Music Genre Names Explained 

What is your favourite music genre?

Classical music has genres, too, but technically it's not all "classical" music. There's Baroque and Romantic, as well as Classical. Perhaps a video on these next?

Dubstep is a reference to dub music not double. Dub comes from Jamaican reggae where they would use studio effects to trip out the production and beef up the bass and have sound system parties. This would have a huge influence on dance music starting with disco / boogie in the late 70a early 80sm. Some twenty years later there was a genre called two step which came from UK garage. It had swingy beats. Well people started making dark and moodier two step with an emphasis on sub bass. Hence the dub in dubstep.

Lo-fi means low-fidelity. While hi-fi comes from high-fidelity. Fidelity being the crispness and "fidelity" to high quality souding audio.

Small correction from a metal head: metal and heavy metal are not always viewed as the same. Heavy metal is sometimes viewed similarly to how you described “rock and roll” in that it describes the earlier style that the rest of the genre evolved from

You haven't mentioned Industrial. In Germany is the genre "Schlager" (which can be translated with "Beat"), which may be a bit between Pop, Country and Folk. But it is never really dying. In the 80s there was the style "NDW" for "Neue Deutsche Welle" ("New German Wave"). In the 2000s there was the style "Neue Deutsche Härte" ("New German Hardness"), which follewed in the trails of NDW.

As for the "Rap vs Hip Hop" thing, I had it explained to me by an old rapper that "Rap is the words, Hip Hop is the music". But that's just conjecture.

Dubstep is actually a portmanteau of Dub (from dub reggae) and 2-Step (A style of UK garage)

An interesting thing that wasn’t really mentioned in this video, but for a long while, R&B and Soul (among a few other sub genres) were labelled under one name in the US, Race Music. This wasn’t changed til the 60s I think, because it’s pretty messed up that a bunch of music got basically called “Black People Music.” It’s definitely an important part of music history though, since so much of our music was built upon African American pioneers whose legacies has since been covered up.

I ususlly see Indie Rock spelled accordingly, I-N-D-I-E. Having grown up in Indiana, Indy is short for Indianapolis, as in the Indy 500.

Weird that you didn't mention the many types of metal. I'd imagine there's a lot to the etymology of that

Was expecting at least a mention of the many latin american genres like bachata, salsa, merengue, cumbia, tango, ranchera, bolero, and many more. There's also flamenco from Spain.

I think rap is an acronym for "Rythm And Poetry"

I remember hearing the term Acid Rock and imagining it applied to some sharp hard edge sound, only later to learn that the acid in question is LSD and it tends to be pretty mellow music

How do we call the vocalist of a Heavy Metal band? Lead singer.

"Grunge" was more of a scene (specifically from Seattle, WA USA) than a musical style. The Big Four of grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains) have VERY different sounds (Nirvana is punk, Pearl Jam is rock, Soundgarden is acid rock, Alice In Chains is metal); they just all dressed like your typical person from the Pacific Northwest would and all made it big at the same time from the same area (and members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden had a project called Temple of the Dog).

"Classical" music when it was new went by many names since there are actually many different styles that make up what we now call "Classical" (which is more properly a period of music between the Baroque and Romantic periods). The textbook time frame for the Classical period is typically around 1750-1825, and can be broadly categorized by features distinguishing it from previous movements like Baroque (initially a term meaning something like "over-the-top" and was something of a pejorative term for the music). My favorite, though overly general, way to distinguish Classical from other periods is something my high school music theory teacher used: if it sounds like you're riding a horse, it's Classical (unless it's a song about riding a horse. in which case it might be Romantic, which was famous for "text-painting", or making the music sound like the lyrics). The term itself was used in-period, as the music (and other arts, I believe, though that's not my expertise) was meant to evoke ideas of the "Classical" Greco-Roman world, even more old-timey to them than they are to us, and seen as ideal in many ways. Brief overview of what I remember from several music history and musicology courses.

Classical is music that has stood the test of time. What you're talking about with "modern classical" is technically just "orchestral". Though, most non musicians, and a surprising number of musicians, use "classical" to mean pretty much any orchestral music.

