At first I thought I was seeing things, but they are indeed doing this.
This has always been a topic that has stirred controversy; companies charging more for plus sized clothing. So much so that most clothing companies have stopped doing this due to pressure from the general public. Since this is the case why the heck does Hot Topic think that this is a great idea? I’m guessing that they are counting on people not noticing. Surprise, I have!
Pretty recently Hot Topic have decided to start selling ‘goth’ looking clothes once again. Quite honestly the pieces actually look better, and cost less, than the dreck that Killstar is pushing these days. So, please don’t think I am bashing Hot Topic when it comes to that. In fact I recently bought a very cool Misfits hoodie from them and it is of very good quality and I love it. The reason they are doing this is because they saw goth becoming a huge trend once again and wanted some of that cash. To think otherwise is just being very naive.
Two more examples.
As per the photo above you can see that they are not doing this with every single piece; the two not highlighted are the same price. Why not just spread the cost between the two versions instead of punishing plus sized people by charging more for a slightly different size? This, quite honestly, reeks of trying to make more money off of plus sized people since Hot Topic knows that it is more difficult for them to find alternative type clothing that fits.
It’s kind of funny that the plus sized skirt is actually cheaper right here on sale. However, the regular price is still more.
I don’t see them changing their ways unless enough people start yelling at them about it. It is very important to stand up and make your voice heard in these types of situations, because sitting on your hands and doing nothing does not create change.
The above ‘thing’ is what happens when you don’t gatekeep the goth subculture.
For the last couple of days I have been going back and forth in my head trying to figure out whether or not I should make a post about all of this. Why? Because my first husband, just like Jake, was a verbally and emotionally abusive piece of shit. So, I have been through exactly what Jake’s abuse victim, YouTuber Toxic Tears (aka Kaya), has been through. Being abused never completely leaves you and is something you have to deal with for the rest of your life. Personally, I have worked through that trauma pretty much on my own and I made it through the other end reasonably intact. However, seeing a younger woman going through the exact same crap publicly really breaks my heart and I feel like I have to speak up to not only support her but to warn others not to fall for the same shit.
Who, or what, is Jake Munro? He is an infamous thirty-one year old poseur goth YouTuber who has openly admitted to hating goth music and the subculture, but tags himself as goth in just about every video he makes. He is basically a clout chaser trying to make money off of the subculture. That’s it. I am not going to link any of his videos from this blog because I don’t want to give him views from here. You can easily find all of the crap I am talking about via Google and YouTube so what I am saying isn’t a secret at all.
For over ten years he dated another YouTuber named Toxic Tears, who is actually a goth. His channel only gained traction because of her linking his videos to her audience. In other words he used his girlfriend to jump-start his own ‘career’. He cheated on her multiple times over the years and openly flirted with underage girls while around her. So to say this dude is a creep would be a huge understatement. Some skanky bitch, who was married and has a 4 year old child, cheated on her husband with him and they are now a couple. Toxic Tears and him broke up about a year ago…but it was anything but normal.
Dearest little Jake literally threw her out of the place they shared and she was made to stay in an unheated workshop room. He had isolated her from her friends and made her be financially dependent on him, which is one of the HUGE things that abusers like him do. She eventually landed back on her feet, got a new place to stay and was starting to work on picking up the pieces of her shattered life. For about a year she was finding her freedom and healing from the abuse, then out of nowhere a few days back he makes a two hour video claiming that he is the victim and that she never respected him or appreciated all of the money and presents he gave her. Seriously. I guess he expected everybody to praise him and to feel sorry for him. It backfired. He expected her to cower, but instead she made her own three hour response in which she describes all of the abuse she went through and how absolutely horrible he was to her over the years.
Her three hour response. Please do not watch if you are triggered by talk of abuse. EDIT:This video has been ‘age restricted’ as of 3/12/22.
It took so much courage for her to do this and I really respect her for putting herself out there and for telling the truth as to how things went down between the two of them. However, it really pisses me off that she had to do this in the first place. Jake is such a fucking rabid abuser that he thought that he could still control her over a year later. He is nothing but a narcissistic immature asshole who looks like a cracked out version of Marilyn Manson, who also just happens to be an abusive asshole. Birds of a feather. Learning that he is insecure about the size of his penis and about his short height makes perfect sense. Awwwww…….the poor little guy. Literally.
So, what can we learn from all of this? That the goth subculture needs to be policing itself way more actively than it is doing right now. Abusive poseurs like Jake Munro should not be welcomed into the subculture with open arms, they should instead be kicked to the curb. Fuck Jake Munro and fuck you if you support his abusive bullshit.
Sexual predators, wannabe goth bands and shit nu metal…oh my!
