Blog #17: The Genre Question

One of the most common questions I'm asked is "what do you consider to be your genre?"

For the most part, my tendency has always been to sort of shrug and let the audience decide what to call it. After all, who am I to try and control how I'm perceived? What cosmic authority granted me the right to decide what I am and what others should define me as? I'm often too close to see, too biased by my own intentions, inner monologues, and vanities. I can't categorize it, and I don't tailor it to what I perceive to be the aesthetic standards or expectations of a category, so I just shrug my shoulders and say, "call it whatever." Which is fine, but ultimately unsatisfying to everyone.

While I get to avoid feeling like I'm trying to control others' realities, it also often results in it getting called things it certainly isn't, and audiences are left confused and unsatisfied. It definitely isn't jazz. I'm not skilled or educated enough to play actual jazz. "Avant-garde" feels more like a compliment than a genre. And the kids who really don't understand what they're hearing because the lyrics don't resonate or because the cultural/generational context is removed from their experience of it end up calling it disappointing things like "Evil Ska."

I realized something recently about the question. Genres are languages. They have grammatical expectations, cultures surrounding them, rules and customs, maybe even an ethos, etc. People don't just want to know what to call it (although that's certainly part and maybe even most of it) they want to know what it is. The ones who would call it "Evil Ska" want to understand it. It's in part the reason the second most common question I get is "what are your musical influences?"

For me, the hallmarks of genres have always felt less like qualities a song should have and more like tools I can use. Languages that can be used like words. They say books are best read in their original language, if you can read it; it matters what language you're speaking when you speak. They're part of a larger canon, independently available elements of music that can go into the writing process for each individual song. That doesn't mean my work is without genre. I am not above or beneath genre. (Well, maybe a little beneath, depending on the genre) It just means genre isn't the force behind my, well... genre.

But there is something underlying what I make that makes it all still feel like it's coming from the same place and speaking the same language, even when it also seems like it's changing languages. It's not something so unique about my instincts or anything like that, nor is it because I'm adhering to the musical rules of a genre you just haven't heard yet. There's a reason why my music sounds the way it does, works the way it does, and has the effect it does: not a genre per se, but an ethos.

Genres are, in many ways, the result of musicians following a guiding ethos. A system or at least collection of shared values and beliefs. They aren't prescriptive, but they're generally present, and create the hallmarks of the genre. Ever heard punks debate which punk bands are or aren't real punk? "Punk" is rebellious and values authenticity. "Jazz" is spontaneous and values technical skill. "Pop" is accessible and values high production quality. So on and so on. These genres grow and branch out along similar lines, intertwine and share traits, and evolve from there. But I believe the origin of each movement of a genre is the ethos that drove its prior iterations.

I don't know he name of the ethos that defines my music, but I believe there are other artists out there who share it. It might not be all that new, but the iteration of it that currently exists is unique to a new world. There are prior iterations of its elements that inspire it; many of their adherents the "musical influences" people ask about. There are artists active today who embody it. I think many of them remain obscure, often as a direct result of their commitment to the values that go into our similar creative processes. I believe my initial success is in some ways despite its ethos, but my ability to retain an audience instead of being a fleeting viral moment is largely because of this ethos.

Our approach, myself and other artists who follow this ethos, is the inevitable rejecting result of the impact online culture has had on the arts. Online culture has stifled artists through holding them hostage in fear of outrage/cancel culture, mockery, and the expectations of "the algorithm" (something I doubt exists as the monolith we consider it to be) and we say fuck that. Online culture has made us insecure by mob-mocking that which puts too much effort and care into the work or is too vulnerable; causing everything to be created as either vapidly blasé, fashionably quasi-sensitive, or flexing. Online culture has us excessively self-conscious, trying to bake our expectations about the potential backlash into the aesthetics of the work or its presentation. It tempts us to feed our algorithms what serves its darkly psycho-authoritarian intent in the hopes that it will work in our favor somehow; shorter songs, hooks three seconds in, easily digestible or shallowly relatable lyrics, popular and inoffensive (or rage-baitingly offensive, only two options) subject matter. It wants us to pretend we're too cool to care what our guts look like when we spill them while simultaneously forcing us to arrange those guts in a cool way; and then post short-form content begging and pleading for someone - ANYONE - to "stop scrolling."