Awesome video. I was happy to see metal and ska mentioned. There are a lot of genres out there, too many to include all of them of course... But I was surprised there was no mention of funk as popular as that genre is. Never the less, I enjoyed the video

If you listen to old school rock, you can hear blues, folk, gospel, and even field work songs (yes, even slave songs) / elements thereof in it.

I always chuckle when watching Star Trek Beyond, when they were describing the Beastie Boys song, Sabotage. Jayla even said she likes the "beats and shouting".

Interesting one not mentioned here, House music got its name because it was the music provided by the host venue, aka the "house" as filler between live acts setting up and breaking down.

Thanks for this fairly comprehensive breakdown of music genres. I do feel as if I have been suitably educated, in parts. I've never heard of that proto form of Jazz, Jasm before, for example. It appears that others have pointed this out below, but I have long thought that Rock 'n' Roll's origins lay in it being a Black patois for sex, rather than with anything to do with boats. One of my favourite confusions of genres is Rhythm & Blues, on which I note you touched. Back in the mid-Sixties if one had said "Rhythm & Blues" or "R & B" one's mental picture would have been of a group such as The Rolling Stones or Manfred Mann, possibly involving a harmonica (or Blues Harp, as some would say) and when there was a revival in interest in that towards the end of the Seventies it was thought of as "The R & B Revival". However, R & B today appears to describe what I would have thought of more as Soul, specifically the more down-tempo end of proceedings. Talking of Soul perhaps you should have mentioned Northern Soul, at least in passing, as a particularly danceable type of Soul music with its origins in the clubs of the English Midlands and northwards thereof. As a blogger on female Pop from the satellite nations of the former Soviet Bloc I've uncovered quite a bit of (fully natively composed) material that has a very Northern Soul-like beat, which I have dubbed 'Eastern Soul', BTW. One huge genre which was touched upon in the Czech TV documentary series 'Pop Story' and which you missed and which was hugely influential around the turn of the Sixties to the Seventies was Bubblegum, or Bubblegum Pop, which had two broad sub-strands - the manufactured Pop, sometimes involving children's Saturday Morning TV shows, where session musicians stood in for the animated characters (or chimpanzees, in the case of Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution) and quite faceless groups, which could be made up of an interchangeable line-up of session musicians, which was the American brand of Bubblegum and the groups out of the stable of Cook and Greenaway and Chinn and Chapman and similar, plus the Eurogum of the likes of Middle Of The Road over on this side of the Water, The Bay City Rollers taking the Scottish baton from Middle Of The Road, Scotland being described as "The spiritual home of Bubblegum." in David Smay's book, 'Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth'.

It did exist some few Rock And Roll artists/bands after the 40`s and 50`s like:The Rolling Stones,The Yardbirds,The Kinks,Lynyrd Skynyrd,SAFT and Bloodrock in the 60`s and the 70`s,Slade,ZZ Top,T.Rex,83 Special,Aerosmith,The Fabulous Thunderbirds,Terry Reid,Stevie Ray Vaughan,ACDC and The Outlaws in the 70`s,Def Leppard and Axl Rose in the 80`s, The Black Crowes,Oasis,The Verve,Drive-By Truckers,Gov`t Mule in the 90`s,Blackberry Smoke,Taylor Swift,Whiskey Myers in the 2000`s and 2010`s, The Struts,The Kvednabekkjers and Beady Eye in The 2010`s and Olivia Rodrigo in the 2020`s

Missed out so many. But happy techno got a mention

Finnally! Someone talks about Reggae!! Thank you! ❤❤❤

"Heavy" metal isn't named so for its subject matter but its"heavy," hard sound.

When I was a kid in 40's, my folks were big lovers of the Big Band sound. We bought a house near the Aragon Ballroom so my folks could go dancing to Lawrence Welk. My favorite was Benny Goodman, his music was very lively. Later the 50's & 60's had a much bigger impact and Big Band orchestras fell out of favor.

The term Rock and Roll may originate with sailing but by the 1920s it was a popular euphemism in the jazz scene for sex. That's how it got connected to dancing and to music that was said to make listeners dance and away in a lascivious fashion.

