ZZ Top - What genre/subgenre would you classify them as?

Lynch

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I'm not looking for some deep introspect into the subtle or not-so-subtle differences (or lackthereof) between the categories I'm about to list, I'm just curious what everyone would classify ZZ Top as. Most of my life, I've just considered the first six or seven albums as "southern rock" or "blues rock", but I've seen them referred to in a number of other areas.

What do you think? One or multiple sub-genres for the Little 'Ol Band from Texas?
  • Blues
  • Rock
  • Southern rock
  • Blues rock
  • Texas blues
  • Boogie rock
  • Boogie blues rock
  • Southern blues rock
  • Other?

Or a crossover of multiples listed above?
 

Lynch

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And I'm mostly just curious about the first 6 or 7 albums. From Eliminator on forward, they still had the roots of probably everything listed above, but they definitely got far more radio-friendly and popish. Not to say Eliminator, Afterburner, etc weren't any good, just that I'm more curious of your opinions of the pre-1983 albums.
 

Southern Comfort

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Well out of curiosity sakes I looked up what genre the would be online.. The first idiot said "Rave Like MC and the Boyz..:confused:
But they are plain and simple American Rock. To me ZZ Top started way........... before everybody decided to call their music something different.
Now you have all these genres to deal with. I have no idea how many that is..
I wouldn't call them southern rock just because that to me is more Skynard or Point Blank or Blackfoot.
I would say they play texas blues like SRV.
 

Old Dude

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Anyone who is serious about music knows that great bands don't really fit into neat little genre pigeonholes. That sort of bullshit is best left to the fan magazines (if they still even exist) or radio industry suits who've destroyed music. SONGS fit into genres. BANDS don't. Take all the songs from all of their albums, and some of them will fit into each one of those little categories. Anyone who can't recognize that one song might be one genre, and another song a different genre, doesn't know shit about music.
 

Lynch

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Anyone who is serious about music knows that great bands don't really fit into neat little genre pigeonholes. That sort of bullshit is best left to the fan magazines (if they still even exist) or radio industry suits who've destroyed music. SONGS fit into genres. BANDS don't. Take all the songs from all of their albums, and some of them will fit into each one of those little categories. Anyone who can't recognize that one song might be one genre, and another song a different genre, doesn't know shit about music.
It's also very possible to generalize a band or an artist based on an overall catalog or segments of their catalog without being overly dickish and saying "every song sounds different and if you can't tell that, you are an idiot". However, if we were talking about album-by-album and/or song-by-song, then yeah, a great many songs sound different, thus could be categorized or characterized differently and if someone would like to start -that- particular thread, I'd be more than happy to participate.




by the way, I simply looking for people's thoughts on the topic, not any sort of per-Hoyle textbook definition (as I don't believe there is such a thing in most cases or for most bands)
 

Riff Raff

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To salvage this thread I removed all the thread derailing posts and banned the troublemaker. Carry on.

I would consider ZZ Top Blues or Southern.
 

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