‘I’m famous for staying in,” says R Stevie Moore, writer of the new wave number I Like to Stay Home. “So quarantine is no big deal.” But as a counterculture hermit who’s made more than 400 experimental pop albums at home, Moore suddenly has competition. With studio access and in-person collaborations impossible in lockdown, musicians are now all ostensibly bedroom artists.
Home studios, from Prince’s Paisley Park to Lee Scratch Perry’s Black Ark, have long played pivotal roles in musical history, with the likes of Joe Meek, Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney also favouring them. More recently, Billie Eilish recorded her multimillion-selling debut in her family home, while Grimes’ breakthrough LP, Visions, was made in her apartment. Kevin Parker records all Tame Impala’s albums at home. Grime flourished from kids making beats on PlayStations or cheap software, and dance tracks are rattled out in bedrooms constantly; Grammy-nominated LA artist Steve Lacy even produces beats on his iPhone.
In fact, WFH has become so commonplace in the industry that the practice has spawned its own genre: bedroom pop. Lapped up by a hip, disaffected teen audience, the style is dreamy, introspective and intimate, spanning across indie, pop, R&B and emo, and it has been boosted by a Spotify playlist of the same name – one track, Death Bed by drowsy rapper Powfu and bedroom pop star Beabadoobee, has reached the Top 5 on the UK charts. “I don’t understand how bedroom pop has become a genre,” says Mac DeMarco, whose lo-fi indie is famously made at home. “Although it’s probably my fault.”
At 30, DeMarco is something of an old-timer compared with Gen Z proponents such as Beabadoobee and Clairo. The 21-year-old artist Marie Ulven, AKA Girl in Red, is ratcheting up hundreds of millions of streams with indie-pop tracks made in her bedroom. She considers “bedroom pop” an evolutionary term, like indie becoming a sound rather than strictly the product of an independent label. “It’s more about how it sounds than where it’s made,” she says. “Pop bangers are being made in bedrooms and bedroom pop-ish songs in studios.”
Despite the gloss of some modern day bedroom music, its origins were primitive. The late Daniel Johnston made tapes in his parents’ basement, Liz Phair got signed from childhood bedroom demos and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats recorded with a $90 boombox. Mistakes were inescapable; grinding tape wheels became musical collaborators rather than defects. “Listening back a part would get slower and it was because I was turning the lyric pages with my toes,” Darnielle recalls.
The thrill of a recorded take minutes after completion of a song was big for Darnielle. “Just going from D to G, I sound like someone who’s scaled Everest,” he says of the recordings. During lockdown Darnielle has made his first boombox album since 2002, Songs for Pierre Chuvin – he dusted off the old piece of equipment, stood it on one end to get rid of the loud rattle it had acquired, and went at it. “It was glorious,” he says. “I was an old-school Mountain Goats fan again.”
Calvin Johnson, of K Records and the indie-pop band Beat Happening, set up Dub Narcotic studios in his basement in 1993. Miranda July, Built to Spill and Beck all recorded there. “It was to demystify that it’s hard to record,” he says. “If you want to record, just hit record. It’s not about equipment. For the Beck record we had nothing, just inspiration.” Years later, Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos, often labelled bedroom pop, took influence. “Calvin’s approach made me feel like I could make music too,” she says, “to connect to a song without it being produced in an unachievable way.”
Embracing rough edges is not the same as making intentionally bad music, Johnson stresses. “We weren’t saying: make it sound shitty. We were saying: make it sound as good as we can.” Moore mirrors this. “Take Beatles bootlegs. You don’t think: that’s unlistenable, listen to that background noise. That’s an absurd thought.”
As technology evolved, so did the sound. In the digital age, lo-fi music was made to the warm hum of a laptop fan rather than the grainy whirr of spinning tape spools. In the 2000s, Ariel Pink was making psychedelic electronic music at home. “I concocted a bubble for myself,” says Pink, a disciple of Moore’s. “It was me against the world.” He describes himself as “peerless” and says he was “almost Nazi-like about not being into things other people liked. I wanted to sound from a different era. To convince people it was a degraded tape.”
This creation of an imagined sonic past became part of the zeitgeist, with Pink’s unique style – dubbed hypnagogic pop – shaping the burgeoning home-recorded chillwave scene (typified by hazy, amorphous lo-fi tones). Ernest Greene of Washed Out was one of that genre’s breakout artists. “I was interested in bringing out this really nostalgic sensation,” he reflects. While lo-fi music is often interpreted as possessing a deliberate indifference or disdain for clarity, it often reflects experimentation with the latest technology. “Illegal rips of Ableton software were easy to get,” Greene recalls, also crediting YouTube as a goldmine for tutorials and esoteric sonic influences.
Aside from these practical benefits, what is the deeper appeal of home recording now? “I’m a cheap bastard,” jokes DeMarco. “Also, I’m a control freak, I don’t like to be on the clock and I don’t play well with others.” Creative autonomy is another factor. “When small new indie bands bring in producers, it’s weird to me,” he says. “It’s like being a painter and having someone else go to the store and choose your palette for you.”
Home recording can bolster confidence. “It’s less pressured,” says Ulven. “I can fool around and have nothing come out of it but in a studio there’s expectations. There’s also something intimate about recording in your own space; that’s where you’re your most authentic self.”
Singer-songwriter Kurt Vile echoes this. “At home I’m completely relaxed, but every time I go into the studio my heart jumps out of my chest. I feel exposed and it’s a totally different energy.” Vile’s first two albums were home recordings and he’s now, like Pink, returning to these origins.
The method seems to have a specific appeal for young people: “A strong feeling of authenticity,” says Ulven. “I gravitate towards truth and unfiltered feelings. That rawness has been lacking in pop. It’s resonating because it’s what we need.”
For Darnielle, the approach gave him a lifelong ethos. “[Having] nobody listening creates maximum freedom,” he says. “That sets you up to write as though nobody is ever going to hear it, to only please yourself. You owe your craft your truth and that’s never truer when nobody else is there.” It gives DeMarco a focus on the purity of music. “New artists often get caught up in shit outside of just making music,” he says. “Bedroom recording works so well because you can just do it. Don’t worry about gear, just go for it.” It’s proving a life saver for Ulven during lockdown. “My studio feels like having an extra limb right now.”
As for Moore, well, it’s been his entire life. “Being DIY is a religion to me,” he says, one that has been now imposed on all musicians. Pink thinks now is the time to convert. “Bedroom pop is the answer to coronavirus,” he says. “Take out that dusty keyboard and just start trying things. Nobody is watching.”
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