What is ‘Simpsonwave music’? The sub-genre that redefined the fanvid
From species to supermarket aisles, we as humans have an innate desire to place ideas, objects and people into categories. This cognitive process, which is believed to start in infancy, even expands to the types of music we listen to. But what was once a simple process has now turned into what some might describe as an overload of genres.
While it’s sometimes good to add a touch of specificity, the days of jazz, pop and rock seem like a distant past, replaced by the likes of lowercase and Nintendocore. Yet there is a sub-genre that might be more familiar to you than you think, especially if you spend a large proportion of your time on the internet. Emerging from the success of vaporwave and Tumblr-core, Simpsonwave took YouTube by storm in the mid-2010s, redefining the phenomenon of fanvid and later vertical video.
The term ‘Simpsonwave’ is used to describe a form of fanvid involving clips from Matt Groening’s animated sitcom The Simpsons, which are then layered over vaporwave music. Emerging a few years before, the sub-genre of vaporwave uses slowed-down or screwed samples of jazz, elevator music, R&B and lounge music from the 1980s and ’90s in a bid to satirise consumer capitalism or pop culture.
Why fans of vaporwave then turned to The Simpsons for accompanying visuals remains debated, although many have speculated that it is because of the series’ nostalgic feel and strong association with the 1990s, similar to the web design, glitch art and cyberpunk tropes present in vaporwave culture. Coverage of the sub-genre peaked in 2016 – the year of overdrawn eyebrows, Pokémon Go and Kylie Jenner – as YouTubers began to question the authenticity of Simpsonwave, debating whether it was, in fact, artistic.
In April of that year, YouTuber FrankJavCee posted a step-by-step tutorial on how to create these “nostalgia-drenched meme videos”. First, viewers are instructed to take footage from the earlier Simpsons seasons, preferably between seasons one and six, over which they should layer edited music often featuring looped lyrics. Next, creators of Simpsonwave should add retro filters to “give the footage that VHS look”, which represents “the adult longing for a childhood they thought they had,” alongside psychedelic overlays. Finally, capitalised titles written in full-width or spaced-out text should be added to the video before it is uploaded to one of the many Simpsonwave forums on YouTube.
Later on in 2016, brands like Rough Trade began to share Simpsonwave clips on social media, and many even saw the vaporwave derivative as a “chill summer soundtrack”. As the sub-genre propagated, however, it became known by many as “sad Simpsons” video, given the clips often aimed to explore the psychology of Groening’s characters on a deeper level than the show let off. Some even began to edit to create new character arcs for Springfield’s infamous family, shaping The Simpsons to their own liking.
To this day, one need only search Simpson wave on YouTube to find videos with over 19million views. From top hits “S U N D A Y S C H O O L” to “N O S L E E P”, the latter of which features a lo-fi edit of Chet Baker’s ‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’, the social impact of Simpsonwave is clear, with commenters praising the videos as “art” or the playlist that “makes me [them] feel like it’s the good old days again”.
