Sunday, 16 September 2012

Indie Pop Genre Research


Indie Pop is a sub-genre in music, (formed from the main genre of Alternative Rock), that originated in the UK in the mid-1980s, with its roots in Scottish post-punk bands such as ‘The Smiths’. Indie Pop was inspired by punks DIY ethic and related ideologies, and generated a thriving fanzine, label and club/gig circuit. Indie Pop differs from Indie Rock to the extent that it is more melodic and less abrasive.
The term "indie" had been used for some time to describe artists on independent labels (and the labels themselves), but the key moment in the naming of "indie pop" as a genre was the release of NME's C86 tape in 1986. The compilation featured artists such as ‘Primal Scream’, ‘The Pastels’ and ‘The Wedding Present’, and "indie" quickly became shorthand for a genre whose defining conventions were identified as melodic power pop song stuctures. Originally, the genre was dubbed "C86" after the tape itself.

The Indie Pop scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK, and continues to have a strong following and inspire musicians, not just in the UK but around the world with new bands, labels and clubs devoted to the sound.

The birth of indie pop can be traced back to the post-punk explosion in a limited-circulation of small shop-based record labels such as ‘London's Rough Trade Records’ and ‘Glasgow's Postcard Records’. The publication in Record Business magazine of the first weekly indie singles and album charts (for the week ending 19 January 1980) and the adoption of such charts in the UK music press stimulated activity. In order to reflect this, the British musical weekly New Musical Express released an era-defining compilation cassette called C81. This cassette featured a wide range of groups, reflecting the different approaches of the immediate post-punk era.


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