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Oh boy, where do I even start? Ugh. Just the thought of combining music genres makes my ears twitch. Look, the point is, catch all-terms for music (mostly the ones that I don't use, in a derogatory manner or otherwise), and I'm sick of pretending they're not.

First off, let's address the elephant in the room: what the hell even are these combinations? No, seriously. Try defining it without sounding like a pretentious coffee shop manager who thinks they're "cultured" because they own a set of bongos. It's this vague, catch-all term for "anything not Western", which is most of the damn planet. So congrats, you've just lumped thousands of distinct musical traditions—each with their own histories, instruments and cultural significance—into one category.

That would be like me treating most pop artists as though they had distinct musical traditions or their own cultural significance or me refusing to lump pop, classic rock (and no, not the good stuff like Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane or The Doors), oldies, "bad" hip-hop (think Lil' Wayne, Flo Rida or T-Pain) and adult contemporary/adult alternative into one category. Why, if I were to refuse doing that, I'd be calling burgers and fries "foreign cuisine" and patting myself on the back for being adventurous.

You wanna know why I do this? Because of Nickelback. Because of Creed. Because of 3 Doors Down. Because of Journey. Because of Def Leppard. Because of every single fucking corporate, pop-infused rock band that ever formed and decided to clog up the fucking airwaves.

A big part of my beef with music is the way it's marketed. "World music" albums, for instance, are always plastered with some stock-ass photo of a desert at sunset or a vaguely ethnic-looking person in traditional dress, like they're selling a damn vacation package instead of music. The Spotify playlists feature such titles as "Chill World Vibes", "Tribal Beats for Study", "Meditative Desert Sounds"—that all expose the playlists as sanitized and curated for Western ears.

- Disney turned African, Chinese, Latin, Mexican and Hawaiian music into elevator noise with their shitty movie soundtracks.
- Record labels keep turning flamenco into elevator music.
- Punk rock is ignored, with the general public viewing it as a threat to society or a novelty genre that uses political and/or social ideologies for the sake of shock value; they also pretend that it has no distinct musical traditions, histories or cultural signifcance, while pop punk and its "adult alternative" offspring (a radio format, as well as a genre that evolved out of adult contemporary and pop rock) are given the opposite treatment.
- People look down at you for not liking the late Selena Quintella's music (despite how cheesy, bombastic and generic it is), even if you like her as just an individual or pay your respects to her. She deserved better than this.
- Qawwli gets remixed into some EDM DJ's "exotic" drop.
- Rock and roll evolved out of country music as well as African-American music genres like blues, R&B, folk and jazz--yet the second it hit the market, it got reduced to background noise for rednecks as well as people to sip their oat milk lattes to. Not helping matters are the countless subgenres of rock music (e.g. glam metal, arena/corporate/radio/stadium rock) that serve no purpose other than to remove any of the genre's depth, history or passion.
- Some musicians ditch their roots to pander to Western audiences by watering down their sound. Meanwhile, actual traditional musicians (e.g. New Orleans or trad jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Acker Blick, early rock bands a la The Beatles or Led Zeppelin with little to no airplay, most reggae/ska artists, especially those that didn't water down their roots for mass appeal, Celtic fusion bands like The Pogues, Big Country, Drunken Lullabies or Flogging Molly) rarely get any recognition because they're not "marketable" enough. They're complicit in this garbage.

Here's another thing that drives me up the damn wall: the way certain (usually white) producers and musicians treat world music like some kind of noble crusade to "preserve dying cultures". Oh wow, how generous of you to sample a Mongolian throat singer over your ambient synth track—real patronizing, buddy.

The irony? They're often the ones profiting the most from it. Traditional musicians get paid pennies (if they're paid at all), while some DJ in Berlin gets hailed as a "pioneer" for slapping their vocals onto a beat.

The "collaborations" where the non-Western artist gets buried in the credits like an afterthought make it seem like they're spreading awareness, but they're really not. Awareness doesn't mean shit if it's just a trend. How many people who listen to proper alternative rock can actually name a song or an artist (let alone that artist's whole discography) that uses more than three instruments or can tell the difference between it and other genres they keep blurring the lines with?

Most pop punk isn't alternative.

Adult alternative and alternative rock are not the same thing. One is diverse, risk-taking, experimental and challenging. The other is a glossy, frictionless, radio and elevator-friendly mess designed for adults who don't want to move.

There are times where alternative can be pop (see U2)... and times where it can't be (see Smash Mouth and Third Eye Blind). The latter two bands are obviously not rock OR alternative.

Power pop is not rock or alternative, at least sonically. It gets even worse when you find out that most bands can't even bother with alternative rock sonics.

I'm not saying people shouldn't explore music from other cultures. They absolutely should. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. The wrong way to do it would be treating something "weird" or "exotic" that you can cherry-pick from to spice up your own boring-ass playlist. The right way would actually be learning about it. Understanding where it comes from. Supporting the artists directly instead of funneling money through some middleman label that couldn't care less about authenticity.

And for the love of Satan, stop calling folk "world music". If you mean "Celtic", say that. If you mean "highlife", "fado", "bolero" or "mariachi", use the damn name. Because when you don't, you're erasing the individuality of these traditions, turning them into some vague, interchangeable mush.

Easy: Stop being lazy.

If you like a sound, research where it came from. Who pioneered it? What's its cultural significance? What are the controversies around its commercialization?

Pay the original artists, not just the Western remixers. Buy their albums, go to their concerts, boost their platforms.

Stop treating non-Western and alternative music like a zoo exhibit. It's not there for your aesthetic pleasure—it's art, with its own stories and struggles.

Call things by their actual names. No more "world music" or "adult alternative" bullshit.

And finally—listen to more music. Like, actual music from actual places. Not just the watered-down, corporate-approved version.

Look, I'm not some saint. I listen to trash sometimes, too. But the least we can do is acknowledge when something's problematic instead of pretending it's all "harmless fun". Some musical concepts are just lazy, reductive and often exploitative, and I hate that. If you actually care about music (and not just looking like a woke traveler on Instagram), then do better.