My Bloodstream
KJ's Music 