Before I start I would like to state for the record that I do actually like some of the bands featured above; Killing Joke, Body Count and some others. However, it’s on another continent than me and I tend not to go to shows where known sexual predator musicians are being featured. Just wanted to get that out there in case somebody thinks I’m being hypocritical about all of this.
Anyways! There sure seems to be a lot of new ‘alternative’ type festivals going on these days, mostly put together by the mainstream music industry. The above band line-up is so chaotic that it feels like they put a bunch of alternative band names in a hat and picked them out randomly. There is a whole lot of ‘I remember this band being edgy in the 90’s’ vibe going on here. Nevermind the fact that general admission tickets start out at $250.00. That is an insane price to pay for a one day event. It’s obvious that it is all about the Benjamins and not the actual music. Remember, all of the kids want to be goths or alternative these days so the people who put this together are counting on that to make a pile of cash.
EDIT: Just found out that it is being put on by Live Nation. No surprise there folks. They want your hard earned cash, and if women get sexually assaulted by musicians performing there so be it.
Screenshot I took of when post punk dot com featured the band a little while back. They only took it down when a bunch of people, including myself, complained. They can never deny that it happened.
There is one more thing even more messed up than all of the stuff I have already mentioned; they put known sexual predators She Wants Revenge on the bill. This article by The Los Angeles Times is the most complete as to detailing what went down exactly at the club Cloak & Dagger, a space both members of the band ran until it was shut down due to public pressure in 2021. They broke up for a time, but are now back together being covered by such problematic websites as post punk dot com. I’m guessing they handed the site a huge wad of cash to feature them, since that is what they do to the majority of the bands featured on their site. I guess money is more important than protecting the lives of women. Go figure.
The only way that any of these mainstream produced festivals are going to change is if people stop going to them. Cruel World featured Morrissey, a racist windbag. This one features She Wants Revenge, a pair of sexual predators. People will crow online all about how black lives matter and how woman should be treated with respect, but will turn around and go see bands who are the antithesis of what they claim to believe.
Strawberry Switchblade was not a goth band just because they dressed strange.
There is a recent Rolling Stone article titled The 50 Best Goth Songs Of All Time making the rounds, and my goodness are people pissed off about it. The main reason being that the author of the article is a noted historian on the goth subculture, Andi Harriman. Personally I think she is full of shit, based mainly on the fact that she writes for post-punk dot com, a very problematic website that I have covered on here before. It is run by a trust fund guy who is actively buying his way into the subculture. You are the company that you keep.
I read somewhere yesterday that dearest Andi has claimed that she was told by Rolling Stone to expand the list with famous bands that maybe weren’t goth in order to appease their audience. Instead of having standards she gave in and wrote it. I guess getting her name on the byline of a Rolling Stone article was more important than telling the truth of things. Go figure. So, come wander down this path of half-truths and outright lies with me. This is going to be fun! I will quote sections of the article and then give my response.
‘The scene was a torch passing of sorts. Murphy’s Bauhaus had helped invent goth during the early Eighties; Way had brought it to stripmalls and arenas in the 21st century. And, still, neither could answer a question that has haunted people for decades: What is goth?‘
Woman, My Chemical Romance is not a goth band. I repeat, My Chemical Romance is not a damn goth band. Just because a band dresses in black does not automatically mean that the band makes goth subculture music. It wasn’t passing a torch from Murphy to Way, it was more like Murphy spitting up in the air and his phlegm landed on Way. What is goth? A question that she sure as hell also doesn’t know how to answer.
Let’s travel back to 1983. A time when London’s Batcave club was in its infancy. There, the aesthetics of goth were cultivated—a love for horror movies and Gothic novels, a sickly pallor and a koosh ball of hair, pointy winklepickers and a mish-mash of fetish materials, and most of all, a romance with melancholy. ‘83 was also the year that vampire-thriller The Hunger, co-starring David Bowie, hit the big screens. Vampires, Bowie, Bauhaus – it was the perfect trifecta, beautifully bound in an orgy of tragic eternity.
Um…on the US West Coast during the same time there were bands doing the exact same thing. The Batcave was not the only place where goth music came into being and was born; it’s just the obvious easy answer that people repeat over and over and over….again. So much of this is repeated elsewhere that there are tons of people who weren’t even alive during the 80’s running around wearing Batcave shirts and patches right now. I was a teen in the 80’s in the San Francisco Bay Area and even though I was alive during those Batcave years I wouldn’t sport a shirt or patch of a place that I never went to. An orgy of tragic Eternity? It’s not an orgy if it is only attended by three people. Just saying.
The first batallion of dark 1970s post-punk bands fed off the energy of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character, an androgynous creature who didn’t quite seem human. The allure of Ziggy, mixed with the magnetism of Dracula (namely Christopher Lee, Udo Keir, and of course, Bela Lugosi) helped to assemble the essential iconography of the subculture– at once dreadful and oozing with sex appeal.
A whole lot of those bands came out of Los Angeles and not the Batcave; specifically Christian Death and 45 Grave, who both used darkly themed aesthetics in their stage performances. Alice Bag, who was in the early Los Angeles punk band The Bags with Patricia Morrison, actually goes into detail in her book Violence Girl as to how everything creatively morphed after the early punk scene there imploded due to the violence that was happening at shows. I highly recommend her book, because she was best friends with Morrison and her insight is very valuable.
And the sound? It’s atmospheric. Somewhere between a banshee scream or a bellowing, reverberated howl that could part the Red Sea, goth began as a transition point from the jaggedness of punk’s confrontational simplicity into an elegant darkness, one cloaked in sorrow and so much emotion. In order to achieve goth status, there must be as much drama as possible: the music, in true Hitchockian fashion, must be as frightening as a spiral staircase in a creaking haunted house.
Again, a whole lot of early goth bands were anything but elegant. Sex Gang Children, Virgin Prunes, Christian Death, etc…were all very confrontational and anything but elegant, but that was the appeal. You could speak up about how fucked up the world was along with looking like you were mourning it. Personally, that is one of the reasons why I have always been into goth music along with punk; they can be on different sides of the same coin.
Think of this list as a roadmap to that sound—from B-movie horror thrills, to reanimated rock and roll rituals, to complete sacrilege, bulging with blasphemy, bondage, blood and lots of bats. It’s a history that touches on subgenres like dream pop, hard rock, synthpop, and glam, that makes pit stops in Spain and Germany, pays homage at the doorsteps of black-clad country heroes and spooky blues legends, and dives into seedy art rock grottos and DIY punk venues. So pour yourself a goblet of red wine and hold your rosaries tight. It’s gonna be a long, dark night of the soul.
A roadmap to the sound? Then why the hell would you call this list ’50 Best Goth Songs Of All Time’? It should have been titled ‘music that influenced goth bands’ instead then. She should know better than to mislead people with this article, because right now there is a ton of misinformation about it. So much so that teens, and even adults, are running around calling themselves goth without listening to any of the actual music. Instead of trying to stop this crap she is doing her part to perpetuate it. Awwww…….how peachy-keen of her!
I am now going to briefly comment on each band on that list that are in no way goth, and give my reasoning for my opinion on each.
50.Strawberry Switchblade They were basically a pop band who happened to dress in a lot of polka dots. Seriously, that’s it. Plus, Rose McDowall got all cozy with Death In June, a very problematic band. A big huge thumbs down from me.
49. AFI This one is a huge WTF. I actually used to go to the punk club Gilman in Berkeley during the same years that Havok went there before he got famous. I just remember that he had the cover of TSOL’s album Dance With Me on the back of his leather jacket. The dude does like some deathrock music, but that doesn’t mean that he actually makes deathrock music. Their sound has morphed multiple times over the years, but it has never been strictly goth.
47. She Wants RevengeMembers of this band have been accused of sexual assault. They opened a ‘goth’ club in Los Angeles and preceded to do nothing about their workers being sexually assaulted by their guests. Fuck this band up the ass with no lube. I guess our friend Andi is perfectly okay with all of this. Good to know.
45. My Chemical Romance Not a goth band folks. A band isn’t goth just because they dress in black and whine about their lives. The song she chose sounds like straight up pop punk, which is a music genre that really needs to jump off of a cliff.
44. Type O Negative This is one of the big bands that is always called goth by people who don’t know any better. Andi should know better, but apparently she thinks misinformation is okay as long as she gets the clicks. They are straight up metal and that is it.
43. Echo And The Bunnymen If I had a dollar for every single time a misinformed kid calls this band goth I would be a wealthy woman. They were never goth….at all. I actually saw them live in 1987, so I was around when they were big, and they were never called goth. The internet has been spreading this misinformed crap for the last decade. Sorry kids, just because a post-punk band made maybe one or two sad songs in the 80’s doesn’t make the band goth. Period. Thanks Andi for perpetuating this bullshit.
41. Suicide They have always been considered punk. That’s it.
38. Fad Gadget Their songs used to be played in the alternative/goth clubs I went to over 30 years ago, but that doesn’t mean the band was goth. I have always considered them to be a new wave band more than anything else.
36. Nine Inch Nails Seriously? Wahahahaha!!!! Industrial music, maybe, but definitely not a goth band. Nope, just a trust fund dude whining about how shit his life is while playing a keyboard.
33. Depeche Mode I have always loved their album Black Celebration, but is it a goth album? Synthpop definitely, but not really goth. They were an important goth gateway band for me in the 80’s, but they themselves were not a goth band. They could lead you down a road of discovery if that is where you wanted to go. A lot of people would just stop at them and not go any further, and I found such people to be boring as hell.
