Indie Isn't Indie Anymore

What is indie? In the 90's, it seemed to mean a certain sound represented by bands like Pavement, Modest Mouse, Liz Phair, Beck, Neutral Milk Hotel, and the like. A distant relative of the burgeoning, melodic emo scene, stripped of the hardcore punk influences on emo and replacing them with acoustic guitars and jagged rock riffage, but utilizing the same strained voices, shattered soul lyrics, and mostly lo-fi production. Today, it can mean any number of things. There are bands described as "indie" that feature influences ranging from post-rock to underground hip-hop to hardcore to even 1970's yacht rock (leading guys like Michael McDonald to suddenly emerge guesting on indie albums).


(Indie superstars Grizzly Bear featuring yacht rock superstar Michael McDonald. Yeah, the guy from the old Verizon commercials.)

Since it doesn't represent a specific genre of any kind, it must represent a sort of movement. Once again utilizing the example of the 90's, most "indie" bands were considered indie because they weren't signed to major labels. This was another aspect related to the punk and emo scenes, where musicians wore this as a badge of honor, self-releasing their albums and putting on tours the DIY way. But today, this is not even true of many indie bands and hasn't been for a long time. Beck was one of the first, signing to Geffen as early as 1994. Modest Mouse were with Sony by 2000. Liz Phair ended up on Capitol and we all know how that turned out. While today there are many indie bands on many indie labels, some yet are not including Franz Ferdinand (Sony), the Strokes (RCA), Interpol (Capitol, until recently returning to an indie label by signing with Matador), the Decemberists (Capitol), and Arctic Monkeys (Warner).

So since this movement is not represented by being on an independent label, the obvious implication of the term "indie" to begin with, the movement must be represented by a broader definition of the word independent. Under this definition, it must mean that the music is underground, outside the norm, and altogether outside the realms of mainstream music. Except that it's not anymore. This may come as a shock to many people, but indie is one of the biggest genres of music, if it can so be called, in entertainment today.

This isn't really a new trend, yet it continues to baffle hipsters and casual fans of the music the same. Some of the aforementioned bands that signed to major labels have been huge for years. While some stopped being considered indie in that case, such as Beck who somewhat lost that classification after "Loser" took off and fell into the category of "alternative rock" afterwards, this is not true in every case. Modest Mouse, despite releasing albums on Sony, seeing their hit song "Float On" go to #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and seeing their 2007 album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank go to #1 on the US Billboard 200 chart, is still considered an indie rock band and beloved by even the most purist hipsters the world round. Their #1 album was in 2007, yet even today words like "unlikely" and "surprising" are thrown around as Vampire Weekend's Contra and Arcade Fire's The Suburbs both hit #1 themselves and, of course, Arcade Fire wins the Grammy for Album of the Year.


(Arcade Fire accepting their Grammy for Album of the Year. Get used to this picture.)

These things are no longer shocking. Indie, regardless of what it is or how it is defined, has hit the big time. It's a meaningless term at this point applied to a variety of different types of music and different movements, but whatever it is, it is no longer underground. So I ask the question, when can these things stop being surprising? When can we simply accept that, whatever indie may be, it's one of the biggest things around right now?

Furthermore, can we even continue to use the label? The application has become so ill-defined that it no longer represents anything. Can we call these massive bands, whom it should surprise nobody are getting massive recognition, indie bands? What does indie even mean? My personal opinion is that it has become completely outmoded. In 2011, as this type of music has circled around again and become one of the biggest mainstream forces, features no one sound in particular or defining characteristic, and represents no special movement of being underground, being signed to an independent label, or being DIY, there is no such thing as "indie" anymore. It's an irrelevant term.

In 2011, Vampire Weekend is called indie. In 1986, Paul Simon making the same kind of music was just called pop. It's about time we make a return to that instead of trying to put down some irrelevant dividing line between everything in some desperate attempt to make it seem cooler or less mainstream than it really is.