Bedroom pop is pop music written and recorded at home, usually by the artist alone, with a soft, close-up sound. As quoted on Wikipedia, The Guardian’s Daniel Wray (2020) described it as home-recorded music with a “dreamy, introspective and intimate” sound that runs “across indie, pop, R&B and emo.” The label became a genre name in the late 2010s, when a run of teenagers’ DIY videos went viral on YouTube.
Origin
Long Before the Label
Home recording is older than the word. Wikipedia notes that the Beach Boys’ 1967 albums were later grouped as Brian Wilson’s “Bedroom Tapes,” and Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson credited Smiley Smile with inventing “the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters.” The arrival of cheap digital audio workstations led, in Wikipedia’s account of lo-fi music, to “the nearly synonymous term bedroom pop.” In 2006 The New York Times’ Tammy LaGorce called it “bloglike music that tries to make the world a better place through a perfect homemade song.” By the 2010s, journalists applied the term to almost any music with a “fuzzy” production quality.
The YouTube Breakouts, 2015–2017
The modern genre crystallised around a handful of self-produced uploads. According to Wikipedia, Clairo and Boy Pablo “gained more recognition due to the virality of their DIY music videos on YouTube,” and the term was further legitimised by Spotify’s Bedroom Pop playlist.
Breakout Artists
| Year | Artist | Breakout track or release | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Rex Orange County | Bcos U Will Never B Free | Self-released free on Bandcamp and SoundCloud; he then worked on two songs on Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy (2017) and signed with RCA |
| 2016 | Cuco | Wannabewithu EP | Featured some of his first viral songs, including “Lover Is a Day” and “Amor de Siempre” |
| 2017 | Cuco | ”Lo Que Siento” | The single he rose to prominence with |
| 2017 | Boy Pablo | ”Everytime” | Uploaded to YouTube in May 2017; the Norwegian artist’s “DIY-produced bedroom pop track” spread internationally late that year |
| 2017 | beabadoobee | ”Coffee” | Debut single, September 2017; sampled on Powfu’s 2019 “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)”, which went viral on TikTok in early 2020 |
| 2017 | Clairo | ”Pretty Girl” | Video went viral on YouTube in late 2017; her music was then filed under the growing genre of bedroom pop |
Several of these artists have since pushed back on the tag. Clairo said the label “can be limiting because I want to progress,” and in a 2025 interview Cuco said bedroom pop “was just the label of the internet.”
Bedroom Pop vs Lo-Fi vs Dream Pop
| Bedroom pop | Lo-fi | Dream pop | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it names | Home-made pop songwriting | A production quality: “low fidelity” | A 1980s alternative-rock subgenre |
| Where it’s made | The artist’s own room, often solo | Anywhere with cheap gear | Studios as well as home |
| Signature sound | ”Dreamy, introspective and intimate” | Hiss, warble, imperfect takes | Reverb, texture, soft vocals |
| Platform story | Viral YouTube videos, Spotify’s Bedroom Pop playlist | 2010s YouTube streams tagged “lofi hip-hop” or “chillhop” | 4AD label in the 1980s; Beach House-led revival in the late 2000s |
| On Hashpedia | This page | #LofiHipHop | #DreamPop |