This week, I found myself sat on the train, headphones on, filling my ears with enough music to send my eyes aimlessly wandering the carriage. They settled on a poster for the musical Hadestown. Stencilled in large, emphatic, shouting letters, was the term: “genre-defying”.

I’d seen Hadestown a year ago from a small seat where my knees pressed uncomfortably against the handrail. It was a good show, but even with my limited musical expertise, I’d hesitate to label it “genre-defying”. Sure, it was different from Mamma Mia or West Side Story, but regardless of its 6th Century BCE twist, it still walked and talked like a musical.

As the music scene, over the last decade or so, has generally shifted away from genre, it’s become something listeners don’t particularly notice. The question of “what genre of music do you listen to?” has translated into “what’s your taste in music?” – and, I think, for the better.

A description of Sampha’s Lahai might as well be accompanied by a noxious, suffocatingly green wordcloud, bustling with arcane language that has you reaching for the dictionary. If you haven’t sat down and listened to it start to finish, I would strongly encourage you to do so and come up with your own definition. Broadly, you might ascribe it to something like Neo-soul, or Progressive or Alternative R&B – which are, ironically, newly naturalised sub-genres. The music is at once awe-inspiringly complex and chaotic, while above it all floats Sampha’s ethereal voice and dulcet spoken lyrics.

“Polysyllabic prescriptions of genre start to leave a bad taste in the mouth”

I’ve heard Sampha’s music attached to the term ‘Future Garage’ – how do we begin estimating a genre of the future? What kind of car do you keep in a future garage? The original ‘Dancing Circles’ is a much more open, melodically-expansive track compared to its funkier, rhythm-grounded second version. What did it mean that I was listening to a second version of a song that completely overhauled its sound and, admittedly, genre?

The OED labels genre as: “kind; sort; style”. But it only takes a short while until these polysyllabic prescriptions of genre start to leave a bad taste in the mouth. How can you defy genre if your music is ascribed to ‘Ninentendocore,’ ‘Aggrotech,’ or ‘Australian Stoner Surf Alt Rock,’ or any other interminable increase in specificity?

Like any free-thinking student, I asked ChatGPT for ten ‘genre-defying’ tracks from a variety of artists. Out spat a collection encompassing the likes of Frank Ocean, Bjork, FKA twigs, Tame Impala, and Billie Eilish (including ‘ktrw’, an artist that didn’t exist, but might’ve been misconceived as a misnomer of Chase and Status). It’s a nice collection of songs if you’re interested in experimenting between sounds, but, to my thinking, sound that samples from two or three rigid genres doesn’t bridge the qualifying gap to earn the title of genre-defying.

Equally, the squeezing concentric circles of sub-genre are more interconnected than at first glance. Bjork’s ‘All is Full of Love’ falls under trip-hop love ballad. FKA twigs’ ‘Cellophane’ is its dance/electronic-charged balladlike half-sibling. Ocean’s ‘Nights’ borrows a similar downtempo, synth-pop genetic makeup, but mutates into alternative R&B, the weird uncle that Paak’s more traditionally R&B ‘Come Down’ only sees at Christmas.

“Write the list, use it, lose it, and enjoy the creative difference”

Turning away from AI generation, the ‘Song Bar’ (a virtual social forum for musical discussion) gave me its own list – this time composed by a sentient being – of “genre-redefining” artists. Bjork had found her way onto both, but was, this time, labelled (along with one of my personal favourites, Portishead) “genre-bending”.

In the face of debate, I receded into academic obscurity and turned to the authority of old and cobweb-covered criticism – specifically, Johnathan Culler’s Structuralist Poetics. Without wasting oeuvres of time translating and attempting to wield French terms with a critical history the size of France itself, Culler broadly points that the purpose of genre is to set out “possibilities of meaning,” a criterion on what can be expected within the text, from which meaning can be normalised, “naturalised,” and understood.

Culler quickly cedes, however, that within the human: ”[w]e can, it seems, make anything signify” through the invention of a context for it to exist within (think ‘Future Garage’). On the one hand, genres are integral to our understanding: necessary frameworks for us to communicate opinion and description but also to qualify our own understandings and enhance the music’s effect. Translated into music, genre writes you a list of conventional things you might expect to hear, allowing you to sit and listen, smiling and nodding, ticking off as you go. Rock? Ok, guitars. Metal? Shouting. The alternative, anarcho-punk genre-defying list is written, but only to be sniffed at and disregarded.

“Maybe genre is dead. Maybe we killed it. Maybe that’s a good thing.”

In terms of Sampha’s ‘Dancing Circles 2.0’: its Neo-soul blood has me listening out for the twang of an odd sounding guitar; its Alternative R&B bones attune me to the shuffling drums and moving bassline; its eye-rolling musculature of ‘Future Garage’ has me twitching my eyebrows to each space-ship-sounding addition. All of these experiences change how I listen and experience its three minutes and 46 seconds.

“Genre-defying” is, therefore, a non-starter. Music can’t at once ascribe itself to a genre it goes on to disregard. It creates new and exciting sounds that defy all previous description – until a new term is invented. We shouldn’t dispense with genre completely, only disregard it enough to continue pushing the boundaries of music. Write the list, use it, lose it, and enjoy the creative difference.

In the end, I realised how little I cared whether Portishead’s ‘Cowboys’ bent genre or defied it. Pretending to be conducting an investigation into its sound is a great excuse to queue a song you love over and over again. Maybe genre is dead. Maybe we killed it. Maybe that’s a good thing.