This is Mark. Throwing up the devil horns while wearing a Justin Bieber shirt. Totally makes sense if you know him. Offending metal heads and Beliebers all in one go.
Except nobody’s offended, because genres don’t mean shit.
Remember mashups ? We’re living in one now, and the blender’s on high speed. The lines that used to get drawn around genre have been mostly obliterated, with artists free to incorporate the influence of any style they please.
Let’s look at country for a minute.
Pop country.
Rap country.
Rock country.
Let’s be honest, some days you gotta look hard for the actual country in country.
You can throw a banjo on a pop song and call it country, but why call it anything at all ? It’s music. And if it’s good, it’s good.
Outside of radio or DSP playlists, the adherence to strict genre guidelines is over, and even then it’s not hard to find songs being squeezed into a format where they wouldn’t traditionally belong. Because good is good. And when the fans talk, the industry listens. The biggest artists in the world are the ones crossing boundaries people told them they couldn’t cross.
This isn’t an argument for trying everything all at once. Having a style matters. Knowing what you do really well is important. But pushing yourself outside those antiquated genre lines to try something new is important too.
Banjo on your pop song doesn’t make it country. Distorted guitar on your country song doesn’t make it rock. Flute on your heavy metal song doesn’t make it chamber music, just ask Jethro Tull.
Nobody cares about genre as much as the industry tells you they do. That’s why Nickelback is headlining Boots and Hearts. On paper it doesn’t fit, but with today’s music fan, the fit makes sense.
Don’t be something you’re not. But if what you are is a product of the musical blender, don’t worry about what to call it, as long as you can call it good. Embrace the death of genre and skip the funeral. There’s a new life with less rules and a whole whack load of fans that don’t care what you call yourself as long as they love it.
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