Music

No Style Is Also a Style – Reflections on the Aesthetically Ungraspable

An attempt not to explain music, but to answer it with a text that does it, in some small way, justice. Thank you to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude.

The text is very long, yes, but I wanted to do justice to the music.

Impossibility of speaking about music

‘Talking about music is like dancing about architecture’ – so goes a quote of unknown origin that has been drifting through feuilletons and record shops for decades. It describes a fundamental impossibility: how is language supposed to capture what escapes language? How is the rational meant to grasp the irrational without suffocating it? I try nonetheless. This text has been waiting since June, and I have not forgotten it. I believe I first had to understand the mechanisms that came before in order to approach this one, in order to be able to describe it adequately.

Music as an inhabited world

I can say this: I live in music. Without realising it, genres offered me different perspectives on life. For me, it is first and foremost the sound of a song that determines its value, and only afterwards do I look at the lyrics. It is more than perspectives – I open up worlds for myself. There is symphonic monumentality: music as spatial architecture. Great arcs, choral textures, orchestral heft, pathos without irony. It works like a resonating body for overwhelm and sublimity at the same time. Alongside it, classical structural music: order, form, mathematical precision. Not soothing, but focusing. Music as a thinking device, as a discipline of time. Then it tips over into neo-classical intimacy: reduced piano figures, quiet strings, slowness. No drama, but inner sharpness. Music that does not carry, but reveals.

States, atmospheres, fractures

Then come electronic escapisms: pulsating, repetitive, physical. Club, intoxication, trance, escalation or controlled euphoria. Music as a state, not as narrative. In contrast, ambient and soundtrack logic: expansive, atmospheric, functional. Not in the foreground, but as environment. Music as light, fog, architecture. A hard cut: metal and heavy guitar music. Aggression, catharsis, loss of control within rules. Volume as clarity. Pain not explained, but amplified – until it takes on form. Next to it, alternative and indie: broken voices, ambivalence, resistance to smoothness. Personal but not private. Attitude without preaching. Then punk and political rock: direct, angry, impatient. Language as percussion. Music as intervention, not as offering.

Pop, intimacy and hybridity

Another pole: pop in all its states of aggregation. From mass-compatible euphoria to melancholic introspection. Catchiness as a tool, not a weakness. Alongside it, singer-songwriter and acoustic reduction: voice, words, minimal accompaniment. Vulnerability without staging. Music as a conversation with oneself. Not to be overlooked: world music and cultural hybrids. Tradition meets modernity, rhythm meets ritual. Not folklore, but translation. In between, jazz, funk and soul: agility, improvisation, bodily intelligence. Music that breathes, sways, responds. And finally, experimental forms that resist clear categorisation: genre refusal, irony, ruptures, collages. Music that does not want to please, but to disturb, irritate, shift.

Genres as attitudes towards existence

This list is not exhaustive. It is an attempt to make tangible what I mean when I say: I open up worlds. Each of these fields offers not just a sound, but an attitude towards existence. Symphonic monumentality teaches me that being overwhelmed does not only have to mean weakness, but can also be a form of grandeur. Classical structural music shows that order is not a restriction, but a form of freedom – the freedom to move within a framework and, precisely through that, to gain precision. Neo-classical intimacy, on the other hand, whispers that greatness can also lie in reduction, that the quiet sometimes penetrates deeper than the loud. Electronic escapisms convey a different truth: that music does not always have to tell a story, that it may simply exist – a pulse, a loop, a state without beginning or end. Ambient and soundtrack logic teach me to understand music as an environment rather than an object. It is then no longer what I focus on, but what I find myself within. Metal and heavy guitar music, in turn, show me that aggression does not have to mean destruction, but can also be a way of shaping. Pain that is amplified until it is no longer diffuse, but clear, graspable, workable.

Ambivalence, resistance and honesty

Alternative and indie bring ambivalence as an aesthetic principle. They refuse clarity, and it is precisely in this refusal that their honesty lies. Punk and political rock are a reminder that music can also be a weapon, resistance, impatience. They do not ask for permission. Pop, often underestimated, shows that catchiness is not a capitulation to commerce, but a form of craftsmanship – the ability to compress complexity into three minutes without betraying it. Singer-songwriter music lays itself bare, without protection, without production to distract. World music and hybrid forms teach that boundaries are permeable, that tradition does not mean museum, but living translation. Jazz, funk and soul breathe; they live in the moment, not in the score. And experimental forms finally refuse to be what is expected of them at all – they are the thorn in the flesh of every expectation.

