(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 25 April 2026 18:00, UK
While genre classification can provide a helpful set of terms that allow you to express to other people what sort of music you’re into, artists like Frank Zappa are the kind that make a mockery of these differentiations and their regimented boundaries.
Flitting between blues, hard rock, jazz and classical music on his own terms, it’s tough to really pinpoint exactly where Zappa falls into any specific genre, or to even be able to place him in a rough bracket. To put it simply, there aren’t many other artists who have ever exhibited an approach remotely similar to how he did things, but if you’re able to acknowledge that you like him, then you’ll also have a relatively strong idea of why.
You could call him progressive rock, but then again, it doesn’t even matter that he doesn’t actually sound anything like the rest of the prog bands who were operating at the same time as him, because it’s understandable why fans of prog would like his musical adventurousness and rule-bending tendencies, but at the same time, his flagrant disregard for convention or classification might be off-putting for those who consider themselves purists in a certain genre.
The term ‘experimental rock’ is even too nebulous as a means of describing Zappa, but perhaps this is a more appropriate way of explaining what he offers. It flirts enough with the outer limits of what rock music can be, and has more than just an experimental edge to it, so this is maybe as close you’ll get to it, if you’re truly desperate to pigeonhole him as an artist.
However, while developing this sort of terminology is futile when trying to explain what Zappa does, it’s an easy way of determining what he personally didn’t like or see himself aligning with creatively, as during a 1974 interview with The Hot Flash, he was asked some provocative questions about his thoughts on different styles, and he ended up making it clear that one particular trend at the time wasn’t doing it for him, and that he’d gladly distance himself from it.
When asked what he thought of the rise of ‘glitter rock’, perhaps more frequently known as glam in the modern world, Zappa was almost prodded to say something inflammatory, given the assumed knowledge that the interviewer clearly had about the artist’s tendency to critique things he wasn’t a fan of with an overwhelming sense of vitriol.
Responding exactly as hoped, Zappa winced at the mere mention of artists like Kiss and David Bowie, arguing, “Well, it’s not my idea of a good time. I think lipstick in small quantities is OK in certain girls, I’m not too big on it for boys”.
While he himself wasn’t exactly flamboyant in the same sense as these glam artists who toyed with wearing makeup and androgynous presentation, Zappa was equally unafraid of his freakishness and simply trying to do something different, much like those he was evidently repulsed by.
Knowing him, he was probably just being a contrarian, but there’s more that links him and the likes of Bowie than he may have cared to be aware of, thus making this differentiation between styles so pointless. If anything, this separation is more about ethos than it is about style, and in terms of operating by their own respective sets of rules, Zappa and Bowie were both artists who never bowed to the expectations that people had of them, and admirably so.
