Unless you just so happen to have “Musical Anhedonia”, a condition where you don’t like music – you are bound to have a few musicians or bands that you come back to. I mean, who doesn’t like music?
Just the thought of your favorite song should put you in a good mood. It goes without saying that music has come a long way since we first started playing with bone flutes. It took us around 230 years to go from Mozart to Nirvana, and only 15 years later we had Skrillex.
Since technology has been involved with the creation of music, there has been such a rapid shift and change in progression. We don’t expect to see technology ever losing its connection with music either, and no matter what – music itself is just simply always going to be in a state of progression and evolution.
So what’s next? Well, in the music world a lot of genres often get labeled as “alternative” or “experimental” before they get given their own title. Basically, all the genres we are going to talk about below started off being put in the box of something alternative, before trending into what they are now.
1. Art Pop
Ok, so right off the bat you may not have heard the term “art pop”. Well, it is pretty easy to grasp. Chances are, you have already heard a lot of art-pop songs if you consider yourself someone who keeps up to date with music anyway.
Musicians like Björk, Kate Bush, Lorde, Fiona Apple and Grimes just to name a few are considered art pop musicians. So what makes something considered art pop music? According to Wikipedia:
“Artpop is a loosely defined style of pop music influenced by pop art’s integration of high and low culture, and which emphasizes the manipulation of signs, style, and gesture over the personal expression”
Even though you could say that this genre has been around for a surprising amount of time, it wasn’t until musician Claire Boucher, also known as Grimes started to change the game with her 2012 album “Visions”, and more recently with her latest album “Miss Anthropocene”.
Grimes seems to be at the front of Art Pop for the moment, in fact, her 2015 album “Art Angels” is ranked number 416 on the “overall greatest album chart”.
Although she has been quite a celebrity in the underground scene since she first began, she arguably saw a big shift in popularity due to her relationship with billionaire Elon Musk.
Nonetheless, she continues to innovate and get involved with a lot of futuristic methods of artistic creation and expression, even indulging in the world of NFTs.
2. Intelligent Dance Music
Although this kind of music is considered highly experimental, expect to see this sort of stuff in the far future – if we happen to get taken over by aliens.
Musicians like Aphex Twin have been able to show the world the harsher and entirely computerized side of the music world. Some are left scratching their heads, while others see IDM as the pure expression of our brain waves in an audible form. IDM music follows extremely complex beats and logical arrangements and sequences of electronic music.
If you haven’t heard of Aphex Twin, well you’d surely know of the musicians who have been inspired by him. For example, “Creep” singer Thom Yorke expressed his appreciation around the release of Radiohead’s industry-changing album “Kid A”.
Musicians and groups such as Kanye West, Travis Scott, Nine Inch Nails, and Daft Punk have been reported as being influenced by Aphex Twin.
Nowadays, it is so easy to make your own music at home. Billie Eilish and her brother are very open with how casual their creation process is. However, if you want a custom song to be made, Songly is here to lend you a hand.
3. Emo Revival
Ever remember My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco?
If you were a teenager in the late 2000s and early 2010s, these bands might bring back some fond memories of thrashing your hair around and sulking about life.
Turns out, emo music and culture seem to be coming back in one way or another, and a lot of the more modern songs inspired by “Emo” seem to incorporate a lot of rap elements.
Modern musicians like the late rappers XXXTentacion and Lil Peep have openly expressed their love for emo music. Their songs – even though considered rap in base form – have lyrical elements that are closely related to the emotional discomfort and angst heard in the 2000s emo tunes.
Machine Gun Kelly seems to have gone all out recently with his song “Emo Girl” featuring Willow Smith. The music video clearly shows the two rocking out in emo attire, with vocals that bring back those classic troubled vibes.
4. Ambient
Ambient music is what you expect it to sound like Background-like compositions that bring a sense of indirect emotion to the listener that often do not feature any vocals at all.
The thing is with ambient music, the spectrum is so large that it can be quite hard to pick out any particular famous ambient musicians. The reason the genre seems to have so much traction is because of the mass appeal toward the whole “lo-fi” scene. You know, those live videos you see on YouTube that are often titled with something like “chill beats to study to”.
Ambient music has been used as a means to focus too since there are usually no vocals at all. People find it easy to just put some ambient tracks on as they study or work from home.
Conclusion
While we only listed four trends that are growing in popularity, there are for sure so many more. See, right now as you are reading this, there are already so many genres that are just starting to form, as music truly is one of the most impactful ways that we express ourselves as humans.
We have also seen various genres come and go too. From Grunge to Emo, around every 20 years, there is some sort of nostalgic urge to want to bring back a certain style. But there are also genres like classic and ambient that will seem to just stay in trend for eternity.
