Talk:Gothic music/@comment-69.253.159.84-20200801194301

Oy vey. "Goth", referring to music, is shorthand for gothic rock. What gets included under the genre of gothic rock tends to vary from individual to individual, but surefire artists include Siouxsie and the Banshees (though most of their work is alt rock/new wave or post-punk), the Cure (who vascillated between gothic rock and pop), Bauhaus (one of the founders of the genre), Joy Division (via their second album "Closer"), and the Sisters of Mercy (though their latest album has a strong hard rock/heavy metal flavor). The label tends to be somewhat hypocritical, given the fact that these accepted goth artists (a) eschew the label "goth" and (b) did not stick entirely to gothic rock while they were active.

According to purists, no music other than gothic rock in the late 1970s through the 1980s (or early '90s, again depending on the individual) can be called goth. Artists from later decades who incorporate gothic imagery or soundscapes are, in this view, gothic, but not goth. A common example is Marilyn Manson: his musical classification is industrial, not gothic rock, so he is not "goth," but there is no doubt that he uses gothic imagery and is therefore gothic. (The last observation gets some goths' bloomers in a wad - they really hate Manson for some reason.) And "gothic" need not stem from gothic fiction; it means that it borrows from the goth subculture without completely embracing it. Gothic means goth-like, but not actually goth.