The one question I can consistently never answer well, due to its sheer broadness of scope, should in theory be a bit more fun: “So what kind of music do you like?” People ask this because music is obviously a great topic of conversation, and other ways to broach the subject can be quite limited.
That question usually prompts me to fish around in my memory and just pull out whatever I was listening to that afternoon, but I find most people will tend to be a bit more general when they respond. The top three answers I hear are, undoubtedly 1) “Anything but country” (it saddens me that so few have listened to Buck Owens), 2) “Pretty much everything” and 3) “I like all sorts of things.”
It’s not really that people are boring, as much as we’re all a bit weary of labels, and reticent to dispense terms which could close doors on compatibility even though they specifically mean very little. After all, genre classification can be a minefield of clashing perceptions, which often set conversations firing off into all sorts of futile directions. When people do get down to talking specifics, it’s difficult to call a spade a spade without someone declaring it either to be merely a pointy digging tool or, obviously, a miniature shovel.
What adds to the dilemma is that music is one of the few entertainment fields where as soon as terms invented for delineation are introduced and start gaining use, they often begin to lose meaning. I think the blame for this can be placed on the fact that once a descriptor transcends its dictionary meaning, becoming abstractly linked with a musical movement or other sonic indicator, its use gets watered down because boundaries disappear. No one knows exactly what they’re talking about when they start applying terms based on ambiguous conjecture; it’s all out in there and up for grabs at that point, and the grabs are wild and varied with no lines to cross.
What was “Alternative Rock” an alternative to, anyway? What happens when “Indie” bands roll on to the mainstream? Hell, what does the term “Pop” really even mean? There was a time when a poppiness and popularity were inextricable, but now they’re frequently distant cousins, and frankly, it can be a bit awkward around the holidays.
The term “Indie” is probably one of the most ridiculously overused, meaningless music genre terms out there. It originally indicated a sort of work ethic and a statement of underground idealism ascribed to a wide array of acts in the 1980s and ’90s, those who were independent of major labels, but in the course of the last decade it’s come to almost mean anything “hip” as well—a profoundly subjective idea. As a result, it has become a shell of a concept and a very easy notion to misconstrue. While once it might have been considered a musician’s badge of honor to be Indie, I imagine it would be difficult to find a genuinely independent act who would seek that stamp nowadays.
Anyway, to answer the question from above, lately I’ve been digging that new Caribou album Andorra a whole lot. That’s technically Indie (on an Independent label, Merge), but it would be rather remiss of one to label it as such and leave it at that. Likewise, it’s not a “pop” record, but contains shards of overtly poppy material, as if the god of catchiness shone his light down upon a broken-up mirror and let the ramshackle rays scatter from there as they may. Like a lot of good stuff these days, it flies hell-bent through a number of genres, and can’t be captured by the confines of any one individually.
What’s playing on your ipod right now? Send your comments and responses to bpeterson1@wisc.edu.
