The rise and fall of musical genres
 

Just a theory I have, but it seems much like empires, (Roman, Ottoman, British) musical genres seem to rise peak and then enter into a decline. There are very few genres I can think of where this is not the case, at least in Anglo speaking world.

I guess with technology and the changing of generations cultures are always in flux.

Jazz: Swing rises in the 20's and commercially peaks in the 40's before it declines. Jazz as a whole is still dominant throughout the 50's with pop acts and the rise of bebop and cool jazz, but inevitably begins a slow decent as it is eclipsed by rock sometime in the 60's. By the end of the 70's jazz becomes an underground niche genre. It's dominance is over.

Rock: There are so many different genres of rock, but on a whole it begins its ascent sometime in the 50's with the likes of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and hits peak interest in the 70's in what we now phrase as classic rock, and despite its continued dominance through the 80's it safe to say its been on the decline with it's last big commercial success coming from the early 90's, as its market dominance is challenged by other genres and changing technology.

Heavy Metal: Starts in the early seventies and begins its ascent around the late 70's with the NWOBM & bands like AC/DC, to become one of the most dominant genres of the 80's, peaking somewhere around the early to mid 80's before entering in a decline after 91 with the dominance of other youth culture genres taking its place. Despite this, it still remains popular throughout the 90's with ascent of alternative and Nu metal, and the 00's with metalcore, but it never regains the commercial dominance of peak metal in the 80's.

Rap: Starts in the early 80's and begins its ascent in the late 80's to become one of the most dominant genres of the 90's. Unlike heavy metal though, it remains strong throughout the 00's & beyond with superstars like Eminem, Kanye West & Kendrick Lamar, and the dominance of R&B in the pop charts, but nevertheless its popularity has been waning in recent years, leaving many critics to proclaim that rap is dead. Although it is now a hugely popular global phenomenon, it's safe to say it's not as popular as it once was, and that we have hit peak rap, either in the 90's or sometime in the early 00's.

Punk Begins it's ascent in the late 70's and becomes a popular underground genre throughout the 80's, before becoming a commercialized powerhouse in the early 90's with the onset of grunge and bands like Green Day and the Offspring. It retains its popularity somewhat throughout 00's with the ascent of screamo and the popularity of hardcore bands like Hatebreed and Converge ,before trickling down to a small underground musical niche.

Anyhow that my theory, I don't want to hog all the genres so feel free to add your own or to pick my theory apart, cheers wtb.

Country music is probably the best example of this. Peaked in the 50's and 60's with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Faron Young. Then continued on pretty strong on through the 80's and 90's with a few great artists like Lyle Lovett, K.D. Lang, Carlene Carter, and The Judds. Then in the early 2000's Johnny Cash died and it completely turned to crap. It's probably the worst genre in music right now.

Great idea for a thread, William! :thumb:

A lot of this is of course down to commercial popularity, ie what the radio plays, and how much money the genre brings in, in terms of concerts, promotions, merchandising even (not too many people would wear an "I love jazz" t-shirt) but another factor is this sort of desire for the younger generation to always despise their parents' music. Many kids would put down say jazz or big band in the 50/60s because it was "old people's music", although in all likelihood they never even listened to it properly. Same thing with punk vs prog and pop vs rock. There's an almost unconscious need to put down music seen as older, to be seen as "hip" or "with it" or "cool" or whatever the prevalent phrase is at the time, by latching on to the latest trends and being with the in-crowd.

So older music generally gets short shrift from the younger generation, and sadly, mostly these are the ones who buy the records that make up the charts, and therefore determine what is deemed popular and what we will hear on the basic radio.

Then of course you get revivals, when some music is seen as "retro" and is now cool. That 20/30s style was popular again for a while, mostly due to "Boardwalk Empire" and particularly in Britain, on the back of their (failed) Eurovision entry. Sometimes it comes back around, such as with prog in the 80s, to sort of fade out again, and sometimes it metamorphoses into something almost completely different, like "New" Country. Then you have genres crossing over, so that the best (or worst) of both worlds is achieved.

One thing is certain though: as you say, in another however many years, the current trend which is seen as cool will be villified by the kids as they groove to their new favourite genre, whatever it may be. The world turns, and music changes, but one thing remains the same: our belief that the music our parents listened to was crap, and our, in general, refusal to give it a fair trial and just dismiss it out of hand.

So are we just talking about how a genre does commercially or as a whole? Because if it's the latter, I'd say that jazz world is still quite massive and thriving despite not being chart toppers.