32. Johnny Cash I love some Johnny Cash, but was the dude goth? Nope, he was solidly a country musician who sang about dark subjects. Then again a lot of old school country bands did the same sort of thing and they don’t appear on this list. I think Andi only included him because of his Nine Inch Nails cover song, a band who is also not goth. Way to go Andi!
21. The Velvet Underground Definitely a proto-punk band, that is in no way goth.
12. Iggy Pop Again, a proto-punk band and not goth….at all. Iggy Pop’s music isn’t goth just because Ian Curtis hung himself while listening to one of his albums. I saw Iggy perform in the late 80’s and it sure as hell wasn’t a dark romantic performance; it was aggressive, energetic and punk as all hell. If he tours near you go and see him, he puts on an excellent show.
7. Joy Division They were a solid post-punk band and that is it. Ian Curtis killed himself before the subculture was even fully formed so I think sticking the music of the band into a goth box does it a disservice. Retroactively calling bands goth is just lazy and trite journalism. I wrote a whole article about how they were never a goth band. The only people who think they are goth are the kids running around who think that all sad songs must be goth. They couldn’t be more wrong.
6. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins Not a goth musician at all. I wouldn’t even call him proto-goth. However, I think the dude influenced the hell out of horror punk and shock rock. The Misfits even played some shows with him over forty years ago. Just because a musician uses dark theatrics doesn’t make said musician goth. That is unless you want to call both the Misfits and Alice Cooper goth.
4. David Bowie Again, yet another musician who was in no way goth but whose music influenced both punk and later goth musicians. His music is very important but it just isn’t goth, and that’s okay.
Well, that’s it folks. What lesson can we learn from this whole mess? That to some people getting an article in a mainstream music publication such as Rolling Stone is more important than actually telling the truth. Sad but true, and it is this attitude that is really hurting the subculture right now; fame at all costs, and if you have to step over people and lie to achieve it then so be it.
One of her last duties was welcoming Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister. Proof that whatever Truss touches dies.
Golly gee Megan, why do you not care about Queen Elizabeth dying? The simple answer is because she never truly cared about her subjects. The complicated answer? Her direct ancestors caused all of my Irish ancestors to flee their homes under threat of starvation and death. So, if I was to mourn her I would be in a sense betraying my ancestors and I refuse to do that.
The Tories have been slashing the NHS to the point that it can now barely function. What did she say about it? Nothing
The disabled being denied benefits because the Tories want them to die and get out of the way? Not a peep.
People having to choose between turning on the lights or feeding their children? Still nothing.
Her son Andrew raped underage girls, so what did she do? She doubled down on protecting him.
The British Royals have almost no power because the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. She was the head of state but Parliament makes all of the laws. However, she had the absolute right to speak out about how her subjects were treated and if she was unhappy she could have used her voice to help change things. As I wrote above she never really said anything about her subjects being treated like dirt.
The British monarchy directly represents a colonial past; a time in which people were killed or forced to flee their homes in the name of the crown and country. I will not celebrate her death, like I did with Thatcher. However, I refuse to mourn her.
You read that correctly, I have been blocked by Killstar so that I can no longer comment, or even give a a laugh reaction on their Facebook page. Gee I wonder who else has done that to me before? Scammers that I report to Facebook. What do private equity firms love to do? Scam people. So, thank you Killstar for proving me right. By the way, here is a link to that article that has them so angry with me, and why they blocked me on Facebook. I’M NOT BACKING DOWN KILLSTAR!
Just so that you know what side of the equation I stand on. Jello is life.
Imagine my shock and horror when I found out that an article about ‘goth’ had appeared on MTV’s website. Why shock and horror? Because MTV has had a very long history of promoting corporate music. The Dead Kennedys back in the 80’s knew what was up and Jello even penned an excellent song detailing the issues surrounding the channel. About forty years later and nothing has changed.
First off, before I get stuck in, when the fuck did it become cool to be excited about MTV? I was a teen in the 80’s, so yes I did watch it back then. However, by the late 80’s I understood what was going on; they were trying to sell and promote their idea of ‘cool’ to me. By the time The Beastie Boys came about with their very sexist and frat boy bullshit the channel was dead to me. Where I lived at the time there was a local channel that would show obscure alternative/modern rock videos every weekday late in the afternoon and I would always watch it. It was the music that was too ‘out there’ for MTV, so I was very fortunate. I know this.
Let’s begin! I will be showing the sections I have issues with and then I will give a response.
‘ How e-kid style presaged the dark subculture’s resurgence… ‘
From the very start this article makes me wince. The term ‘presaged’ means a sign or warning of an imminent event. I fully don’t understand how some e-kid fashion victims had anything to do with the goth music resurgence that has been happening for the last few years. Oh wait…the author is equating goth with just a fashion style? Oh dear.
