Image via Complex Original
Genre names are a weird thing. Rarely do the people making the music give it a name; it's always a hipster on the outside, coining some phrase that seems to make sense, but ultimately will just help people understand the style of music. The problem lies with those who either aren't good at naming things or aren't informed enough to come up with a name that makes sense. Hell, terms like "EDM" are an immediate red flag to many dance music purists that see the term as being unnecessary, but arguing that point is pointless. And while we can't escape some of the names that have been born over dance music's existence, we can't deny the ones that suck.
Wack EDM genre names come in all shapes and sizes: you have the mashing together of two words to somehow explain why this particular brand of dubstep or electro is different, to adding "intelligent" to show how elevated the sound is. Or you just have names that truly mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Whatever the case may be, here are the 10 worst.
Drum & Bass
We understand, the obvious emphasis on drum & bass is the fast drum beats (clocking in at around 160-180 BPM on the regular) and many varieties of heavy bass. It spawned from the jungle music scene at a time where the sound was both on the rise and evolving into something darker, more technical, and more precise. Drum & Bass, though? How many different genres of music have drums and bass in them? Hip-Hop has a strong emphasis on beats, could it be considered drum & bass? It's so simplistic that, while it works as a rudimentary way of breaking down what the genre is about, thinking about the actual name could give you a headache.
Chillstep
Dubstep, like drum & bass, suffers from being a genre where its influences are worn right on its sleeve, so once you start working in outside sounds, people tend to immediately throw these new styles into a different category. Where Skream described dubstep as "anything at 140BPM," there are a number of "-step" genres out there, yet "chillstep" is the most confusing.
The Urban Dictionary described chillstep as being "dubstep tracks with chill undertones. Low bass, slow beats, add a female's voice to the hook and you've got some chill step." They basically just described Mala's "Alicia," and that's dubstep. Having a "chillout" influence does not a new genre make.
Drumstep
Drumstep came about as a way to describe drum & bass that had a dubstep influence. Some call it "half-tempo drum & bass," but that's not a proper representation, as it's just the switching up of drum patterns, not the actual tempo of the track. There was already a number of half-time drum & bass tracks out there, with guys like Amit and Digital dealing with those styles heavily in the early 2000s, or you could look at the jump-up tracks from the late 1990s as a perfect example of how the 90BPM drum pattern fit into a 170/180 BPM tempo, with producers like DJ Hype, Aphrodite, and others perfecting that. While the actual style of drumstep took off (for a years), the name caused too many (Internets) arguments to really catch on.
Hi-NRG
The only thing worse than Hi-NRG music is the name Hi-NRG. Essentially, the genre started from the disco era, where the use of electronic timbres at around 130BPM-140BPM gave a "high energy," which some genius shortened to "Hi-NRG." That's right, the 103-ish BPM of disco got turned up to the 130 BPM range (aka where you hear many of the house tracks of today), was christened with a terrible name, and died in favor of a newer, emerging sound: Eurodance. The wack names just wouldn't stop!
Complextro
Complextro is said to have been coined by Porter Robinson in describing his brand of glitched-out electro house. We're not sure if he was joking when he said it, but the term's taken off like wildfire, somehow lumping Skrillex, deadmau5, Crookers, Knife Party, The M Machine, and others into this weird, confusing mix of artists. What is so bad about the term "electro" or "electro house?" How "complex" is your style of electro that it truly needs some portmanteau to explain it?
Happy Hardcore
"Hardcore techno" ultimately spawned a number of genres, from gabber to old school jungle. The style of music was so popular that there were a number of subgenres that grew as well, and the uptempo, 4x4 kick-loving, sentimental sounds of "happy hardcore" was one of the more popular. The name is quite irritating, as things that are considered to be "hardcore" aren't usually considered "happy," no matter how many heartfelt lyrics you throw over it.
We do have to give it up to happy hardcore, though, as without it's fuzzy wonderment, darker styles like drum & bass would not have been created.
Trap
Trap's a term that has been around for a while. The word is used to not only describe the music that southern rappers like T.I., Waka Flocka, and other artists make, but for the environment that they grew up in. The EDM producers that borrowed the 808s and Trap-A-Holics samples, incorporated the rave mentality to build-ups, drops, and melodies, and spawned a new style of dance music are basically paying homage to the popular sound of now, from the Lex Luger-style beats to tracks like "Mercy" and anything else that registers in that spectrum. Calling that EDM sound "trap," in the long run, was probably a bad idea, not because it doesn't describe what they're making, but the arguments about exploitation and socio-economic issues that have come about and, sadly, haven't been spoken about by the EDM producers that are capitalizing on this particular sound.
This leaves us in an odd state: Trap is a pretty solid description of the style of music that Flosstradamus and others make, yet they aren't defending it's use. It all boils back to a name being affixed to a sound not by the people within the sound, but the media commenting on it. Sadly, the producers are the ones who get stuck with the bill of defending the use of the name. Damned if you do...
Brostep
When it comes to unnecessary terms for a perceived style of dubstep, brostep might take the cake. The term gained popularity in 2011 as a direct result of the growing North American love of dubstep with an emphasis on the mid-range (as opposed to the heavy bass), particularly tracks that Skrillex, Rusko, and others were making at the time. We assume the "bro" is a dig at the jocks/frat boys who were digging dubstep more and more, which, while kind of funny, doesn't neccesitate the creation of a magical new type of dubstep. It's one of those terms that people who don't listen to (or know much about) dubstep use to describe Skrillex, but if you say "brostep" around artists who make/spin dubstep, it has the same effect as writing "I'm a tool" on your forehead.
Post-Dubstep
Adding the term "post" has been a device that the media has been using in music for the last few years. We don't knock James Blake at all, and appreciate how his love for dubstep shines through the music that he makes. The fact that someone felt the need to coin the term "post-dubstep" to describe his music, especially when research shows that only a handful of artists also fit whatever magical box "post-dubstep" fits in, cripples the idea of this even being a real genre. If he's dubstep, he's dubstep. If he's making pop or indie music that has dusbtep influences, don't manufacture an entire genre around HIS OUTPUT. Put it in the proper categories, or say he has no category.
Intelligent Dance Music
Intelligent Dance Music, or EDM, just feels elitist. We get that the production that was lumped into those categories in the 1990s was more about "adult" listening, or stuff that was good for the headphones but not necessarily made for the dancefloors. Ultimately, this created a feeling that adding atmospherics or manipulating beats like Aphex Twin was somehow "smarter" than regular dance music is downright insulting to more popular, "mainstream" styles. As if a simple, anthemic dance record couldn't also be smart.
Fun fact: Aphex Twin hated the term IDM (yay!), but his alternate term was "braindance" (boo!). We think Cylob summed it up best by saying: "Also, anyone who applies the term IDM to my music deserves to be shot."
