50 Musicians Worth Watching — Their Songs Might Become Your Next On-Repeat List

We hope you'll hit it off with one in fifty of them

Next to mainstream pop, independent music usually carries its own "niche" aesthetic.

In Britain in the late 1970s, independent music meant the independent punk that rose up against the glut of progressive rock. In the 1990s, grunge arrived as a reaction against overplayed American rock, and people at the time filed it under independent music too.

By now, independent music can no longer be called a single genre. It mixes rock, pop, classical, electronic and hip-hop, and reads more like an attitude toward music — a revolt against a mainstream that has gone stiff, and a critique of it.

It seems to stand opposite the mainstream, and yet, oddly, independent music keeps feeding its own variety and invention back into pop, giving pop more life.

The Guardian's list of 50 musicians worth watching does not judge by sales or fame (though a few well-known names do turn up on it). The test is whether the artist has an independent spirit. Their personalities differ wildly, but everyone on the list has one thing in common: rather than following the popular belief that "you have to make this kind of music to blow up," what they most want to make is music of their own.

You may not find them on trending charts or in critics' columns. On music platforms, you may be the first person to break their "zero comments" streak.

You'll find destructive, screaming experiments; expression that's rough and a little naive; street-performance rebellion and abandon; bewilderment at the world; and swagger with nothing held back. Either way, the list itself sounds like an adventure.

We've pulled out a few of its threads — and we hope you'll hit it off with one in fifty of them.

There's a way of expressing yourself, and it's called Generation Z

Generation Z means people born from the mid-1990s through the 2000s. They tend to share a few traits: they like to invent things, they like whatever is odd and interesting, they're willing to try and fail, they're in no hurry to find a job, and they live on social media.

The British band Neverland Clan works like a mirror held up to twenty-year-olds, catching much of what Generation Z wants to say as it lets itself loose: "Don't forget your youth. Put what you want to do, your dreams, first. I'm 21, and I feel the pressure to find work too, but we don't want that crowding out the thing you actually want to do."

Just as the American hip-hop crew Odd Future ripped a hole in a dull music scene with their playful, contrary ideas, Neverland Clan is lining up a punch at British hip-hop. Most of these boys come from southeast London and are in their teens or early twenties. Their tastes run through R&B, rap, trip-hop (an electronic offshoot) and Slipknot (the heavy-metal band), and their songs are about their friendships and what goes on in their home studio.

This is about as pure a DIY band as you'll find. "Everything gets done at home. We don't have a label or an engineer to help us, so we teach ourselves. None of us has been to music school or anything like that."

That they exist at all stands for a new way of thinking: Generation Z's self-sufficiency and its built-in optimism. Lead singer Ryan makes the point (yes, this does sound like a bowl of chicken soup for the soul): "We're young, and our fans might be even younger than us, so we've been through what they're going through. When you finish high school, you're told to go to university, but those straight-A graduates are still scrambling for work. So why not go do something you're actually interested in? We want you to know you can do anything you want to do."

Genre seems to matter less and less

Hip-hop, rock, punk, rap, jazz. For these musicians, being heard as "a certain kind" of artist is not a compliment. And little by little you notice that you can't say what kind their music is — probably because it mixes too many kinds at once.

The Garden is one of them, made up of twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears. "Most of our audience is under 21. I don't really know why. What I want is to reach everyone, to make music for the masses. Our lyrics are about the future, and maybe people in their twenties and thirties can't relate."

That sharp edge seems to make them Generation Z's private property — you almost hope no one's aunt or uncle has ever heard of this band. Their music sounds like several genres at once, "maybe 50 of them, maybe none at all": a bit of hardcore, and a more obvious streak of post-punk.

For them, though, sorting music into camps is neither interesting nor useful, and they don't want to be filed under "one kind." "It might be more interesting if there were fewer genre labels in the future," Wyatt says.

If you want to get a feel for the Garden brothers quickly, start with their album The Life and Times of a Paperclip. You'll pick up their clear-headed, bracing air.

The Life and Times of a Paperclip

Young in years, old in soul

Jorja Smith's path to growing up looks like a typical Generation Z story, but she seems to have an old soul that doesn't match her fame — she barely uses social media, barely watches television, and has no plans to sign with a label. This 20-year-old studied classical singing, piano and oboe, and started writing songs in her bedroom at 16.

You may have heard Blue Lights, the song that made her a little famous. It blends the feel of Dizzee Rascal's Sirens with an eighties piano ballad, tells the story of a young man being arrested, and sounds like "a film from the eighties or nineties." Her voice is distinct enough that plenty of YouTube commenters write things like "so glad I found her here." Her fine emotional touch and her talent also show up in her collaborations — A Prince with the Irish rapper Maverick Sabre, People with the reggae-leaning Cadenza.

