RFD: Light-hearted, whimsical indie hipster music that seemed specifically manufactured for Apple commercials

So much music sounds like this now. It's kind of hard for me to put my finger on exactly the characteristics that instantly make me think "GODDAMN FUCKING APPLE COMMERCIAL." (Maybe it's not even just Apple commercials-- it might span brands.) It seems to vary a little bit, where some of it is what someone here derisively called "vest-and-hat" bands while some of it is grating whimsical naifs on pianos. I'm not sure there is a term for this style, or even that it is a cohesive style in the strictest sense, but there's something instantly recognizable about stuff that falls into this genre/category. Maybe a bit like C86 in that way. My questions:

- Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
- What are the defining characteristics?
- What is this genre called, or what might it be called (derisive answers ok)?
- What is it about this music that is so marketable? Is its marketability connected to certain societal trends and attitudes specific to this time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OmbjjWVhko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCBSSwgtg4

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BXiLAmoEpMI/TP0_Kp1MvII/AAAAAAAAHn0/q8dIrrrIJ0k/s1600/31782_123782634314088_100000470566045_247802_486549_n.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMHO02Vhms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elsh3J5lJ6g

oh my god don't get me started...the baby-voice-singing-a la-Cat Power/Feist makes me want to throw the TV out the window. And there's no stopping it. And the whole ukelele Geico thing...rage-inducing

OK before someone jumps all over me, not technically baby-voice, don't know how to describe it....twee?

leave cat power out of this.

i like in the lumineers video how the guy visually represents the alleviation of his loneliness by surrounding himself with a chrous line of women wearing the exact same outfit as him. that's like bieber-level narcissism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmSbXsFE3l8

every single tech ad now has this, it's so hard to stomach.

the tech companies, especially apple and google, have to work extra-hard to counteract the impression that they are evil empires.

yes this def. seems to be a watershed moment for other tech. companies FINALLY working out that twee sells

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_used_by_Apple_Inc.

so it basically started around 2007 w/ Feist/Imogen Heap/The Bird and the Bee/Yael Naïm? it seems like earlier Apple ads were heavier on classic rock/pop and obvious Top 40 picks (also more black people!)

God that Lenka song adheres so strictly to the blueprint it's freaky. That's the sound of money alright.

Feist seems pretty crucial here as a jumping-off point for these other acts, could be wrong about that but I suspect a lot of people who weren't paying attention to baby-voice twee indie before that went "oh wait, there's money in this."

(I really like "Mushaboom" for the record)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EUYTGBpBms

I was at a really hip bar that had like five songs by The Bird and the Bee on their playlist and the whole thing felt like a 2 hour ad for the bright orange iPod nano

Few years ago an indieish mate of mine told me how someone she knew who worked in advertising called her up & asked her to recommend some twee music to use in ads

idk this music at all but i have become aware of this inadvertent subgenre

it all sounds a bit like how i remember vampire weekend sounding (nb i probably listened to one song of theirs three years ago)? that sort of pellucid chimy indie, purged of all distortion or irregularity with extensive protooling

is this just the generic sound of "indie" becoming mainstream? Is there "mainstream indie" that doesn't have this irritating feel?

2010/06 WWDC Intra-session 6/7/09 7:50pm, 2011/06 WWDC Intra-session 6/6/11 1:52 p.m., 6/7/11 9:50 a.m., 4:03 p.m.

that wiki page is mortifying

That frigging Lenka song was used in Moneyball where they tried to pass it off as if it was an original written by Brad Pitt's daughter. It was the most surreal thing.

Anyway, Windows does this shit now, too. Ladies and gentlemen, Kishi Bashi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmtde_XNBs

chime-y major arpeggios

fuck a glockenspiel

And it permeates out into all related culture. Adventure Time, I'm looking at you.

glockenspiel
ukelele
mandolin
poorly mic'd piano

what other instruments am I missing here

brb checking magnetic fields album credits

tambourine?

handclaps

Hate this stuff. Sounds like it was made for very small children.

idk cat power v well but the music is definitely not twee! The name, sure.

or light-hearted. I mean, lol.

What are the defining characteristics?

"La, la, la, la (21x)"

Worst offender:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw20ssNMQlU

the thing is i love handclaps, tambourines, glockenspiels, poorly mic'd pianos, and toy instruments, but this context makes them terrible. i've had to check myself when recording at times because it was "too Apple commercial" or "too This American Life interlude-y".

I think that Prius commercial is perfect; it's a car for condescending turds with bad taste.

I was looking for that Prius one. Was seeing it in EVERY BREAK on Hulu and was about to kill someone.

this whole thing is out of control, there needs to be a massive massive rivethead revival to restore some balance.

juno

^^^ yes! There was a bunch of discussion of this trend in the Pomplamoose thread, and I blame Juno/Kimya Dawson for much of it.

A friend whose musical tastes I almost always agree with burned me a Kimya CD once, and I was like... um... thanks?

this one drives me nuts, a peppy update of the Mr Rogers theme for Target's entry to Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jb22vkh9g4

it seems like an entire genre based on Melanie's "Brand New Key" and low-rent Zooey Deschanels.

Rent-a-Deschanels.

someone mentioned that this stuff sounds like it was made for small kids. I think there's something there. Something about marketing the guilelessness of youth's innocence, naivete, and authenticity to, ironically, a world of cynicism and commercialization.

It's also marketing a kind of androgyny, a state of innocence which cuts across gender codes.

weird, I have some random ass person from a marketing firm following my Spotify library. I hope we'll start getting some commercials featuring Chrome

oh that was a million xposts away

Does anyone have any idea who pioneered this genre? Someone said Kimya Dawson, but I would have thought that was too late. Is there anything like this from the 80s or 90s?

ime people who are into this also really like ~4 Velvet Underground songs.

I really like ~4 Velvet Underground songs

the thing is i love handclaps, tambourines, glockenspiels, poorly mic'd pianos, and toy instruments, but this context makes them terrible.

me too, though curiously the Apple ad archetype is so dominant that I can't even remember which bands that sound like this it was that I used to like? It's like tech ad themes have violently overwritten everything in the "handclaps, tambourines, glockenspiels, poorly mic'd pianos, and toy instruments" section of my brain.

Poor Frente, twenty years too soon for $$$

There was a bunch of discussion on the Pomplamoose thread about the progenitors this faux-naif-baby-voice-lalala thing, and Mo Tucker was one of the names thrown out there. I'm not sure I buy that.

Given that wiki list of Apple music upthread, and considering the release of Juno, Feist's The Reminder and the She and Him debut (all 2007/2008,) the floodgates really opened right around then imo.

Australia has been big on this before the rest of the world I think, though maybe in tandem with the UK.

Our statutory body for traffic accident compensation was using a twee girl cover of "Pictures of You" to discourage speeding for a while, not the first example but it felt like the most complete.

Mobile phone network ads in the UK have been the worst offenders for this some years ago, not sure if it's quite the same as this but more strummy, twee, 'I'm having a lovely day' type rainbows-and-ribbons bullshit. I think that progressed into the more handclappy DIY instruments from there.

I seem to recall that Motown had the same advert omnipresence in the early to mid nineties?

Australia has been big on this before the rest of the world I think, though maybe in tandem with the UK.

Well, Sally Seltmann wrote "1 2 3 4," so there's that.

Yes, and it's a very oz-feeling tune even leaving aside that it's actually written by an Australian.

I also felt like, when Mumford & Sons break through, "wait, this has been what is played at pubs and bars all around my local area for the past five years at least". But maybe that's true in lots of other places as well? At any rate entire swathes of Melbourne could be characterised by vintage children's clothing stores, single speed bikes, kale smoothies and the sound of twee indie.

It's not all bad: the hot guys at the local pool have large biceps and read Murakami.

Tell you what though, actual small children find this stuff really boring IME.

I liked "My Moon, My Man" but it was kind of slinky and sexy and didn't seem like it was aimed at kindergarteners.

I understand that Cat Power is untouchable around here, but voice wise she is the godmother of twee....how different is Feist's voice from Cat Power anyway?

I was thinking the other week that it's pretty remarkable that the peak moments of Cat Power's Covers Record still really hit me even after the ten million inferior imitations of the last ten years.

I don't think of Chan Marshall's distressed and distracted tones as anything remotely to do with "twee". I saw her on a bill with proper actual solid gold tweeists Girlfrendo 15 years ago and she was Diamanda Galas in comparison.

Yeah to me this descends from more of a The Sundays --> Frente --> "Don't Falter" lineage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdyDSbWg7w

so sad that this quintessentially ~blue state~ panglossian idiot child music derives from the work of mo tucker, when mo herself has quite correctly realized that milquetoast liberalism is destroying america

^ sage

mo does seem a precedent, "after hours", "i'm sticking with you". also cutie pie 80s indie stuff like camper van beethoven, beat happening and they might be giants.

honestly the mo songs have a much darker core. tmbg def are a precedent, but not so sure of the rest. its not like you need to draw a direct musical lineage through actual bands. they're all really drawing from the same wellspring of children's songs, raffi, etc, and just going different places with it.

the part that baffles me is why anyone would choose to buy an album full of this stuff. otoh i could see casual listeners picking up a catchy 'viral' single, so this is perhaps a v. digital itunes-era phenom to begin with?

its not like you need to draw a direct musical lineage through actual bands. they're all really drawing from the same wellspring of children's songs, raffi, etc, and just going different places with it.

yeah, that's probably true. still fun to connect the imaginary dots.

"1, 2, 3, 4" is a bit of an aberration even for Feist, she's not generally so relentlessly twee

Seriously though dudes Mint Royale's "Don't Falter" is like a paean to iPods that didn't yet exist.

admittedly I agree use of 1234 in the apple commercial was the turning point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0sOA6hTg0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_used_by_Apple_Inc.

so it basically started around 2007 w/ Feist/Imogen Heap/The Bird and the Bee/Yael Naïm? it seems like earlier Apple ads were heavier on classic rock/pop and obvious Top 40 picks (also more black people!)

the ipod campaign's message was once something like, move your body around to this (which will be so individual and distinctive of your personal exuberant body because it's an ipod). so maybe the question is, what about apple's market share changed to make the other thing (1 2 3 4 etc.) worth putting front and center?

Simon Reynolds' "Against Health and Efficiency" is probably relevant?

iphone came out around then, so maybe they pivoted to less "edgy" music as they targeted older potential customers

turned out more people were into cute & comfy than hot & sweaty

more potential pod people, i suppose

for me this is the definitive example of this stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwtmfeyTNV4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFaee49YjMw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1G7O0wVhls

FORD FEIST-A

Ford Fiesta song also features prominent use of an under-discussed twindie signifier: woozy but uplifting Elephant Six horn section. Would be interesting to figure out by what channels that went mainstream, seems like for ages it really signified bedroom recording, four-track, living-room-party type bands directly getting it from E6 records and then suddenly it was kind of everywhere.

About four years ago I realised that everyone was vaguely fond of Beirut in an "I like that advert" kind of way...

I feel this website is relevant:

http://approachableindie.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOW9fLT9eY

beirut are complete shit

Number one indie dinner soundtrack after The XX ime.

Belated OTM to Tim's Frente point. Their New Order cover is virtually year zero for this aesthetic.

weirdly that approachableindie site seems totally sincere

Number one indie dinner soundtrack after The XX ime.

never hear beirut in this role, weirdly. the xx were ruined for me by being indie dinner default choice.

No Surprises also seems to me to be a big song in the development of this genre. Replace Thom's weltschmerz with someone cooing along in a baby voice and there you go.

i tried to find that coke ad from a few years back with some sickening cover of the beatles "all together now" but i couldn't.

was it the Beatles?

It's this ad for MS with Lenka that urges me to smash things up..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ2cftjyHys

urges me to smash something

I don't think "Don't Falter" belongs here. It apes Saint Etienne with it's 90's pop charm.

For some reason the worst of these songs for me are the ones with confessional, "dysfunctional" lyrics, like they're just angling to be in this movie - http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1174730/ - or this one - http://www.imdb.co.uk/title/tt0449059/ - or basically anything with Alan Arkin and a brooding teenager

like omigod, what an unexpected pairing! Whimsy and darkness! It's almost as crazy as a bloody battleground scene filmed in slo-mo with tender orchestral music over the top!

Surely the Jose Gonzales Knife cover with the bouncing balls is the point at which this all went supernova?

key text:

http://www.kicktickets.com/img/original/Event/1933.62b83113548dacf31843b6540f2c0e8d.jpg

oops that's huge.

The other turning point (following on from Feist 1234) was that "I'm not invisible" song, which didn't exist before the advert, and everyone wanted it.

Did it chart?

that bloke covering tears for fears in donnie darko.

as far as "meaningful cover of meaningless dross" crosses over with "xylophone folk tells lovely story about sharing data with your pals"

I guess this is manic pixie dream-girl music, though good luck getting a real manic person to wait for a roomful of pianos, xylophones and ukuleles to be mic'ed up and coordinate brass sections and string quartets before singing languidly over polite twinkling about idk curling up on the sofa with you or whatever lyrical conceit it is that makes people's wallets open

yeah pixie music is right. my theory is this sound was invented in Iceland, i just wish they could have kept múm

I guess this is manic pixie dream-girl music

there are men involved sometimes too. innocent smoothie's office must be full of this.

Oh totally, I didn't mean it was made by actual manic pixie dreamgirls, what with them being a fictional trope - just that it comes from the same place

(but possibly an even worse ratio of people who actually want to believe they are a special creative pixie : people who've realised other people's cynical pixie simulacra sell and constructed their own)

I think most people like some of these artists* and they tend to be more diverse than their presence in these ads suggests but imagine how enervating an entire compilation of this stuff would be.

*Like a maximum of three or four artists each and never the song on the ad.

I think Apple's move to this stuff from 'vaguely hip-hop beat-beaty slightly rocky dance music' probably coincides with the launch of the iPhone. It's also wrapped up with the need to secure early adopters and wanting to evoke some kind of aspirational coffee-drinking fashionable tech startup lifesytle in those people.

Seemingly every E4 youth drama is sponsored by some kind of tech company pitching a product or service directly at teenagers and they *never* use this sort of music, it's usually a sort of grimey frankenstep hybrid.

apple has veered into cheesiness with its new ads though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrRHPf0_B3M

http://youtu.be/nvKyYeJJYwM

I think most people like some of these artists*

I disagree, I am sure some people do but I don't know anyone who does.

you don't know most people

i like willy moon! or maybe i like the idea of willy moon. i like what he's after. anyway. willy moon!

Maybe I'm thinking of the more acceptable end of the genre, like there must be stuff that's so much worse than Feist.

Charlie Brooker moaning about this in 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/11/media.advertising

2007 Creative Review, many examples of twee ad music: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2007/july/the-rise-of-the-twee

And again discussed in Creative Review in 2009: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/january/change-the-record

this all started with stereolab and velocity girl having their music placed in vw ads in the '90s and, like the type of music broad-brush referred to as "indie rock" in the ensuing years, got more bland and self-signifying as the years went by

stereolab? really?

dots and loops era

i don't know if this is germane, having never heard them, but there are two new bands with the actual names "the sparrow and the workshop" and "a hawk and a hacksaw"

hawk and hacksaw have been around for 10 years and are much more legit and interesting musicians despite the elephant 6 twee connection you would assume

just re-order and re-write that sentence to make sense in your heads please

ya, Jeremy Barnes of A Hawk and a Hacksaw was the Neutral Milk Hotel drummer (when he was real young) but he's spent the last decade or so super immersed in eastern European folk music, with interesting results.

haha ok

much love to Malvina Reynolds but this feels like a notable touchstone in the '00s shift towards hearing sub-Moldy Peaches bullshit coming out of yr teevee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs

the sparrow and the workshop

Heh, my old housemate got thrown out of that band. I have no idea whether they're any good or not.

mo herself has quite correctly realized that milquetoast liberalism is destroying america

you believe that? or are you just challoping?