We don't want to have to tailor our self-expression to capitalism, to techno-feudalism, or to public opinion. We make what moves us on our own terms with no regard for its success in terms of modern standards. You might say "but Will, didn't you get where you got because of a short-form content recommendation algorithm?" Which implies a number of misapprehensions. One, that I participated in it; which I very much did not. I don't do the short form content thing and never used TikTok. As a matter of fact years ago I was stupid enough to think TikTok would honor a copyright claim because of my desperation to avoid having one of my tracks go viral. Two, that my music would not have succeeded otherwise; which yes, it most likely wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is now, but I had a career beforehand and loved it as it was. Three, perhaps the ugliest implication, that because the algorithm selected me it would be wrong to "bite the hand that feeds" by refusing to alter myself in favor of it or the audience it reached and either abandon my principles as an artist or abandon my career altogether. Lastly, and most important in its relevance to the ethos I'm describing; that my music succeeded in that sphere because of the intentions behind it and not in spite of them.

My intention is one that says that the cultural impact of the internet is a thing to fight back against. It is the enemy. Being likable, click-worthy, attention-grabbing, cool, involved in online discourse, or any of the things we're told to do are irrelevant actions at best and anathema at the rest. The internet is a place to "post" your work and then leave it, not an entity whose mindset must be preempted in the creative process. It says "be your most vulnerable, your most embarrassing, your messiest, your ugliest, your least cool and marketable and relatable, and let the ones who really get it, get it." It's not for everyone, maybe it's not for anyone at all, and it doesn't give a shit what you think unless what you think is "this helps me feel less alone." Because the truest way to reach the most isolated is to be yourself so aggressively, cringe-inducing-ly, and passionately that people outside that isolated group don't particularly like it.

When I say people should put their phones away at concerts, most of them listen. That's because it's what we all want for ourselves on some level. We want to be freed from the internet. From its judgment, its incessant insistence upon its supposed relevance to every single aspect of our lives, and the mechanical superego it has forced upon our collective psyche like some kind of invisible panopticon. We want the real world and its ephemeral, visceral immediacy. We don't want what the corporate elite have decided popular discourse should be to determine the validity of our lived experiences, our opinions and principles, or our emotional lability and/or lack thereof.

The ethos I create based on is one that creates just for the sake of the creator. For the creative person's enjoyment of the process. In that way, it resists the wave of AI slop as well. In the post-AI era, in the quantity-over-quality era, in the content-not-contents era, relishing the effort is an act of rebellion. It creates for the catharsis of making something and the kick you get when it's done, even if nobody ever sees it. The thrill of being on stage whether it's for ten people or a thousand. It's not about the genre. It's not about the medium. It's not about the broadcast method and its apparent limitations. It's about you, the artist, and what you need to do. The instinct to be creative, the reflex that is to respond to life with creativity. My music sounds like me, even when it follows rules I haven't identified with, because I make it, and make it for myself.

I don't always adhere to it perfectly. I've had my failures, made my mistakes, gotten lost along the way, but I've always come back to this core principle: create for yourself, fuck everything else, and let those who would create the same if they had the means and followed that path find you and go "this is it!"

After all, you're here for videos of my concerts. I am capitalizing on the practice of making the ephemeral permanent. I still record my albums, I don't only perform live. This is Patreon, a platform that doesn't work if I piss you off too much. I leave the comments on and sometimes even reply to them. I still post on instagram now and again (although I do hope to move all of my announcements to other platforms eventually and have started the process) when it suits me. Not everything about it flies in the face of everything internet, obviously, but that's not the point. The point is that the art's intentions are countercultural to what the internet has done to us. I do everything I do without regard for the explicit or implicit demands from the outside. If you wanna buy what I'm selling, buy it. If you don't, don't. If you disapprove of or reject what I do and how I do it in some way, you're not a sale I failed to close or a supporter I lost, you're mostly just another bot in the rabble.

This ethos is why I've always sort of felt like an "outsider artist" who got yanked "inside." Many of the values I espouse and messages I send run contradictory to the elements of pop culture that have embraced me, and I hope to disappoint people. This is including fans, because it means that with each person I turn off I narrow my appeal down further and further until I reach the handful people who truly get it, and can truly prove to them that they are seen, they are real, they are valid, and they are not as alone as they think. The ones who felt rejected even by the self-identifying "weird kids" and still feel like an alien to this day. The ones who any time they see an instagram comment section or reddit thread go "every single one of these people would hate me" but can't stop looking. The ones who wander through the world quietly smoldering inside and unable to find community. It's for them. And the reason I know it's for them, is because it's for me.

This isn't some profoundly unique ethos. I think most likely a lot of people share it. Maybe it's punk, maybe it's a recent manifestation of punk's originating intentions. I don't know what I call it or what you'd call it, but this is what you're hearing, and what's in the sausage of the "genre" you're detecting.

Maybe I'll shrug my shoulders and say "call it whatever."

Just don't call it Evil Ska.