Music as mirror and support

For me, music fulfils a very specific mirroring function: feelings that previously circled in the background only as a vague mood find a recognisable shape in sound and words. In a song, in a particular line, they bind themselves to rhythm, melody and lyrics and thereby become more manageable, almost as if inner disorder were being translated into a form that can be followed. In this way, a quiet sense of support emerges: the music mirrors grief, anger or longing – and at the same time offers a frame in which precisely these feelings feel safer and more accompanied. A metal song cannot dissolve anger, but it gives it a form in which it no longer sweeps uncontrollably through me but can latch onto something. A neo-classical piano piece does not remove melancholy, but it transforms it into something that is no longer only a burden, but also beauty. A punk song screams my impatience out before I do, and afterwards it is easier to bear.

Encounter instead of escapism

This mirroring function has nothing to do with escapism, even if electronic music sometimes sounds like it. It is not an escape, but an encounter. Music brings me back to myself by showing me what I feel before I have words for it. It gives a name to the nameless without simplifying it. That is its gift: it translates without betraying. Categorisation is a defence mechanism. It gives form where there is vagueness. Genres, styles, labels – they function like acoustic vanishing points in a world that is too loud. Rock, jazz, hip hop, electronica: we sort sounds into drawers not because they belong there, but because we need orientation. The list of all these different musical worlds shows: there are countless drawers, each with its own logic, its own language, its own truth. But what happens when the self no longer thinks along these lines? When no playlist is sufficient because every sound is already a contradiction in itself?

I do not hear songs, I hear states

I do not hear music. I hear states. A drum beat that reminds me of a summer evening that never happened. A bass line that does not describe melancholy, but is melancholy. A voice that does not sing, but breathes, hesitates, breaks. Genre becomes irrelevant as soon as sound opens up a world. And these worlds cannot be ordered. They exist in parallel, overlap, merge and separate again. Symphonic monumentality can merge with electronic escapisms without one cancelling out the other. Metal can exist alongside jazz, not as an opposite, but as a different response to the same question: what can sound do?

Exhausted categories and the in-between

The exhaustion of the line means this: the old categories no longer hold. They have been repeated too often, recycled too often, until they are only shells. Anyone making or listening to music today senses this exhaustion. It is no longer about the next genre, the next movement. It is about the in-between, the approximate, that which resists any neat classification. And it is precisely in this in-between that something emerges which can no longer be grasped with the old terms. What arises when a way of thinking refuses to belong – musically, politically, emotionally? Not out of defiance, but because convergence itself would be a lie. The result is not a collage, not a crossover. It is something deeper: a form that only functions through its blurriness. It does not sound like… It sounds like me, before I commit to anything.

Genre refusal as honesty

Bands and artists who can no longer be pressed into narrow genres are, to me, a gain. Not because that automatically makes them revolutionary, but because it makes them honest. They admit that music is not linear, not unambiguous, not final. An album can whisper, fragile, in one minute and strike with brutal force in the next – and both are true. It can combine singer-songwriter intimacy with symphonic orchestration, overlay punk directness with ambient textures, thread classical structures through with experimental breaks. This refusal to settle is often misunderstood. Some see it as arbitrariness, a postmodern relativism that makes everything the same. But the opposite is true. Precisely because nothing is prescribed any more, every decision becomes significant. Every sound must justify itself – not in front of a genre, but in front of the moment itself.

Freedom of form instead of obligation to mix

I am glad that bands are no longer willing to be pressed into narrow genres. But I do not see this as a minimum stylistic requirement. Music is, and remains, music. There is no right or wrong here either. Freedom does not lie in mixing everything, but in being able to decide when mixture is necessary and when clear lines must be drawn. An album that consistently remains within a single genre – be it metal, jazz or neo-classical intimacy – can be just as radical as one that explodes all boundaries. It is not the mixing that matters, but the necessity of the form.

