Indie Definition
Defining indie rock is both simple and complicated. The meaning of the word is the most obvious one: indie means independent music, that is all that underground world self-produced or produced by labels of relative importance, not linked to the majors.
Obviously, such a generic definition includes artists of various kinds and coming from musical genres that are also opposite to each other. But there are other characteristics that can categorize a singer or a group as indie. Because it is the indie we all talk about does not look so much at the origin of a production, as at a particular style of composition and writing.
Birth of Indie Style
The Charming Man by the Smiths is one of the first world-renowned bands to be labeled indie. Indie as we understand it was born in the early Eighties, with the so-called indie rock and indie pop movements. The roots of the genre lie in post-punk and in the birth of numerous independent labels around magazines and small record shops. Success came thanks to the British weekly New Musical Express, which in 1980 attached a collection of songs from post-punk bands to its issue, effectively decreeing their national circulation.
From there, with a thirty-year history, of bands that have exploited this label to make themselves recognizable to the public, there have been many and in every important music market, from the United States to the United Kingdom, passing through Sweden. Generally artists of this genre have different themes than the commercial circuit, more linked to personal events and social relationships, but also politics and philosophy of life.
Indie Sub-Genres
Indie has numerous sub-genres, including indie folk, a musical genre developed in the mid-nineties by some exponents of indie rock music particularly influenced by folk from the fifties, sixties, seventies and country music.
The ‘ indie pop is a genre instead of alternative rock and pop rock born in the UK in the mid-eighties.
Finally, still in the United Kingdom and also in the United States we find indie rock, a musical genre of alternative rock born in the late eighties and spread, especially since the 2000s, also in various other countries.