The Vaguely Specific Oxymoron That Epitomises the Modern Music Industry

This article was originally published on Far Out

It’s no secret that much of what the music industry publishes is engineered for mass appeal, which goes a long way toward explaining the commercial sector’s growing homogeneity. Amid the manufactured illusion of choice that allows this to continue without any resistance is a contradiction hiding in plain sight that neatly captures the current state of the business.

‘Indie pop’ has been a widely used classification in music since the 1980s, although the incongruity of this tag is more stark now than ever before. In the most literal sense, independent music refers to artists not signed to a major label, while popular music is essentially material cultivated and distributed by those same record companies.

These contrasting tenets had previously coalesced into a hybrid, composed in equal measure of elements from each side and legitimised by a fair balance. Today, however, they seem to have fused into a one-dimensional entity, resulting from one force almost entirely obscuring the other.

Indie, which was never a genre, has now become one. As with punk, it has been reduced to a costume and gimmick, the final act in a shift that has blunted the term’s original (and literal) meaning. Now, all it really takes for even blockbuster stars to be deemed ‘indie’ artists is a certain look. In fact, fashion is the closest thing to genre in the commercial music space today.

Not to take away from their talent as musicians, the music media has largely played into The Last Dinner Party’s contrivance as an indie band despite their alliance with Island Records. Although they aren’t categorised as ‘indie’, Greta Van Fleet is also a core part of the same trend that has allowed what is essentially a ’70s cosplay act to transcend that designation.

Musicians with a glossy sound are commonly deemed ‘pop’ (which also technically isn’t a genre), even if they haven’t reached mainstream consciousness. In all fairness, that style of music is accessible to all creators, and its broad appeal leaves room for independent artists to break through without any backing from industry gatekeepers.

Artists like Royel Otis and Vampire Weekend, who started out independent but were evidently aiming for pop-level fame from the jump, have been able to go major that way. The Arctic Monkeys, on the other hand, continued publishing their records on an independent label through their transition from garage rock to baroque pop. Then, you have The Strokes, who essentially defined 21st-century indie while only ever releasing albums in partnership with a major label.

All these inconsistencies have paved the way for indie pop as we know it: the greatest paradox of the modern era. Acts like Foster the People, The 1975 and Glass Animals are all major-label, chart-friendly artists with a particular aesthetic and presentation that’s now deemed ‘indie’. Sort of like Kendrick Lamar talking about spearheading ‘the revolution’ during an event sponsored by Apple Music, this is the ultimate sham because their work bears no trace of independence from the tried-and-tested formulas of the marketplace. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pop music, but to cloak it as anything other than what it is seems dishonest.

From the blues to rock ‘n’ roll to hip-hop, no tradition is safe from the longstanding practice of major labels mining the underground for the next big thing. That’s how the blues became Eric Clapton, rock ‘n’ roll became The Monkees and hip-hop became Drake. To broaden distribution, the product is typically diluted, sanitised or whitewashed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because even Nirvana’s colossal popularity traces back to the punk circuit, but it’s important to note that the music industry’s modus operandi has long been to intrude on self-made spaces and absorb their components into a larger whole until they lose their culture, community and presence entirely.

Indie pop epitomises how genres rarely exist in mainstream music anymore. The lines have blurred such that anyone can work with anyone and everyone is now everything, leaving artistic identity completely out of focus.

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