Teen Gothic

​

Today is the day Rozz Williams passed away in 1998. Every year on this day, I rewatch his videos on YouTube. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about what happened to Christian Death after Valor stole the band from Rozz. I don't understand why people continue to go to their concerts and festivals. Do you really want to support a thief?

I recently stumbled across Dollwave and liked the vibe before quickly realising it was likely AI. Do you have any band recs with similar vibes but that are actually human artists?

I believe that without using music theory and music production terminology, the whole "what is goth music" discussion goes nowhere. For me, 'goth music' is characterized by the following:

• repeated rhythms, often in simple time
• use of effects such as chorus, distortion, delay etc on electric guitars (and occasionally bass guitars) to create 'ambient' textures
• high use of reverb on all instruments
• less overdrive/distortion compared to industrial, punk and metal, more subdued electric guitar timbre
• use of noise and extraneous sounds alongside "musical" pitch (especially goth rock that leans more towards post-punk)
• use of synthesizers/keyboards to colour textures with ambience
• use of power chords (as in all rock genres)
• use of minor keys
• less emphasis on instrumental technical prowess and more on creating affect through texture and ambience
• clean vocals, often in a low tessitura

These are core attributes and by all means not exhaustive. All of these attributes create the "dark sound" that goth rock is known for. 'Ambience' is a very important word here when it comes to describing the sound of goth rock that I believe a lot of people tend to overlook. The 'ambient' and 'textual' characteristic of goth rock is shared by shoegaze and dream pop, with shoegaze emphasizing more use of distortion and less reverb and dream pop emphasizing more chorus and reverb and less distortion. The de-emphasis on showcasing instrumental technical prowess is an attribute shared with shoegaze, dream pop, EBM, industrial punk, post punk and post-rock but not with metal and progressive rock.

So my mom(39) is fine with me being a bit alternative…..to an extent. She’s fine with me liking weird shit and my “weird black music” lol but we but headings on the way I style myself. She only wants me to do stereotypical like not grunge “grunge” (think 2020 baggy jeans and nirvana t-shirt) and I wanna dress the way I like which is definitely not that. I’ve been getting into trad goth makeup and I really like the way I look. For the longest time I’ve always felt I’ve looked too much younger than I am, but when im in goth make up I really like the way I look a lot. My mom considers it whiteface. Whenever she sees me in it she’ll immediately tell me to scrub it off. At one point I made it my instagram profile picture and she yelled at me to take it down immediately. She compared it to a white person posting a picture of them in a charcoal mask.….that’s fine ig but digress. She says I’ll get my scholarship to college taken away if people see me like that. (She then got mad when I changed it to a bat cause then people would think I’m weird and suck blood????) Is there literally any way to deal with this. It’s like taking to a brick wall. Should I just suck it up cause I move away in 2 weeks? She’s still probably call me screaming if I do post pictures in it while I’m in college. She’s controlling like that.

I guess most goths concider goth and i do too. but sometimes i see people here and there claiming they are not goth. i don't realy get it even if they're not under this label they're still post-punk which is super close and i know not all post-punk is goth but they're definetly are. what funny is i heard someone say "just beacuse they had sad lyrics dosn't mean they are goth". so what actually make a band sound goth than ? they had sad/melancholic lyrics and also gothic/darkwave-ish instrumental.

As the title says, i want more than anything to dress as trad goth, i’ve wanted to for a really long time. i’ve started shifting to the more alternative look but not exactly where i want to be. Im talking full extreme bat dragon looking goth. however after telling my partner this, he expressed that he didn’t really like the idea. Now i’m stuck between either wasting my life pretending to be someone im not, or stay with my boyfriend (whom i love very much, please don’t get me wrong i would do anything for this man.) Someone please help me or give me some advise!!!

Please correct me if I am wrong about this and I am fully open to criticism:

For a while now I have seen a rise in berating others, especially baby bats, for interpreting a band or song as goth that another person disagrees with it/makes fun of them for thinking it is goth. I have seen legitimate harassment level messages such as death threats due to someone interpreting something as goth that another person deems incorrect. Music genres, especially this one with so many genres and subgenres, get incredibly blurry in some areas with other music (such as new wave and non-goth postpunk) and it feels wrong to say that there is an exact hard line everyone has to agree on between what is and isn’t be considered goth. Obviously not saying that BTS or Arianna Grande are goth due to interpretation as that would be straight up wrong, but for example the debates on Molchat Doma and similar seem to go wayyyy further than should. Why can’t we just “I interpret this song/band as goth” “I interpret this song differently and not as goth” “that is okay”?. The subculture is very important to me so I know that keeping the genres meanings are important, but the recent rise has kind of concerned me and a lot of the “protecting the meaning” has gone way off the rail. Has anyone noticed a similar trend? Is this a common sentiment and I’m just late to the party? How can we better approach this issue and help prevent toxicity?

Thank you!

Recs for witty/funny goth songs that are not in the caberet/folk goth genre? Especially songs that sound serious on the surface, but are not.

Please don't recommend stuff that intentionally or ironically punches down on folks, I've never found that funny.