Twee pop is a subgenre of

indie pop Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with a DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and s ...

that originates from the 1986 ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...

'' compilation '' C86''. Twee pop gets its name from the aesthetic of twee, which is known for its simplicity and childlike innocence. Some of its defining features are boy-girl harmonies, catchy melodies, and lyrics about love. For many years, prominent

independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small and medium-sized enterprise, small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels ...

s associated with twee pop were Sarah Records (in the UK) and K Records (in the US). Twee pop gained popularity in the 1990s and has seen a recent revival in the 2020s.

Etymology

The definition of twee is something "excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental," supposedly born from a childish mispronunciation of the word sweet. With the twee movement's embrace of innocence and femininity, the genre has strong associations with

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

Characteristics

According to NPR, twee pop "was fervently informed by punk: snappy riffs, fast-track tempos, propulsive drums." Artists such as Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, and Marine Girls were primarily women who wrote about love, relationships, and personal empowerment. While the music sounded lighthearted and naive, the subject matter was often gritty and dark. Twee pop has been seen as a feminist response to tough, invulnerable, masculine punk and post-punk music scenes of the time. Many twee artists, such as Blueboy, were openly queer. In the 1990s, indie pop and twee scenes rejected the sexist, homophobic, and racist attitudes of mainstream music. A retrospective fascination with the genre in the US saw Americans eagerly defining themselves as twee. According to '' The A.V. Club''s Paula Mejia:

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

says that twee pop is "perhaps best likened to bubblegum

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent reco ...

—it's music with a spirit of D.I.Y. defiance in the grand tradition of punk, but with a simplicity and innocence not seen or heard since the earliest days of rock & roll". The author Marc Spitz suggests that the roots of twee stem from

post-war A post-war or postwar period is the interval immediately following the end of a war. The term usually refers to a varying period of time after World War II, which ended in 1945. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum, ...

1950s music. While the culture categorized itself under the moniker of "indie" (short for independent), many major twee powerhouses gained mainstream critical acclaim for their contributions to the twee movement.

References

{{pop music Indie pop 1986 introductions 20th-century music genres British styles of music Rock music genres Pop music genres