Chillwave (originally considered synonymous with glo-fi and
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (abbreviated as h-pop) is pop music, pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and 1980s nostalgia, nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as Am ...
) is a music
microgenre
microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electro ...
that emerged in the late 2000s. It is characterized by evoking the popular music of the late 1970s and early 1980s while engaging with notions of
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
and
nostalgia
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word ''nostalgia'' is a neoclassical compound derived from Greek language, Greek, consisting of (''nóstos''), a Homeric word me ...
. Common features include a faded or dreamy
retro
Retro style is imitative or consciously derivative of lifestyles, trends, or art forms from the past, including in music, modes, fashions, or attitudes. It has been argued that there is a nostalgia cycle in popular culture.
Definition
The term ...
pop sound, escapist lyrics (frequent topics include the beach or summer), psychedelic or
lo-fi
Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate stylistic ch ...
reverb
In acoustics, reverberation (commonly shortened to reverb) is a persistence of sound after it is produced. It is often created when a sound is reflected on surfaces, causing multiple reflections that build up and then decay as the sound is a ...
), and vintage
synthesizer
A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...
s.
Chillwave was one of the first music genres to develop primarily through the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
. The term was coined in 2009 by the satirical blog Hipster Runoff to lampoon microgenres and indie acts whose sounds resembled
incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as th ...
from 1980s
VHS
VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s.
Ma ...
tapes. Prior to this, the music would have been labelled as
shoegaze
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with dream pop) is a subgenre of indie rock, indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion (music), distortion and effects, a ...
,
dream pop
Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such ...
, ambient, or indietronica. Leading acts included Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro y Moi, who gained attention during 2009's "Summer of Chillwave". Washed Out's 2009 track " Feel It All Around" remains the best-known chillwave song.
Many artists exploited the style's low-budget simplicity, which led to an oversaturation of acts that contributed to the original scene's demise. The phrase "chillwave" came to be used as a
pejorative
A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hosti ...
due to the music's perceived shallowness and reliance on nostalgia. Detractors also criticized the term for having been contrived by media publications. It heralded the early 2010s proliferation of Internet music microgenres, including
vaporwave
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970 ...
, which originated as an ironic variant of chillwave. By the mid-2010s, chillwave had faded in popularity, with most of the original artists and listeners of the genre shifting focus to other music styles.
Musical origins
Chillwave has been classified as
psychedelia
Psychedelia usually refers to a Aesthetics, style or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience produced by certain psychoactive substances. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic ...
,
bedroom pop
Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or music production, production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a delibe ...
, or
electropop
Electropop is a popular music fusion genre combining elements of the electronic and pop styles. It has been described as a variant of synth-pop with emphasis on a hard electronic sound. The genre was developed in the 1980s and saw a rev ...
. Before a specific term for the music was coined, it was described as
shoegaze
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with dream pop) is a subgenre of indie rock, indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion (music), distortion and effects, a ...
,
dream pop
Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such ...
Pitchfork
A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials.
The term is also applie ...
''s Nitsuh Abebe writes that, since at least 1992, the style had existed for one principal reason: "stoned, happy college kids listening to records while they fall asleep." Abebe cited
Slowdive
Slowdive (stylized in lowercase) are an English people, English rock band that formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 1989. The band consists of Neil Halstead (vocals, guitars), Rachel Goswell (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Christian Savill (guitars) ...
,
Darla Records
Darla Records is an independent record label founded by James Agren in October 1993 while he was in New York (state), New York. Darla's first release was a 7-inch by Grifters (band), Grifters, an indie rock/lo-fi music, lo-fi band from Memphis.
...
' ''Blissed Out'' ambient compilations, and Casino Versus Japan's eponymous 1998 album as examples. One of the earliest known manifestations of the genre is
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American Rock music, rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian Wilson, Brian, Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their f ...
