Ever heard music that is So Bad, It's Good? Well, some amateurs happen to be quite interesting musicians.
"Outsider music" (the name is a variation on the concept of "outsider art"
) is music "sung" and "played" by amateurs who obviously are far removed from being professional talents. They sing off-key, can't carry a tune, can't play their instruments, are unable to read music or write bizarre, sometimes Painful Rhyme lyrics without any sense of song structure. To most people these musicians are basically something to laugh at, but fans of outsider music look beyond the cheap and easy laugh. As it so happens many of these bad musicians have a refreshing unconventional sound, far removed from the monotone, sterile and corporate controlled hits you hear in the Top 40. If they were musicians who consciously wrote cacophonic or otherwise bizarre music they would probably be hailed as innovators. The thing however is that these amateur musicians are actually more genuine and heartfelt in making creative and original music than professional musicians who try to sound different, but consciously never go so far that they would alienate their audience completely.
The genre itself has been around for a long time, with predecessors such as The Cherry Sisters and Florence Foster Jenkins. The rise of Camp in The '60s led to interest in these types of performers. The Shaggs and Wild Man Fischer managed to gain some attention, and one unquestionable outsider managed to get an actual hit single and some genuine stardom: Tiny Tim.
The "outsider music" concept was codified in The '90s by Irwin Chusid, a longtime DJ on New Jersey-based non-commercial radio station WFMU and aficionado of non-mainstream music. Chusid began featuring outsider artists on his regular radio show, and even started a spinoff show devoted entirely to them, called Incorrect Music, which ran from 1997 to 2002. In 2000 Chusid published Songs In The Key Of "Z": The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, where he devoted several chapters to artists deemed outsider musicians. Some of them are mentally unstable, some plain eccentric, others merely naïve and innocent, some very social like Tiny Tim, others don't want to see anyone, like Jandek, but they all share an adventurous, authentic and unusual style of music. Chusid also went to great lengths to differentiate between self-consciously odd professional artists like Frank Zappa, Velvet Underground and/or The Sex Pistols and musicians who are clearly not aware how eccentric and unique they sound, like Tiny Tim, Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis. The latter category are the real "outsiders". Chusid notes that the line between those two groupings can sometimes be quite thin, and he included Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart in the book, even though they're famous Cult Classic musicians; Barrett in fact started in the "self-consciously odd" category (being the original frontman of Pink Floyd) before his declining mental health thrust him into outsider status. Even legitimate Classical Music composers like Charles Ives (an insurance executive who composed experimental music on the side) and Erik Satie (an eccentric loner who largely avoided established serious music circles) can fit in this category.
Chusid's book is still the best introduction to the genre. He's also put together some compilation albums with music by these artists than can be ordered online.
List of outsider musicians:
- Farrah Abraham
- 2012 - My Teenage Dream Ended
- GG Allin — A very prominent example
- Syd Barrett
- 1970 - The Madcap Laughs
- 1970 - Barrett
- Captain Beefheart: More self-aware and musically knowledgeable than most outsiders, but his eccentric style qualifies him.
- Cat Power (her early stuff)
- The Cherry Sisters
- Roky Erickson
- Corey Feldman
- 2016 - Angelic 2 The Core
- Wild Man Fischer
- Crispin Glover
- Bruce Haack
- Louis "Moondog" Hardin
- William Hung
- Charles Ives
- Jandek
- Florence Foster Jenkins: The worst opera singer of all time! She gathered a following just from people who couldn't stop laughing at her voice.
- Daniel Johnston
- 1983 - Hi, How Are You
- 1983 - Yip/Jump Music
- Rodd Keith: An authentically talented but supremely troubled man who gained attention long after his 1974 suicide as the most masterful performer in the genre of "song poem" music, i.e. the music version of Vanity Publishing.
- The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
- Tendon Levey
- Shamus M'Cool*
- Joe Meek: Basically the British Phil Spector, but arguably crazier, if you can imagine.
- Mrs. Miller
- R. Stevie Moore
- The Most Ever Company
- Onkel Konkel and His Konkelbar
- Lucia Pamela
- Harry Partch: Avant-garde pioneer who devised his own tonal scale and invented new instruments to accommodate it.
- Ednaldo Pereira
- Ariel Pink
- Sondra Prill
- Emily Pukis and the Vagrants note
- The Residents
- Erik Satie
- The Shaggs: Possibly the most uncoordinated band to ever record.
- William Shatner: His singing career is basically Spoken Word in Music.
- 1968 - The Transformed Man
- B.J. Snowden
- Skip Spence: Basically the Canadian-American Syd Barrett, as a founding member of Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape who likewise developed LSD-aggravated mental health issues. His eccentric 1969 album Oar is considered by some critics to be the first example of lo-fi music.
- The Space Lady
- Submarine Man
- David Tanny
- Shooby Taylor
- Tiny Tim: Still the most famous of these musicians; a One-Hit Wonder for "Tip-Toe Through The Tulips", also known to younger generations for his Cover Version of "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight".
- Tonetta
- Sid Vicious: Yes, the one from the Sex Pistols.
- 1979 - Sid Sings
- Wesley Willis
- Wing
- Zoogz Rift
