Last September, when English Teacher won the Mercury Prize—one of the U.K.’s most prestigious music awards—much of the coverage focused on their working-class roots. The Leeds-based indie rock group, who climbed the ranks through regional arts funding, disrupted a decade-long streak of Londoners winning the award. Given that the decade in question was famed for its controversial nepo-baby-boom and ever-depleting public services (in the U.K. at least), it’s hardly surprising that creative opportunities for Brits all but congealed around the M25 in the intervening years.
But while social status in the arts rightfully remains a big topic, English Teacher’s win highlights another dramatic swing currently taking place in the music industry—one that isn’t receiving as much attention. Fronted by Lily Fontaine, a woman of colour, English Teacher notably stands out in a genre famed for its guitar-wielding quartets of white men. Over the last few years, with crowds belting out the chorus of the all-female band The Last Dinner Party’s “Nothing Matters,” and Lola Young’s “Messy” dominating TikTok, the notion that traditional poster boys still represent indie music is increasingly in question.
Snappy riffs aside, the indie rock genre can be hard to define sonically, but it once carved itself an identity from the quick-and-dirty masculinity that traditionally accompanied it. With the rise of Indie Sleaze 2.0, nostalgia for guy-liner, iPod nanos, and the word metrosexual has reinforced that image—though, aside from The Dare (who might as well have been cryogenically frozen in 2007), the classic indie uniform like sweat-adorned floppy hair, cigarettes, and loose ties are all things of the past. Without these signifiers, many might not realize that indie rock is still thriving—it just looks different now.
The indie rock revival of the mid-aughts shaped the genres signature look—when everyone, their mother, and Alex Turner, wanted to be in The Strokes. This era was the birthplace of The Libertines, Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, MGMT, and LCD Soundsystem, when shaggy fringes and jangly guitars were practically a prerequisite for success. But as labels tried to replicate that magic, the scene became oversaturated with weaker imitators. By the end of the decade, the entire genre was rendered into sonic goop—a phase known colloquially as landfill indie.
Any popular trend that rises too quickly risks overexposure, but in the case of indie rock, the problem was amplified by the scene’s lack of diversity. Aside from few exceptions like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, and Bloc Party, the 00’s scene was essentially a boys’ club—one whose greatest variety lay between edgy partygoers and twee guys with moustaches. As you can imagine, this didn’t leave much room for fresh perspectives.
In 2014, Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke reflected on indie rock’s lack of diversity, saying, “Rock is one of the few areas in music where it seems diversity is not to be encouraged. When Bloc Party started, we were told that things would be hard for us because indie rock was a predominantly straight white male world.”
It’s an ironic reality for a genre named after independence—once a refuge for artists not compatible with mainstream tastes. It was as this became tangential, however, that the oversaturated market eventually collapsed under its own weight. What remained was landfill indie, in all its greasy-haired, skinny-jeaned glory, for the seagulls to pick at while pop and hip-hop dominated the charts.
By the time the dust settled in the mid-2010s, women were dragging rock out of extinction, but despite their indie credibility, many in the industry didn’t see these new bands as part of the revival at all. Perhaps the result of masc-tinted glasses, HAIM were more often classified as pop-rock or soft-rock while Wolf Alice were labelled simply ‘alternative’. As the decade wore on, this new wave of indie became harder to ignore.
In 2017, The New York Times officially declared that rock was ruled by women, noting that “indie rock, especially, has undergone an identity crisis this decade. Often, male-fronted indie bands have begun to feel rote or even parodic,” Similarly, flavorwire commented, “the golden era of indie rock as embodied by four white dudes jamming in a basement […] is over, and that point of view no longer has the default relevance it once enjoyed.”
Yet the likes of Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail—artists that the media identified as bringing about this shift—still weren’t receiving the same level of attention that their male counterparts had enjoyed a decade earlier. Although the traditional brand of spiky masculinity once attached to indie had given way to that of Mac Demarco—who looked like he might live among nymphs in a forest—and the satirical crooning of Father John Misty, the commercial world was clinging on to white dudes all the same.
Cut to today and that’s no longer the case. Indie is back on centre stage, and this time its biggest stars are Boygenius, Wet Leg, Mitski, and Clairo. It doesn’t seem like this is a flash in the pan, either. Up and coming acts The Beaches, Lime Garden, and Blondshell are likely to continue this trend, and recent years have also seen indie rockers Sharon Van Etten and Nadine Shah getting their first taste of chart success—despite both having been in the industry for over a decade.
Making up the rest of the pack are Dream Wife, Bar Italia, Hinds, Picture Parlor, and The Big Moon. Truthfully, you’d be hard-pressed to find any all-male indie bands making it big this side of the pandemic. Whether this has stemmed from the guiding hand of fourth-wave feminism, or if all our male rockers just found their true vocation in podcasting instead, it’s important to note that this pendulum swing towards women-led indie is, in many ways, a reclaiming.
Despite the genre being so heavily associated with masculinity, many women were at the forefront of its first wave. In the ’80s and ’90s it was Sonic Youth, Pixies, Yo La Tengo, Sleater Kinney, and PJ Harvey that initially diverged indie from college rock—themselves indebted to other mixed-gender bands like The Velvet Underground, Television, and Talking Heads.
So while some might say indie is now back where it belongs, the music industry has a long road ahead when it comes to equality. Despite all their successes, women are continually brushed over on festival lineups, and indie specifically still has a major problem with its whiteness. Though who knows what’s to come with Fontaine at the helm?
As far back as English Teacher’s debut single, “R&B”, Fontaine has reckoned with her controversial place in the indie scene, singing: “Despite appearances, I haven’t got the voice for R&B / If I have stuff to write, thеn why don’t I just write it for me?” If this is a sign that those that break the indie mould can now also receive recognition, maybe English Teacher’s win beckons in a new era.
