Summit Music Hall in Denver was sold out on Saturday night, with Clairo headlining the bill. That’s a major accomplishment in itself. It’s even more remarkable since Claire Cottrill released her first song only two years ago – on YouTube.
Cottrill, who goes by Clario as her musical moniker, now has over 837,000 subscribers on YouTube, 1.3 million followers on Instagram, and 263,000 followers on Twitter. She turned 21 just this past August, and by then had already signed to Fader, only two weeks prior released her first full length, Immunity, and another EP before in May 2018. The song that started it all, “Pretty Girl,” was posted online in August of 2017, and now has more than 40 million views on YouTube. (“Pretty Girl” also was included on The Le Sigh Vol. III released by Father/Daughter Records that same month.)
Clairo is, by definition, a YouTube phenomenon. She’s gone from 0 to 60 in the public eye in two years – and in the past two months seems to be on every magazine cover, interviewed by every music magazine, and performing on every late night and daytime talk show. I feel as if I blinked and she appeared as a major part of the indie scene. I’m starting to understand why many of my friends are exhausted by trying to keep up with all the new music coming out these days.
But there were plenty of fans at the sold-out show – all 1,100 of them – who made it feel like Clairo was the only musician they’ve ever loved. And Clairo loved them back: walking the full stage, squatting down low to get close with the front row, and singing her heart out.
I shot photos for the first three songs – Cottrill almost right on top of me at one point – and then wandered the venue. Later as she played the hit single off her latest record, “Bags,” I hummed along and ate a slice of pizza. I hung out at the back bar, where despite the show being sold out, I still had plenty of room to relax. I watched the half-circle backdrop on the set change between different video projections: everything from acrylic swirls and random patterns and water droplets, to old, dreamy videos of mountainous landscapes with glaciers, horses, flowers, and dragonflies, and waterfalls with rainbows. I sensed she was going for a heavy element of nostalgia.
I was surprised, however, that the songs were more upbeat live; they were more indie rock-like than piano-focused or R&B, unlike the versions on Immunity. For the somber nature of many of her tunes and her lyrics, this wasn’t a show to cry to. It was too busy, too loud, to get emotional. Her music has been relevant and personal to me because it’s intimate, and the show somehow was not.
Then the key piano part in “Bags” wasn’t played live, even though there were two keyboards on stage, and I started paying more attention. When the guitar part at the end of “Feel Something” wasn’t played live either – only part of the backing track – I started to get annoyed. While I was grateful to be seeing Clairo at all, and at such a great venue, a sense of skepticism and unease crept upon me. Why is she so dependent on the backing tracks? Where’s the real “live” element here?
To be fair, I didn’t realize how big Summit Music Hall was going to be. I was expecting Clairo to be more like Tomberlin or something, who often does an intimate solo guitar act. I wanted to see a real piano on stage, something much more than backing tracks with just live drums and guitars. Yet only two months after her first album, her live show already feels overproduced and staged. And the fact that Mac Demarco attended the show that night and crowd surfed at the end – and that these fan bases overlap – just gave me an icky feeling that other indie musicians and she are just riding each other’s waves of popularity like some game.
Finally a feeling I’ve been unable to put my finger on for the past year came to the front of my mind: I often don’t care for indie musicians who rise to fame so quickly, while so young.
And I’ve been confused lately as to why I have this opinion. I like a lot of young artists and a lot of musicians who have appeared out of nowhere on the radio. But most of them are pop artists, people who go on to be part of the Top 40. They’re people you expect to be sellouts to the industry, so you’re okay with their instant rise to fame.
For example: Billie Eilish, whose music I enjoy, is 17 years old. She grew up in LA, and her parents are in the entertainment industry. Her older brother writes music, and her first song was actually written by him for his band (according to Wikipedia) and ended up on the Billboard Hot 100 within two years. Who else has ever had help writing their first song and then been catapulted to stardom within two years? No one I know in indie music, for sure.
What makes me uncomfortable about this feeling of mine is that I’m not the only one who has it. Some on the internet have been suspicious or even hateful of these quick rises to fame, especially when it’s something women achieve.
In the past two years, a post appeared on Reddit accusing Cottrill of being an “industry plant,” because of her father’s jobs and industry connections. Now, there’s a big difference between being an “industry plant” – which as far as I know, isn’t a real thing, and is just a term created to try to invalidate artists – and benefitting from your privilege.
Because of her father, Cottrill was able to sign a great record deal at a very young age, and on her first tour, she opened for Dua Lipa – who won a Grammy in 2019 for Best New Artist – all from a few YouTube videos. That’s not a common “indie” experience.
Sure, that’s what going viral can lead to these days. But it’s also what having good connections can take a huge step further, and make the difference between a short 15 minutes of fame on YouTube, and launching a life-long career.
There’s nothing wrong with liking the music of young artists who make a name for themselves quickly or use their personal connections to their advantage (hey, that’s life), but when I recognize the structures from which they come from within the indie scene, it rubs me the wrong way. To me, that’s a narrative for the popular music industry.
Because instead of just enjoying the music, if I get to thinking, why did this artist get noticed enough for me to know about so suddenly? That also makes think:
Who’s music am I missing out on knowing about or listening to because their parents, family, or friends don’t have helpful industry connections?
Now I’m not saying that an indie musician has to spend 10 years unnoticed, struggling, for their music to be good, or for them to deserve attention. And there is no rule that the “best” people or the “best” music will rise to the top of the charts, get noticed, or sell and stream the most hits. But I’m going to have a really hard time caring about your music and career over time if you had most of the steps to success and fame handed to you, especially at a young age.
I fell in love with indie music in Minneapolis because of the openers, the smaller, lesser-known acts, the underdogs. The bands who make up the local scene where I live, who barely chart on the college radio stations, and tour regionally in a crappy, beat-up van with their friends. The ones who are still working to make it work five or ten or fifteen years later, working multiple jobs, often wondering if it’s still worth it.
And it’s hard for me to root for young, fast-rising stars in the indie industry like Clairo, because no one, not even she, had to wait for that reward: it happened basically overnight. I’ll never get to see her stripped-down set at a small venue somewhere, where she plays for 10 or 20 people, who are mostly drinking at the bar. She’ll never open for another band at a local album release show. She’ll probably never even be able to claim a “local” scene, she has only ever opened for big names and headlined sold out shows at mid-sized venues. She signed with a major label before she could legally drink. She’ll probably always get to focus on her music as her main priority, and not have to juggle the three jobs most musicians work between tours. Since releasing her first song online, she’s almost never not been recognized for her work.
And let’s be clear: it’s not that she didn’t work for something she deserves. It’s that the way the world works now, how internet stars rise quickly to become viral sensations, that I cannot connect with. And while that can propel someone to make great music sooner than they would have otherwise, it can also warp their sense of themselves, what it is to be a musician, and they could burn out faster.
It also robs fans like me of that intimate discovery process, where instead of joining a local community’s music scene, and creating personal connections within it, she’s suddenly national and international – leaving Clairo with no “local” anything, no loyal foundation to fall back on if she wants or needs to change. Everyone and anyone can claim her, but who can she claim?
While she has an amazing opportunity now before her, which many don’t or will never have, I wish she could have gotten it a few years down the road at least. So she could figure out more about herself without being a big-name indie act, without being a constant performer, without all the pressures of the industry on top of the tough experience of being an early twenty-something.
Maybe this is a difference between up and coming Gen Z musicians and fans from all previous, older generations. Maybe us Millennials and older folk just aren’t used to this viral internet rise to fame path, and can’t accept it. But the reason over 1,000 people were at her show, and the reason I loved her album, is because we relate to her or her music.
So while I love Clairo’s music, her show was fun, and she seems like a wonderful human, I struggle to see Clairo as an indie musician.
