Why Emily made me hate indie music again
June 7th 2007 18:20. Updated: June 7th 2007 18:21
So the attractive-but-punchable one from Big Brother, Emily, has been booted out and will now be known as the attractive-but-racist one. I can’t help thinking that Channel 4 have overreacted a bit. But I suppose that’s the sort of thing that happens when Ofcom are in charge.
Even though she was easily the best eye-candy in the house, she was intensely annoying right from the very start. Her introduction video was almost painful to watch.
AAAAAAAAAARRHRHHGHRUYAGSSKJSUgd}) p(oluj[omrgklsdv ,.xco=-
There are so many bad bits in this video, but the absolute worst is this:
There's a new music that's taking over this country and it's called indie.
That one sentence alone was enough to send me bouncing round the room with rage when I saw it. It was almost enough to have me lapsing back into the state I was in when I was 15, when I was turned off by indie music and everything it stood for. It took me years to even accept it when an indie band did make good music.
I might have to brace myself, because whenever I criticise any music on this blog, some poor soul feels like he's been violated and launches into personal attacks in the comments. But I will do this anyway.
Here is my list of things I hate(d) about indie music and why Emily personifies its problems:
- This generation does not have its own sound. Emily says "There's a new music", but if there is then indie is not it. It might not have been called indie since the start, but the approach and the style of music have been around since at least the late 1970s. Not much has changed since then. A lot of youths think that this is their sound, but it is the same sound that their dads were listening to. Shame on our generation for being the first since at least the 1950s not to have its own scene!
- Indie is not as gritty as its listeners would like to think. Many indie fans see the music as raw, gritty, rebellius and working-class. But over the past five or ten years, indie music has become as bland and commercialised as the pop and R&B that its fans deride. But many indie bands are made up of middle-class people pretending to be working class. The Kooks are the worst example. Kaiser Chiefs might predict a riot, but it is the politest, most middle-class riot you will ever see.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with rich people forming a band. But Emily is deluded. She acts embarrassed about her wealth while simultaneously flaunting it. "I'm not a rich bitch," she says, before describing how she owns hundreds of handbags and shoes. Davina McCall then reveals that Emily's teeth cost £4,000.
- Indie is not as radical as its listeners would like to think. At least Emily does not suffer from this, as she is open about the fact that she considers herself to be right-wing, and intends to vote Conservative in the next election. While this information on its own shouldn't make her a villain, there is something wrong with a 19-year-old complaining about "the youth of today" for not embracing education. And now we have the racism issue to top it off.
- Indie music thinks it's superior to your music. This is an all-too-common thing to hear from an indie fan: "the music I listen to is smarter and more intelligent than [dance / hip-hop (delete as appropriate)]. Clever people like me listen to it. Stupid people like you listen to [dance / hip-hop].” Emily clearly thinks she is at the top of the tree. At one point she asks, rhetorically, “Isn’t it time you put some intelligent women on the show?” Davina McCall also reveals that Emily gives herself 10 out of 10 for intelligence. Not that we saw much evidence of this intelligence while she was in the house.
- Indie heros are wankers. Emily hoped that the house would contain “dirty kind of Pete Docherty kind of rocker boys.” Need I say more?
+11 (Votes: 11)
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#1 Vicky
June 7th 2007 19:57
I almost stuck my foot through the television screen when she said that. New, yes, if what you mean by new is ‘…25 years old’.
Indie has always meant different things to different people - independent record labels, set up post-punk when the major labels threatened to destroy their integrity; The Smiths and the twee explosion who insisted on indie labels; Madchester, which no major would touch with a bargepole; and now this tedious Arctic Monkeys shite which is basically guitar-based semi-emo pop, but who cares what label they are on. It’s impossible to give a 5 word precis on what ‘indie’ music is!
What annoyed me about her statement was that by saying indie is ‘new’, she didn’t ascribe any kudos to the effort which, say, The Buzzcocks went to to separate themselves from major labels and fund their own records and instead infers that some moneyed tossers with a guitar and a drug habit are somehow edgier and more worthy of a place in the annuls of history.
#2 Gary
June 7th 2007 21:50
Yes, yes and yes. Perfectly put. And such a punchable face. Even if she is good looking, her irritating mannerisms just make you want to vomit in disgust. Out of everyone on there I hated her the most.
She’ll probably develop a drug habit at some point soon anyway, if she’s that into Pete Doherty.
#3 MatGB
June 7th 2007 23:49
attractive? Vapid, ignorant and horribly blonde, but attractive?
Sooo not my type. Pretty much with oyu on the indie not being that radical thing; when we were running RocSoc in Exeter we used to get indie-kids join trying to be ‘alternative’ or ‘radical’. We took these nice little innocent freshers to the local owned-by-a-biker-gang goth/rock club. after they’d paid their subs, obviously.
90% of them were scared off, the rest were humans. I’ve no problem with people liking different types of music, but I do have a probem with anyone that thinks their dangerously subversive listening to what, in many respects, is simply a variant of pop.
First time I heard either Kaiser Cheifs or Franz Ferdinand (I forget which) I wondered if there was a punk revival going on, then I saw them and worried. Ah well.
#4 doctorvee
June 8th 2007 00:25
I was watching the live feed last night, and I have to admit it: I was entranced by her see-through dress. I wondered if she had the most famous nipples in the country at that particular moment.
Gary, have you seen this on Guido Fawkes’s blog?
#5 Craig
June 8th 2007 10:28
I’m not a big fan of anyone who says they like a specific genre of music, no matter what it is - how can you possibly like everything that covers?
I chicken out and say I like a wide variety of music, but preferably songs with a good tune and words which have some meaning.
Oh, and The Birdie Song.
#6 KJ
June 9th 2007 16:45
I pretty much agree with most of what you’ve said. Indie music isn’t the same as what it used to be and now-a-days pretty much everything that comes out that has at least one guitarist is described as indie music. One thing that really pisses me off now is that to be indie you have to dress indie. Fucking fashion.
Emily had to go because C4 had to show that they had learned the lessons of the previous show, plus they’ve had enough controversy to deal with recently that keeping Emily in would surely have led to all sorts of problems for the channel and the show.
#7 Gary
June 10th 2007 22:03
It’s nice to know I’m a good judge of character, as I hadn’t seen Guido’s post on that! Although I predicted heroin rather than coke.
#8 Sam Quill
June 19th 2007 18:13
Most of your complaints are chiefly with indie music fans, or indie music culture, rather than the music itself.
#9 doctorvee
June 19th 2007 19:52
Of course. If the music of indie existed in a vacuum, separate from the culture and the fashions and the posing and all the rest of it, I probably wouldn’t find it particularly offensive.
#10 True rocker
June 27th 2007 13:39
Agree totally with your comments and detest Britpop/Indie of all description
#11 skytone
September 3rd 2007 03:40
Indie music is a double edged sword. But it is true with recording being soooo cheap, an indie band doesn’t sound so indie anymore.
#12 Jim
September 23rd 2007 17:29
well she just seemed like any other indie girl. damm it their annoying, stupid indy rock. Every type of music is turned into a fashion now: indie, punk (!), metal (emo, goths etc) RnB (remember when that meant hooks that weren’t ripped and actual talent)
Blondes are fine just not ones that like indie
If indie is so rebelious and amazing why does hard rock and heavy metal form 70s/80s sound so much better?
#13 Steven Brennan
December 27th 2007 15:21
You guys are my heroes.
I agree 100%
‘Indie’ can go die.
I wrote a little rant on here if you would like to read it
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Indiot+(+Indie+Idiot+)