Sunflower
The common sunflower (''Helianthus annuus'') is a species of large annual forb of the daisy family Asteraceae. The common sunflower is harvested for its edible oily seeds, which are often eaten as a snack food. They are also used in the pr ...
''.
Boards of Canada
Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of the brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin. Signing first to Skam Records, Skam followed by Warp (record label), Warp Records in the 1990s, they received recognition following th ...
, whom Abebe says pre-chillwave music was often compared to, were also influential, as were
Fennesz
Christian Fennesz (born 25 December 1962) is an Austrian producer and guitarist active in electronic music since the 1990s, often credited mononymously as Fennesz. His work utilizes guitar and laptop computers to blend melody with treated samp ...
, and
J Dilla
James Dewitt Yancey (February 7, 1974 – February 10, 2006), better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer, composer and rapper. He emerged from the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michiga ...
's 2006 album ''
Donuts
A doughnut or donut () is a type of pastry made from leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franch ...
''.
Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg ( ; born June 24, 1978), professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded al ...
is frequently cited as "the godfather of chillwave". He initially gained recognition in the mid-2000s through a string of home-recorded albums that reconfigured 1970s radio-rock and 1980s new wave in a lo-fi setting. The Paw Tracks record label, which distributed Pink's albums, was run by
Animal Collective
Animal Collective is an American experimental pop band formed in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its members consist of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). The band's work is cha ...
, who signed Pink after being impressed by a CD of his home recordings, starting with '' The Doldrums'' (2000). '' Uncut''s Sam Richard profiled Pink as "a lo-fi legend" whose "ghostly pop sound" proved influential to chillwave acts such as Ducktails and Toro y Moi. Critic Adam Harper disputed Pink's "godfather of chillwave" status, writing that his influence on lo-fi scenes has been somewhat overstated, explaining that his music lacks "the mirror-shades-cool synth groove of chillwave ... Pink's albums are zany, personal, largely rock-based and dressed in awkward glam". Discussing chillwave's bedroom pop precursors, Allene Norton of Cellars opined that Pink is "definitely not chillwave but that kind of stuff influenced a lot of the artists making it, like Washed Out."
In March 2007, Animal Collective member
Panda Bear
The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear or simply panda, is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its white coat with black patches around the eyes, ears, legs and shoulders. Its body is ...
(Noah Lennox) released his solo album '' Person Pitch'', which is credited with launching the chillwave style. The album influenced a wide range of subsequent
indie music
Independent music (also commonly known as indie music, or simply indie) is a broad style of music characterized by creative freedoms, low-budgets, and a do-it-yourself approach to music creation, which originated from the liberties afforded by in ...
, with its sound serving as the major inspiration for chillwave and a number of soundalikes. Animal Collective itself also contributed to the movement. Their album ''
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Merriweather Post Pavilion is an outdoor concert venue located in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland. In 2010, Merriweather was named the second best amphitheater in the United States by ''Billboard'' magazine. The venue was also ranke ...
'', released in January 2009, was particularly influential for its ambient sounds and repetitive melodies, but was not as tightly associated with the "hazy" psychedelia that chillwave was identified with. According to ''Flavorwire''s Tom Hawking, chillwave acts extrapolated "the sort of ill-defined pastoral nostalgia" from Animal Collective's early work "and spun it into an entire genre." However, "Animal Collective were never really part of that scene, such as it was — they were more like its spiritual overlords".
In February 2008, Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of
Deerhunter
Deerhunter is an American indie rock band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in 2001. The band currently consists of Bradford Cox (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Moses Archuleta (drums, electronics, sound treatments), Lockett Pundt (guitar, vocals, ...
ambient pop
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...
... was streaked with themes of impermanence and memory, which would soon come to define chillwave as a whole." Lennox later contributed guest vocals to Cox's 2009 song " Walkabout", referred to as an "early chillwave totem" by Fitzmaurice.
