Spotify Wrapped 2023: Weird music genres explained - including Escape Room, pov:indie & Bubblegrunge

Spotify Wrapped is known for spitting out obscure genre’s, leaving users dazed and confused as they come to terms with their daily addiction to Escape Room, Weirdcore and Bubblegrunge music. Adding a new genre into your music rotation should be exciting but Spotify users have been lumped with sub/micro genre’s so niche, they’re often left befuddled.

Spotify Wrapped is a hotly anticipated annual breakdown of music streaming stats and, every year, audiophiles flock to the platform to see how their listening habits have changed over the past 12 months. Additionally, it uses the data to confirm which artists came out on top globally.

Spotify Wrapped 2023 confirmed Bad Bunny had the most popular album on the platform this year ahead of the likes of Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. Bad Bunny's album had more than 4.5 billion streams globally and it was followed by Taylor Swift’s album Midnights.

The end-of-year wrap gives many Spotify users the chance to splash their listening milestones over social media and brag about their eclectic taste. However, some instead take to social media to ask Spotify to explain their most listened to genre.

Here’s a run down and explanation of a few of the weirdest genre’s seen on Spotify Wrapped in recent years.

Escape Room

Listeners with a taste for art-pop, deconstructed club and even hyper-pop have most likely come across the words ‘Escape Room’ plastered on their Spotify Wrapped. When it comes to the name of a genre of music, it’s origin can usually be tracked back to a particular artist, movement, or critic - in the case of ‘Escape Room’, it’s a little different.

As reported by The Fadar, Glenn McDonald, a data alchemist at Spotify, revealed that he actually named the genre himself. “I made up the name myself, because I couldn’t figure out any existing one to apply. The vibe is kind of an underground-trap/PC-music/indietronic/activist-hip-hop kind of thing, and I thought of “escape room” both for the sense of escaping from trap, and for the ideas of excitement, puzzle-solving and indoorness implied by the actual physical escape-room phenomenon.”

If you somehow feel more confused now... we’re on the same page.

pov:indie

Spotify Wrapped 2023 landed on November 29 and the question 'What is pov:indie?' has already made its way to a Reddit forum. According to VoltFM,  'pov:indie' is "characterised by its independent, DIY approach to production and promotion."

What we can assume, is that it is a sub-genre of Indie, with an emphasis on lo-fi and bedroom aesthetics. To get a better understanding, Spotify's 'The Sound of pov:indie' playlist includes artists such as 'girl in red', Phoebe Bridgers, and Clairo.

Weirdcore

Much like the London-based digital artist whose bizarre visual work aired at Aphex Twin’s Forwards Festival set earlier this year, Weirdcore is a genre soaked in distorted, lo-fi aesthetic. Spotify are yet to publicly define the genre and its reasons for using the obscure styling to categorise artists but the description on its public playlist, ‘The Sound of Weirdcore’, gives reference to the associated genres.

The description reads: “See also Intro, Pulse, Edge,♀Filter or 2022; or the Sounds of Pixel, Tribute, Smooth Saxophone, Indie Electronica, World Fusion, Slowed and Reverb, Smooth Jazz, Guam Indie, or Georgian Alternative.”

Bubblegrunge

Bubblegrunge is an obscure genre tag which arose following its inclusion in users’ Spotify Wrapped playlists in 2021and a portmanteau of ‘Bubblegum Pop’ and Grunge’. As reported by Newsweek, the genre is used to describe artists like ‘The Pixies and The Smashing Pumpkins’ and reveals itself as a more ‘light-hearted’ and ‘poppy’ version of grunge music.

However, a post on online music website, RateYourMusic, went into more detail. The post reads: “Bubblegrunge is a modern term for late 2010’s mix of Indie Rock & Pop with elements of Emo, Punk, and Power Pop but its biggest factor is they are female-fronted guitar heavy bands.”

Dream SMP

Dream SMP has gotten a lot of people into a funk over the years, mainly because the source of the genre name isn’t routed in music, so to speak... instead, it’s routed in Minecraft. NME writes: “Dream is the online pseudonym of the YouTuber who created an exclusive ‘survival multiplayer’ server (or SMP) in Minecraft”

But what does that have to do with music? Well, not much apparently. Some of players who frequent the Dream SMP server also make music and thus grew a genre on Spotify which now encompasses artists you might listen to that sound like the creation of a Dream SMP player.