2016: The top 40 was where house music went to die
Dance music's creativity isn't being reflected in the charts – and that's really sad
The incorporation of these samples into, most commonly, tropical house foundations adds serious insult to the injury, sapping the life out of flawless old-skool cuts with draining Magaluf beach party beats. Forget soul music, it’s just dull music.
Tropical house is a genre so bad that its founder Thomas Jack has already distanced himself from the style, with the Australian asserting to Noisey that it is “so annoying that I’m over it”. Succinctly put. He further complained that “people would go grabbing, like, 90s pop songs and putting fuckin’ flutes over them.” No clue where they got the idea to jack from others, Thomas?
Nearly three decades on from its birth Juan Atkins is still making techno, and Frankie Knuckles made and played house up until his last days. For the most part dance music is underpinned by forward-thinking approaches and a desire to pioneer. The underground is booming right now, with inventive collectives and individuals popping up in all corners of the globe and pushing things on. There’s currently no reflection of this in the bastardisations littering the charts, with the top 40 now strewn with the corpses of dead tunes.
Groups like Disclosure have proven that it’s possible to do commercial well. When it comes to chart house in 2016, we’d rather listen to white noise.
Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Staff Writer. He wants quality house every weekend, please
Alex Jenkins is a freelance illustrator and regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow him on Instagram
