The Speculative future of Vapor Wave - Will the genre change to fit with nostalgia of future generations?

[CornBogFitz]

Vapor Wave is a musical/asthetic genre based around capturing a general nostalgic feeling. It is literally music for wearing rose colored glasses. This is why many of the aesthetics are associated with the 1980s despite it being invented in the 2010s. However, as new generations grow into the genre do you believe will what defines the genre change into something else, ironically failing to preserve the original aesthetics? Please share/debate your thoughts. I find this thought experiment interesting.

 

[kevlarmoose61]

Genres similar to (in terms of the intention) vaporwave will more than likely crop up in the future. The sound is going to be different though, obviously, so I imagine the succeeding genres can probably be grouped under a common 'nostalgia-wave-core-whatever' umbrella or something.

But what 'defines' the genre will probably change in the common perspective as well, so who knows. Definitely interesting to think about though.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

Vaporwave is just synthwave, but for people who are too unbearably gay to unironically enjoy anything. Instead of trying to capture the iconic sounds of the era with timeless appeal, it's ironically inspired by Muzak that nobody actually liked to begin with.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Vaporwave will not change because vaporwave is dying. According to RYM is went from 1237 releases in 2015 to 780 last year. Google trends also shows a downward trend in search requests:

Newer generations will not care about vaporwave just like how they don't care about nu metal. They'll probably come up with different genres similar to vaporwave, but it won't be vaporwave.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

Vaporwave will not change because vaporwave is dying. According to RYM is went from 1237 releases in 2015 to 780 last year. Google trends also shows a downward trend in search requests:
View attachment 5990526
Newer generations will not care about vaporwave just like how they don't care about nu metal. They'll probably come up with different genres similar to vaporwave, but it won't be vaporwave.

It's an inevitable result of centering your artistic efforts around the A E S T H E T I C, the ideological/philosophical significance of nostalgia, ironic portrayal, and other navalgazing horseshit that nobody cares about, instead of focusing on taking sounds that people have actually enjoyed listening to and presenting them to new audiences.

 

[BirdUp]

navalgazing

*navalgrazing

 

[Idiotron]

Vaporwave is something that AI will be making in a few years and will be used primarily for background noise in internet videos.

 

[Inside your walls]

I think vaporwave will go underground and have a niche audience of listeners, in terms of music genre it got slowly replaced with barber beats and gentrified Lo-Fi slop (yuck), just how aesthetically wise people went from longing for 80s-90s to longing for Y2K, but I think from time to time there will be an album or a song from that genre that will catch the attention of a wider audience like this album for an example.

 

[Scout Trooper]

I think that like most mediums there is a Mandela effect where "new" vaporwave aesthetic gets reincorporated into the genre until it only really sounds like itself and the parts that were more genuine to the period are unidentifiable or gone enitrely.

 

[Masturbator]

Vaporwave will not change because vaporwave is dying. According to RYM is went from 1237 releases in 2015 to 780 last year. Google trends also shows a downward trend in search requests:
View attachment 5990526
Newer generations will not care about vaporwave just like how they don't care about nu metal. They'll probably come up with different genres similar to vaporwave, but it won't be vaporwave.

vaporwave / retrowave is a niche genre so it makes sense it became less popular on bigger scale the very time people who used to listen to it moved from the net

going contrary to generic doomscroll expectation i'd say it will either mutate to embrace actual retro e.g disco italo (from where a lot of retrowave artists pull their samples anyway) or become simulacrum of former self the very same way lowfi ceased to be chilly 2010 typa musiks into ai generated headache inducing beats, either are possibly but the thing is that both actual retro and retrowave have left lots of works worth lifetime of listening so even if it suddenly "spoils" they wont get to turn it any worse as retro audience is very very picky anyways

that said retro and -waves were going since eighties (read: the very time music became electric) and always were proclaimed "dying" or otherwise unpopular yet every decade it comes up with its own jean pierre tier maestro who they try to copy then fail then forget lmao, it wont really "die" but their authors would (e.g edyard artemiev) since a lot of titans of retro are over 60 so we are very very fucking lucky to live in same decade with o.g still alive

