Quiz: Is This A Real Genre (original) (raw)

In dance music circles, PR email blasts, and Beatport charts, "tropical house" has been trending hard in the first half of 2015, even though it’s an idea—mostly white guys who don’t live in the tropics making melodic house—that’s been around for decades. Which begs the question, is this tropical house crest due entirely to relentless marketeering? How easy is it to convince well-informed music consumers that a fake thing is a real thing? Is creating a genre as easy as it seems?

The line between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that could be real is as thin as ever, if existent at all. This is the uncanny genre valley that publicists-cum-neologicians live in and for. There are probably a billion think pieces about what genre really means (or doesn't), but for brevity’s sake let’s go with a basic, superficial definition: a genre is a descriptor of similar musical productions/artists which is repeated in legitimate publications with full-time editors over some period of time.

So, using this definition, which of the following are real genres and which are bullshit*?

  1. EBM - "electronic body music"; dark '80s electro from Northern Europe
  2. Wigan Bass - medieval-influenced offshoot of Mancunian dubstep
  3. Seapunk - net art music that sounds like pink and turquoise and/or dolphins
  4. Billy Twang - rockabilly with a twist of outlaw country
  5. Balearic Beat - druggy, euphoric music played on the Balearic isles, often at the wrong speed
  6. Viking Metal - Norwegian black metal influenced by Norse folklore and folk music
  7. Foamcore - hardcore, intentionally tinny speed techno
  8. Gabber - uptempo Dutch hardstyle techno
  9. Vaporwave - satiric offshoot of chillwave inspired by library music and muzak
  10. Belgian New Beat - cokey Belgian techno from the '80s
  11. Brostep - generic take on dubstep for dudes who used to call people 'fag' before they got plurred out on molly
  12. Skweee - off-kilter synth music from Scandinavia
  13. Shit Gaze - ultra-lo-fi music that incorporates noise and punk
  14. Bath House - melodic, downtempo chillout mix music, usually featuring a water motif
  15. Wonky Pop - slightly left-of-center UK pop
  16. Disco Polo - mixture of Polish folk music and Euro Disco
  17. Parent Trap - dad rock mashed with ratchet bass drops
  18. Schlager - German schlock pop
  19. Bleepy Blitpop - techno plus Britpop with chopped vocals
  20. OutRun - synthy chiptune music for driving 8bit cars to
  21. Hypnagogic Pop - the formal way to say chillwave
  22. Ghettotech - uptempo ghetto house with raw, raunchy samples
  23. Goa-Wei - Goa trance built on traditional Chinese scales and signifiers
  24. Fidget House - Euro-centric house with wobbly, slippery basslines and vocal cut-ups
  25. Pixie Prog - post-feminist prog rock from Iceland
  26. CEDM - Christian Electronic Dance Music; big tent revival
  27. Nardcore - hardcore punk from the Oxnard area
  28. Skit Scat - comedy hip hop where all of the songs are skits spoken in a scat-like cadence
  29. Sissy Juke - queer footwork born in Vancouver

Answers:

  1. real
  2. fake
  3. real
  4. fake
  5. real
  6. real
  7. fake
  8. real
  9. real
  10. real
  11. real
  12. real
  13. real
  14. fake
  15. real
  16. real
  17. fake
  18. real
  19. fake
  20. real
  21. real
  22. real
  23. fake
  24. real
  25. fake
  26. real
  27. real
  28. fake
  29. fake

*bullshit unless enough people try to make this a thing

Editors note: A previous version of this quiz mistakenly stated that "Shit Gaze" was fake. It is, in fact, all too real.