Thirty-Three Insiders Can't Agree on What Indie Rock Is

Pitchfork asked 33 artists, label founders and critics to define indie rock, and not one definition held. The survey, published alongside the site's list of the 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time, drew answers from Mitski, Neko Case, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, Lou Barlow of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr., Ryan Schreiber, Gerard Cosloy of Matador, Simon Reynolds, and roughly two dozen more. Some said indie rock is a sound. Some said it is a business model. Matador's Cosloy said it does not exist at all.

"It doesn't exist. It's not really a musical genre," Cosloy told Pitchfork. "I think it's sort of a nebulous marketing term." His test: if independence is the ethos, why do so many indie bands sound identical? "How come so many bands sound like each other? That doesn't feel very indie to me."

What does the survey actually settle?

Very little — and that appears to be the point. The strictest answers track distribution. Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, defines pre-2000 indie rock as music released on labels using independent distribution, because major-distributed records had far better odds of radio, record-store placement and press. Mitski put the shift plainly: "Originally it meant rock music that was released independently of a major label. Now it is a sonic aesthetic, even if it's released on a major." She added that she has no strong opinion on which definition wins, because "language changes."

Lou Barlow traced the terminology's history: in the late-1980s UK, weekly charts tracked literally independent releases, while America charted "college rock" via CMJ — a mix of independents and majors, with R.E.M. the biggest success. By the mid-'90s, he said, "college rock was abandoned in the U.S., non-macho/less overtly sexist heavy rock became grunge, and everything else became indie rock."

Whose definition is it anyway?

The generational divide runs deep. Ben Gibbard offered three definitions: the rigid one (independent labels), an esoteric one (iconoclastic music made regardless of label), and a generational one — indie rock as the current catch-all for what the '80s called college rock and the early '90s called alternative. He also argued indie rock is "a much more American phenomenon," contrasting it with UK independents like Creation and Factory that harbored "Motown-like world domination attitude."

Ryan Schreiber, Pitchfork's founder, defended a core definition: "a lineage of guitar-based music with a strong DIY ethic and ties to local, grassroots music scenes," focused on pop hooks even when raw. But he conceded that 2000s offshoots — dream-pop, shoegaze, emo, slowcore, dance-punk, freak-folk — made "indie" a subculture rather than a sound, one that somehow housed Animal Collective, Converge and Death Cab for Cutie simultaneously.

A. Savage of Parquet Courts aimed at his host: Pitchfork's poptimism turn, he argued, forced small bands to compete with universal coverage of Taylor Swift, rendering the term "moot." Steven Hyden was blunter, dating an era from 2013 — when Pitchfork reviewed Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience — as the moment "indie rock is the corpse that Pitchfork stepped over."

Which records qualify?

The border cases expose every fault line:

• In despite of majors: Emma Anderson counts the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy (Warner) and Nirvana's Nevermind (Geffen) as obviously indie rock.
• Out despite of indies: Anderson disqualifies polished independent releases like New Order's Technique and Cocteau Twins' Heaven or Las Vegas.
• The R.E.M. problem: Azerrad notes Murmur (1983) came out on I.R.S., which looked indie but was a division of A&M — a distribution advantage Twin/Tone, Dischord, Touch and Go and SST never enjoyed.
• The Velvet Underground: Eric Slick calls them "too foundational to belong to indie rock." Marnie Stern says the same of Television's Marquee Moon.
• Surprises: Neko Case names the Sugarcubes' Life's Too Good; Reynolds names Haim's debut, which "sounds like Fleetwood Mac — and not even Rumours but Tango in the Night-era."

Slim Moon, founder of Kill Rock Stars, noted that genre names always drift — punk meant something different in New York, London, and the mall era — and that by the late '90s, after Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse broke through, indie rock "firmly became a mainstream major-label genre" while partly keeping its older meanings.

What changes for the genre?

For working artists, the practical answer came from Alan Sparhawk of Low: "Do your thing. Don't wait for someone else to do something for you that you can do yourself. Work with your friends and people who believe in you." Barlow, asked whether Harry Styles counts, suggested indie may simply mean "imaginative" now — which is either the term's salvation or its final dissolution.