Genre Lock

Ok so I’m curious.  When a band first starts out.  First starts rockin out in someone’s basement or garage, are they really locked into one genre or style?  You hear it all the time how bands don’t sound the same and fans disappear.

Linkin Park comes to mind obviously.  They started out so ruthless with their rap rock and they evolved into more of a mainstream alternative act.  Course they still include elements of their former selves but nothing quite as special as Hybrid Theory and Meteora.

There is a pretty similar process bands go through over the years where the music changes and warps into something they didn’t start out playing.  Is that really a bad thing?  I used to think so.  I would get so heated when the style changed for a new record.  I wanted what they've established themselves to be, not this new image and style they are trying out.  I remember thinking, “Great, now I have to wait til the next album to really get what I wanted to hear.”

The process they go through is following all the fleeting influences in a musician’s life and slowly narrowing in on a style that incorporates all the parts they want it to.  It’s a painful process and drives you mad sometimes.  There would be times where I’m sitting in my drummer’s basement just frustrated as hell because I can’t get the song to sound like it does in my head.

Bands are going to change.  If they are meant to survive throughout time they have to change.  Everything else changes so why should creating music be any different?  Influences come and go, so those elements come in and out of the music throughout the years.  I actually enjoy being surprised with new styles now.  I just reviewed the new Muse album and that was what sort of sparked this post.  Lots of people don’t like the way it sounds because they changed.  If it’s a good band that have proved themselves throughout their careers, why not trust the tangents their music travels?  At what point is it selling out to make the same music you have been making simply because it does well in the market?  If the artist isn’t fully behind what they do, and just do it for others, it loses the warmth and passion.  Those things come through in the recordings, they really do.  I can tell you numerous times where I had to redo a recording because the energy wasn’t there.

Don’t get me wrong.  I hate to see things I liked about a band disappear in following albums, but here’s a good way to look at it.  Yeah you might not like that album so much, but it’s only one album.  It’s the same if you just don’t like a certain part of a book or a movie.  Same concept.  The overall picture of what the artist does and has done is still there.  Who knows, maybe somewhere down the line you’ll go back to that album and actually develop a liking of it.  I recently did this with Foo Fighters Colour and Shape.  A problem arises if they lose their style completely.  Even then, the artist is being true to what they feel like.  If they don’t they are crucified, if they just make music to please others and to do well in the marketplace, they are “sellouts”.  Not too much room for a win-win here.  I’d prefer the artist to stay true to what they feel like creating.  I may drop out of their fan base if they lose their original style that I liked but I still respect them and there will always be the songs that I do enjoy.

The real question is what kind of follower are you?  Do you more just like certain songs by an artist?  Or do you thoroughly enjoy the artist and all that they do and represent?  Neither is right or wrong.  Think about it.