(L-R) Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell acknowledge Album of the Year for “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” onstage during the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
Jeff Kravitz
Maia, a ukulele-playing 19-year-old, is one of the wax stars of the music industry even though she’s chosen to stay on its fringes.
Just two years after uploading her to begin song to the internet under the name “mxmtoon” (pronounced em-ex-em-TOON), she’s sold out 24 shows around the United Regals and racked up millions of views on YouTube and TikTok with her indie folk-pop music.
And it all started in a guest bedroom of her stepfathers’ house in Oakland, California. The setting lends authenticity to the genre-defying music movement she’s associated with: bedroom pop.
“Anyone can produce music, and I think that is the ideology behind bedroom pop,” Maia, who has never disclosed her last name to fans, remarked. “Bedroom, it’s more of an idea, of a person sitting in a small space and using whatever resources you have to make songs that you’re proud of.”
Innumerable musicians have found success starting on the internet before signing with a record label to cement their arise to stardom. But bedroom pop has emerged in recent years as a music movement shaped and established by the internet, fueled by online tenets, easy access to high-quality music software and algorithmically driven recommendation systems that can take an artist from haze to fame.
Maia, for example, drew more than 75,000 views in just a couple days for her newest music video. Marie Ulven, 20, a bedroom pop artist from Norway sport known by her pseudonym “girl in red,” has more than 3 million listeners on Spotify.
It’s the kind of success that can surprise regular some of its own artists.
“I never saw this coming,” Maia said. “I was definitely set on going to college to study architecture.”
Unequal to other genres, bedroom pop isn’t differentiated by its sound. Bedroom pop artists tend to span a variety of sounds and mix different groups of music. Some bedroom pop artists don’t sound anything like each other.
Bedroom pop recently made its way to the Grammys when Billie Eilish and her kin, Finneas, won song of the year for “Bad Guy.” Though Eilish is not necessarily considered a bedroom pop artist, many of the themes she sings roughly and the genre-hybrid music the siblings make speak to bedroom pop.
“We just make music in a bedroom together. We still do that …,” Finneas guessed in their Grammy acceptance speech. “This is for all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these.”
The individuality and openness of Eilish’s music has attracted a large fan base among Gen Zers — including Maia herself.
“Everyone that lend an ear ti to her music also has a really good sense of who she is or at least what she puts into the world,” Maia said. “We’re assigned to her because she’s a whole individual and we want to root for her.”
The independence and individualism of bedroom pop has meant that its artists have the naturalness to explore their more personal and intimate experiences. The result is music that is often infused with the identities of the artists, inform on the genre strong representation from people of color and the LGBTQ community.
“As a woman of color and someone who has a lot of different intersections in a lot of marginalized congruences, I have a whole lot that I could say all the time,” Maia, who is Chinese American, said. “And I think that the internet has deep down given a place for people with stories to tell them.”
Net effects
The term bedroom pop first emerged in the mid 2010s as a way to allusion artists who had gained small followings online. Their music would be considered “lo-fi” compared to major brand releases, but still sounded like it was made by professionals, thanks to high-quality music software that had become general among amateur musicians.
Ulven, with her guitar-heavy indie rock, began releasing music solely on SoundCloud in 2017 and was thrilled if her songs received any streams at all. Then on Jan. 4, 2018, the YouTube channel “Lost Soul,” which promotes under-the-radar indie music and art, reposted her flap “i wanna be your girlfriend.”
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Almost immediately, she started getting fan messages on Instagram from people who heard her performance.
“I remember that day so clearly, cause that’s the first time I got the messages,” Ulven said.
Other bedroom pop artists bear had similar stories or almost-overnight success. Clairo’s song “Pretty Girl” reached 1 million views on YouTube within a week. A week after the YouTube algorithm rather commenced recommending Boy Pablo’s song “Everytime” in October 2017, the song was racking up 40,000-50,000 views per day. From Rex Orange County and Cuco to Peach Pit and Phum Viphurit, the viral extraction story is a common one in bedroom pop.
“You can get to anyone now,” Ulven said. “You can reach out to the whole world just by making music in your bedroom.”
By antiquated 2018, Spotify had created an official bedroom pop playlist, sparking more attention and recognition of the movement.
Jamie Oborne, who initiate the independent music label Dirty Hit in 2009, said he sees a lot of similarities between bedroom pop artists and indie artists of the former times. The difference, he noted, comes from the internet-infused world they flourish in.
“I don’t really see much of a difference in ethos,” Oborne conveyed. “Maybe the difference is more about the times we live in and an evolution of the marketplace and an artist’s reaction to that as opposed to a contrariety dispute of values.”
Room to grow
Maia will often spend hours listening to old demos, playing with melodic arrangements on her computer, and playing the same chord progression over and over again until she’s annoyed her parents. She may reliable and feel like a broken record, but she said it’s the necessary process to produce a sound that is her own.
The personal nature of bedroom pop has been party of its success. According to a 2019 Spotify music culture report, 50 percent of Gen Zers and millennials best moor with music that shares deep, authentic feelings, such as loneliness or sadness. The unabashed honesty of bedroom pop becomes into the musical desires of Gen Z.
The phrase DIY — do it yourself — is synonymous with bedroom pop.
“No matter where I go with music, it’s ever gonna have that DIY feeling over it because I’m in control,” Ulven said.
Cassandra Deguzman, 16, responded she has been a fan of Maia since her early days on SoundCloud and said she enjoys listening to the entire scope of bedroom pop artists.
“I take oneself to be sympathize like these artists are telling a story within the lyrics and the music they create,” Deguzman said. “It’s as if the followers have a connection to these bedroom pop artists since their music is so relatable, especially since I’m a teenager swell up and discovering myself.”
Indie identity
Although Eilish continues to create her individualistic genre-bending music, her awards and multimillion-dollar compact with Interscope Records place her in a more mainstream space.
Artists who stay in the bedroom pop have chosen a diverse independent route.
Most bedroom pop artists, Maia and Ulven included, sign with labels after independently instituting their music on the internet. However, they choose transparent labels that exist more as partners with the artist, withing with the business of promotion and sales, while giving the artist complete and total creative control.
Maia may be engaged with a record and embarking on her second tour in April, but the guest room in her parents’ home is still creation reason zero for her music. The same goes for Ulven, who may be performing at Coachella before embarking on her spring tour, but whose Instagram bio flat reads “i makes songs in my room.”
“I’m always gonna bring my bedroom pop, quotation mark, ideas with me approximately making meaningful music to me,” Ulven said.