Most artists have labels and management teams that plan out an entire year’s worth of promotional activities as soon as they have a tentative album release date. Interviews, TV appearances, shows, collaborations for remixes are all lined up months and months in advance to assure that album sales are maximized.

However, as many artists have recognized, streaming services and social media have completely changed how people listen to music, and learn about music. Long gone are the days where people would discover new artists by coming across their CDs at a local store. Music consumption and distribution have become so rapidly accessible that virtually anyone can release music from any setting and still get millions and millions of plays.

‘Bedroom’ pop was a term that was coined for artists that made music at home and released their songs, often without high-budget productions. The quintessential example of this phenomenon that is often brought up is Clairo. Clairo’s 2017 breakout song ‘Pretty Girl’ went viral very quickly on YouTube, after she recorded a grainy music video for the song, sitting on her bed. The song has garnered 71 million views on Youtube as of March 2021, reaching large audiences with its straightforward, contemplative, and vulnerable lyrics. Even though the song is objectively good, the differences in sound between Pretty Girl and songs that come out of recording studios with large production teams are evident. Many people define bedroom pop to have a ‘fuzzy’ sound that sets it apart, which is true for Pretty Girl too. Yet, the song catapulted Clairo to stardom, allowing her to perform at huge festivals like Coachella and chart on the Billboard Hot 100. She went on to release her debut album in 2019, which is still reminiscent of her old sound,  despite the many resources that must be available to her now.

Clairo herself has attributed the ‘virality’ of the song to YouTube’s algorithm system, which is an interesting take. Many people have criticized the algorithm for a lot of valid reasons, but the algorithm has also launched a lot of people from obscurity to stardom, making it an extremely powerful tool.

Bedroom pop artists that have recently blown up are artists like mxmtoon and girl in red, both musicians that found an audience through the Internet. mxmtoon or Maia gained massive success for her song prom dress. In an interview with NBC News, Maia, a Chinese-American woman, states: “As a woman of color and someone who has a lot of different intersections in a lot of marginalized identities, I have a whole lot that I could say all the time, and I think that the internet has really given a place for people with stories to tell them.”

Being a bedroom pop artist is a lot more than just the fuzzy sound, nostalgic soundscapes, and relatable lyrics. The immense success of artists that started off in their bedroom, like Billie Eilish and Clairo, really set the tone for where the music industry is going. These artists are bringing in an age of even stronger individualism, vulnerability and relatability, that may become more and more desired in music as the years go by. It is exciting to anticipate what is to come.