Underground (?) Music

Jeez who even listens to these people?

What’s a big number? It depends on the context, but removed from that, what abstract number is objectively big?

Maybe it’s a billion. Maybe a million. Maybe a thousand. Maybe 100.

What if those were people, people who were invested enough in you and your career to listen to you every month? Suddenly what constitutes ‘big’ is a lot simpler. At least for me, even if 10 people a month were seriously interested in what I was creating, that would be a ‘big’ number. However, when it’s not you working for those numbers where each little milestone is a major accomplishment, it can be easy to diminish all but the largest artists. Compared to Drake, someone averaging even a million monthly listeners is small potatoes. The issue of constant comparison is an inherent problem with listening to music in the streaming era, where the latest sale numbers and stream count are available to anyone connected to the internet. This, of course, creates many problems, not the least of which is the modern equivalent to “Might Makes Right”, a phrase helpfully coined by Ludwig Ahgren as “Bigger Number, Better Person”. This mentality is that commercial success is not only indicative of quality music but that all popular music must be good because it’s popular, and is both a symptom of and reinforcement of this culture of constant comparison.

Another force operating on what might be considered ‘big’ is the people who want to keep something ‘small’ or ‘underground’. The modern concept of a gatekeeper, who hoards obscure music because it’s obscure and wants to keep it that way. When artists truly go mainstream, there is often a contingent of fans who very loudly bemoan their hidden gem becoming a household name. However, some artists have a much louder and larger subculture of gatekeepers than others. If you want to keep the majority of the fan base and make a lot of money when you go commercial, you simply have to never be ‘underground’. To be underground is a concept that can be applied to all music since the first Homo Erectus played on dinosaur bone xylophones.

On Wikipedia, the first line attempts to define Underground Music, “Underground music is music with practices perceived as outside, or somehow opposed to mainstream popular music culture.” While fairly vague, this definition does at least provide something to build off of. At its core, the idea of the ‘underground’ is mainly defined by how both the artist and audience consider the artist to be. MF DOOM, for example, is often referred to as being within the greater Hip Hop ‘underground’. Despite this, he has 7.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and before his tragic, far too early death in 2020 collaborated with the likes of the Alchemist and Madlib, some of the largest and most talented producers of our time. He even starred in a series of commercials on Adult Swim, showing off his villainous Mac & Cheese recipe. Together, without fan input, many people who just saw his numbers and accomplishments probably would not call him ‘underground’ - but because that is the perception, it is the reality.

In a truthfully very Nietzschean way, often fans destroy by defining an artist as ‘underground’ and holding onto far more than they should. The issue is that to a certain extent, almost every artist has fans like this. And for many artists, it’s not a bad thing. They can give back to the niches that allowed them to grow in the first place, and in return, fans are loyal and often feel closer to their artist because they are smaller. This can lead to a higher fan percentage buying tickets, more word-of-mouth guerilla marketing, or an active social media account. In a perfectly symbiotic Artist-Audience relationship in this context, both need to understand and accept an arbitrary bar for what is and isn’t underground. Drake is someone whose audience largely understands that he is extremely popular, and he absolutely plays into it. Lil Uzi Vert is an example of someone whose audience doesn't understand their level of fame, who also sees themselves as somewhat ‘underground’.

Another complication is that when you put the numbers into perspective, that artist with a million monthly listeners is pretty underground to your average person. Spotify has 570 million monthly listeners, so even Taylor Swift with almost 100 million monthly listeners and arguably the most popular artist right now still only reels in well under a 5th of the entire platform. Unless you are one of the most popular people on the platform, the average person most likely won’t know your name.

