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What Does Indie Mean Today?

What Does Indie Mean Today?

Public Opinion
April 10, 2024

A Note from Jack

Whenever someone comes on Track Star I ask what kind of music they listen to. If it’s 90s hip hop or classic rock, I have a pretty good idea of what they listen to. More often than not though, especially with younger people, the answer is “indie,” which is a pretty hard thing to define. I’ll often follow up by asking for some of their favorite artists and the answers are all over the place. Which artists do you think of when you think about the term indie?

– Jack

What Does Indie Mean Today?

By Quinn Moreland

In 2012, Taylor Swift mocked a pretentious ex’s fondness for “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” Almost a decade later, Swift released an “indie” album of her own, 2020’s folklore, made alongside two of the genre’s biggest names, Bon Iver and The National’s Aaron Dessner. Here, indie implied an organic, homemade quality that wasn’t entirely inaccurate—Swift recorded her vocals at her personal home studio. But Taylor Swift is famously quite popular and in the most traditional sense, indie equals independent, meaning music that is not financially affiliated with a major label. If Swift and the DIY band selling cassette tapes at the basement show can both be called indie, has the word lost all meaning?

Indie as it applies to music was popularized in the ’80s in the U.K. as scrappy labels like Rough Trade, Factory, and Mute upended the music industry. Born from the punk ideology of championing authenticity over skill, indie was a philosophy, a style, an aesthetic. It was often proudly amateurish, a defiant rejection of the technical perfectionism upheld by mainstream rock and pop. The ethos resonated over in the United States with labels like Los Angeles’ SST, Washington D.C.’s Dischord, and Olympia, Washington’s K.

By the late ’80s, the lines between indie and the mainstream had blurred. In the UK, indie had grown into a genre—a predominantly guitar-based sound—with its own chart. The same thing happened across the pond with college rock, music played on campus-run alternative radio stations. Previously independent bands increasingly began to sign with majors, causing inter-scene tensions and accusations of “selling out” (see R.E.M.’s Green, The Replacements’ Tim, or Sonic Youth’s Goo.) The foremost example is Nirvana, who jumped from Seattle’s Sub Pop to DGC Records, a Universal subsidiary and kicked off an alternative rock boom as major labels searched for their own grungy goldmine.

Fast forward a decade. It’s the early 2000s and The O.C.’s beloved dweeb Seth Cohen is preaching the emotional acuity of a band called Death Cab for Cutie. Though they would soon sign to a major, Death Cab came to epitomize a pervasive image of indie, that of the sensitive-to-a-fault hipster bro.

By the mid-2010s, indie had nearly completed its journey from a sensibility to the marketing tool that it is today. Canadian raconteurs Arcade Fire won a Grammy for album of the year, Beyoncé and JAY-Z were spotted at a Grizzly Bear concert, and Bon Iver worked with Kanye West.

Which brings us to today—is indie just an identity for artists like Swift to try out for an album cycle or two? What does it mean to describe Maggie Rogers, who has been signed to a major label since her viral breakout, as having an indie sound? Where does that leave artists who are self-releasing their music on platforms like Bandcamp? Considering these questions has encouraged me to look beyond the descriptive convenience of indie—I’m not convinced anyone really knows what it means anymore.

Track Star Presents: Angie McMahon

So many people have told me over the last few months that Angie’s record was their favorite thing they listened to all year. It’s definitely one of mine. Whether she’s on stage with her band or just playing solo in our studio, Angie is f***ing rockstar. See for yourself…