Where Is Pop In The Independent Toronto Music Scene?
In November of 2019 I was at a King Princess concert partying with lots of young women having a blast. We were dancing it up to some great pop music and had the added bonus of the near-zero threat of being felt up in GA. It was me and the teenage lesbians against the world! I thought: if there are so many of us here to see King Princess, where’s the pop talent in the local scene? We know indie Toronto for its thriving rock, and hip hop communities, but considering Canada has contributed many of the Western world’s most famous pop stars like, Justin Beiber, Shawn Mendes, Avril Lavigne, and Carly Rae Jepsen to name a few, why can’t we find pop artists at our local venues?
The indie Toronto music community currently focuses on genres that are traditionally palatable to men like rock and hip hop, leaving a huge untapped market of young women and LGBTQ+ people who haven’t had financially accessible concerts to go to on the regular. Instead they need to save up for one or two stadium pop shows a year. Yes, lots of people who aren’t men like rock and hip hop, but those genres guarantee a male fanbase before any other, whereas pop guarantees a female and queer fanbase because it tends to target young femme people and is considered “girly”. Bubblegum, escape room and other genres under the pop umbrella thrive amongst young women and queer people partially because of their diverse representation of ethnicities, confident womxn, and the LGBTQ+ community. They’re also loved for being upbeat, danceable, and visually intentional. These genres also owe some of their success to the Spotify “Hyperpop” playlist, Y2K revival trends on TikTok, escapist dance music cravings amidst a pandemic, and enlightenment amongst young people addressing internalized misogyny.
Due to the downfall of gatekeeping music via traditional media, and the prosperity of social media and streaming platforms, people have been discovering genres that weren’t represented in their city’s music scene. I ended up in the PC Music Discord chat over quarantine. For those unfamiliar, PC Music is an independent label/collective that has spearheaded the hyperpop movement. In the chat, the mods told me that a lot of their users are from Canada. So that confirmed that there is an appetite for independent pop music here. At first I considered that it hasn’t manifested in the local scene because pop is an extremely produced genre that is only possible with the financial backing of a major label, but then also considered the success of PC Music as an indie label, and independent pop stars like Kim Petras and Rina Sawayama. PC Music artists usually collaborate with A. G. Cook, their founder and producer, or PC affiliated producers; Petras works with big name producers despite being independent; and Sawayama has maintained a steady partnership with Clarence Clarity, an independent producer. So pop music doesn’t require a major label in order to get adequate production. In fact, indie pop artists have demonstrated that they are sometimes more produced than radio artists due to a common modern theme within the genre being to critique consumerism, which is expressed through overproduction in songs and accompanying visuals. For example, QT, the pop star/personification of an energy drink from PC Music, and Poppy, an artist who pretends she’s a computer. Considering these independent artists and their production partnerships, production doesn’t have to be unattainably expensive and should already be accessible for pop artists in Toronto.
As female and queer dominated genre, I think independent pop has an audience ready for its arrival in Toronto. The interest is there, as exhibited online, but also a lot more potential audiences are unaware of the possibility for a local indie pop music community because they’re usually only able to see pop artists as touring acts from out of town and at a high price. This might explain local independent pop’s current lack of industry support. A local indie pop scene should be fostered in Toronto because it’s currently missing a safe space in music that caters specifically to female and queer audiences where they can also thrive creatively. This makes it an opportunity to get more people involved in local music.