Fragment as honest totality

The fragment is not the opposite of the whole – it is its honest version. A text, an album, a field of thought: all this can be fragmented without collapsing into chaos. But only if fragmentation is understood not as a stylistic device but as a way of thinking. Music that unsettles does not have to be loud. Sometimes a pause in the ‘wrong’ place is enough. A chord that is not resolved. A voice that breaks off mid-sentence. These ruptures are not mistakes. They are structure. They force a pause, reflection, feeling. I experience this with albums that do not want to fall into line. That lack an arc, a clear dramaturgy, a single high point towards which everything builds. Instead: a sequence of moments, each of which stands on its own and yet belongs with the others. That is not arbitrariness. It is another form of order, one that is not based on narrative but on atmosphere. Ambient logic meets punk impatience, symphonic monumentality meets experimental refusal – and none of it is accidental.

Against dramaturgical expectations

This structure is unsettling because it contradicts our expectations. We are trained for beginning, middle, end. For verse, chorus, bridge. For the big moment, the emotional crescendo. But what if the truth does not lie in the crescendo, but in the silence afterwards? There is a form of coherence that arises precisely through the avoidance of classical order. When aesthetic decisions are guided not by style, but by necessity. Not ‘What fits?’, but ‘What must be?’. No synthesis. No compromise. Only the force of what remains unexplained and yet coherent. Refusal is not a negative. It is a position. Those who refuse do not claim that nothing matters. On the contrary: refusal says that some things matter so much that they must not be appropriated. Not by a genre, not by a scene, not by a market.

Refusal as space of protection

I think of artists who elude classification. Who respond to interviews with silence, whose albums have no singles, whose lyrics resist interpretation. That is not arrogance. It is protection. Protection from the grasp that explains everything and thereby kills it. The sound of refusal is often quiet. It does not scream for attention. It does not demand it. It is simply there: persistent, idiosyncratic, unmistakable. And those who hear it have to decide: ignore it or dive in. There is no in-between. But precisely this decision, this need to take up a position, leads to a question that troubles many: the fear that without fixed form, everything will fall apart. Perhaps the opposite is true: only if form remains open can it create resonance. A resonance that does not say, ‘I am like you’, but: ‘I am – and you still vibrate with me.’

Openness as strict form

That is not arbitrariness. It is openness. And openness does not mean that anything goes. It means that much is possible, as long as it is necessary. As long as it arises from the inner logic of the work, not from external pressures. I experience this openness as liberating. It allows me to hear music that seems not to belong together. A playlist where drone ambient stands next to hardcore punk, where symphonic orchestration encounters electronic escapisms, where singer-songwriter intimacy collides with experimental genre refusal. A concert evening that begins with folk and ends with industrial. That does not shatter my perception. It expands it.

Identity as the sum of contradictions

For what is identity if not the sum of all contradictions? Anyone who believes they must choose betrays themselves. Those who accept that they can be multiple find freedom. Music teaches this. It shows that one does not have to play a single role, but can be many at the same time. I can listen to classical structural music in the morning because I need focus, sink into electronic escapisms at midday because I need distance, find catharsis in metal aggression in the evening and come to rest in neo-classical intimacy at night – and none of this contradicts anything else. Each of these states is true, each is necessary, each is me.

The self as amplifier

This insight leads to a shift: one no longer becomes the voice of a genre, but the instrument of a way of thinking. It is not important how you sound, but how you are meant. What you bring into resonance, not which frequency you hit. You are not the song. You are the amplifier. This shift changes everything. Music is no longer consumed, but experienced. It is not a product to be bought, but a process in which one takes part. The self becomes the medium through which sound manifests. And this self is not passive. It shapes, interprets, decides.

Listening as co-creation

I listen to a song, and it is not the song the artist wrote. It is my song, in this moment, in this state of mind. A symphonic orchestration can mean overwhelm for me, sublimity for someone else. A punk song can be rage or liberation. An ambient track can convey emptiness or abundance. Tomorrow it will sound different. Next year it will mean something else. Music is never finished. It is always in the process of becoming. The self as meta-instrument also means this: I am responsible. It is not the artist who decides what the song means. I decide. Through my listening, through my feeling, through my remembering. Music is a dialogue, not a monologue. And in this dialogue I am not a recipient, but a co-creator.