Etymology and hypnagogic pop
Most accounts attribute "chillwave" to a July 2009 post written by "Carles", the pseudonymous manager of the blog Hipster Runoff. The site, which was active between 2008 and 2013, was known for its ironic posts on "alt" trends. Carles used the term to describe a host of emerging bands that appeared similar to each other. A July 27 post titled "Is WASHED OUT the next Neon Indian/ Memory Cassette?" ruminated on a nascent trend involving the "musicsphere" searching for a "new 'authentic, undergroundish product' that isn't a huge brand like AnCo/ GrizzBear/etc. ... It seems easiest to have a chill project, that is somewhat 'conceptual' but also demonstrates that ur band has 'pop sensibilities' or something." He proposed a list of genre names, including "Chill Bro Core", "Pitchforkwavegaze", "forkshit", and "CumWave". The post concludes:
A few weeks later, in August, ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American Crime fiction, crime Drama (film and television), drama television series created and primarily written by the American author and former police reporter David Simon for the cable network HBO. The series premiered o ...
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (abbreviated as h-pop) is pop music, pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and 1980s nostalgia, nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as Am ...
" to describe a trend of 2000s lo-fi and post-
noise music
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music include ...
in which indie acts began to engage with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. Chillwave initially became subsumed under the "hypnagogic pop" and " glo-fi" labels, although "glo-fi" quickly fell out of popular usage.
While chillwave and hypnagogic pop both evoke the cultural aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, chillwave espoused a more commercial sound that emphasized "cheesy" hooks and reverb effects. According to ''Pitchfork''s Miles Bowe, chillwave came to constitute a
pejorative
A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hosti ...
referencing the "cynical" rebranding of hypnagogic pop acts who had "streamlined
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...
style to find genuine pop success." Keenan, who had previously championed hypnagogic pop, became disenchanted with many such artists, writing in 2011 that "in the reductive glare of mainstream media", chillwave had become "shorthand for a cheap form of revivalism and a valorising of bad taste".
Carles later explained that he had set out to throw "a bunch of pretty silly names on a blog post and eewhich one stuck." Neon Indian's Alan Palomo surmised that the tag caught on "because it was the most dismissive and sarcastic ... the term chillwave came when the era of blog-mediated music was at its height at that time." The term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of articles by ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' and ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''.
Peak popularity
Summer of Chillwave and early vanguard
Chillwave flourished throughout 2008 and 2009, culminating with the 2009 "Summer of Chillwave", which was marked by an inundation of artists with names and song titles referencing summertime, the beach, or surfing. Songs were generally of low-to-moderate tempo and incorporated vintage, analog instrumentation that evoked the popular music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although it had no specific geographical source point, chillwave was concentrated in the southern and eastern coasts of the U.S., with
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
figuring the most prominently. Neon Indian (Alan Palomo), Washed Out (Ernest Greene), and Toro y Moi (Chaz Bundick) were considered to be the vanguard of the chillwave movement. All three were one-man acts from the Southern U.S., while Greene and Bundick were acquaintances and collaborators.
Greene's " Feel It All Around" (July 2009) became the best known song of the genre, later to be employed as a backdrop for the opening sequence of the television series '' Portlandia'' (2011–2018). Created mostly from a slowed-down sample of Gary Low's 1983 song " I Want You", '' RBMA''s Sian Rowe wrote that it "has all the things that chillwave would be defined by: lo-fi synths, laid-back filtered-out vocals and disposable camera-style photography that usually involves the beach or anything watery."
Neon Indian's debut '' Psychic Chasms'' (October 2009) was another early album that typified the genre, particularly the tracks "Deadbeat Summer", "Terminally Chill", and "Should've Taken Acid With You". Bundick's debut '' Causers of This'' (January 2010) drew similar attention for its style of old-fashioned, lo-fi pop. The album was acclaimed by critics and given an early endorsement by
Kanye West
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer and record producer. One of the most prominent figures in hip-hop, he is known for his varying musical style and polarizing cultural and political commentary. After ...
, which lent the work significantly more popularity. ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' additionally dubbed Bundick the "godfather of chillwave".
Writing in 2019, Ian Cohen of ''Stereogum'' argued Dayve Hawke (variously known as Memory Tapes, Memory Cassette, and Weird Tapes) to be the fourth leading chillwave act of the era. Cohen identified Hawke's output as "quintessential chillwave documents", namely the 2009 album '' Seek Magic'', "probably the best album of the bunch that dropped in 2009 — and, by definition, probably the greatest chillwave album of all time."
Vaporwave
Vaporwave
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970 ...
is a microgenre of electronic music that originated as an ironic variant of chillwave. It was loosely derived from the work of hypnagogic artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro, and was characterized by the invocation of retro popular culture as well as the "analog nostalgia" of the chillwave scene. Amplifying the experimental tendencies of hypnagogic pop, vaporwave is cleanly produced and composed almost entirely from samples. It relied on sources such as
smooth jazz
Smooth jazz is commercially oriented crossover jazz music. Although often described as a "genre", it is a debatable and highly controversial subject in jazz music circles. As a radio format, however, smooth jazz radio became the successor to e ...
, retro
elevator music
Elevator music (also known as Muzak, piped music, or lift music) is a type of background music played in elevators, in rooms where many people come together for reasons other than listening to music, and during telephone calls when placed on ho ...
dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance musi ...
from the 1980s and 1990s, along with the application of slowed-down
chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed (also called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a genre of hip-hop music and technique of remixing music that involves slowing down the tempo and DJing. It was pioneered by DJ Screw, and became a staple in the ...
techniques, looping, and other effects.
Writers, fans, and artists struggled to differentiate vaporwave, chillwave, and hypnagogic pop from each other. One of the descriptions of the genre that were levied by online forums was "chillwave for
Marxists
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and ...
". Vaporwave found wider appeal over the middle of 2012, building an audience on sites like Last.fm,
Reddit
Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
, and
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, mu ...
. A wealth of its own subgenres and offshoots—some of which deliberately gesture at the genre's non-seriousness—soon followed.
Decline
Chillwave reached its peak in mid-2010, the same year it was received with widespread criticism. Some of the common descriptors used for the music in reviews or blog posts became clichés, including "soundscapes", "dreamy", "lush", "glowing", and "sun-kissed". The ''
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Ma ...
''s Christopher Weingarten remarked in December 2009 that "90 percent of writing about glo-fi mentions 'the summer' in some fashion. And summer's been over for, like, four months now."
The chillwave scene ultimately "withered and died". One major reason was a sudden oversaturation of artists, which came as a consequence of its simple production process. Writing in the ''
New Times Broward-Palm Beach
''New Times Broward-Palm Beach'' is a news website that, until 2016, also published a weekly print newspaper; it is part of the Voice Media Group chain. The original paper split off from the ''Miami New Times'' in 1997 under the auspices of ...
'', Reed Fischer referred to ''Pitchfork''s negative review of Millionyoung's "perfectly fine album" ''Replicants'' (2011) as a declaration of the genre's demise. Explaining why the genre fell out of public favor, Bundick surmised that chillwave "did its thing, and once it became a thing, people stopped caring about it, even the artists aking it"
In 2015, Fitzmaurice reflected that the "holy triumvirate" of Washed Out, Toro y Moi, and Neon Indian had maintained their careers in spite of the genre's decline. Tom Hawking predicted that the "chillwave era will most likely be a footnote to musical history, a faint flaring of middle-class angst in a frightening time for everyone. But that doesn't mean it's not worth examining regardless, because its simple existence says far more about a generation than the music itself ever did."
Legacy and critical perspective
2008 financial crisis, summertime, and escapism
Referencing the genre's Brooklyn-centric origins, Hawking noted that the "fact this was such beach-centric music makes it interesting ... chillwave also strikes me as hugely middle class music. ... whereas punk reacted with anger and a desire for change, chillwave was the sound of escapism and resignation. ... it's surely no coincidence that chillwave's rise coincided with the aftermath of the 2007 sub-prime economic meltdown."
Eric Grandy of '' The Stranger'' said that the genre's practitioners shared "a kind of fond nostalgia for some vague, idealized childhood. Its posture is a sonic shoulder shrug, a languorous, musical 'whatevs'." Another attempt at identifying the common threads of the scene was offered by
Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles (born 1953) is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of ''The New York Times''.
''Vulture''s Frank Guan writes that the evocation of summer is not "as a season of deprivation and loss of control, but sa summer spent in suburban quiet and prosperity, chilling indoors alone with central A/C, watching daytime TV or listening to music." One unnamed ''Pitchfork'' writer opined: "This music isn't easy to write about. It takes a lot of work to get past 'soundtrack to the summer' and 'makes me want to hit the beach.' So much of this summer-obsessed lo-fi is about atmosphere and feel that it can seem weird to scrutinize it."
In November 2009, ''Pitchfork'' ran an editorial feature on the "summer of chillwave". The Beach Boys'
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson (June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025) was an American musician, songwriter, singer and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often Brian Wilson is a genius, called a genius for his novel approaches to pop compositio ...
, who had been compared to Animal Collective, was mentioned as a "looming figure" throughout that summer's indie music. An unnamed editor argued that the similarities were more abstract than musical and that Wilson's influence stems from his legend as an "emotionally fragile dude with mental health problems who coped by taking drugs." The editor continued, "Summertime now is about disorientation: 'Should Have Taken Acid With You'; ' The Sun Was High (And So Am I)'; You take the fantasy of music-- the cars, the sand, the surf">ilson'smusic-- the cars, the sand, the surf-- add a dollop of melancholy and a smudge of druggy haze, and you have some good music for being alone in a room with only a computer to keep you company."
Internet music genres and validity
Chillwave was one of the first genres to acquire an identity online and one of the last phenomena of indie music to predate
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
's dominance of social media. According to writer Garin Pirnia, it is an example of linking musical trends by Internet outlets rather than geographic location. Pirnia wrote in 2010 (quoting Palomo), "Whereas musical movements were once determined by a city or venue where the bands congregated, 'now it's just a blogger or some journalist that can find three or four random bands around the country and tie together a few commonalities between them and call it a genre.'" In the description of ''The Guardian''s Emilie Friedlander, chillwave was "the internet electronic micro-genre that launched a hundred internet electronic micro-genres (think: vaporwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, distroid, hard vapor), not to mention its corollaries in 010sinternet rap, which largely shared its collagist, hyper-referential approach to sound."
Chillwave and other offshoots of it such as vaporwave gained popularity on
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
, often as songs that were ironic or made to be
memes
A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...
.
''
Grantland
''Grantland'' was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. ''Grantland'' was named after famed ...
''s Dave Schilling argued that the term was created to reveal "how arbitrary and meaningless" existing labels such as "shoegaze" and "dream pop" were. George McIntire of the '' San Francisco Bay Guardian'' described chillwave's origin as in the "throes of the blogosphere" and called the term a "cheap, slap-on label used to describe grainy, dancey, lo-fi, 1980s inspired music" and a "disservice to any band associated with it." In 2011, Carles said it was "ridiculous that any sort of press took it seriously" and that although the bands he spoke to "get annoyed" by the tag, "they understand that it's been a good thing. What about iTunes making it an official genre? It's now theoretically a marketable indie sound."
By 2015, the majority consensus was that chillwave was a fabricated non-genre. In 2016, Palomo described labels like "chillwave" and "vaporwave" as "arbitrary" and that he "couldn't have been more happy" about the "chillwave" descriptor falling out of favor. Toro y Moi's Chaz Bundick publicly expressed the following about the genre, saying, "I like the fact that I'm associated with it. It's cool. Not a lot of artists get a chance to be a part of some sort of movement, so I guess in a way I'm super flattered to be considered a part of that."