Does anyone know what the current situation with EDM is?
In the 90s techno was huge, when I was in my late teens/early twenties it was all about Jungle/DnB and House. Last trend I consciously witnessed was dubstep.
Is there a leading genre nowadays? Or is it pretty much fractured by now?

Dang, those kids be dissing jazz? They probably just never heard Kind of Blue.

The prominence of particular genres is very much tied to the prominence of particular subcultures, and the rise and fall of subcultures is very much tied to historical events. Listening to the most significant and successful albums of an era often feels like a bit of a history lesson, whether the music is directly addressing the events of the times or the mood simply reflects the general paradigm of the era, it acts as a sort of window into the overall mentality of that time.

I think approaching old music with this in mind really enriches the experience. Don't compare it to modern music or some standard you have built up listening to other genres, listen to it for what it is and what it's trying to say. Listen to the tone of the instruments and the production quality and realize that those sounds were the limits of what was possible at the time. Imagine what it must have it must have been like in the 60's to hear distorted amplifiers for the first time, how powerful and visceral it must have been to hear even a single note ring out with that edge to it. Or how mind boggling and sinister the first Black Sabbath album must have been, seeming to come out of nowhere with this atmosphere never touched before in popular music. Chuck Berry was revolutionary for youth music, Jerry Lee Lewis was a ****ing demon, Duke Ellington was a wizard.

I've thought about this a lot too and it seems that with electronic music, since being mostly instrumental it doesn't really lend itself as significantly to particular subcultures, the popularity of subgenres over time seems to be dependent moreso on the actual sounds and production techniques used. Reese bass is extremely popular right now, so the dominant subgenres in electronic music are the genres that utilize it the most; Glitch Hop, Neurofunk, Electro-House, Dubstep etc. High hat trills and big synth stabs are also really popular right now so Trap is huge.

Hip-Hop started in 79', it was being majorly pioneered in all aspects through 79' to around 86' then from 87' to a little after 94' is what is considered the Golden Era im which the Highest quality music came out of, from 94' to 00' it was good but becoming gradually more and more commercialized and is also the time when Master P and his record label got highly successful and Southern Hip-Hop started to dominate the scene, from 00' to around 07' Hip-Hop de-evolved into Rap and became extremely commercial and RnB thugs and nightclub rappers became the forefront and Emcees hardly existed on a successful front, from 06' to now rap has become an almost entirely different type of music sounding nothing like anything previous with the likes of the artists on the scene. Hip-Hop is still around but only in the cracks of the music scene and is mostly underground, so it's death started in the early 2000's and is gradually happening and everything becomes more commercialized, although the fan base for Oldschool Hip-Hop is growing so maybe in coming years there will be a resurgence in Hip-Hop oriented style of rap music.

Thanks, I would also tend to agree with your analyze of each generation needing to shed away the music of their parents. Sadly this means that all musical genres eventually fall out of vogue & descend back into an underground niche.

EDM is a tricky one because it's so technology driven its peak may have not been reached. For now you could do two things.

You could look at individual genres within EDM, for instance trip hop & progressive house started sometime in the late 80's and began its ascent in the early 90's to become one of the most dominant genres of the decade most notably in the UK & Europe. It peaks sometime in the mid late 90's (Trainspotting, Mezzanine) and then begins its descent in 00's as its eclipsed by the indie rock revival, The Strokes, White Stripes ect.

Or you could gamble and state that "heaven forbid" the current crop of EDM artists like Armin Van Buuren & Sweedish House Mafia is peak EDM.

Thanks Mico, I'm aware of the history and would completely agree that 87 to 94 is the golden age of rap, but it is it's commercialization with artists like Biggy and Jay Z that leads it to become a radio goliath dominating the pop charts through R&B by the early 2000's.

As per example, most true punk fans would probably murder someone for claiming that Green Day & the Offspring are better than Black Flag & the Dead Kennedys, but nevertheless this was peak punk. Green Day has probably sold more records than all the 80's American hardcore bands combined.

I may be in era though, I haven't checked the overall record sales of NWA and the Wu Tang Clan, but it could very well be the case they could be regarded in the same light as Floyd or Zeppelin.

Progressive house and dubstep seemed to have been popular from about 2007-2012 or so, but both those genres have given way to a lot of electro house (either the commercial radio stuff or the festival-type sound -- two very different sounds), as well as future house, deep house and trap. Deep house being somewhat of a '90s revival thing in some respect and future house being deep house on steroids. Maybe some trance too with artists such as Armin van Buuren, Gareth Emery, etc. David Guetta, Zedd and Pitbull do more house music, just to give examples.

