I find joy in music. I relish in sharing that joy. So, mostly music. Plus, whatever I'm into at the time.
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The 10 Things That Are Killing Indie Music in 2011 (apologies for the long post - but it's worth it)
Great read. Interesting perspective. As the article states — if you get that far — I believe IT IS more a cultural phenomenon.
If you choose not to click the link (though you should)…
“…any semblance of intellectualism — or any divergence from popular opinion, for that matter — tends to get you labelled a “hipster.” The message is clear: hipsters are pretentious and think they’re smarter than you, and we can’t be having that, can we?”
“This is symptomatic of the general anti-intellectualism that seems to have infected US culture over the past several decades — we’re increasingly suspicious of clever people, it seems, perhaps because of the constant diet of determinedly idiotic political discourse we’ve been fed since the Reagan administration. Whatever the case, we’re left with a culture where both intellectualism and its attendant polemicism are largely absent. “
“It’s much easier to not care about anything, isn’t it? You don’t have to worry about people calling you out on your opinions if you don’t have any — you can make a career out of giggling about how stoned you are and tossing off half-finished songs that are half-finished because, like, you’re way too cool to actually finish them. This idea that not caring is cooler than caring has infected popular culture since the days of James Dean, and it perhaps reached its nadir in the 1990s and 2000s, when few musicians seemed to say anything without placing their statement in inverted commas — but it’s still a pox on the world of music today. Isn’t it, Wavves?”
And finally, “…the entire existence of indie labels is predicated on the idea of rejecting what you’re force-fed and deciding you could do better yourself.”
To sum up, we live in an increasingly homogenized world (in politics, art, music, opinion, etc.) and that, in turn, has led to cynicism that discounts or dismisses that which is different or new or “indie”. People would much rather just go with the flow…. it’s much easier, right?