Pete Waterman claims he originated the term 'indie'. He was a very commercial pop producer on his independent label. Because his small label gained a greater market share than major labels c. 1987-1990, the wider industry hated both his sound of music and his success. Due to the success and vendetta against him, the industry split off and no longer considered his commercial pop to be 'indie'. The industry's idea of true independent music was guitar bands, so post 1991, that's what it tended to mean, more than commercially independent (of major labels). Independent labels like Creation, Rough Trade, One Little Indian and Blanco Y Negro

Soul is secularized Gospel music. The subject matter is not explicitly religious, and it is blended with blues roots.

Great video. Outside the genres of English music, origins for the name of Latin American genres would be a hot topic.

That's my idea! Yay! And my name mispronounced, what an absolute honour 😁

Yoohoo a fellow metalhead ! My favorite metal subgenres are Power and Folk personally.

Regarding “Classical” music, that became a pop culture catch all for music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and some early 20th century music (including Impressionism among other styles) as well as works created in those styles or “neo-classical” music. More modern compositions are often referred to as “art song” or simply “symphonic”, “orchestral” or “instrumental” works. Some forms of “classical” music seem to be more commonly and appropriately referred to by their own names, such as opera, or film score/cinematic. This is purely speculation, but I hypothesize that the term “classical” has been adopted due to the dominance of classical era composers, such as Mozart and Haydn (as well as some early Beethoven). While romantic era composers are arguably more popular (Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Chopin, Liszt…), the term “Romantic” had already taken it’s own different popular definition. Additionally, though Bach and Handel are icons of the Baroque era, that term is too recognizably specific to apply to a more broad collection of music as seen by pop culture. So classical became the term by default. But then again, this is simply speculation. Oh, and my favorite genre is rock or metal, though I frequently enjoy opera and film scores. And pretty much anything but country.

In common usage "soul" is generically used as another name for both rhythm & blues and gospel.

Small correction about the origin of bluegrass music. It was named after Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. It was that band that got its name from the grass that grows in Kentucky.

Renaissance -> Baroque -> Classical -> Romantic -> 20th + 21st Century

Thank you name explain. Genre breaks my brain and I am just so high rn I needed someone to bring me back to basics before I go attempt to understand p*rno grindcore vs Industrial Slam metal or hyper electro vs deathstep

I missed some popular brazilian music genres like samba, bossa, choro...

2 that weren’t covered are: Ambient and D&B (Drum And Bass). Although the origins are pretty strait forward

9:18 In my opinion, Hip-Hop music is the music associated wit h Hip-Hop culture, and that music doesn't always involve rapping. Meanwhile. Rap music is an umbrella for music that utilizes rapping including part of Hip-Hop, but also EDM genres such as Trap, and Grime, which may or may not be closely related to Hip-Hop other than the rapping part. Similarly, Electronic music is an umbrella for music that heavily utilizes synthesizers which range from the academic Concrete music, Ambient, to dance genres such as Dubstep, which are mostly unrelated aside from having synthesizers

Really interesting man! As a reggae fan

Pop music is intended to be accessible to the general public, and tends to shy away from complicated chord structures and instead sticking chiefly to the I-V-vi-IV cadence.

Simplified description for what Classical could have gone by: orchestral, concert music or concert hall music, string orchestra, symphony, duet - trio - quartet - quintet - etc. ...

I'd say modern music produced with the same methods and instruments as classical is more accurately described as "orchestral". Classical, as you said, refers to arts from the past that we still enjoy.

Pop pertaining to music as a genre/descriptive category is derived from "pop culture", so "pop music" in actuality is "pop culture music". It does typically reflect as though the music is popular because pop music is what's chosen to be played everywhere - it's sort of "forced" to be popular, but does not mean it is popular.

Classical music was an outgrowth of the neoclassical art movement which was heavily steeped in Ancient Greek and Roman. Since the music didn’t really survive it was just stylistically influenced by the art, architecture, and writing of those periods

I always thought that Hip-hop was just rap but more danceable

Amazing breakdown. Kudos for taking such a broad subject with so many different subsections, yet piecing it together in an entertaining and informative way. Great work

Thanks so much bro

I feel that "Heavy Metal Thunder" in Born to Be Wild is referring more to the roar of a motorcycle than to the music. Wouldn't classify Steppenwolf as metal.