I subscribe to over 20 YouTube channels as well as listen to other outlets such as Pandora, and I'd say that most of the genres are represented as if there's been no shift in anything, but that's from an underground perspective and is determinate based on my individual preferences and which artists I did or did not seek out on my own. When it comes to the mainstream stuff, it is more like what I mentioned in my first sentence IMO. If you're wanting an analysis by charts, I can respect that, but I never look at them so I can't give a further analysis based on that. I'd say that house -- when including all its variants -- is ruling at the moment.

Exactly as I say then, Biggie's Ready To Die was 94' and Ready To Die came out 97', along with Jay-Z'z first album Reasonable Doubt (which I wouldn't call a hit) came out 96'. That's why I say the real process of of commercialization started 94' to 00'.

I think I've had this argument with William before but I feel like Rap as a genre is at an all time high (or peaked in the last ~10 years). It's made it's way into multiple genres and is having more mainstream success than I ever remember. You could argue it's not nearly as "good" as the Golden Era, but it's more commercially successful.

I agree, the beats now are way better too.
The evolution of rap has amazed me, they changed the tempo and groove of it and they are still trying to find new ways to keep innovating on the genre.

Yes you have lol, but it is not aimed at rap, but rather all musical genres in general. Anyhow I disagree, I think we hit peak rap back in the early 00's when rap utilized through R&B completely dominated the pop charts, but the landscape of pop music has been changing over the last few years with the ascent of Lady Gaga in other artists. Don't get me wrong, rap is still immensely popular and will be for most likely the next two decades, but I do feel it has hit its peak, and I think time will bear that out.

All music has its golden age. I feel the last golden age for music in general was the 90s

My understanding is that its popularity has been in decline over the past decade or so.

i think its more popular now than in the 00s decade.

Rap is still on the rise and so is metal and all its sub genres..

im not a fan of either of those genres but i can't deny they are still popular.

music history major?

All right some disagreement on rap (though I suspect it's more based on passionate rap fans not wanting to let go than statistics)

So far we have....

Jazz, Rock, metal, rap, punk, country and various patchwork of EDM.

You know country was the one genre I thought might defy the odds because it's so rooted in geography, but when I think about it Elvis man is right, rural America has been shrinking over the decades. Peak country probably hit in the late 60's when Cash and Haggard where at their peak.

Okay here is an easy one:

Disco:

Starts in the early 70's and begins to ascends in the mid 70's & we hit peak disco around 1977/78 with colossal hits like Staying Alive & Heart of Glass.

Instead of a natural decline like most music genres it comes to an abrupt end with the disco backlash of 79 (Disco demolition night) where with the exception of a few underground dance clubs, it becomes completely obliterated as a genre by the early 80's with the onset of the New Wave.

not wanting to let go of what :/

i mean theres a lot of hip hop currently on or featured in songs on the charts. im not sure what it was like in the 90s but i doubt it was drastically different in terms of hearing hip hop on popular radio stations (was Jay-z really as popular as N-sync in the 90s?)

Jazz is still very much thriving, it's just something that you see in a more localized sense. Even still, we have jazz albums taking the internet by storm from time to time, so I don't think it's too unlikely for jazz to have another peak in the near future. And metal is most definitely not in a dip, I'd say it's at one of its best stages in its history right now.

I think that these days, the internet is preventing falls and to a lesser extent, rises, by keeping them more at a constant level because it connects niches and creates a more tight knit community surrounding the music. It's not so simple as a rise or fall anymore. You could say that they're in a decline because they don't tear up the charts, but with the way that the music world is today I don't think that's a healthy indication of the state of a genre.

For the most part i agree with this but you can still hear traces of disco in modern artist like Thundercat or even Of montreal. New wave is dead as a hell though which is a shame because i love that genre.

The last decent new wave band ive heard is the Lost sounds which remained together till 2007 or so..

oh ya i agree with this for sure. I thought this thread was more about whats on the charts..

this is certainly the best era for music in general.

This is a good point and critique of the thread, technology, particularly the internet has changed the state of music as people are no longer soley dependent upon big corporations and a few indie labels to feed them their music.

Nevertheless, popularity is still relatively defined by commercial sales & surveys, and jazz definitely doesn't dominate the music charts or sales anymore. That era is long gone, but it's still thriving as a niche genre.

Think of the British Empire, it once dominated the globe like jazz did in the 50's, but today the UK, while still a thriving G7 will never attain the historic dominance it once had.

It had it's peak and went into decline, interestingly both jazz & the UK seemed to have bottomed out around the late 70's.

