Everything is a gimmick. Everyone is a gimmick. If you want to be discovered you need a gimmick. How will the algorithm chose you without a gimmick? I don’t have anything cool about me or my music, I need a gimmick. Is two gimmicks too many? Is nostalgia a gimmick? Yes. What is my gimmick is cool? It’s not. If slop is the defining feature of the 2020s, gimmicks will be the baited qualities to process filter videos and mediocrity onto your phone. Slop, at it’s core, is very easily identified. Gimmicks are harder, but they are far more common.
This is a bunch of miscellaneous bands, videos, and songs that have caused me to physically recoil in the last year. Some of your favorite bands might be here, maybe even an Instagram Reel you liked. Four parts. Enjoy.
Part 1: Be Anonymous, Wear a Mask
This could be about a dozen+ artists. It’s ridiculous how many people wear a mask and use it as a part of their art. Three artists, in my brain, did this well: Slipknot, MF DOOM, and Daft Punk. Slipknot leverages masks to cover or expose aspects of each band member they fear or embrace — qualities that are deeply exposed in their occult-embracing music. I will not write about MF DOOM. Daft Punk has a baker’s dozen songs about being robots; their masks are robots. Their music is about embracing humanity and emotion through dance. It makes sense. Did KISS do it well? GWAR? Orville Peck? Buckethead? You can see how deep this can go.
The new age of mask-wearers bake their music with innate laziness, separating their identity so far from their sounds the only defining quality is how horrid it lands on your ears. President, the newest rock sub-headliner, is a soon-to-be arena-filling project that will be your barometer of who lacks any taste. Led by, and I’m not kidding about this, ‘The President’, the group attempts to look inward about one’s own battles with religion, politics, mortality, and other biblical ideas. Why should anyone care about a masked singer’s own battles of humanity? None of it is personable, and it exists only to create trailers for The Purge or other D-tier horror films your coworkers would talk about. The band doesn’t help itself by making the music so horrid even a Hot Topic™️ cashier would skip it to listen to any of the Bring Me the Horizon AI remix songs.
Somehow making it even worse, we know who the lead singer of President is! NME and a small handful of internet sleuths discovered it’s the lead singer of a lazy British pop band (that I won’t name to save your ears). Following the winds of change, he founded a post-hardcore band that makes Of Mice & Men sound like The Beatles.
The newest addition here is Angine de Poitrine, a masked math rock duo from Montreal that litters themselves in polka dots. Their performance on KEXP (shoutout Ray Dalton) has over 10m views, an absurd number that’s placed them above Of Monsters & Men performing Little Talks in 2012, Arctic Monkeys in their prime, and is close to doubling Florence & the Machine’s performance before Obama’s second presidential term. For full performances, it’s the 5th most viewed in the history of the channel which dates back to 2008.
It’s eye catching, and their music sounds exactly the way they look. If Goose is one end of the horseshoe of “these guys can really play, and they sound good!” then Angine de Poitrine is the other end of it, where you can clearly tell they’re exceptional but first listens sound disorganized. They’ll frequently bounce around time signatures and play in different tempos, and I dare you to count along for any of these songs. I like Angine de Poitrine’s music. I hate they have to look like discards from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends to bait deep fried attention spans. Googling their name provides a unique animation on the page, something I haven’t seen since the Obama years.
In a way, Angine de Poitrine is punk. While the 100 worst human beings alive push AI generation to counter any creativity that’s innate to our existence, embracing the absurdity of our time and ripping in 24/4 can be a direct act of resistance. It’s almost in direct contrast to a group like President, where their masked identity allows the quality of their music to stand out. President’s masked identity only heightens my attention to how horrid and desperate for cash & fame the entire project is, while Angine’s somehow looks the same way they sound.
Part 2: Make A Video That’s Like, So Cool.
I cannot describe how many artists fall into this bucket. Low effort gimmick music videos probably take up 10% of all internet storage at this point. Forests are getting leveled in the South to make data centers for more of these. Timelines are littered with the dumbest video gimmicks possible. Here’s the ones that straight up annoyed me the most.
A band I will not name posted a video of a guy grilling hot dogs on stage while they performed with a caption like “oh haha wow look at this band I found doing this!” YOU DID IT. YOU’RE THE BAND (more on this later). If your band is more well known for throwing hot dogs off a stage than ripping off bad Black Keys songs, than you should rethink how you are marketing yourself. Their instagram (not linked intentionally) still mentions their 2.75 seconds of virality, with the description saying ‘sell out the show, maybe we’ll toss dogs.’
Sombr’s entire marketing plan was recording himself mouthing his lyrics in a room, ad infinitum, dumping a marketing budget to boost the videos, and becoming famous off cross virality. At least it’s cheap.
