The Tumblr era that I personally like to call the golden age occurred around 2011 to 2016, give or take. As someone who had an active blog within those years, I feel particularly qualified to speak on the familiar and recognizable music scene at that time.
Of course, there were a lot of other artists and albums that made Tumblr what it was, so this is not a definitive list. But the following three albums always come to mind when thinking about Tumblr’s indie-coded music scene.
‘Badlands’ by Halsey
Tumblr may have accidentally left Halsey out of its post celebrating 19 years of iconic online moments, but there’s no denying her impact on the site circa 2015. When Halsey released her debut album, Badlands, the songs “Gasoline” and “Colors” quickly made a home on Tumblr. There were grungy lyric edits everywhere, all with a sort of grainy nostalgia mixed in with mid-2010s indie aesthetics. Bloggers posted Halsey’s visuals and lyrics, which often focused on doomed love, toxic relationships, and romanticized delusion. Tumblr users ate that up. Halsey was the natural Tumblr successor to Lana Del Rey, whom we’ll discuss further down, of course.
‘AM’ by Arctic Monkeys
In 2013, Arctic Monkeys released AM and further solidified their international success. They were iconic in the U.K. already, but AM gave the U.S. a chance to really catch up to the hype. This album swept over Tumblr like a tsunami, and soon enough, everything was black-and-white, biker-gang, cigarette-smoking aesthetics. Leather jackets and motorcycles and sunglasses indoors. Tracks like “Do I Wanna Know?” and “R U Mine?” and “I Wanna Be Yours” infiltrated every corner of the aesthetic blog side of Tumblr. Alex Turner also aided in this aesthetic takeover when the Monkeys went on tour. He’d adopted a sexy, bad-boy greaser persona, which he carried through until around 2015. He’s since shed that image, opting for a more classic lounge-singer vibe. But the legacy of that album survived on Tumblr, where it became the epitome of 2010s indie sleaze.
‘Born To Die’ by Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey burst onto the scene in 2012 with Born to Die, and while her persona and vocal style confused and even angered some critics at the time, the kids on Tumblr loved her. The “Born to Die” music video introduced flower crowns into the blogosphere. Pretty soon, there was a flower crown edit of every obscure fandom character and band guy you could think of. That was The Thing to do on Tumblr for a long time, and we have Miss Del Rey to thank for that. Her later albums would also take over the site, up until Norman F—ing Rockwell in 2019, when her popularity began to wane a bit. But Ultraviolence, Honeymoon, and a bit of Lust for Life still had a vice grip on Tumblr. There’s no telling what Lana Del Rey’s popularity there looks like now. But for a while, she was all the rage.
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