Since the onslaught of emo music in the early 2000s, while I was in high school, I’ve been watching the steady devolution of pop from a rigid, monolithic structure to a screaming quorum of hedge-bets and has-beens. With rapidly decreasing traditional record sales, the transition from music as populist rejoinder to a cataclysmic divider has been thorough and remains unfinished. Perhaps, as I am afraid to believe, it will never be finished, like fashion (goddamn social network). This shattering of “music” as we know it in America has come largely thanks to the networking and layering/defining of social life, strictly upon our faith in the omniscient god-machine, life-sustainer and social differential engine.

The parallel is simple to see, but why would anybody want to see it. “Indie music” has come at a time when we are all worried about our social lives more than we’re worried about war or recession (do you remember we’re still in two wars and a recession?). The varied styles of indie music cater to those who would benefit most from their promise of distance; very different from how emo music assured that all of us have our hearts on our sleeves and we’re really all emotionally stunted and clueless, all of us together yearning to be understood. Rather terrifically, and terribly, emo music was firmly supplanted by that it is opposed to; instead of us wanting to be one and together sharing the same depression, now we all want to be islands with our own musical fortresses. I knew Eminem’s story arc before his second album came out, and I’m still surprised he hasn’t shot himself like Kobain did.

Regardless, I hold indie music at arm’s length. There was a time when I unhesitatingly dismissed it as the bastard child of an ignorant college culture, jacked-up on that sweet social cocaine the internet has brought to the party. It brought forth that old proverb: the more we find ourselves closer together, the further apart we feel. Indie music fills that gap created by our sudden connectedness, rewards us for our quirkiness, our apart-ness, our difference. It claims at once that this is both unifying yet preserving of individualism, much like the internet has converted us to be. Everyone to us is a node in a network, unique but connected. Personalized in a standardized fashion. When we all moved from myspace to facebook, we were giving up the confusing and eye-bleeding realm of oversaturated customization hacks while we were walking into seemingly the promised land: a world where we had to compensate for the sameness of our profile pages with the flamboyancy and transparency of our status updates. Indie music and revelatory statuses have become the fetish of under-30 socialites.

People often hate the very term “indie music” because it suggests a unity to its much-fought-for disorder. To the lovers of that stratification, there is no finer debate than how my Arcade Fire is different from your Vampire Weekend. Furthermore, but past us now, is the debate about how your Billboard 40 band is inferior to my unknown no-label Ohio-based band. I went out to see them live, they played at a bar in Delaware, and I was one of five people who watched. What I don’t think indie music fans have realized yet is that their music is approaching the very populist “make blander records to sell more of them” attitude their genre has rallied against, and Arcade Fire stealing a Grammy from the clutches of Eminem and Lady Gaga is not vindication, but reverse-psychology from the old guard. By winning a Grammy, Arcade Fire (and consequently indie music as a style) has been signified as “popular enough to win an award”, which is very much not the same as “good enough to win an award”, even though nobody has ever heard of them. The move shows nothing less than the music industry’s first attempts to steal back music itself from the clutches of iTunes and Pitchfork. (Pitchfork said indie music was dead a year ago, btw.)

As I implied earlier, my blantant hatred of indie music is a past-tense statement. I don’t really hate it anymore, it’s just not my taste and I don’t really believe in it as a social construct, and I can’t blame it for what it is. Indie music is simply the natural progression, the next step towards the democratization of culture as a whole, moreso than just from “popular” to “niche”. Niche culture has always existed, but it is indie music that has seemingly tried to elevate niche culture as the only culture in music. Such an idea is inherently contradictory and cannot be sustained, therefore niche itself must sell out. We have successfully entered and are hopefully now exiting the false theory of “you must be small and unknown to be a good band” in contemporary music.

Think of it this way: when Bruce Springsteen (the Boss) signed to a major record label, it didn’t stop him from writing and singing about being a goalless, whiney white teenager in suburban New Jersey, and in doing so win the collective hearts of American listeners. His music was so intensely popular while being blindingly awesome that very few understood the psychological depth wrought within his words. Can Arcade Fire say the same? The priorities are grossly misplaced by the artist and the audience to the detriment of an artform. This isn’t an indictment or judgement so much as a cultural observation, and I hope you don’t find that idea confusing.

