The Arc of Labeling Compulsion and Genres of the 2000's

 There was a time, back in the pleistocene epoch, when you went to a "record store" to PURCHASE recordings in the form of vinyl plastic records.

 In such places, there would be bins of records.  They would be organized thusly:

ROCK

JAZZ

CLASSICAL

COUNTRY

 That was it.

 For example, the Star Wars soundtrack wasn't found under "soundtracks".  It was in the "CLASSICAL" section.  Electronic music like Kraftwerk wasn't in "EDM/DANCE" or "ELECTRONIC" or some such, it was not jazz, it was not classical or country music - so it was in "ROCK".

 (Browsing through Spotify nomenclature...) 

James Taylor wasn't "FAMILY FOLK MUSIC" (???).  Rush wasn't "PROGRESSIVE METAL".  The Clash wasn't "BRITISH PUNK".  Black Sabbath wasn't "DOOM METAL".  

 The effective thinking was "if it's not country music, it's rock music".  

Likewise, pop radio stations in the 70's played music that sometimes would be found in the "COUNTRY" bins, sometimes "ROCK" - occasionally even "JAZZ" and "CLASSICAL".  

 Because it was about MUSIC.  Not an exercise in how well something fits a description.  Musicians made music that was labeled after the fact - because it was presumed it would simply fall into one of those categories. 

 It's my belief that's why pop music defied categorization in the 70's.  

 In the 2000's we had Peak Genre Categorization.  I found myself having conversations with students about what bands were "emo" (an invented by the record industry label for promotion) - with zero consensus between different students.  Metal students were obsessed with focusing on specic sub-genres: Northern Swedish Death Metal, West Coast Screamo, Emo-Screamo, whether pig squeals were acceptable but not cookie monster growls, whether there could be a chorus in a song, whether there could be melody, whether there could be one or two guitar players... on and on.

 In the year 2020, nobody purchases music anymore, you subscribe.  But the damage is done; everyone is fitting a niche.  It's ingrained that music has to not exceed parameters.  So now there are a series of about a dozen default categories, more granular than the 70's.  They are fenced off, once shouldn't dare cross.  It's codifed, it's the law.   

 It's amusing though, that some hybridization is accepted in each "genre" by no acknowledgment that it's occurred.  "Country" music today shares more in common with hair band metal from the 80's and hip hop drum beats than "country music" pre-2000 (I'd go further and say "Post Garth Brooks Era").  European dance music almost always has sampled metal guitar pads, but you'd never see a guitar player on stage with a dj.  Metal bands will have choruses that share identical chord progressions with the lightest elevator-friendly pop music.  

 Superficially it would seem that these hybrids run counter to my premise, but they're very specific hybridizations; new breeds that bear genetic semblance to wolves but are distinctly poodles, huskies, dachshunds.  Mutts are frowned upon in general.

 As a musician/guitar player, it presents a rigid reality.  If you really only prefer one specific hybrid, it works out.  If you like more than one style, then it's cognitive dissonance.  I've seen it happening to others, and myself: do you fence off what you create and do, or allow it to try to create a new "acceptable" hybrid?  This buried context has been stifling, and squashes a lot of interest in doing music for people today.  Which is bad - I've seen people face this without being aware of it, knowing that what they want to do is not *exactly* one of the Acceptable Forms, and instead of deciding to either stay within boundaries or strike out against them, the feeling is "failure".   People just stop.

 Being aware of this view of reality is something the Modern Musician has to know and embrace  because it streamlines the process, while preventing impractical flights of whimsy.  

The Irony of Prince Being a Musician?

 It would seem the number one comment I noticed after Prince's death is something along the lines of the following:

 ".... yeah, and he could really play guitar, and other instruments!".


Recently the video of Nick Jonas of Jonas Brother's teeny bopper fame failing at trying to play a basic solo at a concert made the rounds.  He's obviously marginal as a guitar player, and it's not like the Jonas Brothers - or hardly any other pop act these days - create "their" own music.

 There he was, though, trying to do something he obviously couldn't in front of a crowd of people.

 The precedent was sort of set when Madonna tried to play through some bar chords on a song on a tv show.  The unspoken premise being in "reality", everyone is in on the secret:

 Pop stars are no longer expected to be actual musicians.

 "Wow, look at Madonna!  She's playing guitar!!!".

 A novelty?

 As a kid in the late 70's I HATED, DEPLORED seeing people lip sync.  Not only that, but my parents most of the time would not accept the notion, or "people in general".  

 We've passed through that to being cynical, to be accepting.  We've gone farther, into a weird fractured land where some people still believe in what they see, while others just don't care anymore.  People pay $$$$ to go see pop acts (emphasis on "act") either partially, or fully aware that they're going to see people miming to prerecorded music.

 "Chip, in the future, people will pay lots of money to knowingly watch people pretend to be pompous about pretending to perform music they didn't create".   Ok, sure.

 Prince started at the end of the pre-computer assisted music era.  People had no choice to be musicians in order to make music.  People took pride in it.  Now Justin Bieber is lauded for trying to play guitar, as if he's somehow going into uncharted territory, and risking his health and safety for doing so. 

 Not to denigrate Prince at all, but... you know, the idea of a pop musician not only being able to play an instrument, but multiple instruments, and to write their own music shouldn't be an outlier phenomenon.  It didn't use to be.  That it has become that in the 21st century is a sad reflection on what culture has been reduced to.