Topic summary
lo-fi
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Lo-fi music.
Genre crystallization
"Lo-fi" was applied inconsistently throughout the 1990s. Writing in the book Hop on Pop (2003), Tony Grajeda said that by 1995, Rolling Stone magazine "managed to label every other band it featured in the first half [of the year] as somehow lo-fi." One journalist in Spin credited Sebadoh's Sebadoh III (1991) with "inventing" lo-fi, characterizing the genre as "the soft rock of punk". Additionally, virtually every journalist referenced an increasing media coverage of lo-fi music while failing to acknowledge themselves as contributors to the trend.