I Prevail, a band I have never liked or even cared about, has spent over a decade making bad Bring Me the Horizon/A Day to Remember songs. They exist to open for bigger bands and make worse songs than their own openers. Across 4 albums, there are no novel ideas other than motivating bald-by-choice white guys to get better at self-inflicted drywall repair. Their continued mediocrity offers an explanation as to why – at a concert real people paid real money to attend – their drummer made a pizza during one of their songs.
My least favorite version of this, somehow more hated than ‘make food on stage,’ is low effort short-form-video bait captions. Picture this: the band’s standing in front of the camera, their song’s playing. Needs a caption. How about: “We’re a smol bean indie twee band from kackahookie flyoverstate just trying to make good sounds!” My thumb’s already scrolling up before I noticed your music was playing, praying my next video is a [SLOWED] [REVERB] [BASS BOOSTED] edit of No Hands over a Dellin Betances strikeout compilation. However, there’s nothing worse than a caption pretending like you’re not the band uploading it. “I stumbled into a tent and found the emo band” – very cool, I hope you were paid well to do that. It seemed really authentic!
If you make good music, people will find it. If you make algorithm music your overall product will be striped of all prominence. It’s shameless.
Part 3: Remember When: Nostalgia Farmers and Bad Covers
I’m cheating and lumping two horrid gimmicks into one here. Who cares? Nostalgia is a curse, one whose shackles will impede your progress more than procrastination or a lack of self-determination ever will. Remember what was and seeking a continued re-visitation will damage your ability to transmute the past into your future. Bands that cash in on nostalgia aren’t just lazy, they’re actively harmful and should be shunned if there is capacity of critical thought. Some artists cheat twice, by cashing in on your nostalgia with a horrid genre-crossing cover that’s offensive to everyone involved. Cheating thrice: packag all of this together into an Anniversary Tour.
I’m all for gay rights, but sometimes we have to acknowledge gay wrongs: Greta Van Fleet should not exist. Extraterrestrial forces broke the social contract giving this cover band a recording contract. Their debut album, From the Fires, by all accounts is a near 1:1 rip of a Led Zeppelin cover band making uninspired interpolations of every burnt out classic rock fan’s least favorite Zep songs. It won a Grammy for best rock album. Safari Song is one of the most offensive tunes ever recorded. It’s so repulsive I wonder if everything leading up to it’s release in this wonderful medium was really worth it. Six years later, they released a borderline tolerable album, Starcatcher (it still isn’t even mediocre). It’s existence proves GVF should be the most anti-AI 4 dude coalition to walk this planet, as it sounds the way Silicon Valley tech-brain thinks. A 76-month-old would have better ideas than this after a single listen of Zeppelin I.
While I have sinister amounts of hate in my heart for GVF, I’ve learned to find Our Last Night comical. Anyone that’s truly enjoyed any -core genre or embraced unclean vocals has been sent one of their covers. They originally started as an actual band signed to Epitaph, and have toured the world playing original songs. In 2013, they did a soft pivot to becoming a metal(ish)-band-covers-pop-songs and even had a dedicated ‘Summer of Covers.’ If you ever wanted to know what any pop song sounded like as a soft-metal song, Our Last Night’s probably done it. I’m not kidding, they covered abcdefu a few years ago. Our Last Night stopped touring last year probably from a combination of: setlists look like that, there’s more money in social-media-farming these covers, and they’re all really New Hampshire dads at heart now. Our Last Night sold out the 3rd largest venue in Boston with this stuff.
The EDM and house communities are rife with this. Tons of tunes hit the nostalgia itch. They intentionally call back to songs you remember, yet become horrid covers of the already great. I give this realm a slight pass – edits, remixes, bootlegs, sampling, etc. is innate to the community. However, on my hands and knees begging for more curators to be involved with these producers. Close Ableton and delete that Sweet Disposition remix. If you boot up Logic and start cooking a Sweet Dreams remix, I hope it crashes. Oh you’ve got an edit of Harder, Better, Faster? They give those BOGO to anyone with small blacked out sunglasses. We can move on. Remix or edit something new, recent, or unheard. NOTION – a DJ I have no opinion of yet – released a forced nostalgia remix of a single from 2024 and it became one of the biggest songs in the world. The Chainsmokers made an entire career off this. Too much music exists already and is being made every day for another frat bedroom ‘DJ’ to mutilate Show Me Love again.
Part 4: Genre Pivot
Pivoting genres can be really exciting! Exploring yourself through a new medium can unleash new levels of talent, or breathe new life into your art. Unfortunately, we’re becoming inundated with artists reducing this exploration to the quickest way to success instead of a creative exercise.
I’m going to put Ninajirachi’s Coachella version of iPod Touch below so you have some space to think about who this will apply to. You can pick one person, or you can try to pick the three I’m writing about.
I believe there are three artists that have shamelessly pivoted genres in direct dereliction of their craft: Post Malone, mgk, and BigXThaPlug.
Post Malone is the purest example of a culture vulture and an industry plant. He started as an alternative rock/metalcore guy and has followed where ever the cultural winds have gone since. Famously, he said hip hop doesn’t talk about anything real in 2017. Lil B the Based God tweeted that same year that Post Malone will be a fully country artist within a year — while early, he was eventually right! Seven years later, Post released F-1 Trillion, one of the most horrendous country albums I’ve ever listened to. Ignoring the metal-hip hop-country progression entirely, it’s purely insane a white rapper whined for half a decade about how hard it was to be white in hip hop to pivot to the least ambitious audience. Thinking about it makes me physically ill, and his upcoming Morgan Wallen-inspired 35-song slopfest will surely be the worst major album in 2026.
I’ve written about mgk before, and his genre pivot I hate isn’t the one you’re probably thinking. After famously losing a rap battle to Eminem, he switched to pop-punk — a change I welcomed and thought it made more cultural sense. Proving he fears no god or hell, he’s since decided to release music stylized in americana and nu-metal. His Lost Americana record misses the entire point of the genre, and is the worst possible way you could spend 45 minutes. Somehow outdoing himself, he linked with Fred Durst for his entry into the ‘Worst Song Ever Released’ contest. Machine Gun Whippets released FIX YOUR FACE this year, and I really do not recommend you click on the video below.
I try not to be hard on mgk. He’s like a 13 year old high school drop out’s idea of what being cool is: collabing with Limp Biskit, dating Megan Fox, and beefing with Eminem. However, BigXThaPlug’s pivot hurt me to my core.
BigX’s entire brand was being a big dude from Texas that could rap well enough. He was my favorite up-and-coming rapper for a year or two in the early 2020s, and I had a pretty long BigX phase in 2024. His 2025 album, I Hope You’re Happy, is a full country release. BigX is more country than Jack Harlow is R&B, but that doesn’t excuse either. The credited features are a who’s who of blue jeans, cold beer, blonde girl, and big truck singers that aren’t triple Trump voters. While furnishing an impressive collection of country artists I don’t hate with my whole soul, it tarnishes the career of a guy breathing a fresh breath of southern hip hop.
Pivoting to country music is the laziest larp major artists can do. It’s the last genre of the medium with fleshed out institutional infrastructure to ensure success. If you kiss the ring, drink the cold beer, wear the jeans, and sell your soul of political morals, even those agnostic to talent can headline the biggest stages. Country music is a gimmick for those chasing clout, where lacking quality isn’t a detriment but rather the point. Fast tracked success in the 2010s was soundcloud mixtapes, and now it’s recycling the same 8 sentences in a new way, saluting the flag, and really pushing up that southern drawl even though you’ve got golden cutlery. It’s an ecosystem that rejects diversity intentionally – withholding awards & nominations from Beyonce, Kane Brown, and Shaboozey. If Beyonce isn’t welcome in the room, it makes you wonder why artists are continually trying to get through the door. At least this gimmick is music related, I guess.
I’m quite happy pivoting to house music didn’t become a trend, because that Drake album sounds the same way gentrification looks.
Where does this leave us?
There’s been continued discourse by influencer-voiced non-listeners about Geese’s blow up. Geese, not unlike many bands I wrote about here, leveraged an actual marketing agency to create momentum. Is this unethical? I don’t think so — I find it far more ethically sound than the radio payola of yesteryear or forced listening in the Country ecosystem. However, Geese has their own gimmick: good music. While I’m not the biggest fan of Getting Killed, I’ve found joy from the dance-punk on Projector and loved the rock-revivalism of 3D Country. The best release from the Geeseverse is Winter’s solo album, but that’s a different point all together.
Gimmicks aren’t needed to be successful. They’re an attempted cheat code to expedite your success. Much akin to steroid users, artists and their MBA-touting managers leverage unsavory tools to get results they expect before the results they deserve. In 2026, these tools are anything that looks good on a tiny vertical screen. Unfortunately, these mechanisms for success seldom amplify the whole point people are here to begin with: the actual sounds the real musicians are making with their instruments. If the method of your madness makes me pay more attention to something else, then it’s useless.
Formulas for success are continually changing — and it’s far harder to be artistically commercial with the lack of legacy institutions. Capital seldom pays attention until something’s already established. That’s no excuse for attempting to cut corners on the highway of popularity, especially when your music’s bad. When the ever fleeting glow of the gimmick becomes stale, the low priority consumers will have already tossed it aside for another more shameful gimmick. It’s a rat’s race to the bottom, to be the first video on the feed, to be posted by others.
M&Ms: Music + Movies + Etc. 
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