![]() Doomerwave edits throw on some reverb, slow the song down, add some vinyl scratching, and I wouldn't be surprised if the songs were moved a semitone or two down to top it all off. The editing on this track is indicative of the entire doomerwave style. But it turns out in 2020, the gift that keeps on giving, a challenger has emerged that threatens to take sadcore, and similarly depressing music, to new heights: “doomerwave”. Not even the now-world-famous singer who wrote ' I Can’t Feel My Face,' a song that casts cocaine as a femme fatale, can escape the overwhelming grasp of depression. The only popular performer who seems to talk about doing cocaine is The Weeknd, and even then, the primary theme of his early work was basically “ I take cocaine and have sex with models and I’m still sad”. They match the sentiment expressed in Giles Corey’s ' Nobody is Ever Going to Want Me': “ I want to feel the way I feel when I’m asleep”. Unlike psychedelics, which dissolve the ego and make one’s relationship with reality negotiable, and stimulants, which make you have fun and want to start a podcast with random strangers you meet at a nightclub, depressants indicate a rejection of life and fulfillment. It’s no wonder that the go-to drugs of reference in popular music are depressants like Xanax, Oxycontin, or Percocet. Sure, they’re hardly as mainstream as Lil Peep, Juice Wrld, or Drake, but they’re certainly more popular than their style, which draws from Yugoslavian post-punk and new wave music, would normally warrant. I also think the explosion of popularity for Belorussian post-punk group Molchat Doma is related to this as well. Peep would go on to die due to an accidental overdose of depressant drugs in 2017 at just 21. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of Lil Peep’s songs, ' Shiver,' samples Have a Nice Life, one of the biggest bands most associated with the sadcore label. Mumble rap is another example of this, with rappers choosing not to enunciate words, instead opting for a downbeat slur. Drake’s songs, particularly early in his discography, sounded like the soundtrack to some drugged-out haze, an attempt at escaping reality through painkillers. In a lecture on capitalist realism, Mark Fisher noted the emergence of Drake as such a popular figure, and the influence Drake has had on music. Yet the ethos of sadcore - characterized by slow, hazy, and depressing sounds - is quite popular in mainstream music today. ![]() ![]() All the hits are there: Mogwai’s ' Take Me Somewhere Nice,' Low’s ' Lullaby,' Radiohead’s ' How to Disappear Completely.' Though despite millions of views, sadcore continues to be quite niche. Sadcore isn’t a genre so much as a loose category of songs that make you feel particularly sad. I discovered the YouTube “sadcore” ecology in my late teens. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |