Scottish Roundup

Regular digest of Scottish blogging and citizen media.

vee8

Formula 1 and motorsport writing, links and tweets.

Duncan Stephen

Visit for more information on my work and other projects.

Current affairs/ Entertainment/ General/ Music/ Personal/ Politics/ Television

Why Emily made me hate indie music again

7 June 2007, 18:20

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:

  1. 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!
  2. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Indie heros are wankers. Emily hoped that the house would contain “dirty kind of Pete Docherty kind of rocker boys.” Need I say more?

Rating: +16
Loading ... Loading ...