Gateway Series / Music

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• Devo is a definite gateway into Synth-Pop, New Wave and Punk Rock.
• Michael Jackson's songs that are featured in different kinds of albums served as a gateway to different kinds of genres. For example, "Beat It" got many people into Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, due to the song having a guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen.
• With the help of YouTube, Straight No Chaser and their humorous rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas" is a nice gateway into A Cappella groups such as the Clef Hangers.
  • Not to mention Rockapella's appearances on Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, probably the first exposure many had to a cappella groups in the 1990s.
  • Since Woodstock and through much of the 1980s, Sha Na Na occupied the same position as gateway group to a cappella singing, sharing it with The Manhattan Transfer. Which group was your gateway primarily depended on your age and whether your preferred musical style was Doo-wop, Rock & Roll, or swing/jazz.
  • In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was The Swingle Singers.
  • In the mid-2010s, Pitch Perfect and Pentatonix were mainstream audiences' first exposure to a cappella groups.
• The music composed for shows such as Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica can be a gateway for more classical music and famous composers.
• Electronic Music has had many different artists from different genres that have served as this across the years.
  • For many, Daft Punk have been a gateway band for a good part of the 1990s and 2000s.
  • Similarly, Aphex Twin is one of the most well-known ambient artists in the world, and is often the first one people listen to before exploring other ambient artists.
  • Skrillex is widely credited as the gateway artist to Dubstep. In fact, dubstep is often credited by American EDM fans as the genre that got them into electronic music in general, contributing to the massive EDM boom of The New '10s.
  • Armin Van Buuren and his long-running radio show A State of Trance is the gateway to all kinds of Trance.
  • LMFAO can be seen as a gateway into introducing EDM fans to rap, and vice-versa.
• Green Day, The Offspring, Against Me! and NOFX are all punk bands who often act as Gateways to more underground and DIY punk rock.
• The Police serve as a gateway for New Wave and '80s rock in general.
• Some of the more mainstream Nu Metal bands like Linkin Park, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, and Korn, while not particularly heavy (though heavy enough to be metal), have served as good Gateways to much heavier and varied sub-genres of the heavy metal musical umbrella (on another note, they also act as a gateway into rap for metalheads, and vice-versa).
  • And on that note, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dream Theater are common gateways into more obscure or specific subgenres of metal. A lot of people get into metal through Alice in Chains, too. For some people, Rammstein was the gateway band in metal.
  • System of a Down is a gateway band in metal, especially for people getting into death metal, noise metal, folk metal, and punk metal. With their Breakthrough Hitinvoked Toxicity, they could also be credited with making many of the more conservative metal fans less skeptic about alternative/nu-metal.
  • Some songs of Nightwish and Within Temptation making it into the pop music charts made and make some people interested in Symphonic Metal, if not Metal in general. Trans-Siberian Orchestra's music is a common staple of holiday radio, acting as another gateway for symphonic metal.
  • Ozzy Osbourne's solo career acted as a gateway to Black Sabbath and metal in general in the early 2000s, when other (proper) metal had a hard stand in the world of music.
  • Because of Guitar Hero, DragonForce was definitely some kids' first Power Metal band.
  • Getting into death metal? It's probably through one of the following: Cannibal Corpse, Death, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Behemoth, or The Black Dahlia Murder. If you started with thrash, the first four (plus Obituary, Deicide, and Entombed) are more likely, whereas people who started with metalcore or deathcore are more likely to cite the latter two (as well as Suffocation, Dying Fetus, and Job for a Cowboy).
  • Mötley Crüe is a definite gateway into Hair Metal and Glam Rock. The same can be said about parody act Steel Panther, while The Darkness got many British alties into the genres in the early 2000s.
  • Because of Slash's appearances in all sorts of media in the mid-to-late-1990s and the 2000s, Guns N' Roses were many pop fans' introduction to hard rock and heavy metal.
• Pendulum is this for Drum and Bass. Although before them, it was Goldie.
• The Prodigy brought an audience of alties and metalheads in The '90s to electronic dance music in general, thanks to being just harsh enough to appeal to them while maintaining their electronic roots.
• Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War's usage of Hispanic-styled music has led many to look into the style.
• Enya serves a gateway to Celtic music and New Age music.
• Nirvana and Pearl Jam serve as a gateway to grunge at first, and then to alternative music in general. Sometimes this also leads to non-mainstream music of other genres in general. Kurt Cobain in particular has drawn more attention to Daniel Johnston by wearing a Hi, How Are You shirt. Nirvana covering songs by artists like The Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Lead Belly on MTV Unplugged in New York also brought a whole audience to these artists.
• The Stooges and Ramones are a gateway to Punk Rock in general, due to being some of the first punk bands.
• Joy Division is often a gateway to all sorts of '70s and '80s punk, post-punk and goth bands.
• Queen often serves as people's introduction to a variety of Rock and Metal genres.
• Pink Floyd is this for Progressive Rock, due to their relative accessibility compared to some prog bands. Yes, Genesis and Rush are also common gateways for the same reason. Genesis is a somewhat interesting case, in which their notorious Genre Shift to pop rock meant that one could effectively use them as a gateway to progressive rock by going through their discography backwards, starting with We Can't Dance or Invisible Touch and slowly working down to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or further. Yes is a bilateral gateway artist, with the '80s "YesWest" lineup helping introduce prog fans to '80s hits in general, and the classic '70s lineup(s) helping introduce those brought on by "Owner of a Lonely Heart" to prog in general. Meanwhile, Rush got many metalheads into progressive rock with songs such as the Hard Rock-tinged "Tom Sawyer".
• Red Hot Chili Peppers and Talking Heads are a gateway to funk for many people. George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic are another big gateway into funk, as is James Brown, the Godfather of Soul himself.
• Bob Marley and the Wailers are the usual gateway into Reggae and dub. Also, they've covered many songs from the mento, calypso, soul, Doo-wop, funk and African genres, which means that hearing the originals can often attract people to those genres as well.
• The Clash are a gateway into many genres such as punk, rock 'n' roll, reggae and dub.
• Jamiroquai's early work in the acid jazz style is a gateway into Latin jazz.
• Many rap musicians who sample from groove and jazz records find this, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Grand Puba, Digable Planets, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and A Tribe Called Quest for instance all sample from Funk and Jazz records which often leads to people finding the origins of the samples.
• Chances are, if someone was born and raised in America and is a fan of any or all metal from Germany, either Rammstein, Accept or Scorpions was responsible.
• Japan (the band) and their solo work are known for introducing people to piano music such as Erik Satie as well as Japanese music such as Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sylvian's solo work also is a gateway into the ambient and new age genres.
• Outside of Japan, FLCL could be considered a gateway series for the music of The Pillows, and Japanese alternative and indie rock music as a whole.
• Due to the band's brief American pop radio success in the mid-2000s, Modest Mouse was a gateway band into the world of indie rock for many future fans of the genre.
• Any time a song is used in a movie/TV show/game/etc., it gets people into that song or band.
• Mumford & Sons is a gateway to the British Folk genre, and in turn indie music. Coldplay can also be considered a gateway into indie music.
  • Perhaps the best example of the last decade is "Kids" from Oracular Spectacular by MGMT. Without that, songs like "1901" by Phoenix and "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People wouldn't become popular. Both this and the above example of Mumford led to Adele having a worldwide smash and Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" hitting number one for weeks and weeks.
• Miles Davis for jazz in general; Kind of Blue in particular, but also, due to his many Genre Shifts and enormous fame, for a number of jazz sub-genres, including cool jazz, hard bop, post-bop, and especially fusion.
  • By virtue of the Peanuts specials, especially A Charlie Brown Christmas, there is the music of Vince Guaraldi.
  • The soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop has lead many to discover similar jazz and bebop music elsewhere, as well as other works from Yoko Kanno.
  • While he's best known as an actor, Jeff Goldblum's also a professional jazz pianist and after years of playing a weekly gig at The Rockwell in Los Angeles and occasionally showing off on talk shows and in movies, he and his band The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra released an album of jazz standards, The Capitol Studios Sessions, in 2018. It introduced much of his sizable fanbase to the music (especially Rat Pack-era material), showing that it isn't as "difficult" as it often appears to be, and in fact is often fun. It sold so well that a second album, I Shouldn't Be Telling You This, arrived the next year.
• For many in The '90s, Scatman John was a gateway to scat singing.
• Radiohead, thanks to their incredibly successful fusion of icy post-modern electronica and grungy alternative rock, can be a gateway to Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre, and other electronic artists for fans of Three Chords and the Truth who might have otherwise written off electronic music as 'fake' or boring.
• Eminem for hip-hop/rap. Being the most successful rapper, and an abnormality due to people's preconceptions of skin color with rap music, probably has something to do with it.
  • In particular, Eminem was a trail-blazer for getting Americans comfortable with explicit lyrics and shock content in the Top 40 mainstream. This is in part to many of his songs addressing the censorship his lyrics faced and provocatively asking about what harm he's actually doing.
  • Eminem also serves as a gateway for rock fans to get into hip-hop, in part because of his occasional Rap Rock albums, but also due to the way his angsty sensibility suits rock tastes better than the Boastful Rap content of radio hip-hop (at least until the rise of emo rap at the end of the 2010s).
  • This can work in the Lighter and Softer direction too. Eminem's early-career Subverted Kids' Show Teen Idol status and his habit of making Take Thats at pop stars also serves as a gateway into Teen Pop for fans of hip-hop and Classic Rock who had previously dismissed it. This particularly applies to his famous nemeses, *NSYNC and Britney Spears, both of whom have surprisingly Friendly Fandoms with Eminem Stans.
  • Many fans of Machine Gun Kelly got into Eminem after Eminem's Diss Track against him.
  • Kanye West as well, thanks to the critical acclaim he's garnered.
  • Long before either of them, though, there was Public Enemy and N.W.A.
  • In The '80s, it was probably Run–D.M.C. or Beastie Boys.
• The Temptations are a definite gateway to R&B and Soul music.
• 3OH!3 is the most successful crunkcore artist for better or worse, so it's safe to say they're a gateway.
• Justin Bieber has created a massive resurgence of teen pop. While many Bieberesque singers and boy bands started their careers after his took off, only one such act has had comparable success to Bieber: One Direction (and by extension their members' solo careers).
• Chances are Miku Hatsune (or Hatsune Miku) will be your first experience with Vocaloid.
• The Beatles:
  • For listeners who don't remember the 1960s (for reasons other than drugs), The Beatles can function as a gateway band for that decade's music and "oldies" in general.
  • The Beatles also made many people across the world aware of traditional Indian music, thanks to songs like "Norwegian Wood", "Love You To" and "Within You Without You". George Harrison's association with Ravi Shankar also made the musician more famous in the West. Not to mention the fact that the band going to India and invoking Southeast Asian culture and mythology in their lyrics also made many Westerners familiar with it.
  • Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has been shown to be a good intro to Avant-Garde Music; the production is psychedelic and weird, but the actual songs are accessible pop, based on an aesthetic Two Decades Behind and sounded comforting and nostalgic even at the time. It's especially good for children, since the lyrical content is whimsical rather than Darker and Edgier like a lot of the other experimental rock of that time - even the Higher Understanding Through Drugs references are limited to Double Entendre. Many a 10-year old fell in love with Sgt. Pepper, then moved on to Pet Sounds, and then went to decidedly spicy freak music like Trout Mask Replica, Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.
  • The Beatles also serve as a gateway for Bubblegum Music, if you want to go Lighter and Softer instead of Darker and Edgier. Bubblegum historian Bill Pitzonka, when asked how he got into the genre, said:
  I got into The Beatles. And then... instead of most people going from The Beatles to The Stones to Zep, The Doors, I went from The Beatles to The Monkees to The Archies to The Cowsills.
• The Beach Boys for '60s pop; Pet Sounds for Baroque Pop as well.
• The Rolling Stones covered so many blues standards that many rock fans discovered Blues acts like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and Robert Johnson thanks to them.
  • The Brian Jones-produced Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka introduced many rock fans to traditional Moroccan folk music.
  • This seems to be much of the purpose behind the "British Blues" scene and much of The British Invasion rock in general – to expose rock fans to blues, folk, jazz and early rock influences (African-American especially) by basically incorporating it into a more contemporary rock or rock-friendly electric blues style.
  • The Blues Brothers and its sequel has lead many film-goers to seek out blues, gospel, folk, and older pop music.
• If you're a rock fan who got into country, Gram Parsons or Lynyrd Skynyrd is most likely responsible.
• B.B. King, as the King of Blues.
  • Alternatively, Howlin' Wolf for the more "down home" but "heavy electric" brand of blues – or Jimmy Reed for the more "gentle" but still "heavy electric" brand of blues.
• Nine Inch Nails for Industrial Metal. Nine Inch Nails and Throbbing Gristle tend to be a lot of people's starting point for Industrial music overall.
• Jellyfish, Cheap Trick, The Who, The Cars and Big Star for Power Pop.
  • Due to Jellyfish's tendency to wear their myriad influences on their very colorful sleeves, it can equally be a Gateway Series for Baroque Pop, 1960s or 1970s pop, Alternative Rock, The British Invasion music, vintage bubblegum pop, even obscure influences like Henry Mancini or Hugo Montenegro. Certain Singer-Songwriter musicians like Harry Nilsson or Randy Newman apparently were strong influences on the band too.
  • Cheap Trick's distinctive style was influential on many different genres over their career, from Hair Metal, New Wave, Grunge, Pop Punk, and Arena Rock, and could have lately served as a gateway to any of those styles.
• Cocteau Twins and Beach House for Dream Pop; My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Lush, Catherine Wheel, Kitchens of Distinction, The Boo Radleys and Pale Saints for Shoegazing.
• Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate, Weezer, Thursday, Hawthorne Heights, and American Football for Emo.
• Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Suede for Britpop.
• John Williams is a common gateway into both film soundtracks and classical music. His soundtrack for Star Wars frequently appears on lists of essential classical music recordings for new classical music fans.
• Lana Del Rey and Lorde for Indie Pop.
• Frank Zappa has led many people to discover Captain Beefheart, by having the singer appear on records like Hot Rats and Bongo Fury and producing Trout Mask Replica. Zappa also made his audience appreciate modern classical music, especially dissonant works. If you listen a lot to his albums, you're bound to enjoy listening to difficult composers like Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schonberg, Alban Berg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Anton Webern better, since you're more used to this experimental sound.
• Ry Cooder's collaborations with Ali Farka Toure and Buena Vista Social Club made those local artists more famous worldwide.
• Jazz fusion artists, including Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorious, Weather Report and Joni Mitchell's mid-late '70s albums, introduced a lot of rock fans to jazz.
• Lots of Progressive Rock fans get into classical and jazz. It's not surprising, given that many prog musicians are steeped in these genres. It also goes the other way; plenty of classical and jazz fans get a toehold into rock through prog.
• Video game soundtracks are a major gateway into classical music for younger listeners, to the point where many orchestras now regularly hold concerts with video game music.
• Nobuo Uematsu in particular, with his extensive work on the Final Fantasy series, his love of using leitmotifs, and the acclaim his music has garnered in all forms, is a common entry point.
• BABYMETAL can be seen as gateway series for introducing metal fans to j-pop (or vice versa).
• The Sugarcubes, Björk and Sigur Rós are all major gateways into Icelandic rock and pop music.
• When it comes to Christian rock, Skillet and Red are two gateways among rock fans who normally are averse to the genre. Ambiguously Christian bands like Flyleaf also help.
• David Bowie: His Let's Dance album and persona was an era of very accessible commercial pop that can be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys '80s hits, serving as a gateway to his weirder stuff like The Thin White Duke, the musical theater soundtrack album for a musical that never existed, and the time he pretended to be an alien.
  • Bowie also earned a lot of fans from his role as Jareth in Labyrinth, due to the film being aimed at children who weren't old enough to understand all the Nietzsche references, cocaine and experimental content in his music. Eventually, those children grew up and checked out his back-catalog.
• Ludwig van Beethoven's most popular pieces such as "Für Elise", Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor (Moonlight), "Ode to Joy" and Symphony No. 5 in C minor have convinced many a listener to explore more Classical Music. It helps that Beethoven is perhaps the best-known composer in popular culture (movies about Saint Bernard's notwithstanding), so he's a logical starting place.
• Akira Yamaoka's soundtracks for the Silent Hill series have introduced a lot of people to electronic, industrial, and ambient music.
• Alternative Dance groups such as New Order and Depeche Mode tend to be bilateral gateway artists, helping introduce rock fans to Electronic Dance Music and dance music fans to Alternative Rock music by skillfully combining elements of both genres. New Order is a particularly notable example, due to them being the second incarnation of famed Post-Punk band Joy Division, who introduced more and more electronic elements into their sound as their career went on, a trend they continued to run with as New Order. It helps that Alternative Rock overall, with its stylistic variation, has historically been more open to electronic and dance influences, particularly in the U.K., than mainstream rock.
• Pieces from the Little Notebook, compiled and at least partly written by Johann Sebastian Bach, is a variant; it's considered "Baby's First Classical Music" because it is often used for music students as an introduction to playing classical music.
• Billy Joel and Elton John (among others) can act as a gateway into adult contemporary pop and rock.
• Billy Idol's punk-flavored brand of Arena Rock can be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys '80s hits, serving as a gateway to punk rock in general.
• Johnny Cash's American Recordings albums and Hootie & the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker's country solo career got many alties into Country Music.
• Pop fans getting into country may have had Carrie Underwood to thank.
  • The same applies to Shania Twain (for '90s pop fans), Taylor Swift (for 2000s bubblegum pop fans), and Kacey Musgraves.
• 10cc frontman Graham Gouldman's soundtrack for Animalympics got many furries into '70s Progressive Rock.
• In the '90s, Contemporary R&B artists like TLC, Destiny's Child, En Vogue, SWV, Janet Jackson, Mark Morrison, Des'ree, and Aaliyah acted as a gateway into traditional R&B, Soul and Gospel Music for non-urban audiences. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown did the same in the late-1980s, while Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé would serve that purpose in the 2000s.
• During The '90s, Savage Garden were a lot of tween girls' first Soft Rock band. The use of "I Want You" in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable also got many anime & manga fans into '90s bubblegum pop.
• Hall & Oates' unique brand of Rock crossed with R&B can be enjoyed by anyone who loves classic rock, serving as a gateway into R&B itself and its sister genres such as Gospel Music, Soul and even Hip-Hop.
• The Fallout games have introduced a generation of gamers to classic pop, country, and jazz songs from The '40s, The '50s, and The '60s. People who would otherwise most likely never have sought out that kind of music found themselves becoming fans of artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marty Robbins, and especially The Ink Spots after hearing their songs played on their Pip-Boy's radio.
• Taylor Swift's 2020 album folklore is what got several non-fans of Swift (or pop music in general) to appreciate her music and become fans, mainly due to it being a New Sound Album different from her earlier country and Synth-Pop albums and displaying a more stripped down and aesthetically honest approach.

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