Indie music is dying.
I don’t mean there’s any shortage of new indie bands producing spectacular music. In fact, just the opposite is true.
There are so many indie bands getting noticed by so many people that the genre itself has become misleading.
Once upon a time — not too long ago, in fact — indie music was a new and unfamiliar genre with just a few bands that were generally considered to be far too strange and artsy ever to be popular with large audiences.
It was the golden age of indie music, when Animal Collective and Minus the Bear were far too bizarre for any self-respecting cool kid to have ever heard of.
But those days are over, and performances from Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire on this year’s Grammy Award show validate my fears.
Indie music is supposed to be independent. It’s supposed to be free from the constraints of what mainstream music is supposed to sound like and free to push musical and intellectual boundaries.
In other words, true indie music is similar in principle to what alternative and punk used to be.
All three grew out of dissatisfaction with the state of mainstream music, but once punk and alternative became mainstream themselves, they experienced a significant drop in quality.
Anyone who cringes at the memory of the emo fad should be seriously worried because something similar is about to happen to indie music — and sooner rather than later.
In many ways it’s a natural part of the evolution of a genre — oversaturation within the genre discourages new and creative artists, and a high probability to achieve fame and fortune encourages bands to focus less on creativity and more on producing music for quick cash.
Mark my words: Soon the radio will be flooded with Band of Horses copycats — hundreds of bands desperate to sound like the latest and greatest modern folk band.
Non-believers need only consider the lineup of every music festival this year to see the beginnings of the indie apocalypse.
Every festival this summer is an homage to indie music — Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons and Florence and The Machine are playing at almost all of them, and festivals are seeing record numbers in attendance.
Every day in the Quad, students can be heard discussing which festivals they hope to attend, and bands like The Decemberists and The Flaming Lips are often mentioned.
Facebook and Twitter collectively exploded when the lineups for Bonnaroo and The Hangout were announced, with people who once wouldn’t have been caught dead sleeping in a tent at a hippie festival ecstatic to attend.
What’s really disappointing is how little anyone can do to stop indie’s eventual death. It has been poisoned with popularity, and that’s a poison with no cure.
 
 
____
Contact Andrew Price at [email protected]