‘ A new aesthetic inspired by Y2K futurism, anime, nu-metal, mall goth, and mid-’00s emo rose among a group dubbed the “e-kids.” This interest in 2K culture reignited an adjacent style as well: goth fashion and, by extension, goth music. ‘
Um….no, just no. The whole ‘e-kid’ crap did not reignite goth fashion or goth music. Goth fashion and goth music never went away, it has always been around. These e-kids are so desperate for an identity, any identity, that they try them on and then throw them away once they are done with them after a few months. Teens have always done this sort of thing, but because of the internet they just go through identities way more quickly and in a more shallow manner. For example, if these kids want to be ‘goth’ they will get their parents to buy them entire outfits from dark alternative clothing websites and ask around as to how they should do their make-up so that they can be judged as a ‘true goth’. For many that is how deep it goes; just a ready made fashion statement, a box to fit themselves into. Do some of them actually get into goth music? Of course, but I think they are heavily outnumbered by the ones who don’t.
‘ The roots of goth are deep and nuanced. Starting in the late 1970s and into the 1980s in the United Kingdom as an offshoot of post-punk acts like Killing Joke, as well as the rich voice of Nico, goth took inspiration from Victorian-era dress (long black gowns, lace, boots, and clove cigarettes), literature, society, and the grim theatrical nature of the early 20th century vamps and silent film stars, like Theda Bara. The term “goth” as an adjective for music wasn’t recorded until 1967, when music critic John Stickney called The Doors “gothic rock.” During the ’70s, goth developed in the United States with bands like Christian Death, known for seminal hits like 1982’s “Romeo’s Distress.” Some of the most famous goth groups in the ’80s — many of whom remain shorthand for the very word — include The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division. ‘
I know that I just quoted an entire paragraph, but there is just so much to unpack here that I feel like I have no choice in the matter. The goth subculture, which is mainly about the music, came right out of punk. The clothing aspect of the goth subculture also came right out of punk. Earlier goth bands, like Sex Gang Children, still had the punk ethos of making music that challenged people, that made people think. They just did it more artistically than the punk music that inspired them. Also, not everybody back then copied Victorian fashion. People within the early subculture were not just one block of people listening to Bauhaus and dressing like fainting Victorian ingenues. What does smoking cloves have to do with the Victorians? I just liked cloves in the late 80’s because they tasted good and you could get really tripped out by spinning around while you inhaled. That was a thing within my friend group. Yes, it is okay to find that funny because it is.
Oh no, not the whole The Doors were the first band to be called ‘gothic rock’ trope. No matter how many times people are corrected about this it always manages to bubble to the surface like toxic goo. Since the goth subculture didn’t exist in the 1960’s how the hell could the band be considered goth? What the reporter back in the 1960’s meant is that The Doors had a sound that could be called foreboding and dark; in other words gothic, because that is what the term means. The term gothic does not always equate the term goth, they can mean totally different things; one is about a subculture, the other is a style of architecture and literature.
I do not know how many more times I have to repeat this but JOY DIVISION IS NOT A GOTH BAND. I even wrote an earlier blog post all about the subject. Ian Curtis killed himself in early 1980, before the subculture was even formed so that fact alone throws the whole thing out the window. Did Joy Division inspire a lot of goth bands during the 80’s? Sure. Were they themselves a goth band? That would be a no, because they influenced tons of bands that were in no way goth like U2. Plus, I think fitting Joy Division into a neat and tidy goth box does the music of the band a disservice. I have always considered The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees to both be dark pop bands that some goths happen to like. I saw The Cure live in 1987 headlining a sold out arena show. You weren’t an underground band back then if you sold out a venue like that. Plus, both bands were played on the more mainstream stations back in the 80’s. That is how I first heard The Cure back then; Boys Don’t Cry being played on a regular pop station that my then friends were listening to.
‘ As social media has since taken over culture, and as apps progress and new ones launch, subcultures develop from terminally online lifestyles where the association lines are often blurred. What is or isn’t goth becomes harder to identify. ‘
I actually agree with this bit a little. Social media has taken over culture to some degree, BUT only as much as an individual wants it to. It is still totally possible to have a social life outside of social media, especially since clubs are opening up again and bands are touring. Social media isn’t the be all and end all of the goth, or any other, subculture. Yes, what is and isn’t goth is harder for newer people to identify. I know that the author was trying to do a good thing by sharing all of this, but in the end all articles such as this, that spread misinformation, are doing more harm than good. Especially considering that this article was published over on the website of MTV.