What I’m particularly excited about is the time when this happens to the film industry. Because it’s coming soon. Indie music rose to popularity because it reached a critical mass of accessibility and triviality. Thanks to the internet, anybody can make music with GarageBand (or the good pirated shit) and a $100 guitar from ebay, and you don’t need to know how to sing or write lyrics as long as it’s catchy and somebody can relate to it. Is that such a bad thing? Certainly not, but it can be. As I’ve often said, while there is democratization, there is also no vanguard and no curation. And I am of the firm belief that there can be no real art without criticism and curation. Anyway, the time is coming quickly as the declining price of 1080p-shooting, gorgeous DSLRs overwhelm the fast-dying metallurgy of film. With it (and again, thanks to the internet) has come a new wave of independently-produced hand-made and backyard-staged cinema that looks just as good as the old stuff. My sincere hope is that unlike what happened in music, this new movie production model focuses on quality over quantity.

Lastly, I chose Arcade Fire as a name-drop because they exemplify a number of indie band tropes, which I will outline in the most harsh, reductionist way possible:

- The “what the fuck are all of them doing, is that even an instrument” band
- The quintessential “white people problems” band
- The “I can’t sing, let alone play an instrument, and I guess that’s the point (because neither can you)” band
- The “they’re all on prozac, what else could explain the one-note melody” band
- The soulless quirk-pop band, betting that you’re not fitting in at work or at parties

(Quick Post-Publish Edit: For the record, I’m a fan of the songs I just listed, except the Yeah Yeah Yeahs one. Liking it doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of it.)

Ugh. I’ve listened to this song a couple times since it came out and I’ve largely avoided it because it makes me very depressed. I didn’t really know why, I just felt a pain in my gut when I heard those lyrics and that pseudo-R&B beat and poor old Alicia Keys’ voice. Unfortunately, I’ll analyze this a bit.

First of all, let’s talk about Jay-Z. Yeah he was kinda cool way back when and I’m very happy he made a song that rails against the proliferation of autotune in contemporary “hip-hop”. (Man, that awful clarinet just kills me every time.) However, he’s gone down the same dark path that Kanye West so valiantly rushes headlong: that of trite and vulgar lyrical masturbation. For the few of us young people who do listen to the vocals beyond just the chorus, I cannot imagine any words more grating to listen to than those of an artist espousing their own spectacle. It’s one thing when they’re rapping about how many people they’ve killed. It’s another when they’re just talking about how cool they are and how they’ve “revolutionized music” and “rewritten history without a pen”. Why do people keep buying these albums?

Other than the needless almost Twitter-style self-promotion, the song barely touches upon what it’s supposed to be about: New York City. You know, the place with the big lights that will “inspire you”. (I thought for awhile that she was saying “expire you” and that made me okay with the song.) So not only is this song contain the abysmal tonality of Jay-Z jerking himself off, but it has the overused and outdated motif of choking an entire city’s chicken. At one point in the song (and in a few other songs) Jay-Z compares himself to Frank Sinatra, calling himself “the new Sinatra”. Well, no. Sorry. You can’t do that. Just fucking can’t. There really has been no need for another “New York City is awesome” song since Sinatra’s own “New York, New York”.

Let’s compare the two songs, just because I’m a dick. First of all, Sinatra’s song is not masturbatory at all. In fact, it’s from the perspective of someone outside of the city looking in: being beguiled by its seemingly endless excitement. Really, his song is simply a dream, a wish, an assumption: “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”. Jay-Z’s song, on the other hand, is about having already “made it”. It’s about Jay-Z high-fiving Knicks players and shit. Hanging out with famous people and seeing beautiful women all around. Probably having sex with them. It’s self-congratulatory, he compares himself to DeNiro, making the Yankees popular, and “rest in peace Bob Marley”? What the fuck? I bet you’ve never even heard a Bob Marley song. Hell, Miley Cyrus hasn’t heard a Jay-Z song. (Good for her.)

