Depending on how you look at it, this could
very well be the chart that represents internet
culture the most.
It shows the birth, peak and ultimately the
replacement of a meme.
These charts are from Google Trends. I got
them by typing in seapunk and vaporwave.
It started on June 1st, 2011 with a Twitter
exchange between two multimedia producers.
Here, in this moment, Seapunk was immortalized
via a hashtag.
But the group of people who retweeted and
liked that tweet were just getting started.
‘First, do you mind introducing yourself?’
‘My moniker is Ultrademon. I was considered
to be one of the godparents of Seapunk’.
They began sharing art and music, chopping
up and remixing 90s inspired visuals and sounds,
utilizing elements of cyberpunk to develop
an oceanic aesthetic that they could get behind.
‘I didn’t really have much of a community
I guess like that and for me it kind of came
from feeling like an outsider.’
Buzz around Seapunk spread quickly and small
publications began tracking its every move.
But, it was still super underground and largely
based on private Facebook groups.
If you asked anybody on the street in 2012
what Seapunk was, they’d have no idea.
Then in March 2012 the New York Times attempted
to capture Seapunk in an article.
The headline?
The Little Mermaid goes punk. Seapunk, a web
joke with music, has its moment.
‘Being a part of something that’s a meme.
It makes you question your own work. So,is
this a joke? Or is what I’m doing any good?
Can it be taken seriously?’
It’s debatable whether Seapunk was a joke
or a real attempt at developing an oceanic
themed subculture.
But the article cites Katy Perry, Lady Gaga
and Azealia Banks as artists co-opting the
style.
But it doesn’t stop there.
8 months later, at only a year old, Seapunk
had an infamous week.
Without any warning, it hit TV sets across
the country.
[Rihanna SNL performance clip]
Ladies and gentlemen, Rihanna.
Most writers tasked with covering Rihanna’s
green screen performance had no idea what
to think, characterizing it as “odd” and
“trippy”.
And then quickly moving on to saying the she
“redeemed” herself with the emotional
ballad “Stay.”
But the small band of web artists who spent
the majority of 2011 and 2012 cultivating
that look knew exactly what was happening
and it split them up on a very philosophical
level.
Many people claimed Seapunk died the moment
Rihanna took the stage. But others weren’t
so angry.
‘I approached it as a positive. I think
it’s almost better to be a part of something
that’s inspiring people on that level in
some way.’
In fact, this sort of thing has happened on
SNL before.
Back in 1979, David Bowie performed on SNL
with Klaus Nomi, an opera singer who was a
fixture of the East Village art scene of the
mid-’70s.
Like Rihanna, Bowie was taking the opportunity
to confront a large television audience with
something from the underground.
The difference here was that Nomi was onstage
performing with Bowie.
It’s true that Rihanna, Azalea Banks and
Lady Gaga might be more associated with Seapunk
than the artists that originated it.
But in the age of the internet underground
styles, aesthetics, and movements are always
transforming and adapting — they are two
steps ahead.
Today, Seapunk is still alive and kicking,
but it’s mutated for the most part, into
an even more popular musical sub-genre called
Vaporwave.
It features elements of public access TV graphics
and sounds, elevator music and future funk.
And Rihanna very well might be on to this
sub-genre too.
You see last year, Tame Impala, the musical
project of Kevin Parker, released the album
Currents.
The album art, music videos and sound all
have elements of Vaporwave.
Rihanna’s latest album, Anti, features a
cover of a song from Currents called “Same
Ol Mistakes”
And it was produced by Kevin Parker himself.
If you listen to that track and “James Joint”,
a 1:50 interlude on Anti, you can’t deny
it.
That elevator music and future funk sound
signature to Vaporwave is there.