‘ Today, it feels fitting for goth to be passed down through TikTok, just like it was through Tumblr in the 2000s with soft grunge and pastel goth taking over adolescent closets, with looks built from black velvet chokers, flannels, and shorts styled with black nylons. The neo-goth invasion picked up steam in 2020 when Belarus-based band Molchat Doma’s album Etahzi started gaining traction, with users clinging to the track “Sudno” and soundtracking the song by posting pictures from Soviet-era Europe, both romanticizing it and showing the harsh reality of life in the Eastern Bloc. ‘
Oh dear god so much to unpack here. When they mention ‘goth’ being passed down through Tumbler to TikTok all they are meaning is the fashion. Sorry to tell everybody who doesn’t know but ‘grunge’ was pre-packaged rebellion sold to the masses in the 90’s by record execs and MTV. I was there, that is all it was. It had nothing to do with the goth subculture at all. Nothing. I wore ripped shorts with tights underneath them in high school in the late 80’s, and I even had a flannel shirt or two. Both things were worn by people in the metal, punk, and every other alternative subculture at the time. This fashion was only made popular when MTV got a hold of it in the early 90’s and all of a sudden it became popular to look like the unpopular kids. Since the 80’s are still hugely popular teens only liked Molchat Doma because their music sounds like it came out of Stranger Things. It’s just 80’s nostalgia, it doesn’t go any deeper than that.
‘Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based musician and producer Aryan Ashtiani, who goes by the moniker Mareux, became a TikTok sensation overnight with his 2021 cover of The Cure’s “The Perfect Girl,” taking a floaty song originally from their 1987 album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me to gritty electronic depths. Mareux’s synth-heavy reinterpretation sparked a movement on TikTok, with some well-known users posting videos using it as a backing. Mareux was shocked. “There were a few very famous TikTokers who used the song back in summer ’21. This gave it that boost overnight,” he tells MTV News. “From there, it ran rampant on various edits and meme videos and continues to this day.”’
Who? I honestly don’t know who this person is. Does that make me terminally old and not hip? Sure. I just listened to the song and it’s meh? In all honesty it just sounds like an amalgamation of all of the sounds that teens associate with 80’s music all mixed together ready for easy consumption. That is exactly why it got popular with that set of people. Again, it’s just 80’s nostalgia boosted by Stranger Things. Next!
‘Last year, Dua Lipa was photographed by Jordan Hemingway for 032c, styled in a Trad Goth look inspired by Siouxsie Sioux. GothTok celebrity Zander Buel, a.k.a. awfullysinister, posted a video praising her for the ensemble, saying, “I think she looks great! She nailed it.” Buel is another face of the subculture on the internet.’
Again, I have no idea who these two people are, however I remember when this happened. The people who I remember freaking out the most about this were all of the self described ‘goth’ teens, who thought being goth was just about image and that’s it. I have let it be known before but I cannot stand the whole ‘trad goth’ trope. It’s just goth for fucks sake, take the term ‘trad’ and throw it into the waste-bin where it belongs with all of the other ‘goth types’.
‘“When goth goes through this cycle, like it does every so often where it has its ascendance in popularity, it takes a bunch of people with it,” he says. “Some of the people, it spits back out, and those people move on to the next thing. But some people, it takes with them, and then they keep that long-term interest in that label, and they stay within it and they continue to listen to the music, or they go to the clubs and shows, and they discover new bands.”’
This is the only full paragraph in the whole article that I feel is 100% correct. Most of these teens right now are probably going to move on within the next year or two and some will indeed stick with it and really get into the music. This happens in every subculture.
‘Dusty Gannon, of the band Vision Video, has become TikTok’s “Goth Dad,” a comedic character he made up to provide reassurance and levity through his dad jokes, makeup tutorials, and advice, while also promoting his music. Aside from being a digital dad, Gannon has focused energy on explaining goth culture and history, and the importance of maintaining a safe community.’
I am going to be wording my response to this bit very carefully. Gannon has created a gimmick and has made it his profession; he recently quit his job to be a full-time musician. On the one hand I think good for him for carving out his own niche within the goth community, but on the other hand my stranger danger hackles rise up because who financially can take a chance like that right now? I’m not saying he is a bad person at all, just that the way he promotes himself specifically to teens can be easily seen as such by people who are older and who have been around the block a few times. He just ticks off so many boxes that it feels like an act of some kind to me. If you enjoy him and his music more power to you, I just can’t support him. You do you.
‘ Where is the future headed? Bauhaus, one of the original goth bands, released a new single for the first time in 14 years in March, and they are touring again. ‘
…..and the single sounds exactly like the music that they made forty years ago. No real growth.
‘ “Most of the other artists have not embraced TikTok because they think it’s cringe or detracts from their brand. I saw a huge opportunity to connect with fans and create new ones and haven’t looked back,” he says. “In regards to younger people, I think a lot of the stigma towards goth and alternative cultures in the past was linked to homophobia. Now that mainstream culture is more open and accepting, I think a lot of these previously disenfranchised scenes will continue to flourish.” ‘
Homophobia was huge period until fairly recently. If you looked too different in the 80’s/90’s, no matter how you dressed, you were called a faggot. Funnily enough those name calling people got into ‘grunge’ and played at being alternative until that trend died with Cobain. They would drive their cars around blasting Smells Like Teen Spirit while yelling ‘faggot’ at you as they drove by. Anybody who was around back then knows exactly the crowd I am talking about. Mainstream culture has never been as accepting as it appears; scratch the surface and you find out what is really going on.
‘ As the scene grows, the community is full of Baby Bats and Elder Goths ready to share the experience of dancing to darkly dazzling tunes and breathing in fog from the smoke machines. However, that only happens if we continue passing down the music and fashion. TikTok is divisive, but it can be influential, opening doors into new worlds and allowing us to experience other avenues of expression and art. Beyond likes and views, exposure is paramount. ‘
Exposure to actual goth music is indeed important to the continuation of the subculture. However, when the music being shared is not goth by any stretch of the term that is when all of the confusion sets in. It is the reason why a lot of older folks, such as myself, largely stay away from specifically TikTok. TikTok is divisive because of all of this and more. Not to mention the fact that it is a phone app being used by the Chinese government to spy and collect data on people.
‘ “It’s probably going to be a mess for a while,” he continues. “It’s in a transitional stage where it’s becoming very mainstream. People love to fight and argue and gatekeep online, so I can see it staying ugly for a while. Still, that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of cool creators and new artists to discover.” ‘
Gatekeep? More like telling the truth. A huge issue right now is people throwing that word around when they are told the truth about goth music and the goth subculture. When they find out that their favourite black metal band is in fact not considered to be a goth band they get all pissed off and throw around the term like rice at a wedding. Goth music has parameters, and without them there wouldn’t be a goth genre of music or even a subculture for that matter. It’s a music based subculture. If it was based on just wearing black, like some younger people and publications still think, then wouldn’t you see priests and nuns dancing around in goth clubs to This Is Heresy by Christian Death?
Yes, you are reading that price correctly. Notice the missing cone stud on the edge of the lapel?
I have never made it a secret that I have bought some clearance items from Killstar’s website in the past to use in clothing projects. However, the quality of their items has gone totally downhill within the last year. So much so that I can no longer find items on their site that are fit for purpose. Most, if not all, of their clothing items are now made of really cheap looking polyester that looks the same as the crap fabric that Halloween costumes are usually made of. I have said in the past that I don’t care where you get your clothing from, and that still holds true. However, I do not like people being fleeced. If I see something that is really ‘off’ on a dark alternative clothing site I will tell you about it.
The other day I got a Killstar email, and in it included a link to their new drop. I normally don’t click through their emails because I just read them at this point for the entertainment value. However, I saw a green pillow and on a lark I decided to click through. That in turn took me to the ‘new-in’ page so I started scrolling through that trying to find that damn pillow. To my shock and horror the above studded pleather jacket caught my eye; not because of the spike disaster zones located on it, but because it looks cheap as hell. Again, something that you would find in the ‘punk/goth’ section of a Spirit Halloween store.
The older Killstar pleather jacket that I own. I did the painting and studding.
I have an older pleather jacket by them that is thick and of a pretty good quality, so I am not totally against pleather. This jacket is an entirely different story. First off is the damn price; they are charging £299.99 for this badly made excuse for a pleather jacket. Yep, that much. The pleather material looks very thin and very cheap and it’s easy to tell that because of the way it doesn’t flatter the model at all. It hangs on her all wrong and she looks awkward as hell in it. If a model can’t make it work the chances of you making it work are about zero. It will look good on nobody.
This next part really cracked me up. As I stated right below the photo one of the cone studs is missing off of the edge of the lapel. It looks like a plastic screw, whose cone snapped off…and they didn’t even notice. Using plastic screws instead of metal ones on those cone studs? They will probably easily snap off if you accidentality brush up against anything. Even worse than that is that the lapels and larger areas of cones on the arms are from rolls of pre-studded pleather. I have seen such pre-studded pleather material online before so this isn’t totally shocking, but the pure audacity to charge that much for a jacket that wasn’t even completely hand studded is really outrageous to say the least. Nevermind the fact that they are claiming they are metal studs, when it fact the screws are plastic. Are the cones plastic also? I honestly can’t tell. Also, the lapels don’t even have snaps on them to hold them down against the jacket. I’m guessing because of the pre-studded material being used. It’s just generally constructed very badly and it shows.
As of me writing this they are having a 30% off sale on everything on the site, including their new items. That brings down the jacket to just over £200, which is still very overpriced. Killstar seems to be in financial trouble because of the constant sales they have been having. Not a week goes by without some sort of deep discount. This is not the sign of a company that is doing financially well. The venture capitalists who bought it a few years ago keep cranking out new ‘drops’, and have made the brand into a fast fashion label.