Ford Fiesta song also features prominent use of an under-discussed twindie signifier: woozy but uplifting Elephant Six horn section. Would be interesting to figure out by what channels that went mainstream, seems like for ages it really signified bedroom recording, four-track, living-room-party type bands directly getting it from E6 records and then suddenly it was kind of everywhere.

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 9:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would trace it back to the mid 2000's kitchen sink twee like Polyphonic Spree, I'm from Barcelona, Architecture for Helsinki, which I guess ultimately traces back to Belle and Sebastian, though I don't place the blame at the latter's feet so much.

Oh and Sufjan of course.

That Nick Drake song in the VW ad really shook things up a lot when it came out in the late 90s. I remember that it seemed to tap into something a little different with the youth market. Could that have been the spark?

A big precursor of this whole phenomenon was definitely the VW ad with Pink Moon which was all the way back in 1999. But stuff like that still has a nocturnal pensive aspect so it's not so cloying (see also B&S, most of Feist, Cat Power, the Mad World cover, etc). The strain that emerged in the mid 2000's stripped that out to become purely happy-go-lucky kindergarten sing along music that I think people find so insufferable.

xpost beat me to the punch!

There was a whole era we're forgetting of indie-rock (but not twindie) music in commercials for young-people cars, e.g. Modest Mouse on the new Nissan Quest Commercial

Polyphonic Spree is a good connection, I sort of forgot their existence after the first album getting hyped to me by friends, but they may well be a link in the chain as they were, it turns out, much more successful than I remembered with licensing:

In early 2003, they were dropped by their record label, 679 Recordings, citing "lack of record sales." Ironically, it was about this time that the band had only just begun to break into the pop-cultural scene. The song "Light and Day / Reach For the Sun" was used in a joint Volkswagen Beetle/iPod tie-in advertising campaign, appearing on nationwide television commercials in 2004.[7] The same song was used in a tribute to Bill Walsh during an NFL football preseason special. It was also used in an episode of the TV series Scrubs, the end music for the first series of the BBC Radio 7 sci-fi comedy Undone, the music video for the song was also adapted for the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

Startling to discover there are sixteen ILM threads about the Polyphonic Spree.

xpost!

wow polyphonic spree in a joint VW/apple commercial that is a bit overdetermined

That Nick Drake song in the VW ad really shook things up a lot when it came out in the late 90s. I remember that it seemed to tap into something a little different with the youth market. Could that have been the spark?

I think this is to blame... seemed to usher in an era of using music in the middle of the venn diagram between 'cool enough' for young people and 'young but unthreatening' to old people.

much love to Malvina Reynolds but this feels like a notable touchstone in the '00s shift towards hearing sub-Moldy Peaches bullshit coming out of yr teevee:

ever heard this atrocity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JhvfoqdA

Even more than just how downright shitty this music is, I find I am enraged by the idea it seems to be selling, i.e., this wondrous fucking world of benevolent innovation that brings you new and stylish toys to connect to your childlike creativity and the miracles of sharing that via developing technologies to friends, family, and the hoards of admirers of your "art". When really, it's just to sell utterly useless shit that we spend millions of dollars creating and consuming instead of bothering putting time, money, or effort toward any of our problems as a nation and/or culture. It is actually music for children and plays the same role as putting a toy in a McDonald's Happy Meal or a cartoon on a packet of smokes: to sell something unnecessary and probably harmful to a bunch of innocent dupes who think they "need" this stuff.

