Indie Music Is a Queer Girl’s Game
Though the perceived typical genre for queer artists has long been pop music, Music Columnist Erin Pattie makes a case that indie music has become the perfect place to be more diverse.
Tegan and Sara, though now falling under the category of shimmering electro-pop, were a staple indie act as far back as 1999. They amassed a cult following up through their 2009 album Sainthood, enthralling their fans with raw lyrics, onstage banter, and thoughtfully structured indie rock albums. The twins shifted to the pop genre after Sainthood, feeling their voices weren’t being heard as queer women. Their indie music, though emotional and lyrically complex, wasn’t getting the same play as their counterparts--especially their male ones. A piece from the Los Angeles Times said that “despite indie rock’s reputation as a thinking-person’s form, [Tegan] never felt taken seriously, the way she does now. ‘People were always nice to us, but it was kind of like, ‘Oh, our cute, quirky cousins showed up!’” In some sense, Tegan and Sara were right; queer anthems by everyone from Robyn to Hayley Kiyoko were long made in the pop sphere, glittering anthems about love, sex, and dancing (even dancing on your own). But in the last few years, those same anthems have been made a little differently.
Though pop has long been marked as the genre with distinctive gay icons, indie music actually seems like the natural choice for a genre to have an increasingly queer presence. An Atlantic article called “How Indie Rock Changed The World” reads: “Everywhere, the line between fan and performer was paper-thin. The approach was anarchic and participatory: the idea (at least theoretically) was that anyone could get a band together, learn to play, and maybe even press a record and take the show on the road.” Indie was born out of people who felt that they didn’t fit into the mainstream finding a community and means of self expression. The article goes on to say that “Hole-in-the-wall venues, alternative record stores, ragtag independent record labels, and copy shops incubated a subculture where outsiders became insiders and found one another.” The indie of the 90s was notably less diverse than it is now, but the sentiment remains the same: indie is an excellent genre to participate in when you felt cut off from whatever music is popular at the time.
Obviously, as the times change, the genre of indie had to change too. As mentioned earlier, even 10 years into their career Tegan and Sara weren’t being taken seriously in the indie scene. The same Atlantic article says “...most big cities also had a scene, and each had its own distinctive ecosystem. In Cleveland and New York City, for instance, where thrashy, locomotive hardcore music had a long reign, white boys predominated and girls were scarce. In Olympia, as in Boston, there were sympathetic college radio stations, more women, and more of an art-school atmosphere to the enterprise.” Movements like Riot Grrrl and Queercore helped genres like punk and indie morph to be more inclusive (though it’s important to note this did not happen overnight,) but I think what really helped diversify indie was the internet, specifically the rise of bedroom pop and social media. People could share music in seconds, so people like Clairo and girl in red making music in their bedrooms could become internet sensations overnight. Also, as the Atlantic mentioned, one of the hallmarks of indie music was the close relationships performers had with their fans. Twitter and Instagram Live’s allowed this to happen in a digital age. Young queer girls could see their role models and indie music, though now wholly international, could still feel like it was taking place on a local scale. Now, performers and bands like the members of boygenius, Big Thief, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, and Courtney Barnett, just to name a few, have reached some of the cultural icon status that Mac Demarco and Kurt Vile have long held within the indie genre.
Though indie has gotten increasingly diverse, being an out queer artist can be a blessing and a curse. Lindsey Jordan spoke about this in an interview with NYLON. “‘My friends all know and stuff, but to the music world, it's part of [my music] now. It's in the subtext. ... I'm really split about talking about being gay, because I didn't have any heroes that were gay women growing up, so I never heard anything about writing a love song about other women—even though I'm sure there's millions out there, I felt like I had to pave the way for myself. It would be cool to be that for someone else, but at the same time, I hate [feeling like I’m capitalizing] on my identity.’” This is where the impasse comes in. Somehow, since Lindsey and Clairo and Marie Ulven (a.k.a. girl in red) dominated indie playlists everywhere, gay became a part of the genre. It’s a newer, more personal level to the “How does it feel to be a woman in music?” question. (As Jordan stated in the same interview: “It fucking sucks because I keep getting asked about it.”) Indie has long been hailed a place for misfits, so there’s little point in reminding the people making music that that’s what they are.
I’ll argue with anyone who says that longtime queer anthem, “Dancing On My Own,” isn’t a god-tier pop song, but this is where my personal bias comes in. I, a lesbian, have found a lot of solace in the grounding realism and complex writing of the indie genre. Songs about taking back the same awful ex over and over, about yearning for girls we can’t have, about depression and running away and having sex that’s a bad idea are incredibly important for everyone to have growing up, and the experiences of entire groups of people shouldn’t be relegated to one genre. For me, music has never been a purely abstract or impersonal enjoyment, but me relating to rage, elation, despair, and lust that I couldn’t yet articulate. The first gay role models I ever had were Tegan and Sara. I would listen to their deeply cathartic and personal albums like The Con and So Jealous on loops at age 14 (and now,) and when they moved away from indie, it was important to have new artists that made me feel the same way. Songs for and by queer people aren’t always shiny and sweet in the indie world, they tell stories and capture moods. For a group of people that’s still getting used to having visible role models, I don’t think having songs like that is such a bad thing.
Image Credit
Thumbnail Image and Image 3 by Neve Tullberg, Image 1 by Frank and Oak, Image 2 by Lera Pentelute