History of Indie/ singer songwriter music by Lucy Barker and Maddy Ryder

The History of Indie Music

Indie music originated in the mid to late 70’s from the genres punk rock and then new wave. In the 80’s kids started making bands who weren’t amazing musicians but still felt they could make good music. All these new musicians inspired new independent labels to appear such as K records in the US and Factory in the UK. At this point in time the Americans referred to what we would call Indie music as College rock or alternative.

Sub genres of Indie such as Indie-pop and Indie-Rock exist, this came around the mid 80’s and many Indie-pop songs made it into the charts. A great example of this is the Indie-Rock band the Kaiserchiefs (http://www.kaiserchiefs.com/). Formed in 1996, they were successful in pulling a large number of fans of both Rock and Indie.

I am reminded of Todorov and Buckingham when I do my research on the history of Indie music, Todorov said that ‘a new genre is always the transformation of one or several old genres’ and my research has proven this. Buckingham said ‘it is in constant process of negotiation and change’ this is also true because the Indie genre is developing because different people have different views on what they would class as Indie music, so when they create it, it can be completely different.  

Indie music is getting more popular especially indie-pop which has made it's way into the charts a lot recently I think that this will carry on and in the future and other sub indie groups will also be more popular in the charts because people no longer listen to one kind of music, they cherry pick their way through the genres. 

The History of the Singer-Songwriter Genre

The concept of a singer-songwriter can be traced back to when people used to learn songs through the oral tradition (were they passed on there songs through singing them to one another), this was used all over the world, much in the way that stories were told and passed on across generations. 

In modern times, many new and upcoming artists use the Singer-Songwriter genre in order to make a name for themselves, writing their own songs and preforming them, uploading videos to websites such as Youtube in order to gain recognition. 

An example of this is artist Lauren Aquillina. The singer began by posting covers of popular songs on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMPQe0pXMU). She then went on to write and perform her own songs on the website, and quickly gained a large fan base (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzu1g-S0fI).

Many popular Singer-Songwriter artists cross over a variety of genres, including Pop, Indie and Rock. Popular Singer-Songwriter Ed Sheeran (http://edsheeran.com/) is well known for his songs, which are a mixture of both Indie and Pop.

Singer songwriter is very popular at the moment and has been in the past for example Elton John and Adele. often singer songwriter artists will be able to accompany there voice with an instrument that they can play such as the piano or guitar. I think it will carry on to be popular because quite often they are relatable to a wide audience because the writer will write songs about things that are currently affecting them and they quite often will not be alone. That means our song should relate to some people because materialism is a big problem.