Bedroom pop: The antithesis of studio production

Throughout history, the arts have been a token of the wealth divide and something that remained inaccessible to the common man.

Music was a showcase of wealth, of influence and of power; it recognised and signified education and, more than anything, superiority.

Many factors worked in tandem to provide more and more people access to instruments and even musical education.

While music was claimed by more and more social demographics, the concept of music was perceived and experimented with differently, shifting the way it sounded, the way it was engaged with and the way it was distributed all in varied ways.

The birth of genres like soul, classical and jazz all as subsections of a greater world diversified the music scene and the amount of people who were listening to it, writes Music News Blitz’s Isaac James.

At-home studios

During the pandemic, the human race had nothing, if not time.

Confined to houses and bedrooms, many began to experiment with hobbies they hadn't before.

Interest in creating different projects peaked quickly, though it's hard to think of an industry that had such a monumental shift the way the music industry did.

Teenagers and young adults began to flock to software like Ableton and FL Studio to begin curating and playing with the tools at their disposal, often proceeding to upload their songs to platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud, although few would gain much traction due to the sheer number of people doing so at the time

Bedroom pop is deeply distinct in its instrumentation and general tone; the melodies have a tendency to be more soft and melodic than most songs.

Basic instruments like guitars and ukuleles feature often, but specialist equipment like drums or woodwind instruments are either missing or replaced with digital versions.

It has quite a lot of overlap with lofi music, another genre that was very popular between 2018-2021 which helped curate an audience.

Breaking through

The surge in popularity within the genre can be attributed to a few things besides the increase in accessible music technology and software.

Recent years have seen a greater appreciation for DIY projects, be that for decoration, art and in this case, music.

People are able to greatly appreciate self-produced music as it is more vulnerable and raw, artists are unable to hide behind studio production and are forced to rely heavily on their own ingenuity.

Furthermore, there has been greater awareness of harmful and exploitative music labels and the intersection between artists’ lives and their work has been growing increasingly closer.

I think that bedroom pop very much enabled a more casual and independent means of interacting with the industry that shields participants from the less desirable sides of it.

There is also a point to be made in that, smaller artists have a greater capacity to engage with their fans.

Whilst multi-million monthly streamed artists like Ariana Grande may sign the occasional autograph or two, having a smaller community to stream one’s work means the artist has more time to engage with their fanbase.

There were, of course, key players in pushing the bedroom pop genre to the forefront of the music scene.

“Perfect Pair” by Beabadoobee took the world by storm, especially TikTok, for its innovative and captivating sound, amassing over 450 million streams on Spotify alone. 

Other artists like Mxmtoon who captivated fans in 2019 with her debut album The Masquerade and Strawberry Guy with his hit single “Mrs Magic” released in the same year really enabled the public to grow accustomed to the general sound and tone of the genre, laying the foundations for a sphere of music that retains its popularity even six years later.

MORE BY ISAAC JAMES: Clairo: The plight of a teenager

Implications for the industry

Indie music as a whole has always operated as an underdog within the music scene.

In an industry that is already viciously competitive, having artists who produce and publish work without agents, without a studio and without marketing makes an already difficult job even harder.

There is a vast abyss of talented musicians who constantly put out their work and gain minimal traction and consistently underperform.

However, bedroom pop operated as an umbrella term to unify such artists.

A few music platforms will offer weekly playlists to listeners with underground artists, a small hand up to those who struggle to gain an audience.

By creating a label to connect and relate to the genre, people are more easily able to access and find aspiring artists.

The themes and trends across the genre also generate an established listener demographic, one that has loyally followed the genre even though the height of its popularity has arguably passed.

Retrospective

On the whole, bedroom pop is still a relatively “new” genre as it were, with legacies such as rock, classical and R&B all overshadowing bedroom pop in terms of age and respect, yet the fanbase accumulated by bedroom pop is nothing if not loyal.

Whilst the themes discussed in bedroom pop and the general sound seem to resonate more deeply with younger audiences, the existence of the genre is a testament to the diversity of those who enjoy and create music, a rebellion to an infamously toxic industry that more often than not prioritises profit over passion.

The future of bedroom pop, whilst uncertain of what it could manifest into, is almost certainly going to expand upon the core philosophy of creation.

As technology develops, so too will the industry, and I think that such an evolutionary genre will have the power to make shockwaves through the world of music.

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