It’s Time To Get Rid of the Term “Sad Girl Indie Music”

Recently, one of my favorite female musicians Lucy Dacus sent out this tweet expressing her dislike for the term “sad girl indie.” She goes on to say that though sadness and experiencing it and writing about it can be powerful, she feels this term just simply classifies and commodifies a large group of female musicians and their pain. This got me thinking. I had never really thought too deeply about the term and most of the time I use it to describe a group of female musicians whose music impacts me quite a lot so I don’t have any ill intent. But Dacus had brought up a point that I just couldn’t ignore.

Though it is hard to figure out who coined the term “sad girl indie,” it’s something that has been around since what seems to be early 2017. It’s usually used to describe a group of female musicians who create pretty intense and emotional music, and aren’t “mainstream” in terms of popularity and sound.

To start, the wording of the term oversimplifies the whole range of emotions these artists tend to express in their music. It just takes all their complexities and slaps one word on it. This quite frankly is something done to women very often. We are all deemed “mean” or “catty” or “overly emotional” by someone in some sphere or another. It must particularly sting for these artists, though, as they tend to use their music to cope and truly express their experiences and struggles. It has to feel as like they are venting and shouting and spending careful amounts of time to truly try and capture a specific moment in their lives, just for all of that effort and complexity to just be completely ignored. This isn’t to say that some of their music isn’t sad because of course, some of it is. It’s more about how that because of this term, sad is all these musicians are seen as. It’s just yet another mold they are being put into without their consent or desire to be placed there.

So now the term has turned a wide range of artists’ music into one thing. That isn’t inherently the worst thing in the world, but it does quite a lot of damage when we take a deeper look. First off, this oversimplification makes the emotions of these women in music “digestible.” If it turns it all into one simple thing, then we don’t have to look too much into it. We don’t have to think about where certain of their emotions and experience come from, like the horrible societal expectations and just the general impossible standards for women. It just allows for people to consume mindlessly. It just completely destroys their art and the purpose of it, which is to impact others and to get them thinking more consciously about the things they talk about in their songs. This impacts women of color the most as their experiences are the most intricate as they face specific hardships in being both women and of different races and ethnicities. As previously mentioned, this oversimplification makes their music more digestible and thus easier to commodify. The music industry can now turn their music into more profitable and acceptable for them because “it won’t make people uncomfortable now.” It is just another example of things being done to women to make them useful for what is typically a male-dominated industry.

Discovering just how harmful this term is has brought up a lot of anger. It is frustrating that women in music have to already do so much to be respected and once they get an ounce of attention, they are placed into some sort of box when all these artists want to do is to express and create in a way that is unique to them. This is just a reminder to be careful of the things we say because even the things that seemingly don’t sound very malicious or don’t come from a place of ill intent can have a damaging impact.

To end things on a high note, I wanted to share a playlist with some of my favorite musicians who have been painted with the aforementioned term. I have a lot of love for the women I included as their music has impacted me a lot personally! Their complexities and musical magic are something I have been forever changed by and because of that, I feel a duty to protect the integrity of their art, forever and always.

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