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I don't see why vaporwave would alter itself for a new generation given that it centers around a hyper-specific type of nostalgia. the kids born after 9/11 have no reference point for the shit that came before. things like increasingly realistic computer graphics becoming commonplace, the death of retail, the oppressive air of cynicism about society and politics, all these things annihilated the cultural era whose ashes vaporwave is playing in. vaporwave is memories of going to the mall with your dad; of early video gaming when technology was becoming more affordable while new technical feats were coming around the corner every day, but the graphics of the time still left much to the imagination; of a time when people were still optimistic about the world, the big problems seemed solvable, and the internet was still new and revolutionary. this nostalgia belongs solely to the older millennials and, like others have noted in this thread, is already fading away. the zoomer version of vaporwave is gay shit like fuckin webcore because their nostalgia is for like, social media circa 2010 and cursed mobile/web games.

Vaporwave is just synthwave, but for people who are too unbearably gay to unironically enjoy anything. Instead of trying to capture the iconic sounds of the era with timeless appeal, it's ironically inspired by Muzak that nobody actually liked to begin with.

It's an inevitable result of centering your artistic efforts around the A E S T H E T I C, the ideological/philosophical significance of nostalgia, ironic portrayal, and other navalgazing horseshit that nobody cares about, instead of focusing on taking sounds that people have actually enjoyed listening to and presenting them to new audiences.

fuck you, vaporwave owns. navel-gazing has been a part of every cultural and musical era. vaporwave, in its original form, is not at all ironic - that's part of the foundational sentiment of the genre, since it was born as a reaction to early 2010s cynicism and vitriol. vaporwave is all about enjoying smooth sounds, consumer luxury, and the wonders of new technology.

Spoiler: a selection

and the all-time classic:

 

[gildersleeve]

vaporwave, in its original form, is not at all ironic

I agree with your sentiment. Though I would like to add in your selections that vaporwave has slowly evolved over time to include less sampling and more original tunes using period appropriate synths, or at least VST's it seems. Eyeliner was one of the first I noted that did so around 2014 . Now there's FM skyline, and windows 96 more recently. Gotta say I adore it.

Spoiler: aforementioned artists

Generally I agree with what other posters here note. That vaporwave will become progressively more niche over time. Though I don't think it will move past that era. As other electronic music genres from the 2000's have been revived already and have not been incorporated under the "vaporwave" idea (like jungle and DnB's sudden wave of interest again) Since it's not engrained with the malaise of nostalgia vaporwave naturally has. Like Mr.might&magic stated above. It's a very specific era it focuses on.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

I can't reply properly for some reason but whatever here we go.

Glad to see there was some root to Vaporwave that actually had a reason for existing, niche that it may be. But this is why we gatekeep art; because if you're not careful, your obscure, hyperspecific microgenre can easily be co-oped into incoherent slop by braindead faggots over the course of just a handful of years, and anyone outside the old guard of your scene will have a damnable time discovering that it was ever any different.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I agree with your sentiment. Though I would like to add in your selections that vaporwave has slowly evolved over time to include less sampling and more original tunes using period appropriate synths, or at least VST's it seems. Eyeliner was one of the first I noted that did so around 2014 . Now there's FM skyline, and windows 96 more recently. Gotta say I adore it.

Windows 96 has quickly become one of my favorite artists of the decade. I don't know if I'd still classify him as vaporwave, as his sound and style have moved off in their own direction, but he was a temporary resident of the genre anyway - his work predates the quirky MIDI-style sound of One Hundred Mornings by a lot. the boy's on his own artistic journey and he's going places.

from his new album released just last week:

 

[vomitusdeux]

Vaporwave is vaporwave. Whatever comes after will be something else, probably weird corporate stock images and royalty free music.

 

[Masturbator]

I can't reply properly for some reason but whatever here we go.