If you read this blog you know that I do a lot of DIY projects that involve studding. You can do it too! Honest! I believe in you! If you have to buy a pre-studded jacket please buy one from an independent creator on Etsy, because you deserve better quality than what Killstar is trying to sell you.
Have you noticed how it is always evil bitch Tories who are the only women that ever get elected as UK Prime Minister? First there was Margaret Thatcher, who hated the poor and working class. Then next up it was Theresa May who hated immigrants and made the immigrant laws even more difficult to navigate. Then there is Liz Truss who is fighting right now to become yet another evil bitch Tory Prime Minister.
What did Liz Truss do to piss me off this much? It’s simply enough that she is a Tory because Tories are corrupt pieces of crap who don’t care about anybody except for their wealthy friends. However, she is right now bragging to her brainwashed brethren that she will allow fracking again in communities that want it, concentrate on extracting oil off the coast of Scotland and will ban solar panel farms. She wants to go back in time. How far back? Probably the 1800’s because she could make little kids go up chimneys again and save her wealthy friends a few pounds.
That’s right, this corrupt bitch doesn’t give a crap about the future of the UK. Scientists proclaiming that that the environment is terminally fucked doesn’t matter to her at all. Screw those kids who can’t breathe properly, screw those elderly people who can’t afford oil to heat their homes and screw all of the families who cannot afford to buy food. What is more important is that sweet cash she is getting from the oil industry, and her ability to put her cronies in charge of projects in which they will just steal all of money for themselves. Do not trust a damn thing that comes out of that woman’s mouth: lies, lies and more lies.
The only thing that ever scares the Tories are mass uncivilized protests, like what happened when Thatcher came up with the poll tax. People were so angry by that tax that there were full scale riots, This caused the Tories to make Thatcher quit and the law was thrown out. There is no honour among thieves. I can see something very similar happening again soon because people aren’t too happy when they can’t turn on the heat or feed their children.
In the wise words of the Subhumans…just think for yourself. Never believe what the Tory led UK government tells you.
Friends don’t let friends sound exactly like The Cure.
Before I start I would just like to state for the record that I really dislike the term ‘post-punk’. Mainly because it makes no evolutionary sense musically since punk never died. I’m only using the term because more people know of it. I would rather use the term ‘alternative’, since all of this music was either called that or ‘modern-rock’ in the area of California that I lived in the 80’s. The end. Carry on!
Do you have that one friend who just discovered post-punk music? Did they buy a bass and constantly listen to Joy Division in an effort to sound just like Peter Hook? Or are they a singer who can sound exactly like Robert Smith unironically? Worse, has this friend shown interest in starting a modern post-punk band because they think that their sound is unique, even though it is not? Then you may have to do an intervention. because friends don’t let friends start cookie cutter modern post-punk bands that try to sound like Joy Division or The Cure.
I can hear people asking ‘Why is it bad to sound just like The Cure or Joy Division?’. Because that sound has been done a million times before and is bringing absolutely nothing new to the table musically. Nevermind the fact that there were a lot of post-punk bands that sounded nothing like The Cure or Joy Division back in the 80’s. Off the top of my head here are a few of them: Big Country, U2, Blue In Heaven, A Flock Of Seagulls, The Smithereens, The Call, The Jesus And Mary Chain, INXS, Gene Loves Jezebel, Love & Rockets, etc…. Why aren’t any of these modern bands taking cues from any of those listed original 80’s bands? Because they are lazy as hell. It’s easier for them to grab at the low hanging fruit, rather than doing some research into the genre.
Big Country was an awesome 80’s post-punk band that didn’t sound like Joy Division or The Cure.
Why have all of these clone bands come out of the woodwork within the last few years? Because the mainstream has jumped onboard and has made it a trend. Your friend sees this and thinks that if they do the exact same thing that they will be launched into stardom; within a trend in which they sound exactly like everybody else. They may get some younglings to buy some of their music off of Bandcamp, but that is about it. They will just be stuck in the centre of that glut of bands with no means to escape their self imposed box.
What can you do for your friend to steer them in a different direction? Making a playlist for them out of the bands I mentioned is a good first step to take. You, of course, should be with them when they hear the music so that you can comfort them in their time of need. Finding out about all of this could lead them to lashing out and pretending that such bands did not exist in the 80’s. You can lead a horse to water but sometimes they won’t drink. When it comes down to it you tried your best and that is all you can do.
So, what have we learned from all of this? Modern self described ‘post-punk’ bands are a dime a dozen right now and to stand out of that pack you have to be willing to take some risks, such as not sounding exactly like The Cure or Joy Division.
