Into The Music
Genres
Deep dives into the sounds that define us.
Genres
The Post-Genre Collision: Music in 2026
The term “post-genre” has been thrown around for years, but in 2026, it has finally become the literal reality of the music industry. We are no longer living...
Genres
Political Rap: When the Specificity Is the Point
Political rap has existed as long as rap has existed, and the question of what makes it work versus what makes it a slogan set to a beat...
Genres
Jungle: The Music That Never Stopped, Just Waited to Be Rediscovered
Jungle music emerged in the early 1990s from London and Bristol, a product of rave culture mixing reggae sound system culture with the faster tempos of hardcore techno...
Genres
New Wave: The Sound That Made Pop Safe for Smart People
New wave emerged in the late 1970s as a commercial refinement of punk, taking the energy and the anti-establishment attitude and making it more melodic, more produced, and...
Genres
Appalachian Music: The Deep Root That’s Still Growing
Appalachian music doesn’t get discussed as a genre in the same way that, say, outlaw country or alternative country does, partly because it predates the genre taxonomy that...
Genres
Women in Country Music: Is 2026 Different, or Another Cycle?
Country music has always had a complicated relationship with its women. The commercial structure of Nashville radio has historically favored male artists in ways that are documented and...
Genres
Pop-Punk: How the Same Genre Became Three Different Things
Pop-punk is a genre name that has meant different things in different decades, which is either a sign of its vitality or its incoherence, depending on your relationship...
Genres
Synth-Pop: The Sound That Started With a New Machine
Synth-pop is the music of the instrument that changed everything: the synthesizer, which arrived in mainstream pop in the 1970s and rewired the relationship between technology and music...
Genres
Hard Rock: The Genre Built Around the Riff
Hard rock and heavy metal share a boundary that’s always been porous, and the distinction matters less to most listeners than it does to the critics and historians...
Genres
Funk: The Genre That Built Everything and Gets Half the Credit
Funk is the genre that built half of modern music and gets thanked for it about a quarter of the time. Sample a James Brown break and you...
Genres
Folk-Pop: The Genre That Assumes You’re Paying Attention
Folk-pop as a commercial category arrived with a particular moment: the early 2000s, when artists like Norah Jones, Damien Rice, and the Iron and Wine of the early...