Glad to see there was some root to Vaporwave that actually had a reason for existing, niche that it may be. But this is why we gatekeep art; because if you're not careful, your obscure, hyperspecific microgenre can easily be co-oped into incoherent slop by braindead faggots over the course of just a handful of years, and anyone outside the old guard of your scene will have a damnable time discovering that it was ever any different.

as rule of thumb niche shit should come with requirement to challenge brain wrinkles at least very bit, sorts out a lot of types who would otherwise have hijacked the stuff then turned it all about themselves, so em nerds are super lucky naturally on this one

outside of memes its a common topic i read in spheres like small gamedev and funny literature (e.g hard sci fi stuff) where demand to come with something elaborative than repeating past is pretty much in air so another "author" with his "uhhhhhhhhhh many tech uhhhhhh evil human nature uhhhh big robot" gets quickly shot down so the very same there as repeating another artist does not means coming with something anew

is already fading away. the zoomer version of vaporwave is gay shit like fuckin webcore because their nostalgia is for like, social media circa 2010 and cursed mobile/web games.

i dont really believe music genres can just go and fucking die as much they just go "in the people" the very same way simulacrum emerges from the myth the very also same way chiptune came from hipsters trying to repeat tracker music, the lowkey part vaporwave / retrowave / -waves are lucky is because they are built on foundation of older stuff so their "inbreeding" is impossible as they require reference and even by the time vaporwave went super popular and spawned webpunk thing everyone just realized they cannot milk same topic infinitely, not saying any of this cannot come up with original author who would bring something totally new and fitting but the very time they do happen there's much more copycats than shrooms after rain

 

[whore loving dragon]

I expect "Nostalgia music" in general, and in particular, music which focuses on audiovisual artifacts associated with the technological limitations of the 70s-90s, will only become more popular in the future. Right now it's actually surprisingly hard to create music that authentically captures those sounds, because you pretty much need old hardware, and musicians don't want to be custodians of old audio hardware, they want to make music. But AI will quickly make it easy to mimic whatever sound you want.

 

[CornBogFitz]

It's an inevitable result of centering your artistic efforts around the A E S T H E T I C, the ideological/philosophical significance of nostalgia, ironic portrayal, and other navalgazing horseshit that nobody cares about, instead of focusing on taking sounds that people have actually enjoyed listening to and presenting them to new audiences.

I disagree. Aesthetics often embolden a musical movement. For example. While the aesthetics of goth and emo at first appear very similar, the musical movements of each are vastly different.

 

[Grub]

It's an inevitable result of centering your artistic efforts around the A E S T H E T I C, the ideological/philosophical significance of nostalgia, ironic portrayal, and other navalgazing horseshit that nobody cares about, instead of focusing on taking sounds that people have actually enjoyed listening to and presenting them to new audiences.

This. I read about vaporwave one day and saw some album covers and artwork and stuff and thought it seemed kind of cool but then I listened to it and it was like listening to the soundtrack of a shitty 80's made for TV movie or one of those 80's/90's science videos the teacher would stick in the VCR for us to watch when they wanted to kill time and not have to work. It was sort of nostalgic, but not in a good way.

 

[VF-1J Armored Valkyrie]

This. I read about vaporwave one day and saw some album covers and artwork and stuff and thought it seemed kind of cool but then I listened to it and it was like listening to the soundtrack of a shitty 80's made for TV movie or one of those 80's/90's science videos the teacher would stick in the VCR for us to watch when they wanted to kill time and not have to work. It was sort of nostalgic, but not in a good way.

This is ultimately still where I get off the boat with even the unironic Vaporwave; I'm not trying to listen to re-racked call holding music. I like the nostalgia, it's the liminal background music feeling I'm uninterested in.

I disagree. Aesthetics often embolden a musical movement. For example. While the aesthetics of goth and emo at first appear very similar, the musical movements of each are vastly different.

I'm not really sure how this is a relevant, but I guess I'll refute it anyways; goth, emo, and punk all deal with this same phenomenon where they set out to create a counter-cultural space that works against societal norms, but have all been so thoroughly reduced to the lowest common denominator by people glomming onto the vague aesthetics that they are all incredibly normative within themselves and meaningless from a countercultural perspective.

Overfocusing on aesthetics over actual art inevitably leads to art becoming a meaningless fashion statement.