If you’ve been anywhere near the Internet over the last decade, then you probably would’ve run into the vaporwave genre of music. Characterised by its nostalgic sound which mixes in themes of electronica, ambience, and jazz, the genre is a massive hit in online communities. However, it turns out that one of the genre’s biggest fans is none other than Michael Nesmith, guitarist for iconic pop rock group The Monkees.
While many would expect that if The Monkees’ Michael Nesmith was to open up about his favourite music, you’d hear tales of all the great rock acts from the ’60s and ’70s that many of us could only dream of seeing live. However, it turns out that all the 75-year-old is really into these days is vaporwave.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the rocker discussed his love of the music style, as well as naming a handful of his favourites songs and albums from the genre
“Your best and only access to it is the Internet,” Nesmith explained. “You’ve got to put in ‘vaporwave’ on YouTube and follow it down. It’s an endless cavern of inter-connected convolutions. I tell everybody I meet about it.”
“Once you open it up, it’s like cracking an egg. It goes all over the place.”
“The first mistake anyone makes with this stuff is thinking it’s electronica,” Nesmith explained of 2814’s Birth Of A New Day. “Well, listen for a few minutes and you realize, ‘This isn’t electronica. This is someone with the radio on in their garage while they’re putting WD40 on their new motorcycle.’”
“It’s completely gone from the landscapes of traditional music. The people that seem to put together the collections are basically high-end programmers, people that put together rocket science code. It comes in and you hear echoes and vibrations and restatements that you’ll never hear outside there.”
Likewise, he also sung the praises of a vaporwave remix of ABBA’s seminal ‘Dancing Queen’. “This is one of the bedrocks,” he noted. “When you watch it, you’ll understand. It’s just nuts.”
“It’s ABBA at its weirdest and strangest: every one of the optic memes and every one of the audio memes sprinkled around it, but in such an unfamiliar pattern that if you weren’t watching the glitteration of ABBA in their shiny blue suits you wouldn’t know. It wouldn’t dawn on you.”
Of course, Michael Nesmith also spoke at length in regards to one of his favourite vaporwave records, Floral Shoppe, credited to Macintosh Plus.
Released back in 2011 by Ramona Xavier, who usually produces music under the name Vektroid, the record has gone on to be considered one of the greatest records in the vaporwave scene, and is credited as having made the genre popular.
“I’d never heard anything like it, and I was just smitten,” explained Nesmith. “Now I listen to it pretty regularly. It really satisfies me. The first indicator as you’re listening is that it’s abnormally slow. You think, ‘Well, that’s weird. Why are they singing like that? I don’t know. Do I like this?’”
“If you’re distracted in the slightest and head to another train of thought, the music drifting off into this pool of liquid blue becomes compelling. It’s the most psychedelic stuff I’ve heard ever since psychedelics.”
While we’re somewhat surprised at how fond of vaporwave Michael Nesmith is, if you take the time to give some of the genre’s greatest hits a spin, you’ll be able to understand pretty quickly why he’s into it so much.
Check out Macintosh Plus’ vaporwave classic, Floral Shoppe:
