WeirdMiddleBrow

Conversation here : https://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-music-genre-do-you-hate-and-why/answer/David-Stewart-8/comment/47805070

“Who buys this crap?”

I do! I love this crap!

I think I even paid money (not a lot, but actual money) for this very Gregorian Beatles album.

I love all the stupid, quirky cover versions in an inappropriate style.

In fact, I’m developing an entire category in my music collection that I call “Weird Middlebrow”. Stuff that’s so innocuous, that seems to be everywhere but no-one really admits to liking it. It doesn’t seem to mean or say anything but has huge fandom.

Yet the moment you step back and consider it dispassionately, through all our models of how music is “supposed” to be. Through either our high-culture or pop purism / trash-culture filters, it’s like “dude! WAT?!?!?! How is that even a thing?”

Of course, weird middlebrow is ruled by Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s Cats (dude, how is that even a thing?).

But Blue Man Group is there. And Trans-siberian Orchestra. (Which seems to exist just to provide music for people’s automated Christmas lights). And those odd modern orchestral pieces that end up in the Classic FM charts despite not being classical music and no-one ever having heard them. And definitely Gregorian versions of Beatles and other rock songs.

And steampunk cover-versions of Queen :

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Pygmies and Panpipes.

Today, 60s “library music”, and 80s video-game music are the epitome of hipster cool. In 20 years time it’s definitely going to be all those Gregorian Beatles etc. And Claude Challe.

Actually, the most cutting edge vaporwave guys are already on the case : H2, by LifeMod :-)