"vest-and-hat"

I'v been calling it C&U, Cupcake and Ukulele.

can't believe companies are selling people stuff they don't "need"

i think that the use of this horribly, cloying music is not an attempt to sell "stuff" but to sell consumers a naive, innocent, creative, and simple state of being... which you can do by buying their expensive shit.

cat power for zoloft ad?

"there you go
marriage and kids
and drug addiction

all lies aside
I believe I am the
luckiest person alive

hell we all die
sometimes
hell we all try
somewhere

money always sees
money always draws
the light

hope you can see
through the beggars
In the clear"

we need to hate the president more!

http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/rock-and-roll-so-boring-its-making-kurt-vile-seem-interesting

we need women with bigger balls!

http://www.yourmusicisawful.com/2013/04/hey-kids-grow-a-pair-how-music-blogs-neutered-indie-rock/

Much of the "tweeness" of the original source material that is cited here (Beat Happening, Kimya) has become twee because of the recontextualization of that sound (or their specific songs) within a commercial construct. I get that lots of ILM don't like either artist but to lump them in with latter-day cynical earnest-for-pay music, or cast them anybody as "where it all began" is a leaden, lumpen observation... afaic Nick Drake only became a 'reference with a negative connotation' after it was co-opted to sell Volkswagons. I'm not defending any artist here but a witchhunt for seminal glockenspiel usage seems to miss the point. Capital accumulation is ugly and will fuck up everything in the end, etc.

i have never knowingly heard a beat happening song. but i used to watch the sundance channel a lot years ago so maybe i have without knowing it.

heh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS_zpyW-Slc

irl lol at 'seminal glockenspiel usage.'

BrianWilson has been a genre of music for years much to the detriment of humanity. butwhatareyagonnado?

maybe there is nothing to be done. even when people are stones fans you end up with black keys, jack white, kings of leon. you just can't win.

you know what helps me get through these dark days? satanic minor threat covers. that's what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Zdl2wXnRc

SMALL GOD, BIG CROSS!

EP reissue cover deserves a medal.

http://bravewords-public.s3.amazonaws.com/images/p17gilh9391l4k1b5q1qe71ot71n634.jpg

Soon to be used in a Nike Crosstrainers ad, no doubt.

About four years ago I realised that everyone was vaguely fond of Beirut in an "I like that advert" kind of way.. I feel this website is relevant:

http://approachableindie.com/

― Tim F, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao they have ratings for how 'advanced' things are on here. Bon Iver is 'advanced' indie, Elliot Smith is 'intermediate' indie and Pains of Being Pure at heart are 'beginner'. Good to know.

You too can become a fan of Afro-Pop! This is the beauty of indie; it can encompass so many stylistic influences that Alternative Country can occupy the same space in your music library as Afro-Pop Soul. Filling that empty space in your genre list is tUnE-yArDs, a one-woman operation that makes so much noise an unexpected resentment toward artists playing just one instrument may occur.

If you like: KT Tunstall, M.I.A., Björk
Check out: tUnE-yArDs (start with w h o k i l l, continue with BiRd-BrAiNs, then graduate to EPs and rarities)
Feeling brave: Devendra Banhart, Juana Molina, Micachu, CocoRosie, Joanna Newsom

AI level: Advanced

lmao they have ratings for how 'advanced' things are on here. Bon Iver is 'advanced' indie, Elliot Smith is 'intermediate' indie and Pains of Being Pure at heart are 'beginner'. Good to know.

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:26 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lmao!!!!

http://i.imgur.com/MlD8Wnn.gif

He’s a little bit dancey (I declare this a real word) electronic, he’s a little bit rock and roll. He knows how to write an infectious single and apparently knows when to quit while he is ahead.

AI level: Advanced

"AI level" - nice

http://i.imgur.com/WwIaMsv.jpg

rufus and other kids are doing that Of Monsters and Men song at the school talent show. it wasn't his idea. its not terrible, i guess. though i really don't know how that band doesn't get sued by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros. it sounds so much like "home" ny ES&TMZ. okay, probably not grounds for a lawsuit similar, but it really sounds like this band listened to that song and then made a homage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I

if only some indie kid would base their career on this song. i'd be on board! (if there is an indie kid that does this, lemme know...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR1svqwTYK0

i could be wrong, but i get the impression that there is a serious lack of LSD in the United States. there are so many kids around now who have never tripped on acid. this has to have all kinds of negative effects on youth music.

About four years ago I realised that everyone was vaguely fond of Beirut in an "I like that advert" kind of way.. I feel this website is relevant:

http://approachableindie.com/

― Tim F, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao they have ratings for how 'advanced' things are on here. Bon Iver is 'advanced' indie, Elliot Smith is 'intermediate' indie and Pains of Being Pure at heart are 'beginner'. Good to know.

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, 18 April 2013 17:26 (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's the weird thing. At first glance it looks like stuff-white-people-like self-ironising, but then you realise it's totally straight.

Scott Seward otm

Re lsd

the drug kids are all into EDM I guess

so sad that this quintessentially ~blue state~ panglossian idiot child music derives from the work of mo tucker, when mo herself has quite correctly realized that milquetoast liberalism is destroying america

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 23:27 (Yesterday) Permalink

seriously the best post I've read in a long time

my cat just threw up 3 times

agree on nick drake being a moment for ad execs in the 'cool music will make this memorable' thing.

there are also bands i quite like that seem to have ended up really cashing in on the ad music thing -- noisettes, vampire weekend (of course), a few others. honestly i don't hear their music as that twee, and don't mind their songs being used at all except now it makes it harder to just hear them as songs when i go back to the albums.

some beat happening for scott too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7KNRC8SSAw

"Motorbike to cemetery
Picnic on wild berries
French toast with molasses
Croquet and Baked Alaskas"

vs.

"There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry."

i only know the indian summer song cuz sonic boom covered it. i think. maybe i'll listen to that...would break my streak though.

Even though it's not the same kind of indie being described in the OP, I feel like mention needs to be made of how this played into the whole thing:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mvm6KfJDE0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mvm6KfJDE0

http://books.google.com/books?id=l2VK76iKk8kC&lpg=PA45&ots=j9tHhrVptW&dq=nick%20drake%20vw%20ad&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q=nick%20drake%20vw%20ad&f=false

I didn't know VW had done ads with Luna, Stereolab, Spiritualized and Velocity Girl songs before the pink moon ad.

thomas frank called this way back in the day too: http://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler/dp/0393316734

wait, i think i'm lying. i think i watched a beat happening video last year when i went on youtube to listen to will oldham for the first time.

i've been enjoying this indie rock comp today. the only band i know on it is boo radleys. and i barely know them.

http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Dark-Side-Of-The-Pool/release/585391

thomas frank called this way back in the day too: http://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler/dp/0393316734

I've read that book, but what exactly did he call?

he was the one who told us we had been lied to, iirc.

WOW. SOMEHOW HE KNEW

meanwhile, i was totally twee this week! my kids can make me do anything. like sing. which i would never do in real life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPCQ9Wnd3hI

lol. i know, fish + barrel, but still...

"Yup, a V-neck with buttons. Deal with that mutherfuckers!"

http://usedwigs.com/nolikey/

so many great pictures, but this might be my fave:

http://usedwigs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/nolike_033-440x330.jpg

take pretty much any of this stuff over fucken rusted root tho

what exactly did he call?

basically how very good society is at taking things that define themselves as somehow oppositional and using them to sell things, and also the reflexive action back on the production of these cultural things themselves.

awesome thread

do the trachtenburg family slideshow players factor into this somehow? they're like the stooges of rinky-dink.

take pretty much any of this stuff over fucken rusted root tho

aweemaway

What is it about this music that is so marketable? