Genre disambiguation.

[1234567890]

Is it just me, or is the term "alternative rock" dreadfully overused?
Anyway, I thought it a good idea to have a little Q&A. Lets start With Bjork. Itunes has her doown as "alternative & punk", but what is it really?

[RFNAPLES]

Artists/Groups often change their styles on albums and less often change their genre. It is therefore probably more accurate to refer to the genre and style of a song.

Allmusic.com classifies Björk Guðmundsdóttir as:

Genre-Pop/Rock

Styles-

Experimental Rock
Electronica
Experimental
Alternative Pop/ Rock
Alternative Dance
Trip-Hop
Club/Dance
Electronica

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[joannajewsom]

Yes, the term alternative rock is highly flawed. Geez, Bjork listed as punk? Alternative is a stretch for her, but punk is ridiculous. Bjork is not alternative rock, no matter what allmusic classifies her as. I'd love to hear them make a case for placing her in the same category as Pixies, Nirvana, and R.E.M. If the term is broad enough to apply to Bjork and Nirvana, it's completely useless.

Experimental, Electronica, Trip-Hop all apply to Bjork, and Alternative Dance more to her earlier stuff. Rate Your Music has her under all of these and Art Pop, which I think is appropriate. In my years of using both allmusic and rateyourmusic, I have found the latter to be much more accurate when labeling music by genre. How does allmusic even determine genre? We don't know. Is it one guy? With rym, the users of the site vote for the appropriate genres, and the site is full of music geeks who are very anal about that stuff, making for a more accurate insight on genres. On rym, Bjork's debut has 3 votes for Alternative Rock and 29 against. Post has 3 for and 24 against. Homogenic has 2 for and 9 against. Being a huge Bjork fan who is very familiar with her entire catalog, I can assure you that she is not alternative rock.

[RFNAPLES]

Björk's Debut is listed on Allmusic as:

Genre-Pop/Rock

Styles-

Electronica
Alternative Pop/ Rock
Club/Dance
Trip-Hop
Alternative Dance

An album can often have songs with a variety styles and forcing it to be labeled with only one style is innacurate at best. An album with only one style is often boring.
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[joannajewsom]

Okay, I guess you didn't read my post, as usual. Let me guess, you weren't responding to me, even though you posted after me.

On rym, Bjork's debut has 2 votes for Alternative Rock and 29 against it. Which site do we listen to? I'd say that rym is much more accurate, and obviously a lot of people don't agree with that label of alternative rock. Ultimately, who cares what allmusic thinks? Isn't this a forum where we share our opinions? Should I just visit allmusic if I'm ever interested in what you think? What do you think? Do you think Bjork is alternative rock and, if so, could you make a strong case for this, other than saying someone else says it's alternative rock?

"An album can often have songs with a variety styles and forcing it to be labeled with only one style is innacurate at best. An album with only one style is often boring."

I don't know why you chose to say that as if you're saying something new, informative, or even relevant here, especially when I already said that "Experimental, Electronica, Trip-Hop all apply to Bjork, and Alternative Dance more to her earlier stuff...and Art Pop". No one here is "forcing it to be labeled with only one style," so I'm not sure where you are pulling this strawman from. Why don't read someone's post before you respond?

Just because a certain type of music could fit into several genres, does not mean that we can start throwing around labels like "alternative rock" willy-nilly. And just because an artist does a song or two with elements or undertones of a certain genre, does not mean that that artist should be labeled by that genre when discussing their work as a whole. We don't go around calling Blondie hip-hop and your almighty allmusic doesn't call their "Autoamerican" album hip-hop, simply because of "Rapture".

[RFNAPLES]

I read your reply. Perhaps you once again assumed that a responder must agree with you since you are always right and have impeccable wisdom and debating skills; wrong on all accounts.

OK I guess you didn't read my reply. If an album contains songs with different styles, it must therefore bare more than one style label. A vote on a single style label for an album by an internet group of non-experts declaring an album a certain single style when it contains more is fallacious. First because it is at best the style of the majority of tracks or the most popular tracks and; second because it is a vote that you yourself should recognize as evil bandwagoning, some may say pooled ignorance.

Language is imprecise and the definitions of genre and style terms are also imprecise. To state that you know what an album is or isn't in spite of what others say is just asinine.

I would prefer to use genre and style labels on songs/tracks and not artists/groups or albums given the variety over a career and from song to song. But if forced to label songs/tracks and artists/groups I will usually choose multiple styles and perhaps genres too.
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[Richie Hunt]

I wonder what genre and style Lord Buddah might classify Bjork as...

[joannajewsom]

"I read your reply. Perhaps you once again assumed that a responder must agree with you since you are always right and have impeccable wisdom and debating skills; wrong on all accounts."

I said that you didn't read my reply because you said this:

"An album can often have songs with a variety styles and forcing it to be labeled with only one style is innacurate at best. An album with only one style is often boring."

even though I said this about Bjork:

"Experimental, Electronica, Trip-Hop all apply to Bjork, and Alternative Dance more to her earlier stuff...and Art Pop".

So, you were either pulling a strawman argument out of nowhere; or you just didn't read my post to realize that that particular point was completely irrelevant, since no one here was trying to place one label on Bjork, nor did anyone claim that any artist should only have one label. For some strange reason, in your very next post, you say this: "If an album contains songs with different styles, it must therefore bare more than one style label." Naples, get this through your head: no one here is going against this claim. We're talking about which labels apply, not if an album should have more than one. Remember that time I mentioned the numerous labels I think apply to Bjork? No, you obviously didn't read that or you would not have brought up this strawman argument again. Please, do not bring up this "revelation" again, because that's beside the point. I addressed that when I said this in my last post:

"I don't know why you chose to say that as if you're saying something new, informative, or even relevant here, especially when I already said that Experimental, Electronica, Trip-Hop all apply to Bjork, and Alternative Dance more to her earlier stuff...and Art Pop'. No one here is "forcing it to be labeled with only one style," so I'm not sure where you are pulling this strawman from. Why don't read someone's post before you respond?"

That is why I said you didn't read my post. And you proved once again with your new post that you didn't read my post.

I also said that you didn't read my post because you decided to repeat what allmusic lists Bjork's album as, even though I said this:

"Bjork is not alternative rock, no matter what allmusic classifies her as. I'd love to hear them make a case for placing her in the same category as Pixies, Nirvana, and R.E.M. If the term is broad enough to apply to Bjork and Nirvana, it's completely useless...In my years of using both allmusic and rateyourmusic, I have found the latter to be much more accurate when labeling music by genre."

If you would have read my post, you would have already known that I was well aware of how allmusic labels Bjork, and I completely disagree. If you had any regard for my opinion and stance on allmusic, you would not have just repeated your last post. You would have tried to reconcile the the major flaw that I brought up, and possibly made a case for allmusic's inclusion of these artists. It's like you saying "the bible says ____", I say "I don't care what the bible says because it's inconsistent and flawed", and then you replying "well, the bible says ____".

Any person with the lowest level of debating skills and respect for what the other person had to say, would have addressed that valid point. You didn't. Therefore, you either didn't read my post, or you just have no regard for the points I bring up. Want to see how it's done? From now on, I will respond to the points you bring up.

"A vote on a single style label for an album by an internet group of non-experts declaring an album a certain single style when it contains more is fallacious. First because it is at best the style of the majority of tracks or the most popular tracks and; second because it is a vote that you yourself should recognize as evil bandwagoning, some may say pooled ignorance. "

Wasn't it you who said something in past forums about 20 people believing something is black and 1 believing it's white, and that this is supporting evidence? Yes, you did. It seems that you're a huge hypocrite who just went against that "belief" in order to support your claim.

And claiming rym is declaring an album to be a single style is a completely false claim!!! You obviously are not familiar with the website that you are criticizing. Another huge strawman argument that proves that you either don't read, or haven't a clue as to what you're talking about. Bjork's Debut currently has 5 (5!!!) genre labels on rym- 3 primary genre labels and 2 secondary genre labels (the secondary labels are for the undertones and influences- note that alternative rock didn't even make it as a secondary genre). Therefore, your claim that rym is "an internet group of non-experts declaring an album a certain single style when it contains more is fallacious" is the only thing around here that is fallacious. What a joke you are. Check out the website before you go around making false claims.

So, your first point that you make about that is fallacious, given that there are secondary genres for, to quote rym: "Secondary genres include influences and undertones that are less predominant, or not representative of the album as a whole." So your theory about the labels only being given for "the majority of the tracks" is false. The site has a separate labeling system to avoid that very baseless claim you're making against it. It seems you have no regard for my opinion or how rym works, and you just make up our arguments and positions for us.

