In the context of this blog the point of ranking indie guitarists is to define which guitarists are worth talking about first. So I tried evaluating them as fairly as I could by defining a simple methodology based on weighted criteria and scores per guitarist. And at the end I must admit it’s still very subjective but, hopefully, less… At least it helps reflecting why I think some guitarists are ahead or behind.
Methodology
Each guitarist is given a final score in percentage based on intermediate scores per criterion from 1 to 10. And each criterion is given a weight depending on its importance in the final score.
Criteria
- Creativity: the ability to create something that sounds new or immediately recognizable, typically inspiring lead guitar parts
- 30% weight: Creativity should be the #1 feature of the best guitarists for indie rock music
- Technique: the ability to play hard guitar parts that sound catchy but not complex
- 25% weight: Technique is one of the main reasons why we can be fascinated by indie guitarists
- Songwriting: the ability to create many good indie songs based on guitar lines
- 20% weight: Songwriting helps indie guitarists in their quest to make great indie songs
- Independence: the ability to retain autonomy to explore sounds, emotions and subjects of limited appeal to mainstream audiences
- 20% weight: Stay indie is a valuable and quite hard feature for successful indie guitarists
- Charisma: the ability to influence listeners (incl. band fellows) when playing guitar
- 5% weight: Charisma is that undefinable skill owned by some great indie guitarists that thrill us without making much sense
Scoring rules
- 9-10: Top level, outstanding
- 7-8: Very good level, better than average
- 5-6: Good level, average
- 4 and less: Bad level, below average
Off-topic guitarists
These guitarists were not taken into account: Lou Reed, Billy Corgan, Josh Homme, Jack White, John Frusciante, Robert Smith, Kurt Cobain, Alex Turner, Dan Auerbach, Chris Cornell, Mike McCready, Jerry Cantrell, Kim Thayil, Dave Grohl, Stone Gossard, Neil Young, David Byrne, John Squire, Mick Jones, Johnny Ramone …
Even if they once were flagships of indie rock and awesome guitarists, they were dismissed from this list for these reasons:
- Closer to other music genres: they would now rather be assimilated to classic rock, hard rock than to indie
- More mainstream: they started indie but got mainstream in what they did for the main part of their career
This could be debated a lot. For example why keep Jonny Greenwood and skip Jack White? I just think Jonny has managed to stay indie in what he does despite being quite famous while Jack became more mainstream, being closer and closer to his classic/blues rock roots, which I also like a lot, but is off topic in this blog.
Top 50 of indie guitarists
And here is the top 50 with details. It’s worth noting that I list here the 50 first guitarists but I evaluated more than 100 of them and that in case of same final score I decided myself the ranking between the equally-ranked guitarists.
| # | Name | Main band | Crea- tivity | Tech- nique | Song- writing | Indepe- ndence | Char- isma | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thurston Moore | Sonic Youth | 10 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 95,0% |
| 2 | Johnny Marr | The Smiths, Modest Mouse | 10 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 94,0% |
| 3 | Jonny Greenwood | Radiohead | 9 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 86,5% |
| 4 | Curt Kirkwood | Meat Puppets | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 86,0% |
| 5 | Graham Coxon | Blur | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 85,5% |
| 6 | Kevin Shields | My Bloody Valentine | 10 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 8 | 85,5% |
| 7 | J Mascis | Dinosaur Jr | 9 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 85,0% |
| 8 | Stephen Malkmus | Pavement | 9 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 85,0% |
| 9 | Annie Clark | St. Vincent | 8 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 85,0% |
| 10 | Joey Santiago | Pixies | 10 | 8 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 84,5% |
| 11 | David Longstreth | Dirty Projectors | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 84,5% |
| 12 | David Pajo | Slint | 9 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 84,5% |
| 13 | Carrie Brownstein | Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 84,5% |
| 14 | Daniel Rossen | Grizzly Bear | 8 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 84,0% |
| 15 | Ira Kaplan | Yo La Tengo | 8 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 84,0% |
| 16 | D. Boon | Minutemen | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 84,0% |
| 17 | Lee Ranaldo | Sonic Youth | 9 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 9 | 83,5% |
| 18 | Mac DeMarco | Mac DeMarco | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 83,5% |
| 19 | Bill Ryder-Jones | The Coral | 9 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 83,5% |
| 20 | Marissa Paternoster | Screaming Females | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 82,5% |
| 21 | Kurt Vile | The War on Drugs | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 82,0% |
| 22 | Yannis Philippakis | Foals | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 82,0% |
| 23 | Stevie Jackson | Belle and Sebastian | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 82,0% |
| 24 | Lou Barlow | Sebadoh | 8 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 82,0% |
| 25 | Kevin Parker | Tame Impala | 8 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 82,0% |
| 26 | Sufjan Stevens | Sufjan Stevens | 8 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 82,0% |
| 27 | Greg Ginn | Black flag | 9 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 81,0% |
| 28 | Amedeo Pace | Blonde Redhead | 8 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 81,0% |
| 29 | Nels Cline | Wilco | 8 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 80,5% |
| 30 | Polly Jean Harvey | PJ Harvey | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 80,0% |
| 31 | Ian MacKaye | Fugazi | 8 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 80,0% |
| 32 | Doug Martsch | Built to Spill | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 80,0% |
| 33 | Steve Albini | Shellac | 8 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 80,0% |
| 34 | Nick Zinner | Yeah Yeah Yeahs | 8 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 79,5% |
| 35 | Stuart Braithwaite | Mogwai | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 79,0% |
| 36 | Elliott Smith | Elliott Smith | 9 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 78,5% |
| 37 | Spencer Seim | Hella | 9 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 78,5% |
| 38 | Ruban Nielson | Unknown Mortal Orchestra | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 78,0% |
| 39 | Rivers Cuomo | Weezer | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 78,0% |
| 40 | Ian Williams | Don Caballero, Battles | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 78,0% |
| 41 | Marnie Stern | Marnie Stern | 7 | 10 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 78,0% |
| 42 | Judah Bauer | The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 77,5% |
| 43 | Kim Deal | The Breeders, Pixies | 8 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 77,5% |
| 44 | Adam Granduciel | The War on Drugs | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 77,5% |
| 45 | Tom Campesinos | Los Campesinos! | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 77,5% |
| 46 | Nick Drake | Nick Drake | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 77,0% |
| 47 | Ty Segall | Ty Segall | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 77,0% |
| 48 | Avey Tare | Animal Collective | 8 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 77,0% |
| 49 | Alex Scally | Beach House | 8 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 77,0% |
| 50 | Dave Davison | Maps & Atlases | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 77,0% |
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