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You can feel the airiness in the beat. There may or may not be a sample from an old-school R&B song, and there’s a good chance that it’s been played at a summer festival before. Everything about it was dreamy — ethereal even — and in the summer of 2012 (perhaps even a little later than that?) tropical house was the most popular genre of music on the planet.
One wasn’t able to attend a music festival or house party without hearing a track from Kygo or Felix Jaehn. It was feel good music like I had never heard before. Kygo’s “Sexual Healing” remix comes to mind immediately when the words “tropical house” are mentioned, but for few years that man alone had hits on top of hits on top of hits.
His run atop blogs like The Hype Machine and Ear Milk was unprecedented, a soft spoken Norwegian that developed his sound out of a dorm room in Edinburgh and became a worldwide phenomenon.
Somewhere along the way though the genre as a whole seems to have just sort of fizzled out. I suppose that this happens with music of all kinds, right? The landscape is ever changing and the tastes of teenagers are what has always driven the market, but why couldn’t tropical house find a niche group that would stick with it?
Perhaps it was the formulaic approach that artists began taking to the genre. Tropical house never evolved like hip hop or rock. Trop house DJs find a popular song from ’70s or ’80s, throw a little synth, a kick drum pattern, a steel drum, saxophone, and a pan flute and boom – you’ve got tropical house. Me personally? I blame festival culture and drugs as a whole.
It’s the fact that a person rolling on molly will listen to literally anything, claim that it’s the most amazing shit they’ve ever heard, and you can start to form an idea as to why this subgenre of house music didn’t quite make it.
The kids who were going to large-scale music festivals and rolling face to Kygo, Felix Jaehn, and Matoma grew up and got jobs, content to stop discovering new music. This leaves us with a fresh batch of teens who simply aren’t into tropical house or discovered something far cooler than what myself and my mid-20s contemporaries were listening to at their age.
Maybe this is an indictment on myself. Perhaps I’m dead wrong here and tropical house is still alive and well, but at 26 I’m no longer an authority on what sounds cool and what doesn’t. Furthermore, artists like Kygo are now getting mainstream radio play which is essentially a death knell in terms of something being considered cool.
Way back in 2012, though, when I wasn’t too tired to do deep dives into dark corners of the internet to find groundbreaking music, tropical house was the shit, and when I’m feeling extra nostalgic wallowing away in a cubicle, I’ll throw a little Kygo on and smile..
Image via Youtube
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jduda@grandex.co
beautiful, johnny d.
i remember driving to the beach one time and my homie put on Viceroy’s remix of Going Back to Cali. I about lost my mind.
tropical house tastes like sunburn, pacifico sweat, brushing sand out of your hair, eyes red from saltwater and jazz cigarettes, 8 pm sunsets
That was poetry
Kygo is still absolutely massive in terms of live shows. He plays in every city’s biggest venue and headlines music festivals.
There’s only so many beats you can make with a xylophone though.
Trop haus is still getting some new stuff that’s pretty good. You’ll hear it a lot soon on instagram model’s vacation videos
But Kygo / Selina Gomez’ “It ain’t me” was the song of summer 2017…
Great take. It got super formulaic but there was absolutely no better genre to vibe to in warm weather. RIP in peace sexual healing
warm weather and tropical house is a strong vibe
Kygo is still huge. He has however changed his sound and gotten away from any of his early remixes. But you’re right, the trop house genre has faded tremendously.
House music genres always revert to the mean. Dubstep started turning into rap (or Taylor Swift singles), Tropical house was cool/different and then started sounding like the music you’d hear in a hotel lobby, and Trap turned into… trap I guess.
Kygo is still big I’m sure he’ll drop another album in the near future. Tropical house is the shit
Kygo is still and will remain a lock for any summer playlist. Firestone will always be both a relaxing yet a hype song at the same time for me.
great