Among my social circle, I have a famous distaste for bands like Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters & Men, and the rest of their ilk of faux-backwoods, banjo-accompanied strum-and-stomp folk pop.
Every ounce of that aversion is due to Fleet Foxes, whose explosion of popularity in the late 00s opened the floodgates for imitators.
However, while there is an undeniable amount of trend hopping in the bands that followed them, Fleet Foxes’ fifteen-year career betrays an ignorance to—if not disdain for—the passing trends of popular music. Rather, their influences have always run much deeper than the flavor of the moment.
Never has that been more evident than their fourth album, Shore, which was recorded in many of the same studios as the classic albums that have served as the Foxes’ musical north stars. Whether through observable or supernatural means, those influences are more synthesized on this album than ever before.
If you’re going to name a band after the greatest monster in cinema mythology, you better deliver. Luckily, long-running French metal outfit Gojira hasn’t built their reputation by not living up to their name. Throughout their twenty-plus-year history, they have delivered punishing groove metal that is both destructive and awe-inspiring.
Perhaps there is no candidate for Pop Superstar more unlikely than The Cure’s Robert Smith. With his frizzy moptop, pale complexion, and full face of makeup, Smith was the face of the 1980s goth rock movement and its obsession with darkness—the kind of guy that Satanic Panic folks would point to to prove that society was in the icy grip of the Dark Lord.
Across the history of popular music, few minds have created music as beautiful, infectious, and moving as that of Brian Wilson. But that mind was also intensely fragile, leading to bouts with mental illness that were so serious he had to withdraw from the creative process, often for years at a time.
Coheed & Cambria attracts a lot of criticism for their… whole deal. Sci-fi prog rock concept albums based on a comic book written by the lead singer who then sings about genetic wars and space armadas in an androgynous elf voice isn’t exactly a recipe for mainstream success. But at their best, Coheed has a gift for wrapping these weirder elements up in sugary sweet pop hooks and classic rock tropes.
Looking back, it makes no sense that 
One of the more interesting things about music to me is how we attempt to categorize and classify according to imperfect terminologies—and more specifically, how that terminology changes over time.
It feels bizarre to remember now, but by the time 2000 rolled around, many people had felt that the emo scene was already waning—after all, Sunny Day Real Estate had already broken up and had a reunion. Mineral had been defunct for two years. And even those stalwarts were considered to be latecomers—and even imposters—to a scene rooted in emotional hardcore bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace.