The Definitive History of Shoegaze by Noah Wong

Shoegaze is an experimental genre of rock music, beginning between the late 80s and early 90s with the pioneering bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride. All early shoegaze bands were from Britain, or in My Bloody Valentine’s case, Ireland. Although early bands produced a new and creative sound by pushing waves of reverb through guitars, adding in bass, drums, and soft vocals to create rock songs with only a few chords, music critics didn’t initially take too kindly to shoegaze. The name “shoegaze” was started as an insult due to how the guitarists stood still while looking at their shoes onstage. The movement was also called “The scene that celebrates itself” because shoegaze bands would often attend each other’s concerts. While their sound was unique and groundbreaking, it was not unheard of. Other bands had experimented with similar ideas, but none had based their music around them. Shoegaze was influenced by bands like Cocteau Twins and Jesus and Mary Chain.


Jesus and Mary Chain’s first album Pyschocandy featured guitar tone filled with fuzz. The noise is aggressive and often jarring, but the songwriting is very catchy, with few chords and simple drum beats. The reverb filled album was the one of the first to push the guitar to its limit of sound. This sound was borrowed by many shoegaze bands. Though Jesus and Mary Chain were largely influential, they weren’t classified as shoegaze.

Cocteau Twins had a very different sound from Jesus and Mary Chain, but were just as important in the development of shoegaze. Their music was dreamy and calm. They treated the vocals as an instrument by singing random words and phrases in an ethereal sweet tone. The lyrics to their 1984 song “Ivo” are “Peep-oh, Peach blow, Pandora, Pompadour, Pale leaf, Pink sweet, Persephone”. These lyrics are nonsensical and bizarre, which force the listener to focus on the melody. “Her rolling, ululating syllables impart the kind of feelings that verbal communication is notoriously ill-suited for, and besides, when she swoops between the extremes of her range on a devastating number like "Lorelei," you'll swear you're speaking her language," says John Doran in his article on the Cocteau Twins’ influence, “The actual lyrical content doesn’t matter here. What is important is that, in tandem with Guthrie’s wall of sound production, a blank canvas is presented to the listener in order to project his or her own imagery and meaning”. Delicate dreamy female vocals are prominent in many other shoegaze bands, like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Lush. 

Cocteau Twins had a very dreamy sound. Labeled under the genre of dream pop, Cocteau Twins music is carefully put together. Unlike arena rock, which showcased epic guitar solos and heart-racing drums, Cocteau Twins make sure their instruments mix well and combine to create an atmospheric sound. This focus on the texture of the music is very common in shoegaze. Bands try to create a certain atmosphere with their reverb heavy guitars. The sound itself created a story or scene that the listener could visualize. This was very different from other popular music at the time. Cocteau Twins were very similar to the shoegaze genre and influenced it greatly; however, they never quite embraced shoegaze music. They set the stage for the innovators to take the next step.

In terms of strictly shoegaze music, the album Loveless by My Bloody Valentine is a pinnacle of the genre. It was highly acclaimed by critics when it was released in 1991. It continues to be largely influential to this day, and was probably the closest shoegaze got to becoming a mainstream genre. In order to see how My Bloody Valentine became the most important shoegaze band, their first album must be examined closer.  Isn’t Anything was released in 1988 by Creation Records. The band members consisted of Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butchers on guitar and vocals, Debbie Googe on bass, and Colm Ciosoig on Drums. Kevin Shields wrote the songs and was the main creative force behind the band. The album cover is a blurry close up of three of band members, with their faces covered in a light that obscures all features. The picture conjures up a dreamy and calm presence. It matches the music in its hazy and unclear features.

Isn’t Anything is distinct from Loveless.  While they have some similar aspects, they are still miles apart.  Bilinda Butchers’ sweetly sung “oohs” on “Lose My Breathe” are reminiscent of Cocteau Twins. The drumming is aggressive and fanatic. Colm’s quick snare fills keep the songs moving. The bass can be dark and brooding, like in “Feed Me Your Kiss”, or barely heard in the background, like in “Lose My Breathe”. The main focus, as with all shoegaze music (or in this case, pre-shoegaze) is the guitar. The guitars are dissonant and at times hazy and a bit fuzzy, but never to the extreme of Loveless. Shields turns up the bizarre noises for some songs like “Cupid Come” where the guitar drone sounds like a moan, or “All I Need” where the guitar is bright and layered. The closest Shields gets to “Loveless” is the first song “Soft as Snow (but Warm Inside)” where the guitar pulls back and forth to make a sound like a hollow version of “Only Shallow”, Loveless’s first song.

From their debut album to the masterpiece Loveless a lot happened to My Bloody Valentine. Much of the recording of Loveless is surrounded in mystery and speculation. It took two and a half years to record, costing upwards of two hundred thousand pounds, which is “an almost unheard of amount of time and money”. Their drummer Colm was sick and homeless during most of the recording and only played drums on two tracks. The rest of the songs had drums that were programmed to recreate Colm’s signature style from Isn’t Anything without him actually playing. Also, their bassist Debbie doesn’t play a note on Loveless. Instead, Shields played the bass part to get the right sound for his vision of the album.  The main cause of the long and expensive recording period was Shields' endless quest for perfection.

The critical reception of Loveless was mostly high praise. McGonigal writes, “Translucent. Genius. Shimmering. Genius. Glorious. Genius. Beautiful. Etc. It’s hard to think of a superlative that hasn’t been showered its way at one point or another. And of course, when you pile that much praise so high up into the sky, it inevitably reads as impossible hype” (McGonigal 2007). The album is so celebrated that listening can seem overwhelming. It has made its way onto many top album lists. Rolling Stone magazine put it at number thirty-nine for their top albums of the 90s.  Pitchfork, the internet blog, has it at number two, and NME magazine has it as number eighteen for best albums of all time.

Despite its influence, no album ever truly captures the sound of the guitar as Loveless did. Most songs are obscured in the noisy guitar that drown out the other instruments. Ironically, the entire album begins with four snare hits before the guitar dives into its endless pilgrimage.  “Only Shallow”, the first song, surges back and forth with Bilinda Butcher’s soft voice barely heard. The third song, “Touched” is only 57 seconds and the only song not written by Shields. It is the most bizarre song on the album, constructed by Colm with a sampler. In “Sometimes” an acoustic guitar plays along with the wall of sound provided by the electric guitar. This tethers the song and is reminiscent of a simple guitar ballad. With such soft vocals you are able to hear the melody, but only sometimes can you pick out the words. This makes you focus on the melody, which often is forgotten in other rock songs. In “I Only Said” the guitar sings a simple high melody throughout the song with waves of reverb in the background. The last song “Soon” is vastly different from the rest of the album.  It starts off with a drum beat that remains audible throughout the song. This song is closer to a dance track with the drums and guitar part playing off each other. It fades out to end the album.

Another band that helped start the shoegaze genre was Ride, a band from Oxford Britain that mixed styles of shoegaze and Britpop. Their debut album Nowhere was released in 1990 before Loveless has the reverb effects on guitar, but vocals are mixed high and can clearly be heard. Nowhere was also an influential album. Ride adds strings to a few of their songs to give the songs a beautiful melody. “Vapour Trail” has a lovely string melody that is obscured by grand spacey guitar until the end, when they pull away the guitar to reveal a melancholy string part. Ride offered a style of shoegaze that mixed shimmering guitars with British vocals and upbeat songs.

Slowdive, a band from England, were much more dreamy than My Bloody Valentine and Ride. They inspired many dream pop bands, a genre similar to shoegaze with less guitars and more synthesizers. Their sound at the time was almost ambient with their melodic, atmospheric sound. They even recruited Brian Eno, an influential ambient musician and producer to collaborate on two songs, “Sing” and “Here She Comes” and play keyboards. They offered a different side of shoegaze that downplayed the role of reverb heavy guitars, but highlighted dreamy and spacious music.

With the disappearance of the main innovators of shoegaze the genre began to decline. Shoegaze made its way to America with bands like the Lilies, but never went mainstream. My Bloody Valentine broke up after Loveless and didn’t release another album until 2013, 22 years after Loveless. Ride disbanded in 1996 after two mediocre albums that were hardly considered shoegaze. Slowdive broke up in 1995. The genre disappeared from the Earth, but was not forgotten.
In the early 2000’s shoegaze reemerged, this time under a new name. Called ‘nugaze' (new-shoegaze), it brought back old shoegaze habits while adding a few of its own. Some cite the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation as the reason for shoegaze’s revival. It was put together by Kevin Shields and included shoegaze style songs, and even “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine during a scene that showed the city of Toyko.  Shields, the man who helps create shoegaze, also helped bring it back.

Bands like The Radio Dept. could also have been the reason for shoegaze’s revival. Releasing their debut album in 2003, Lesser Matters, they combined indie rock with shoegaze. This brought back an older genre and blended it with a new, popular genre. Their songs are quaint sad indie rock songs with layered guitars.  The Radio Dept. was able to give shoegaze new life. Even though bands like The Radio Dept. have created their own sounds, the shadow of My Bloody Valentine still remains.

Other bands emerged and contributed to the nugaze sound. They offered their own take on shoegaze, most by mixing in another style of music with it. M83, a band from France, released Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts in 2003. This album combined elements of shoegaze with electronic music. This mixing of genres gave shoegaze more room to grow and more sound to explore. It was well acclaimed and was another step in bringing shoegaze back into the music scene.

Shoegaze has found a new hold in Japan recently. Japan recently emerged as an innovator of rock and electronic music that may soon rival America and Britain. Many of the bands from Japan have been inspired by My Bloody Valentine and early shoegaze. In 2013 a group of Japanese artists released Yellow Loveless, a tribute album of Loveless covers with not only shoegaze bands like Toyko Shoegazer and Lemon’s Chair, but also more popular groups like Boris and Shonen Knife.  This album ranges from very similar covers, Toyko Shoegazer’s “Only Shallow”, to EDM covers, “Touched” by The Sodom Project, to poppy renditions like Shonen Knife’s “When You Sleep”.  It shows the effect of bands like My Bloody Valentine on the Japanese music scene.

Japanese Shoegaze might be recently exploding and forming a large scene, but it started soon after Nugaze arose. Asobi Seksu formed in New York in 2001, but features Yuki Chikudate, a Japanese lead singer that sings in both Japanese and English. Their second album Citrus was released in 2006 and received good reviews.  They brought playful indie rock songs and shimmery guitars and added in dreamy singing and spacey reverb driven guitars. Once again, mixing genres to fit the new musical sensations with old shoegaze styles. Their song “Thursday” is catchy with peaceful English lyrics that describe a lost relationship. Yuki sings, “The autumn wind feels, as if it were you, and swayed through the fields, where I once held you.” The end of the song breaks into a dreamy wonderland with Yuki singing “ohs” with background vocals barely heard through waves of guitars. While Asobi Seksu is technically an American band they were one of the first to incorporate Japanese vocals and sparked Japanese interest in shoegaze. They broke up in 2013, but by then shoegaze had successfully moved onto Japan.

Since My Bloody Valentine disbanded no band has taken over as the poster-child for shoegaze. Luckily My Bloody Valentine returned in 2013 with a long awaited follow up to Loveless. It would be daunting to return after 20 years from one of the most acclaimed albums of the 90s, but My Bloody Valentine delivered. Taking some recordings from before their breakup, they crafted another great album met with more critical acclaim. Kevin Shields' influence on shoegaze and music as a whole has been integral despite only releasing three albums.

Overall shoegaze currently is doing very solid. Bands today are still putting out music with the same aesthetics plus their own new different style. Bands like Nothing, Whirr, and PinkShinyUltraBlast are keeping shoegaze alive and well today. While the godfathers of shoegaze My Bloody Valentine may never release another album, they have created a legacy for others to follow. Their unique use of guitars and vocals shows that rock music can still change and evolve. Their sound is what brought back shoegaze in early 2000s and it still propels bands today to try and recapture it.