Egocentrism, honesty and the small

It is precisely this responsibility, this active role of the listener, that leads to an observation which shapes contemporary music: there is a thesis that music is becoming ever more egocentric. At first, I cannot see anything inherently wrong with that. Why should I? Art has always been an act of self-assertion. Those who sing, speak of themselves. Those who compose, arrange the world according to their own rules. That is nothing new. What is new is the honesty. Earlier, artists hid their ‘I’ behind big themes. They wrote about love, humanity, war. Today they write about themselves. About their fears, their neuroses, their trivialities. This is often criticised as narcissistic. But is it not, rather, courageous? Is it not more radical to allow the small instead of incessantly claiming the grand?

The universal in the radically individual

Singer-songwriter music has always been personal, but today it goes further. Alternative and indie make ambivalence, not heroism, their subject. Pop speaks of individual melancholy rather than universal longing. Even metal, once full of mythic grandeur, is becoming increasingly introspective. The egocentrism of the present reveals itself in all genres: symphonic monumentality is no longer composed for abstract sublimity, but for personal overwhelm. Electronic escapisms are no longer just about club ecstasy, but also about individual escape points. Punk no longer screams for revolution, but for one’s own rage.

Ambivalent egocentrism as opportunity

Of course, there is a flip side. If everyone only sings about themselves, where does the universal go? Where do connection, community, the ‘we’ remain? But perhaps this is a false opposition. Perhaps the universal arises precisely from the individual. When someone speaks honestly about themselves, I recognise myself in it – not because we are the same, but because vulnerability connects. A singer-songwriter who sings about their loneliness allows me to recognise my own. A metal song about personal despair gives my despair a form. An electronic track that describes individual intoxication allows me to feel my own.

Another voice in the mesh

One field I consciously want to add is rap – especially German female rap, but not limited to that. English or French voices are just as naturally part of it for me. What matters is not origin, language or scene, but the urgency of what is being said. Rap interests me where language does not decorate, but carries. Where experiences are not aestheticised, but articulated. In these moments, rap becomes a corrective: it shifts perspectives, breaks open self-evident assumptions and forces you to listen where you might otherwise have tuned out. What matters to me here is not the label, not the pose, not the volume – but whether someone has something to say that needed to be said. Attitude before aesthetics. Statement before coolness. Here, too, the same applies: it is not about how something sounds, but why it sounds. And if this ‘why’ holds, this music naturally becomes part of my listening – regardless of language or origin, as an equal voice in the choir of contradictions.

Many forms of the self

The egocentrism of the present is ambivalent. It can lead to self-absorption, to endless repetitions of the same states of mind. But it can also liberate. It can show that no one is alone with their pain, their joy, their confusion. And that is no small thing. Especially in a time in which the self can take on so many forms – symphonic monumentality or neo-classical intimacy, electronic escapisms or acoustic reduction, metal aggression or ambient stillness – especially in such a time, it is important that music speaks from the ‘I’. Only then can it speak to other ‘I’s.

Dancing about architecture

In the end, I return to the beginning, to that quote: ‘Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.’ It is true. And it is not. Because even if language cannot capture what music is, it can circle it, approach it, hint at it. It can lay traces that others can pick up and continue. This text is one such attempt. It does not claim to explain music. It merely tries to convey a hint of what music means to me – how symphonic monumentality shows me sublimity, how classical structural music gives me discipline of thought, how neo-classical intimacy sharpens my inner gaze, how electronic escapisms open up states for me, how ambient logic creates environments, how metal turns pain into form, how alternative allows ambivalence, how punk intervenes, how pop uses catchiness as a tool, how singer-songwriter music exposes vulnerability, how world music translates, how jazz breathes, how experimental forms irritate. And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps dancing about architecture is not absurd at all, but the only appropriate reaction to something that eludes any logic.

No style is also a style

Music is, and remains, music. It needs no justification, no theory, no classification. It simply is. And we, who listen, are the instruments it plays on. Not the other way round. No style is also a style. And perhaps that is precisely the truth: that there is no single truth. Only moments in which sound and feeling touch. Only instants in which we understand without knowing. Only music, reminding us that we are alive. Still, I try – to write about music. Not because I believe it will work. But because the failure itself is part of the music. A wrong note, a broken-off phrase, a thought that does not reach its end. That is not weakness. That is life.

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Written on January 16, 2026 at 10:40. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.