Blue Lights

Then there's Brooke Sharkey, not yet 30 and already more than a decade into performing across Europe. If you had to categorize her, you could call Brooke Sharkey a folk singer, but her unmistakable voice and her gift for telling a story in song may remind you of the odd, eclectic songwriter Regina Spektor, the French jazz singer Juliette Gréco, or the folk singer Tom Waits.

White Chalk

Set against Regina Spektor's intricate arrangements or Juliette Gréco's noble poise, though, there's something more quieting about Brooke Sharkey sitting on the street, her skirt lifting in the wind, singing La Vie en Rose.

Boom — time for a noise experiment

A lot of experimental music, frankly, is hard on the ears, but on this list such attempts are anything but rare.

The Manchester group ILL believes in "the power in rebellious noise." Formed in 2012, they have spent their career laying bare music that is wild, strange and unhinged. They set out to be a band like The Fall or Can (a style sometimes called Teutonic rhythm, or space rock), and gradually turned themselves into feminist "post-punk noisemakers."

In 1950s B-movies, in modern blockbusters, in real space exploration, women have never had much of a place. On Space Dick, released a few days ago, they pay tribute to Alien, Red Dwarf and Star Trek and pull off a cheerful reversal: in the video, a starship captain crosses the galaxy and rescues her fellow women from the claws of monsters and misogyny.

Space Dick

Don't forget live shows — they are music's life

An underpass, a back street, a square. Word gets around, the set starts, and it runs until the police stop it.

That may be daily life for underground bands who love playing on the street, and Show Me the Body is one of them. In the words of bassist Harlan Steed, "A lot of venues were shutting down, and we found it worked out better to play in our own spaces."

Show Me the Body is a hardcore band from New York. Hardcore began its rule over the underground about 40 years ago — rough, primal, fierce and rebellious. In the 1970s, hardcore meant nothing more than a louder, faster punk rock. After decades of rises and falls, it mixed with punk, metal and hip-hop in the 1990s and took over New York City and the areas around it. Its appeal lives on stage, not in the studio; it isn't only music, but something closer to a social fight that can go off at any moment. These shows don't look polished — the singer's and the bassist's cables always seem to be acting up — but the aggression that bursts out of a cramped room is what sets them apart.

In this band's work, thick, tangled noise builds their New York of the 21st century. Their first album, Body War, is a collision of sounds: industrial noise, deafening hardcore, hip-hop, and, strangest of all, a dissonant banjo. They use that discord to mock the social order and to voice their anger at police running wild.

Body War

The old venues are slowly becoming part of the city's gentrification story, but lead singer Julian Cashwan Pratt still knows what he's after: "Keep making more music, and pull in more of the next generation."

They tell their own stories in music, and it lands

If New York has Empire State of Mind by Jay Z and Alicia Keys (written by two Brooklyn songwriters, Angela Hunte and Janice Sewell, out of homesickness for their city), then London has Ray BLK's My Hood. With its full English breakfasts, fried chicken, mopeds and a guest turn from the British rapper Stormzy, the song stays intensely personal and still strikes a chord.

My Hood

Then there's the rapper Nadia Rose, from Croydon. In July 2016, at 22, she put the video for Skwod on YouTube and drew a million views. People simply fell for how confident and how defiant she looks rapping in the street.

Skwod

Her music is full of nerve and invention, humor and charm — no wonder some say she could be the next Missy Elliott (who has won American Music Awards in both the rap and hip-hop categories).

Meeting the classics inside modern music

Abra is the daughter of a church missionary, and grew up moving between south London, New York and Atlanta. Through all that upheaval, "music, art and books were the only constants."

Because she grew up in a religious household, nearly all the music she heard was sacred music. The stacked harmonies and old hymns and folk songs soaked into her life so thoroughly that to her peers she seemed like an outsider.

Today she seems to join the classic and the contemporary with real skill — gospel, eighties pop, avant-garde R&B, she moves through all of it easily. Listen to her track Crybaby, or her whole EP Princess: they bow to the past and still sound current and stylish.

Whatever else they lack, it isn't personality

Last, a "band" from California: Francis and the Lights, founded by the musician Francis Farewell Starlite.

The strange part is that this band has no "members." There's him, and whoever joins in — "including you." He has worked with plenty of fine musicians, among them Kanye, Bon Iver, Cashmere Cat and Drake. His style differs from the melancholy pop that California musicians tend to make. Have a look at Friends, his recent collaboration with Kanye and Bon Iver (the video leans hard into soul dancing — open with care).

Friends

We've also put together a playlist for you: 50 Rising Music Stars

You're welcome.

Cover image source: The Guardian