7:48 *Indie

My teacher explained in class rap seemed to have a connection to the ancient Greek word for sewing, because they "sew" words together to spread a message. Your theory also makes sense, though!

Diamond music - harder than metal - it's the sound of life and the song keeps playing ;)

Progressive House, Progressive Trance, Classic 90s Trance, Melodic Techno (e.g. Orbital, early FSOL, Ian O'Donovan), Drum & Bass (mostly intelligent/atmospheric/jazzy,) Jungle, 90s Hardcore, Ambient, New Age, Berlin School, House (most styles,) US Garage, Trip Hop, Electro, Electroclash, Future Jazz/Nu Jazz, Classical.

I would suggest the dubstep may have a name origin from the book Necromancer, released 1984, as there is a character in the book who listens to music he called "The righteous dub".

2:06 Except for the fact that rock music, in general, can also be heavier, because having a heavier guitar sound is not synonymous with a metal sound. Back in the mid-late 1960s. There are plenty of psychedelic rock bands that also have heavier guitar sounds. But they still don't sound anything similar to bands like black sabbath. And, also there was a rock band back in the 1990s called helmet that have a heavier guitar sound. But they still don't sound anything remotely close to being metal. So, people tend to forget to realize that metal music has way more characteristics than just having heavier distortion.

"Shoegaze" was also a derogatory term coined by music journalists critical of those bands' performances.

I think these are most of the music genres he mentioned. there’s Pop, Rock/Rock And Roll, Heavy Metal/Metal, Country, Folk, Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, Rhythm And Blues/RMB, Soul, gospel, Reggae, Ska, Punk Rock, Grunge, Indy Rock, Alternative Rock, Shoegaze, Rap, hip hop, Electronic Music, techno, EDM/electronic dance music, Dubstep, Lofi, hi-fi, chill wave, Vapour Wave, and Classical. Plus there’s many other music genres he didn’t mention. More words and ect. Cool video. bye

I basically enjoy ALL forms of music at least in some capacity. I am not a huge fan of country, but I love the music of Johnny Cash. Some of the rockabilly I listen to dances on the line between rock and country. In addition while I am not a big fan of bluegrass, there are groups like Steve n Seagulls that I absolutely enjoy. I love ska, punk, various types of electronic music (especially Jean Michael Jarre), some rap (the 80s stuff and Baltic Beat Box and Snow) all types of orchestral music. I am a fan of the various kinds of music labled celtic. I like some of the folk music of Native Americans, Africa, South America, Eurpoe, Southeast Asia. But my favorite kind of music is metal. Every type of metal.

Thanks 👍🏻

Actually rock and roll doesn't come from ships on the sea.... It derives from black slang and is actually a term for sex as in the lyric, "rocking and rolling all night long.". It was because of this that music like it was named rock and roll.

Thanks

Think rap isn’t a genre but a vocal technique/ feature. Hip hop is a genre that typically uses rap! Nice vid x

- Ok, Mr Paganini, which type of music do you play? - Rapid fast violin. - Huh? - Erm...Rap Violin.

These cartoons are so adorable

The term "rap" was slang meaning to talk to someone. Back then it would a regular thing for someone to say, "let me rap with ya younblood?" And rappers don't sing that's how that name stuck. And yes, Hip Hop is the name of the culture which includes : rap, graffiti, DJing, and Bboy or Breakdancing.

Very nice video

You forgot to mention the best music genre called "Bardcore". To find it type in a search for the RU-vidr called Hildegard von Blingin'.

Jazz used to be called Jass but it changed cause they thought it was too close to the word ass to be marketable

For a long time I had language misunderstanding. I thought there was a connection between punk (music genre) and punkki = insect in Latin called Ixodes ricinus. Algorithm love ❤

I thought RAP stood for "rythm and poetry"... Also, kind of sad you didn't talk about non English names/genres, like samba or bossa nova.

As a child learning English, it felt pretty weird that "country" was the word for things like "Italy" or "Brazil", and it was not necessarily related to cowboy stuff.

Not going to talk about Industrial, Goth Rock, or New Wave!!??