This 2021 Complex article outlines many of the points I’ve made so far and delves much deeper into both artist’s perspectives on the idea of an ‘underground’ and the history of the term (100% worth a read). The issue that I have with the conclusion they reach, however, is that it mostly tries to hand wave away what should have been the crux of the piece- what truly IS ‘underground’ today? The article ends with a quote from indie rapper Slug- “Even mainstream rap is underground to me when it comes to ethos or in theory because it’s coming from an underdog… We’ve got to stop looking at (artists signed to labels) like they’re mainstream, because they’re all underground, bro. These are voices that people have put together whole systems to hold back. At the end of the day, when that budget is gone, that person is still a voice and people are still going to trust that person’s voice. If that person never misleads those people, they’re still going to trust that person’s voice.” Truthfully, this feels like a concession, from both Slug and Complex. By that definition, both the idea of the modern and historical ‘underground’ is based entirely on the voice of the person, and is completely divorced from any idea of sales or sound or anything concrete. This definition can be applied to or removed from anyone for no reason defeating the one reason a label like this matters, for external categorization.

My main issue with Complex’s article is the unnecessary equivocation of ‘underground’ and experimental. To once again quote Slug, “Anything nonconformist that isn’t created to get on the radio necessarily and isn’t made to fit in with everything else.” Now, to be sure, many ‘underground’ artists are experimental. However, to be experimental does not mean that you are ‘underground’ and vice versa. Tying these two terms together also becomes a problem when what is considered experimental changes. An illustration of this is almost every major genre today, especially those created by minority groups in the past. Jazz, R&B, Hip Hop, EDM, and even the mainstream acceptance of non-English music that is currently being spearheaded by artists like Bad Bunny today all were ‘underground’ to begin with. The transient nature of popularity in music means that there is no fixed position for each genre or artist, which means that to inherently say that what is experimental must be ‘underground’ disregards that experimentality is tied to the time in which the music is made. Even parts of Western tonality that have been considered literally satanic, such as the tritone, is now a staple of pop music.

2024 was, in retrospect, almost the year for underground artists to go mainstream. Brat, Charli XCX’s lime-green statement piece from June, catapulted the artist into nearly every facet of internet culture for months. Chappell Roan experienced much the same following The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess released in late 2023. Both of these artists now have over 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify, when Chappell Roan had just 1 million monthly listeners in September of 2023. (These numbers are mostly accurate, but since Spotify doesn’t track the changes in monthly listeners I’m going off of 3rd party stats) Her story is one of straight-up ascension - she began as an ‘underground’ pop queen, and turned into the face of contemporary queer culture, even turning down an invitation to the White House due to their posistion on the Palestinian Genocide. The most impressive part was just how wide reaching her influence became, with videos from frat houses to stadiums playing HOT TO GO! going viral. Charli is a different story. Her monthly listeners have fluctated before, hititng 20 million after the 2020 release of how i’m feeling now before dipping to the high single digits before brat. This, I think, acts as a simulacrum for how fame moves today. The difference between being ‘underground’ or ‘mainstream’ can be just a few months. Other artists, like Ice Spice, reach high highs but continue losing listeners (which she didn’t help with her disasterous album Y2K! last year).

Unlike one-hit wonders of the past (who would make up a sizable minority of what people considered ‘underground’) these artists really do achieve sizable mainstream success for their entire catalogues. It may be that one song or album does particularly well, but many people who claim to be fans don’t beleive that it’s fleeting. It’s because of this that these artist never really recede too far from the public conciousness despite no longer being as relevant, and often never regain the ‘undergound’ title they may have once held. Charli XCX’s popularity is especially a refutation of Slug’s contention, as brat’s sounds were heaily inspired by the late legend Sophie. One of the originators of modern hyperpop and an absolute icon, her sound was entirely unqiue and certianly not mainstream. However, Charli’s intreptation absolutely was.

The underground is dead- at least in any way that matters. More than ever before, artists are accessible to everyone, and that’s a good thing. The spirit of the underground lives on, however, for those who want to embrace it. I don’t have a conclusive, all encompassing definition for what it means to be ‘underground’ or not. All I can say is that if you call MAVI mainstream, you are on twitter too much.

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