Well there was a big new wave revival, if you consider indie rock bands like the Strokes & Interpol as new wave.

Also lately there has been a lot of new wave sounding bands dominating the pop charts.

(ie Goyte: Someone I use to know, Foster the People: Pumped up Kicks)

but your right new wave will never be as dominate as it was in the 80's, (we probably hit peak new wave in 83?) you should map that one out.

I was totally on board with the thrash revival of the late 00's and early 10's, damn near all I listened to between 2008 and 2012. A lot of great albums came out of that movement (Black Future, Waking Into Nightmares, Ironbound, Enter the Grave etc) but a lot more mediocrity came with it, at least thrash is still fun as hell even when it's mediocre. Did that wave of bands see any attention here on the forum? Batlord maybe?

You have juicy scandal to impart? ;)

Sorry but Blondie were never disco. They were new wave.

Sigh Troll heart, do you really think that someone who worked in the music industry playing in bands, setting up stage equipment & had a home recording studio is not going to know that Blondie was new wave!!!

Heart of Glass is considered a disco hit, its only on over a 1000 disco compilation CD's. Don't be one of those no it all retards that surfs MB to input contrary comments. Your smarter than that.

Just because something is a hit in the discos William does not make it a disco song, and using Blondie as an example of disco is wrong. Anyway, I don't know what your problem is: I already pointed out the peak/trough of prog (which you completely ignored in your summing up) so it's not like that's the only contribution I've made to the thread. I think in fact I was second to post?

But if I see someone label something as something it isn't, I'll correct it. Nothing wrong with that. Get your facts right and you wont be corrected. "Harry's Game" by Clannad was a huge hit in the clubs, but they're a traditional Irish band. You gonna call them disco too?

Record sales and stuff yes. Just read an article about rap record sales in 2014 being down ~24%. I just feel like it's so heavily incorporated in Pop music to the point where they are practically the same genre, which kind of blurs the reality of it's success.

Rap is finally dying down? Phew, I was getting tired of growing up with everyone around me listening to that.

Nope.

Top Music in United States

That's the main indicator that a genre is past its prime.

but like not just radio play but I think the hip hop coming out now in general rivals the 90s in quality.

Well then my apologies Trollheart, I somehow missed your prog rock comment, I appreciate your contribution. Your still wrong on Heart of Glass though, it is a disco song, and disco is awesome :)

Nah, metal's peaked. People will always want to hear extreme forms of music, so I doubt it'll ever truly "die", but the original purpose of metal (being louder than all the music which had come before) was fulfilled with the creation of death metal, grindcore, and 2nd wave black metal.

Now, great music is made for the most part by singular, experimental bands, putting new spins on pre-existing sub-genres, with only a few small scenes forming around any one sound.

Other than that, you just have throwback bands playing the same thrash, black, death, trad, etc metal which other bands already pioneered decades ago.


Lost interest in about two months, when I realized it was nothing more than 3rd rate Nuclear Assault worship, kept from any kind of real sonic threat by self-consciously retro schtick. The "thrash revival" is one of the worst jokes in the entirety of metal history. Post-"Home Sweet Home" hair metal had more creative worth.

We'll agree to disagree. I'm not one for fighting and I sure don't want to derail your thread. Yeah, my prog thing was the first thing posted after your OP. I haven't commented since as it's kind of gone in a pretty much rap/hip-hop direction and I have no insight into that.

I do feel however my point about genres crossing over is worth exploring?

Wish i could but honestly idk enough about new wave yet to do that. i know enough to not call the Strokes new wave though.

It's only in recent years ive taken an interest in the New wave movement of the 80's im more familiar with the grunge movement of the 90's.

Yes I would tend to agree, some of the crossover thrash bands like Toxic Holocaust & Short Sharp Shock were really good though.

But the straight up thrash bands like Evile & Warbringer didn't seem to have the talent of the big 4.


I actually did respond to your post, you just missed it. I liked your point on how each new generation feels the need to make sure their music is different from their parents, thus it appeared that the decline of musical genres seemed inevitable.

I guess that is true about prog rock, to be honest it's one genre I know nothing about, basically because it puts me to sleep. If you could map out when it started to ascend, peak and then crash, that would be awesome?

A lot of people have labeled The Strokes & Interpol as part of a "new wave revival" but I would disagree as well, though the influence was definitely in their music.

New Wave essentials, U2, The Police, Blondie, the Eurthymics, Duran Duran, Men at Work, The Bangles & any new wave hits from 81 to 84. By the mid late 80's new wave starts to become over sophisticated & commercialized & thus was eventually given the boot.