If you've not done a video on the names of visual art genres, might I suggest that sometime? -- Twickenhamster

0:26 🤔hmmm....When i was a kid. I didn't even think that pop was synonymous with popular, because i personally thought that pop music was just called "pop" for no apparent reason. Just like rock music was just called "rock". But i didn't even know that pop music has its own abbreviation. And, also another fact that i didn't know is that pop music sells more records than any other genre, and pop artists don't even write their own songs. So, i personally thought that all genres are created equal. But that's not even the case at all, because pop music is the only genre that tends to do that. 😲

I love the obscure Chuck Berry album

The Jazz guy in the thumbnail looks like Stevel Seagal

Could've added "Folk" music to refer to "Classic" music not from the West/US, but overall amazing video thank you!

Fully electronic music was being made for decades before the 70s.

I always thought pop music was pop as in popcorn. I am a foreign speaker of English. Love for algorithms. ❤

R&B deserves more attention that you give it. Rhythm and Blues were two separate genres that lumped together because they were both made by black people. The use it stuck for was to refer to rock/pop that wasn’t made by white people. A similar combining of names happened with country and western which were lumped together and became country western music or just country. I understand if you like to make videos about names but I think you shouldn’t be dismissive of subject matters you are unfamiliar with.

I thought Metal referred to the use of distortion electric guitar with metal strings as opposed to acoustic guitar with nylon strings

I prefer the other theory to 'Jazz', being that it derived from the 'jasmine' perfumes worn by New Orleans prostitutes (a city where the genre originated). I find this somewhat more convincing than 'jasm' as early jazz bands were often spelt Jas/Jass, i.e. The Dixieland Jass Band.

Yay finally

Mendelssohn used the term "classical music" in a letter from 1830 which is the earliest use of the term I know but not his invention. The letter, written in Venice to Carl F. Zelter in Berlin, tells how "the pianists there did not play a note by Beethoven… and as I said he and Mozart has something going, they said 'so you are a lover of classical music?' - 'yes', I answered". This anecdote is from the liner notes of a CD of Mendelssohn's piano concertos by Andreas Staier and the Concerto Köln.

No Drum N Bass? Wub wub before Dubstep T.T Also I guess I can note other forms of electronic like House, Chiptune. Also noticed Swing didn't come into the picture, by extension Electro Swing.

Just gonna point out the punk part was a bit wrong, punk originates from rockabilly and surf rock around the 70's, ska started around the 60's based around jazz and Caribbean music it didnt influence punk rock too much but punk rock ended up influencing ska in the 70's and we got ska punk that is what most people refer to when talking about ska. The term punk meant people that were untrained or unskilled in the 70s and wasnt used to refer to prostitutes anymore

Country music used to be (and maybe still is) also known as "country and western".

Metal does have subgenres too. Slash, death core, black, etc. Not my favorite....too hard to understand sometimes. My favorite genres are pretty much anything except country (the ones with heavy twang) and vulgar rap music. I have even grown to enjoy the odd k-pop songs (the ones in English anyway). Classical is very interesting as well.

Robin Daggers/Robin Sparkles/Robin Scherbatsky the mother of Grunge 🤘🇨🇦

(07:05) Most people agree that punk originated in the USA with the formation of The Ramones, (in 1974) so no, while the UK certainly played a significant role in the formation and growth of punk, it was also popular in North America and Europe.

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I thought industrial rock/metal was referencing the fact that the genre sounds like a factory and metalworking. A harsh industrial sound 🤷🏾‍♂️.

Not a critisism, but it's always fun to see Deadmau5 categorized as EDM as he hates the term😁 I like the term though, but it's use is very varied.

You're wrong on Rap. Rap comes from the old Beatnik (and later Hippie) term "Rap" which is a shortening of "Repartee" which they used to mean to have a lively discussion and would often be applied to poetry reading. It was picked up by Jazz, R&B and Funk musicians who were the originators of Rap music. Oh well at least you didn't go with the ridiculous "Rhythm and Poetry" nonsense etymology so many young people seem to believe today. Ironically I believe the Beatniks picked the term up from African American urbanite culture of the early 20th century (where I believe it was often used to describe a man's ability to talk to women).

1:55 but that album is thrash metal, not heavy metal

Can't believe you mentioned Country without mentioning Western. Most people refer to them together as Country and Western.

How about those boyband? What is their genre type?