Shoegaze’s Romanticism: “Only Shallow”?
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Emerging in the early 1990s, shoegaze appears to engage with Romanticism in multiple ways, embodying many of its expressive tensions. At once diligent and disenchanted, shoegaze musicians crafted an image of doomed young artists that resonates with the myth of the misunderstood genius. Yet beyond the musicians’ posture, it is the underlying aesthetic tension of shoegaze itself that most clearly recalls Romanticism: between the ethereal elegy of ascending melodies and an obsessive devotion to noise, shoegaze combines introspection (the term itself referring to the act of gazing downward at one’s feet while performing) with sensory detonation, thus oscillating between two opposing poles. An analysis of key excerpts from this musical movement will allow for a deeper examination of how shoegaze appropriates the Romantic aesthetics, and will expose the resources and claims underlying this particular imaginary.
Source: Sillages critiques
DOI: 10.4000/15rp1
Author: Florence Schnebelen
Language: English
Topic: Music History and Culture
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7131661962
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: