Are There Such Things As Musical Genres Anymore?

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The 1975 have just scored a transatlantic No 1 with an album whose influences range from Yazoo to David Bowie. If you look at everynoise.com and key in, say, Lana Del Rey, you’ll find her listed under “pop, indie R&B, indietronica, chamber pop, synthpop”; she’s all of those, a bit, but at the same time not completely any of those. All are representative of a strain of artists who are post-genre. They now straddle, or exist beyond, genres that seemed set in concrete as little as 10 years ago. They represent a cross-pollination that makes it harder than ever to definitively state that you like or dislike one genre or another.

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Last summer, a survey by “millennial insight agency” Ypulse surveyed 1,000 young adults. When asked about their favourite artists, many respondents couldn’t answer, not through ambivalence but because, it was concluded, “this generation is interested in so many music genres and artists”.

It found that while millennials are passionate about music (76% within the 13- to 17-year-old bracket said they wouldn’t be able to last a week without it), 79% of 13- to 32-year-olds said their tastes didn’t fall into one specific music genre. Just 11% said that they only listened to one genre of music. “It seems,” Ypulse noted when it published its findings, “that millennials are a genre-less generation”.

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So, if genre boundaries are evaporating, and presuming post-genre doesn’t become a genre and cancel itself out, will anything replace them? Potts suggests the answer may lie with streaming. While all the major streaming services, and Tidal, offer genre-specific playlists (many, of course, sharing the same artists and songs), a huge number of their most-subscribed playlists are themed, multi-genre offerings. “In many ways, genre has been replaced by context as playlists become a dominant format,” Potts reasons. “Just look at some of the top Spotify playlists: Your Coffee Break, Feel Good Friday, Songs to Sing in The Shower. It’s a 24-hour service providing a soundtrack to every moment in your life.”

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