You also have no knowledge of the way that the genre voting works. Rate Your Music is probably the most popular music website in the world of its kind, and it's not just going to let anything fly. Genre votes are weighted. You can not just sign up today, vote Bjork as hip-hop and thinks it's going to show-up. I've placed almost 100 genre votes, and my vote still does not have the weight to place any label on an album without support from other users. The more relevant votes you place and the more experience you have as a user, the more your vote is weighted. They also have site mods who oversee everything. This claim about them being non-experts is ridiculous, and way to write off the entire community as pooled ignorance, even though you clearly have not used the site.

How much of an expert do you need to be to distinguish between genres? Every genre page on rym has a detailed description of the genre style, its roots, and examples, just in case those non-experts want some insight on what they're voting on. And the genres on rym, by far, outnumber the genres on allmusic. This is because the rym site and community are very particular about distinguishing between the genres which have very subtle differences. I wonder if allmusic has atmospheric black metal, depressive black metal, melodica black metal, national socialist black metal, and symphonic black metal like rym does. Nah, they probably just slap an umbrella term on it and call it a day. I love allmusic, but anyone who has knowledge of both would know that rym is much superior in this regard.
Check out the genre list for yourself before you criticize it.

http://rateyourmusic.com/rgenre/

I challenge you to show me a rym genre description that is not as accurate or more accurate than allmusic. Look up your favorite albums and see if they do not have them accurately labeled. They do. I trust the system because of the 800+ albums in my rym catalog, they were all accurate. There have been a few disagreements on genre, but they have been mainly within secondary genres in which it really could go either way.

I don't see how bandwagoning can come into play. There are no billion dollar corporations soliciting rym users for their vote, nor does voting a certain style of music a certain genre make you cool or hip. I don't see how the bandwagon effect could even be a significant factor if any, in such a situation.

You said:
"To state that you know what an album is or isn't in spite of what others say is just asinine. "

Hahaha. Isn't that EXACTLY what you're doing with the 29 rym voters who say that Bjork's Debut is not alternative rock. You contradict yourself too much, Naples. Remember your own wisdom, if 20 people think something is black...in this case, 29 people...
You may not like it, but the majority is actually against you this time. You can't fall back on record sales like you did with Spears. You're on the side of defending Silver Apples and you're sinking.

Naples, please respond my points. And please don't bring up this idea that anyone wants to give Bjork or anyone one label. I don't want to, rym doesn't want to, so please put this strawman to rest.

[RFNAPLES]

I don’t know why I bother to respond to Jewsome; I’ll only get back another long trite reply. I don’t know why anybody would care how Jewsome or I classify an artist/group, album, or song/track. We often use genres and styles to try to give a person who hasn’t heard same a glimpse of what they might experience. We could debate ad infinitum what a term means and which one applies. But it is much easier and quicker to sample the music. Genres and styles can be helpful in cataloging and filtering if one is cognizant of their innate limitations and usefulness.

I chose to quote Allmusic as a quick way of providing the genre/style of Björk and then of Debut. I stated that I think it is often inappropriate to label artists or albums by only one and prefer to apply those labels to songs to avoid over generalization.

Here is what RYM says:

Björk--Genres: Art Pop, Electronica, Progressive Pop, Experimental, Soundtracks, A cappella, Film Soundtrack, Folk Pop, Electropop, Vocal Jazz

Debut by Björk--Genres: Art Pop, Alternative Dance, Progressive Pop, Electronica, Dance-Pop. Common Tags: electronic, electronica, 1993, pop, iceland, experimental, art pop, alternative, trip-hop, 90s, icelandic, alternative dance, dance, singer/songwriter, trip hop, bjork, album, 1990s, 90's, alternative pop/rock, progressive pop.

Here is what Wikipedia says:

Bjork--Genres(s): Electronica, Alternative, IDM, Trip Hop

Debut--Genre: Electronic, House, Tribal House

You will never have total agreement on genre/styles and who cares. Just listen to the music and form your own opinions.
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[RFNAPLES]

Hunt/Harvos since Björk wasn't around when Lord Buddha was I don't know if he would classify Björk. However, Lord Buddha upon hearing this song:

"Fair goes the dancing when the Sitar is tuned,
Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high,
And we will dance away the hearts of men.
The string overstretched breaks, the music dies,
The string overslack is dumb and the music dies,
Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high."

realized then that he should not go to extremes in torturing the body by starvation and that he should adopt the golden mean or the happy medium or the middle path by avoiding extremes. Then he began to eat food in moderation. He gave up the earlier extreme practices and took to the middle path.
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