Okay. What genre do they belong to? And not using vague meaningless words like “alternative” or “post”. The Police are definitely not New Wave.
Why do you think it is important that there should be these new genres?
New Theory: Musical Genre is dead because authoritative music journalism is dead.
Historically, it has not been the artists themselves who have defined themselves as belonging to a particular genre or movement. It has been journalists writing about music, and classifying albums/artists that have defined what genres are.
Frequently this is done with historical hindsight. Like only recently are people discussing “Progressive Soul” to describe Isaac Hayes and Funkadelic and such. D’Angelo has stated that he hates the label of “neo soul”.
If there has been a big cultural change that has killed genre as a convention, it’s that we no longer look to a few authoritative journalistic voices to describe and classify music for us. It’s being done on much smaller scales by like YouTubers and such.
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lol I was afraid you would ask that…I don’t know the Police enough to comment on if they fit in a genre but thats missing the point…the genre concept doesn’t rely on any or every band being neatly put into a genre
I just think genres are important as a marker of sub-cultures and to me its important to know whether rock is still generating new sub-cultures…if not is effectively ‘dead’ to me
Meh! 
genre definition is always following the action and artists often hate the labels their music is given…it is a method to aid understanding and it doesn’t matter who is doing it, when a genre crystalizes the name or who made it up is not important
…except that the group of people who historically named and defined most genres is gone - print journalism music critics.
Maybe we should just relax and enjoy music - any music, all music!
This is what Kurt Vonnegut said (and he died this day today in 2007):
“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
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print journos are far from a necessity for genre definition, genre naming is not here because of journos…music talk and writing continues on the net and in music academia and people will always come up with names for groups of things to aid conversation whether its music or film or painting etc.
This is how I look at it. I look at the genres at face value - as descriptive labels to describe an attribute of the band’s sound and the fans that like it. Not as a pigeonhole.
Again, for a recent example, Maidcore. Recent new genre, small and relatively underground, new sound combining breakcore and post-rock/post-metal, strong subculture of superfans geeking on art and lore for the bands.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MaidcoreMusic/comments/11r0x9u/a_beginners_guide_to_maidcore_music/
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I am thinking perhaps the new genres are still appearing out there but they are mostly now smaller and more fragmented reflecting the current delivery system for music…on the plus side, existing in smaller genre niches means they are probably more authentic to the sub-culture they are part of (just not a ‘worldwide phenom’ anymore)
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Best selling 12" single of all time, 40 years later; easily the most influential electronic music club track of all time; two or three of (IMO) the best albums ever released; still play large venues despite their most influential member not touring with them; etc etc
" Peter Bradshaw, the chief film reviewer for The Guardian described Control as “the best film of the year: a tender, bleakly funny and superbly acted biopic of Curtis”"
“American film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a three and a half stars rating, out of four, and wrote that “The extraordinary achievement of Control is that it works simultaneously as a musical biopic and the story of a life.””
Your take on “boring” always amuses me 
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Yes, I think this is exactly it. It’s just another reflection of the current reality.
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I wouldn’t say it’s boring, and I like both movies. Knowing anything about Joy Division though, they both feel like they have an agenda they’re trying to push. Again, I like both movies but I don’t think I’m getting anything but one side of the story in both cases.
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For sure. Control was based on Deborah Curtis’ book so it definitely has a bias, especially towards Annik.
And of course 24HPP wasn’t primarily about them (although of course they were central to parts). It was Tony Wilson’s story.
The actors playing Rob Gretton and Martin Hannett are awesome in both though
This may be going off at a tangent a little but it may be that music has a different significence to children and teens nowadays than it did 40 years ago. Back then, I for one was a Heavy Metaller, and I wore these clothes, had this hairstyle and listened to this music. Similarly, I had friends who were Goths or Punks but everyone (anyone with a brain) was kind of defined by a culture, which was in turn defined by its music.
These days. thanks to the huge amount of free music available on the internet and the cheap online shopping (Temu etc) teens can wear and listen to whatever they want and there’s more fragmentation when it comes to culture and genre. I personally don;t like it when I see some 10-year-old in a Metallica T-shirt that they’ll probably wear twice and throw away, because back then, that was kind of part of my identity. But whatever - if they want to look like their parents then who am I to criticise.
Maybe nowadays younger people identify more with computer games / youtubers / film franchises (or whatever?) than music genres? Or maybe there’s a revival thanks to vinyl getting more popular?
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I’m here to amuse, so mission accomplished 
I really wanted to like “Control” and I did buy “So this is Permanence” after watching it, cause for the first time I “got” the poetry in Curtis’ lyrics (as a non native speaker you miss out on lyrics often). I find his lyrics still, haunting, and beautiful and depressing.
Take that, Taylor Swift!
And in fact, the very strength of Curtis words makes me see everything that New Order did very critically. I really like “Blue Monday”, but the rest of New Order’s catalogue does feel more like Petshop Boys than Joy Division.
No Curtis, no depth!
As for watching both movies to understand the “tribes” of that time and the impact of Joy Division: Control paints a bleak picture, but that is Corbijns style anyway. I love his pictures, hate his movies!
Strangely I could not connect Control with the “tribes” I knew at that time. Even “Verschwende deine Juged” was better in that respect!
I did connect with 24 Hour Party People, but maybe cause those times were also surreal and funny, not only “no future”.
We were confronted with suicide of some too, unfortunately, in fact that is what got me into that scene.
But there was so much more, nonsense in the best sense above all. Those times were like a Dada revival with good music, most of all.
So: 24 Hour Party People!
And … there is this one scene where the Sex Pistols perform at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall for the first time … and everything starts. I was in total awe!!! Wish I was there…
This is how I imagine that other similar books would look like:
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I think New Order was completely solid up until about 1988 and then it started to go off the rails. But Movement, Power Corruption and Lies, and Low-Life are all incredible albums, and Substance 1987 pulls all the interim singles together. Those four albums are just next level good IMO.
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Yeah, but you are a fan boy, so that’s that!
I prefer Depeche Modes albums between 1983 and 1993 (minus “Music for the Masses”), so I know: everybody has his own little vanities, no harm done
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Oh DM is of course great too. Its not like we have to choose
All the goth stuff too.
From 1988 or so onwards I was all about Skinny Puppy, FLA, RevCo, etc too. Still am. But for us these were all just seeing the same friends at different clubs that were all part of the same larger scene that we (back then) just called “Underground”.
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