Likewise, Prince’s entire back catalogue, which, you could argue, is one long effortlessly audacious exercise in genre transcendence. There are, of course, several answers to that question – Astral Weeks, Bitches Brew, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, to name but a few classic albums that immediately spring to mind, all of them unbound by the confines of genre. “I’m always a bit puzzled when a musician is praised for transcending genre,” writes Kelefa Sanneh in his introduction to Major Labels. In a postmodern pop cultural moment, when notions of purism and authenticity seem irredeemably old-fashioned, it may seem like an odd time to write a book that is not only a history of popular music’s defining categories – rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance and pop – but an unapologetic defence of them. “It’s difficult to imagine a Grammy ceremony that doesn’t rely on genre as its organising principle,” wrote Petrusich, “yet genre feels increasingly irrelevant to the way we think about, create and consume art.” This year’s Grammy awards, for instance, featured 83 separate categories, including rock, alternative, folk, Americana, American roots, urban contemporary and progressive R&B. One way they have responded is by inventing more genres and subgenres.
This genre fluidity, she noted, was inevitably causing problems for traditional music institutions, from record shops and radio stations to the organisers of awards ceremonies and the marketing departments of record companies, for whom categorisation remains a defining aspect.
I n March, American music writer Amanda Petrusich wrote an insightful article in the New Yorker about a defining aspect of contemporary pop: the ways in which young musicians constantly evade categorisation by borrowing from and merging what were once rigidly defined styles.
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