Vaporwave is an internet music microgenre, aesthetic, and meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and it tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, digital technology, and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates 1990s web design and imagery, glitch art, anime, stylized Ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, Memphis Design geometric shapes, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, which was one of the first music genres to develop primarily through the internet. The style also evolved from 2000s post-noise and hypnagogic pop trends, as well as similar retro-revivalist and post-internet motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as Tumblr's seapunk. The genre was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin, and Ramona Langley, who each used various pseudonyms. Preceded by Lopatin's Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 and Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, Langley's 2011 album Floral Shoppe established a blueprint for the genre, and the movement subsequently built an audience on sites such as Last.fm, Reddit, and 4chan, while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to Bandcamp for distribution.
Musical Characteristics
Vaporwave is a hyper-specific subgenre, or "microgenre", that is both a form of electronic music and an art style; however, it is sometimes suggested to be primarily a visual medium. The genre is defined largely by its surrounding subculture, with its music inextricable from its visual accoutrements. Academic Laura Glitsos writes, "In this way, vaporwave defies traditional music conventions that typically privilege the music over the visual form." Musically, vaporwave reconfigures dance music from the 1980s and early 1990s through the use of chopped and screwed techniques, repetition, and heavy reverb. It is composed almost entirely from slowed-down samples, and its creation requires only the knowledge of rudimentary production techniques. However, some artists like Dan Mason create vaporwave music from scratch.
The name derives from "vaporware", a term for commercial software that is announced but never released. It builds upon the satirical tendencies of chillwave and hypnagogic pop, while also being associated with an ambiguous or ironic take on consumer capitalism and technoculture. Critic Adam Trainer writes of the style's predilection for "music made less for enjoyment than for the regulation of mood", such as corporate stock music for infomercials and product demonstrations. Academic Adam Harper described the typical vaporwave track as "a wholly synthesised or heavily processed chunk of corporate mood music, bright and earnest or slow and sultry, often beautiful, either looped out of sync and beyond the point of functionality."
Visual Aesthetic
Adding to its dual engagement with musical and visual art forms, vaporwave embraces the Internet as a cultural, social, and aesthetic medium. The visual aesthetic (often stylized as "ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ", with fullwidth characters) incorporates 1990s Web design and imagery, glitch art, and cyberpunk tropes, as well as anime, Greco-Roman statues, Memphis Milano geometric shapes, and 3D-rendered objects. VHS degradation is another common effect seen in vaporwave art. Generally, artists limit the chronology of their source material between Japan's economic flourishing in the 1980s and the September 11 attacks or dot-com bubble burst of 2001 (some albums, including Floral Shoppe, depict the intact Twin Towers on their covers). One vaporwave album that directly interrogates 9/11 is News at 11 (2016) by Cat System Corp. However, some vaporwave projects do use more recent samples; one example is John Zobele's 2017 album Social Justice Whatever, which primarily utilizes samples dating to the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Origins and Precursors
Pitchfork reviewed the album Life's a Gas (1996) by German musician Wolfgang Voigt under the name Love Inc. as evoking "the approach vaporwave producers would take 15 years later, stripping bits of ephemeral radio pop down to ghostly patinas and examining our relationships with the stray songs that rattle around in our memories."
Vaporwave originated on the Internet in the early 2010s as an ironic variant of chillwave and as a derivation of the work of hypnagogic pop artists like Ariel Pink and the "post-noise psychedelia" of James Ferraro and Spencer Clark's the Skaters, Pocahaunted and Emeralds, who were also characterized by the invocation of retro popular culture. It was one of many Internet microgenres to emerge in this era, alongside witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, cloud rap, and others. Vaporwave coincided with a broader trend involving young artists whose works drew from their childhoods in the 1980s.
"Chillwave" and "hypnagogic pop" were coined at virtually the same time, in mid-2009, and were initially considered interchangeable terms, though later differentiated after their styles perceptibly narrowed. Like vaporwave, they engaged with notions of nostalgia and cultural memory. Among the earliest hypnagogic acts to anticipate vaporwave was Matrix Metals and his album Flamingo Breeze (2009), which was built on synthesizer loops. Around the same time, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) uploaded a collection of plunderphonics loops to YouTube surreptitiously under the alias sunsetcorp. These clips were taken from his audio-visual album Memory Vague (June 2009). Washed Out's "Feel It All Around" (2009) is often cited as a chillwave touchstone, though its direct influence on vaporwave is less direct.
Rise and Subgenres
Following the wider exposure of vaporwave in 2012, a wealth of subgenres and offshoots emerged, such as future funk, mallsoft, signalwave, vapornoise, utopian virtual, late night lo-fi, vaportrap, slushwave, and hardvapour, although most have waned in popularity. The genre also intersected with fashion trends such as streetwear and various political movements. After the mid-2010s, vaporwave was frequently described as a "dead" genre. The general public came to view it as a facetious internet meme, a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. While claims that vaporwave is dead have followed the genre since its inception, the musical style continues to evolve and branch and maintains healthy album sales well into the 2020s.
Later in the 2010s, the genre spawned a viral internet trend known as Simpsonwave along with a revival of interest in Japanese ambient music and city pop. Political offshoots of the style, such as fashwave and juchewave emerged, while in the early 2020s, styles such as "barber beats" gained popularity.
Vaporwave in AI Image and Video Prompts
In the context of AI image and video generation, vaporwave is a widely used aesthetic keyword. Prompt writers invoke it to evoke a specific retro-futuristic, nostalgic, and surreal visual style. Typical keywords include "vaporwave", "aesthetic", "glitch art", "VHS", "anime", "Greek statue", "palm tree", "neon", "cyberpunk", "1990s web design", and "fullwidth characters". Models trained on internet data, such as those from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Stability AI, recognize these terms and produce images with characteristic pink and teal color palettes, grid floors, and sun-drenched landscapes.
Prompt writers often combine vaporwave with other styles to create hybrid looks, such as "vaporwave Cyberpunk" or "vaporwave Synthwave". The style is also used in video generation to create dreamlike, slowed-down loops reminiscent of music videos. The Generative AI community on platforms like Reddit shares and refines prompts, contributing to the style's evolution in digital art.
Notable Practitioners and Works
Key figures in vaporwave's history include James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin, and Ramona Langley. Ferraro's Far Side Virtual (2011) and Lopatin's Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010) are considered foundational. Langley's Floral Shoppe (2011), released under the alias Macintosh Plus, is perhaps the most iconic album, with its cover art featuring a Greco-Roman statue and its track "リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー" becoming a viral hit. Other notable artists include Cat System Corp, known for albums like News at 11 (2016), and Dan Mason, who creates original compositions in the style.
In the AI art space, many creators use vaporwave prompts to generate album covers, social media posts, and digital art. The style's association with internet culture and nostalgia makes it a popular choice for Prompt engineering, with tutorials and examples shared across Reddit and other communities.
Legacy and Cultural Impact
Vaporwave's influence extends beyond music and art. It has shaped internet aesthetics, inspired fashion trends, and contributed to the revival of interest in 1980s Japanese city pop and ambient music. Its satirical take on consumerism has been analyzed in academic circles, and its visual language has been adopted in advertising and media. As an AI prompt style, vaporwave remains a staple, demonstrating the enduring appeal of its nostalgic, surreal, and critical engagement with digital culture.