Twee pop

Twee pop
Stylistic origins	Indie pop post-punk pop guitar pop girl groups
Cultural origins	c. 1986,United Kingdom
Other topics
Anorak Math rock

Twee popis asubgenreofindie popthat originates from the 1986NMEcompilationC86.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, prominentindependent record labelsassociated with twee pop wereSarah Records(in the UK) andK Records(in the US).

Twee pop gained popularity in the 1990s, and has seen a recent revival in the 2020s.

Characteristics

Further information:Indie pop

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 withfeminismand queer activism.

Artists such asHeavenly,Talulah Gosh,andMarine Girlswere 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 asBlueboy,were openly queer.In the 1990s, Indiepop 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 toThe A.V. Club's Paula Mejia:

The difference between "twee" and "indie pop" is slight but polarizing. Both styles of music transcended genre, became a tape-trading lifestyle, and have similar influences, drawing from the Ramones' minimalist three-chord structures as much as The Jesus And Mary Chain's salty pop harmonies. Everyone varies slightly on origins... Twee itself began as a vast collection of sounds, gathering the threads where luminaries left off, and carving out divergent avenues in their wake.

AllMusicsays that twee pop is "perhaps best likened tobubblegumindie rock—it's music with a spirit of D.I.Y. defiance in the grand tradition ofpunk,but with a simplicity and innocence not seen or heard since the earliest days of rock & roll ".The authorMarc Spitzsuggests that the roots of twee stem frompost-war1950s 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.