The Decade in Music Genre Hype

Typically Effusive Praise at the Time: "A creative tour de force, Justice have unleashed an era-defining album for the children of acid house. Never mind Daft Punk, here's disco punk." —The Guardian, 2007

What Happened?: For fuck's sake, we called it "blog house." It was the fickle attitudes of dance music fans combined with the even fickler attitudes of Internet users. It's shocking it lasted as long as it did.

Kevin Westenberg

The Rapture: A high point in the dance-punk cycle

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LO-FI

Hype Cycle: 2007–2008

Key Artists: Times New Viking, No Age, Psychedelic Horseshit

What It Was: The same crappily recorded garage-punk tantrums that have been around since the days of Count Five—but now on trendy indie-rock record labels you've heard of!

Creative Peak: Jay Reatard, Matador Singles '08 [2008]

Typically Effusive Praise at the Time: "No wonder they don't care about certain standards of recording quality: They are their own Alan Lomax, immediately 'getting down' the wild, the weird, and the strangely alluring on a single-microphone tape recorder." —Prefix on Times New Viking, 2008

What Happened?: In this accelerated age, a months-too-late MTV News trend piece effectively kills cool dead.

GLO-FI

Hype Cycle: 2009

Key Artists: Memory Tapes, Washed Out, Neon Indian

What It Is: An Internet fanbase starving for a sequel to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion satiate their appetites via bands with less bread-'n'-butter hustle, but plenty of mushy textures, summery melodies, tape distortion, and names like Ducktails and Reading Rainbow that drive home the fact that, yes, we were kids once . . . remember?!

Creative Peak: Toro Y Moi, "Blessa" seven-inch [2009]

Typically Effusive Praise at the Time: "Remember tape cassettes? No, me neither. Not until Alan Palomo's Neon Indian reminded me how it sounded when a tape played so much it unraveled in the deck." —Pitchfork, 2009

What Happened?: Not technically dead yet, but 90 percent of writing about glo-fi mentions "the summer" in some fashion. And summer's been over for, like, four months now. 

'00s MICROTREND GRAVEYARD

Ghettotech, microhouse, folktronica, New Weird America, schaffel, crunk, trap-rap, post-metal, screw, baile, Baltimore club, snap, nu-balearic, moan-wave, grindie, deathcore, nu-rave, juke, wonky, skweee, dubstep, kuduro, jerk, hypnagogic pop, crabcore.