We need to start with the main and absolutely obvious thing: indie rock or indie pop are not genres, because there is no such thing as an “indie” genre. The word “indie” comes from the English word “independent”. In popular culture (whether it’s music, movies, or video games, for example), the word “indie” is used to label products produced by small, independent companies.
When it comes to music, the prefix “indie” should mean that an artist or band collaborates with an independent label – a company that produces and promotes artists’ work, their audio or video recordings on various media, but does not belong to any of the music industry “giants”: Universal, Sony or Warner. It is believed that artists signed to independent labels have more creative freedom and the ability to create what they want, not what will sell better. Also, for obvious reasons, artists who work independently without having contracts with labels have the right to be called independent. But now the concept of “indie” is so distorted that it doesn’t always work that way. And this is a problem.
Okay, let’s just try to come to terms with the fact that musicians on major labels can sometimes be identified as “indie.” Obviously, it’s not because of their collaboration with an independent company. What are the other reasons? Most often, it happens because of the inability or inability to find a genre category for what you hear. This can be forgiven to any ordinary listener who is not supposed to know genres well, but it cannot be forgiven to respected music publications whose journalists write their reviews of certain albums, because in this case it is nothing more than elementary professional incompetence. Here are some reasons why “not indie” can be identified as “indie”:
- It feels like music “made with your own hands,” on your own, without the involvement of a large number of producers or songwriters. Or it doesn’t feel like it, but it actually is. Indeed, independent musicians usually write both lyrics and music themselves, handle their own record production and other technical issues, or involve one specialist in this process rather than a whole team. But this is how Tame Impala, for example, works: Kevin Parker writes his own songs, produces them himself, does mastering and develops the artistic concept. Does this approach give him the right to call himself an “independent musician”, i.e. “indie”? No, because his albums are released under the Interscope label. Does the fact that he releases his music on this label, and not on some conventional Marathon Artists, make it bad, or does it devalue his work? Not at all;
- The use of the so-called “lo-fi aesthetics”, which gives the impression that the songs were recorded not in a modern recording studio with expensive equipment, but, relatively speaking, in the musician’s own living room on a smartphone, and then mixed and mastered in the same living room on his own laptop. Sometimes this can be true, but more often than not, it’s not, if we’re talking about musicians like the ones mentioned above;
- The emphasis is on authenticity and sincerity, on the atmosphere, not on virtuosity or skill. This is a very conditional and relative category, because skilled performers with a wide vocal range are not always insincere, and outstanding and virtuoso musicians who approach the process of creating music in an extremely creative way are not always insincere. And those who play and sing so-so but think they are good at it are not always sincere. Most often, what is considered sincere in music (and not only in music) is something that has a personal story behind it, and a certain meaning.