Thr best pop mudic6/29/2023 ![]() Beat Happening's self-titled debut in 1985 would become the cornerstone for the lo-fi fuzzy intimacy of twee and anti-folk. Indie pop saw its first archetypes emerge in the '80s, which would set the table for the sound that still most often defines the genre. Indie rock was posited as an antidote to the slick, mainstream machinations of major pop artists, with its raw, lo-fi aesthetic hinting at a greater "sincerity" and the populist sensibilities of punk rock. The term indie music was shorthand for a kind of earnest, sincere guitar-centric rock 'n roll. Tracing indie music back to the '80s offers a chance to assess the style in its purest form. Indie started to branch out into its major tributaries - indie rock, punk, post-punk, and indie pop. The river of indie music started to flow in earnest in the '80s, becoming a recognizable genre in its own right. Which means that indie pop crystallizes into the recognizable genre we know today at the same time, even though it still wasn't called by that name for much of the decade. Indie music truly comes into its own in the 1980s. Buzzcocks' "Ever Fall In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)?".Punk, pop punk, alternative, and indie rock are pretty synonymous in their early decades. It's clear that much early punk rock was really just sped up rock and pop, with the much-dreaded Chuck Berry riffs blasting off over speedfreak rhythm sections and feral vocals. It's like that scene in High Fidelity, where Dick plays Sarah Gilbert's character the Stiff Little Fingers and a bunch of clueless punters ask if it's Green Day. While the stripped down minimalism and frenetic, furious fretwork of "Breakdown" or "Boredom" no doubt sounded downright misanthropic and alien in 1977, the infectious chord changes, hummable guitars, and chant-a-long lyrics just sound like a feel-good bop 40 years after the fact. While the original conception of indie pop refers to crate-digging hipsters with a penchant for jangly '60s pop, our expanded definition includes all things catchy and melodic. Even the most abrasive, uncompromising artists likely have a shred of pop about them, as well.įor the sake of this exploration, we'll use the Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP as indie pop's Year Zero. With so many musicians vying for our limited time and resources, everybody needs to know how to appeal, how to stand out from the line noise. With so many artists forsaking the major label machine, crafting their catchy bangers in their bedrooms rather than multi-million dollar studios, it could be argued that a huge majority of musicians are DIY as they come. These days, being punk as hell and liking pop music aren't mutually exclusive, as we can see from the meteoric success of artists like Frankie Cosmos. Music historian Emily Dolan describes indie pop as having the DIY, stripped-down minimalism of Punk rock with "the sweetness and catchiness of pop music." While bands like Josef K and Orange Juice are peak examples of geeky hipsters with deep record collections and a penchant for DIY, today's broadened definition of Indie Rock allows us to turn the dial a little further back. Music journalist Simon Reynolds once pithily observed "Indie music was created in Scotland," referencing the rise of Glasgow's Postcard Records.
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