I wrote this article today, and thought that the people here may find it interesting. Feel free to comment critically or in response to the text.
Listening to any form of music that is alternative to the norm will always hold a level of social stigma; who among us has never told somebody they listen to indie, hip-hop, pop, metal, nu metal, r'n'b, or any other form of music, and not been thought strange, or often even mocked? And again, who among us hasn't done the same to somebody else, at least once? People seem determined to stick to stereotypes as best they can, a chav will without doubt listen to some for of hip-hop or rhythm n bass, and they will hate all of "that head-banging stuff." Skaters will listen to pop-punk acts such as Sum 41 and whatever Blink 182 are calling themselves this week, all the while hating and being hated by punks who hate everything that isn't a man shouting along to some guitars being smashed, on the grounds that everything else is pop and recorded by sell-outs.
And where do we stand, the indie crowd? Who hates us? Who do we hate?
The answer is, at first glance, that everyone hates us. There is nobody in the mainstream or in any other subculture that gives a fuck about the latest Malkmus or Broken Social Scene record. But why? The answer is surely because our numbers are too few. We are not out there in the street, and in the school, wearing easily identifiable clothes and band t-shirts, and as a result, few people hear about our music, and even fewer see indie as a scene of large enough numbers to associate with, so they find one of the various other scenes to align themselves with.
Who do we hate then? Well, we are the most irritating punks in everything but musical taste - we will often mock everything that is mainstream, for being sell-outs, all the while claiming that indie bands are musically and lyrically superior, but have we ever actually paid enough attention to bands such as My Chemical Romance to justify mocking them? It turns out that no, we have listened to them maybe once on the radio, and automatically we have made the connection between mainstream and shit in our head. This is unfair, take indie stars the Weakerthans for example, they are, pretty much identical to Blink 182 musically and lyrically (with the notable exception that they use slightly bigger words occasionally) but we still love them and hate Blink 182. The reason for this, sadly, is because we are hipsters. We hate the mainstream, regardless of quality, simple as that.
By now, you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with indie being an integral partner to pop, aren't you? It appears that I have shown what we all know, that indie and pop are stubborn siblings, refusing to get along despite obvious similarities.
However, all this talk of subcultures, and the classifying of people and bands into these subcultures has missed out one group of people; the people who manage to avoid all subcultures by listening to all music, regardless of popularity or who else listens to it. It is these people who play an important part in the pop music scene, but are hated by the indie scene because of being mainstream.
To explain this, I will have to backtrack slightly, however. Music is an art form. There is no debate on this subject, everybody agrees that music is art. But music has an odd characteristic that art as a whole does not have; people are not free to enjoy what they like, and pick and mix between various different forms of music, instead, they choose, or are forced into, a subculture that dictates their tastes. On the whole, though, every other form of art, from television, through film, to painting and architecture, allows people to pick and mix. In film, there's no comedy scene that derides romantic comedies for being too mainstream. There's no impressionist scene that hates post-modernism.
Indie is impossible to define, most of it isn't on independent labels, and there is little musical similarities between the bands. It could, however, be seen as the cutting edge of music. Indie acts are out there rebelling against the boundaries of what music can be. Before the Decemberists, sea shanties were reserved for films about whaling, but now, - for people who listen to indie, at least - we know they're fun to listen to and are pretty much unabashed awesomeness if done well.
And this is where indie's partnership with pop is revealed. Remember those people I mentioned earlier, the ones who listen to all forms of music? This is where they come into play. They listen to the Decemberists, and they have bands of their own, and they're going to make the sea shanties less extreme, and thus viable for sale to a mainstream market. This sort of thing is going to happen with a lot of indie bands, they will do something to often ridiculous extremes, then somebody will come and water it down, and repackage it for the mainstream market. And that is why indie is an integral partner to pop, it's there providing the inspiration for the pop acts of tommorow.
Whether you like it or not, the indie bands you listen to today are going to have been copied and devalued in the next decade. But then, indie will be on to something new and exciting by then, won't it?