And fuck songs that are about how awesome cities are. Fuck right the fuck off. Unless you’re going to make it a fun, stupid, silly, danceable song, just don’t fucking make it at all. Your city is not that awesome. NYC especially. Sure, it has a shitload of people and it generates a lot of culture, but it’s just too fucking big. But these songs are basically saying that the city is full of pretentious assholes. Really, NYC doesn’t need that. You’re already enough of a target, dude, you don’t need to encourage people to hate you.

ANYWAY, another song I’d like to compare it to, on a more broad measure, is NWA’s “Express Yourself”. Listen to this goddamn amazing song:

You better listen to that, it’s fucking awesome. Back when hip-hop was actually hip-hop and it had defenders and leaders and reality. In “Express Yourself” we have a collaboration of artists speaking their minds, and the prevailing notion is simple and effective: express yourself! Frankly, it’s an odd song coming from the same guys who made Fuck tha Police, but that’s another reason why it’s amazing: the need for artistic expression transcends violence to form a song that is not only articulate but danceable. Can any mainstream rapper make the same claim? I know, I know, this is like comparing a Rembrandt with some shitty unknown contemporary artist, but that’s the point. Kanye and Jay-Z are shitty.

Okay, okay, and finally Alicia Keys. Was she tricked into doing this? Was she paid a lot? She’s a classy lady, she can do better than this. Her whole contribution is a roll of piano notes and the banal chorus. I mean, she can play classical and gospel piano, she has a potentially iconic female R&B voice. Part of the reason why the song is depressing is because she’s so out of place in it. Her voice has quality and it soars, but the message doesn’t deliver, it only deflates. Maybe I’m wrong about her and my expectations are too high. It’s as if Luke Wilson started doing AT&T commercials, or like if J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek. These are all terrible ideas that shouldn’t happen. As an audience, we should recognize their folly and firmly reject them.

I thought Jay-Z wasn’t making any more studio albums. That’d be nice.

But I’m singling out “Party & Bullshit (In the USA)” for a reason. The reason is simple and fairly obvious, but I want to explain it for those who don’t pick up on it immediately. This song is taking something that’s doing it wrong and making it right. I like to complain about what’s wrong, but some things deserve a break to be commended. Especially if it’s transformative. So what’s wrong? Miley Fucking Cyrus, that’s what. Honestly, I had never listened (or known that I was listening) to a Miley Cyrus song before this one, mostly because I figured she’d sound just like those other girls. I was wrong. She’s worse.

What I love about this mashup is the contrast, and it’s that satire which makes the music work so well. The song opens with big’s amazingly harsh, thick rap, which I love for its rough honesty. But there’s a nice, light dance beat (like most bootie songs). Talking about smoking blunts at 13 and getting shot at. Then from nowhere, some autotuned 12-year-old’s grating high-pitched voice slices the song up with some bullshit about a Jay-Z song? Putting your hands up? Butterflies? Moving your hips? Aren’t you illegal in most countries, little girl? Party in the USA? This is fucking bullshit, I can’t think of worse lyrics. (And I lived through Staind, Nickleback, and Evanescence.)

And then more of big’s fucking killer lyrics. You read this shit? Compared to modern music, this is Hemingway. NWA might as well be Longfellow, Thoreau, and Emerson. I’m not the biggest fan of rap in the world, but I have a lot of respect for a guy who can stick to a rhyming scheme like it’s nothing. (Yes, biggie rhymes “out” with itself, but Dylan Thomas did that too sometimes.) I have a great deal more respect for motherfuckers like Snoop and Ice-T who rhyme about killing people than anybody who writes a pop love ballad. Poetic conventions in such violent situations? Brilliant. Scare kids into thinking poetry is cool, it works.

The killer, and my favorite part of the song, is big’s swaying jive in the background of Miley’s chorus. Turn it up and listen to it. Party… and bullshit. Party… and bullshit. Fuck Miley Cyrus and her fucking voice. She is what’s wrong. But biggie, even though he’s fucking dead, is making it right.

Edit: This got fucking reblogged by fucking bootie. I’m so hard right now.