Did you know that there are 1,264 different musical genres in the world today? According to Google. And they know everything.

And, yes, I agree, that is way too many genres.

Since WordPress requires a Category for each post and if you don’t assign a category it will categorize the post as an ‘Uncategorized’ Category. Hmm? I needed some Categories. I was going to use the musical genre of the song as the Category. However, the artist can have a base genre or two or three or more, and the particular song can have a base genre or two or three or more. Sometimes the singer’s standard genre can be completely different than the actual posted song genre.

Think of Pink singing ‘Over the Rainbow’.

So, which genre to use? Do I categorize a song under all the different categories it can be categorized under? No, I went with the singer. (It was much easier for me to search the singer than the song. I was taking it easy!) The Categories are based on the standard genre that the singer/artist is usually assigned to. So there!

Crayola (a brand name that I hope I can say) has over 100 different colours, but the basic 8 are black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. These colours are used more often then all of the other more than 92 colours combined. There was a back-in-the-day expression that said, “Just use the ‘Crayola 8’ to get the job done.” Implication: too many choices causes unnecessary confusion.

I’m actually waiting for necessary confusion. Any day now.

So, I decided to use the ‘Crayola 8’ basis for categorizing the songs into 8 Categories.

Which are:

Rock, which includes; Rock, Rock & Roll, Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Indie Rock and any song that has a good beat, but you can’t dance to it. I hear you snickering, but name one song by The Stones that you can dance to!

Dance, which includes Disco, Techno-Pop, Synth-Pop and any song by Donna Summer.

Popular, which includes Popular, Easy Listening, Adult Contemporary and any song by Michael Buble.

Soul, which includes Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, Ragtime, The Blues and any song that you want to listen to while eating a litre of Laura Secord Pralines and Cream ice cream, watching Love Actually and crying over Emma Thompson getting the Joni Mitchell CD. (Or is that just me?)

Country, which includes Country, Country Western, Honky-Tonk, Bluegrass and any song that mentions a pickup truck, hunting, a lost love and makes your dog want to howl at the moon.

Folk, which includes Folk Music and, and, and, well includes any song by Simon and Garfunkel.

Instrumental, which includes Big Band, Inspirational, Classical and any song that you can make up your own lyrics to as you sing along. And, of course, ‘Come on Eileen’ by Dexy Midnight Runners, because everyone has their own words for that song.

Soundtracks, which includes songs from a television show or a movie or a play and the theme from ‘Friends’.

Humorous, which includes parodies, funny songs and any song by Nickelback.

Other, aka, ‘I don’t know where this song belongs’, which includes any song that doesn’t fit in the other categories or any song that is the only one in a category (like Rap or Hip Hop) . And any song by Nickelback.

There you have it ‘The Crayola 8’ and since you can count, I’m saying 10 is the New 8.

By the By, I added 2 special Categories, just because I can (being a Wizardette has its privileges). I added Canadian, self-explanatory.

And Covers, which includes fan covers, street singers, flash mobs and amateur hour.

A song can be Categorized under two different categories. Just letting you know.

So, I have 12 categories and Google has 1,264. I win!

Written by Cathy, Jim’s WP-Admin Wizardette.