The Indie Renaissance
On October 21, 2022, Spotify’s server crashed because of Taylor Swift’s latest album release. Her album Midnights has topped charts, broken records, and redefined the standards of how big an album release can be. In a world with an impossibly vast array of new artists and new content, the attention to Swift’s new album is especially impressive.
This album was not made in the performative, pop style of her 2014 album 1989, nor does it have the hip-hop influences of Reputation. Instead, it is a dreamy, late-night listen with vintage synthesizers, voice distortion, and drum machines. Far from the upbeat, danceable music of the 2000s or 2010s, Midnights has a distinctly new, introspective feeling, and that sleepy ambience is now coloring the lives of millions of fans worldwide. It is different, even, from her 2020 sister albums Folklore and Evermore; whereas these albums highlighted her acoustic storytelling and instrumental interludes, Midnights launches listeners into the dreamy world of bass-beats and reverb.
What can we take from this new landscape of music—where one of the biggest pop icons of Gen Z’s time turned away from true pop in favor of the sleepy world of alt-synth, experimental music?
When I first listened to Midnights, I was instantly reminded of Lorde’s 2017 album Melodrama, which was an indie pop album curated with an electronic, synthesized feel and deeply personal themes. It positions Midnights as an “indie” album, in the sense that Midnights also plays with the ethereal styles of artists like Lana Del Ray, Lorde, and St. Vincent. And yet Swift, who is signed to Republic Records and worth $450 million, seems like the furthest person from the traditional working-on-the-bedroom-floor indie artist. In fact, all of the aforementioned artists also exist far from that rugged, home-grown style of music production and instead work like Swift in the heavily commercial sphere. Indie, or “independent,” artists began as a term to refer to music made without ties to a record label company. It now connotes an aesthetic reflective of an anti-radio, experimental attitude. Maybe Swift isn’t an indie artist, per say, but she and other dreamy artists are part of a movement that produces traditionally indie-pop sounds and gains mainstream popularity.
Take artist Harry Styles and his 2022 release of Harry’s House. Similar to Swift, Styles is a pop icon, worth close to $100 million, and signed to Columbia Records and Erskine. However, despite his apparent fame, this latest synthesized, experimental album ebbed its way into what can be considered thematically “indie” music. Additionally, as artists like Phoebe Brigers, Billie Eilish, and The 1975 gain increasing popularity, there is a movement towards the mainstream popularization of what was once considered alternative and niche. There are fewer iconic pop superstars (like Britney Spears and the boy bands of the early 2000s), so there is a lessened focus on radio-singles and catchy, danceable pop. Of course, that side of music still exists in the Lizzos and Duo Lipas of today, but as the music market becomes increasingly flooded by more content, any streamlining sense of genre is quickly eaten up in the dizzying amount of new artists. With the advent of music streaming and apps like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, the global accessibility of a whole range of artists has increased, and there is content to be found in every possible intersection of pre established genres.
So what is pop music today? Is it the same as it was in the early 2000s and just less socially relevant? Or is today’s pop more sonically similar to the alternative, “indie” style of the past, packaged up in albums like Midnights and Harry’s House? The question of what defines an era’s categories of musical genre is endlessly complex and perhaps impossible to resolve completely. As soon as one set of criteria is defined—say, that “pop” is danceable and mainstream while “indie” is dreamy and made in an apartment—the industry will inevitably shift in favor of the next, “experimental” style, and a popular artist will adopt that “experimental” aesthetic. As soon as one, non-radio-intended, counter-cultural album becomes popularized enough, it sets the newest standard of radio fame and conventional popularity. This year, the phenomena of Taylor Swift’s Midnights album, as well as the flood of indie artist albums in the past months has shifted the landscape of the pop industry. Dare we call this a turn away from pop altogether? A reaction to the curated, catchy aesthetic of the 2000s? Or, is this just another small step in the constant evolution of pop music in which “indie” artists become the new “mainstream,” and “mainstream artists” are influenced by the current definition of “indie”?
There is no conclusive answer nor should there be in such a dynamic industry. However, it is undeniable that streaming technology and production equipment have decidedly altered the landscape of the music community by increasing opportunity and pushing the definitions of genre until they break and must be redefined. The ramifications of these modern music trends are felt from headliners like Swift herself to the most casual listeners, like you and me.