Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
Defining the Undefinable
If you were to ask a Muse fan the question, “What genre are Muse?” most would either
tell you that they’re some form of alternative or that they simply don’t know. The reason for this
is because over 22 years and 7 studio albums, along with a smattering of B-Sides attached to
singles, Muse have never really defined themselves as one genre. Muse, of course, are not the
only band that defy being confined to a single genre, The White Stripes and Led Zeppelin come
to mind. This raises the question; how do we define bands that span multiple genres?
Beaumont (2014) describes the majority of Muse’s first two albums as being
Rachmaninoff influenced writing that “…recently he’s [Matt Bellamy] been listening to a lot of
early 20th century piano music, emotional but technically complex composers such as
Rachmaninoff, and he had a head full of ivories. So when ‘Sunburn’, written and demo’d while
the band were in the studio, didn’t sound right when played on guitar [John] Leckie suggested
that he switch to the studio piano to work it out. Hence the delicate opening tinklings of
‘Showbiz’ were born and a stellar canon of sonic supernovas was begun. Indeed, Matt’s
rediscovered interest in piano would go on heavily to influence the songwriting for Muse’s
second album Origin of Symmetry.” Beaumont (2014) goes on to further explain their genre with
“Where most rock bands used strings and classical influences to embellish their more sombre
moments…Muse did something new and unthinkable. They threw both pomped up styles full
force at each other and basked in the blast from the fusion. From song one on album one, this
ethos would come to define their work.” (Beaumont, 2014).
While Beaumont had first-hand experience with Muse, TheEchoNest (2013) have
developed an ongoing genre map that is constantly updated using the genres Spotify lists a band
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Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
as being titled “Every Noise at Once.” You’re able to search for a band, and it gives you a list of
genres that band fits under. When plugging Muse into the search engine, Every Noise at Once
spawns a list of 7 genres; permanent wave, piano rock, alternative rock, rock, post-grunge, indie
rock and pop rock. When exploring bands listed in the indie rock category, I found that many of
the bands I listen to are considered indie rock by the genre map, these included: Arctic Monkeys,
Foals, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Phoenix, Snow Patrol, R.E.M, White Rabbits, OK Go,
Peter Bjorn and John, Blur, Modest Mouse, The Features, Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, Matt
and Kim, Alt-J, The Bravery, The White Stripes and M83. This led me to cross-checking with the
other genres to see how many are considered the same genre, as well as other bands I listen to in
that genre, denoted with an asterisk if they overlap in the original indie rock map. In order to do
this, I used a website that allowed me to put every artist listed on each of the genre maps Muse
were also found on into seven separate lists, then comparing all seven lists to see where they
overlap. Each genre map had varied numbers of artists included (all totals include Muse in the
final number). Indie Rock listed 520 artists, Permanent Wave had 107, Piano Rock totaled at
104, Rock had an astonishing 575, Post Grunge listed 449, Alternative Rock had 486, and Pop
Rock finished the final genre with 508. Overall, there was a total of 569 bands that were
accounted for when overlapping artists are accounted for. Out of these genres, with the exception
of Muse, Weezer and The Killers were in six of seven genres, appearing in all but Piano Rock.
There were 30 artists that appeared in five of seven genres, including but not limited to: Violent
Femmes, Beck, Foo Fighters, Garbage, Green Day, Jane’s Addiction, Jet, Manic Street
Preachers, Audioslave, Nirvana, No Doubt, Oasis, Pixies, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Snow Patrol, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Lemonheads, The Offspring and U2. Every band that
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Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
occurred in five genres only coexisted within the Pop Rock genre. When it came to bands that
occurred within four genres, 88 of the 569 were categorized this way, including but not limited
to: Better Than Ezra, Harvey Danger, Hoobastank, Incubus, Blind Melon, Keane, Kings of Leon,
Lit, Live, Blur, Marcy Playground, Matchbox Twenty, 311, Cake, OK Go, Counting Crows,
R.E.M, Semisonic, Seven Mary Three, Smash Mouth, Soul Asylum, Soundgarden, Staind,
Stereophonics, Stone Temple Pilots, Temple Of The Dog, The Cranberries, The Smiths, The
Strokes, The Velvet Underground, The Verve, The White Stripes, Third Eye Blind, Toadies, Urge
Overkill, and 3 Doors Down all appeared in four genres, unlike those that showed up in five
genres, none of these artists completely coexisted in the same genre. All other artists included in
the 569 appeared in three or less genres (448 other artists). What I found interesting was that
bands that I listen to frequently, such as Arctic Monkeys and Foals, only appeared once or twice
when going through all of the genres Muse were classified as in this project, while I thought they
had similar genre to Muse myself.
The lists that “Every Noise at Once” spawns are generated based upon how Spotify
categorizes them, and TheEchoNest acknowledges that these are not definitive lists. Glenn
McDonald (2013) explains that Rock, which I found to have the most artists in its map, gives a
top ten artist list of “Rihanna, Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, P!nk, Taylor Swift,
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Demi Lovato, Lil Wayne, Fall Out Boy.” TheEchoNest remarks
that “These are defensible answers to our query, because for all of them, “rock” is among the
dozen or two most common terms with which people describe the artist, and we have insanely
detailed data to prove it. But this is really not what you and I mean by rock music.” McDonald
(2013). To elaborate, TheEchoNest explains that rock can be split into multiple genres “When
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Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
we say “rock music,” of course, we aren’t talking about term-frequency in a corpus of
descriptive text, we’re talking about a kind of music. It’s an amorphous, evolving, impreciselydelineated genre of music, to be sure, but still, if we were talking in person about this idea of
rock music, we could straightforwardly clarify: “You know, rock music, man! Guitars, drums.
The Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, that kind of thing.” Or maybe we’d say Nirvana and U2, or
maybe we’d say The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Maybe we really mean classic rock,
or album rock, or alternative rock.” McDonald (2013). This goes to show that even the idea of
genre itself is difficult to classify, as, especially with broad terms such as rock, there are many
subgenres that can cover that genre in an attempt to make the artists that fit such genres clearer.
TheEchoNest goes on to explain that “Our computers can now enter plausibly into arguments
over almost 500 genres, from a cappella to zydeco. Rock is the biggest and most central; we
calculate a centrality score, of course, because that’s the kind of thing we do, so we mean that
quantitatively. The least central genre is “skweee,” which most of us hadn’t heard of before this
chart, either.” McDonald (2013). Although it is difficult to define genres this way, TheEchoNest
makes it a bit easier through their interactive maps, which, as aforementioned, span over 500
genres, allowing each band (such as Muse’s seven) to be defined in a way that is a bit more
complete than just calling a band ‘Rock’ or ‘Pop’.
When returning to our central question, how do we define bands that span multiple
genres, it seems that there isn’t really one specific way to be able to both encompass the genre
that a band is classified as and still justify just how many genres a band can fit under. Although
they may not split into seven genres like Muse had, many bands are indefinable in their own
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Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
way, some staying within one corner of the wide spectrum, and others splitting into a wide
variety of subgenres like Muse had.
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Ariel Oster
Dr. Wade Mahon
ENG150 Section 2
April 18th 2016
Works Cited
Beaumont, M. (2014). Out of this world: The story of Muse. London: Omnibus.
TheEchoNest (2013). Every Noise at Once. Retrieved April 15, 2016, from
http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html
McDonald, G. (2013, June 7). How We Understand Music Genres. Retrieved April 15, 2016,
from http://blog.echonest.com/post/52385283599/how-we-understand-music-genres
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