Music Styles

Country, folk and blues mixed together, usually with less studio polish than mainstream country.

Acoustic, fast, and built on banjo, fiddle and mandolin trading solos without any drums.

A radio format more than a sound: the guitar-led records that stations kept playing until they became a category.

Storytelling over acoustic guitar, fiddle and pedal steel, with a strong Nashville industry around it.

Pop written to work on a dance floor, so the tempo and the drop matter as much as the chorus.

Guitars drenched in reverb with vocals mixed as another texture rather than the focus.

Songs passed on and reworked, usually acoustic, with the lyric carrying more weight than the arrangement.

Pop melodies with the production restraint of indie rock, usually lighter and less distorted than its siblings.

Named for independent labels, then kept the name long after the bands signed to major ones.

Built for the widest possible audience, which is why it absorbs whatever else is working at the time.

Long tracks, odd time signatures and concept albums. It treats the LP as one piece rather than a set of singles.

Written to serve something else on screen, which means it has to work while you are not listening to it.

Pop built on synthesizers and drum machines, where the sound of the instrument is part of the songwriting.

Guitar, bass and drums as the core lineup. Broad enough that half the genres on this list started inside it.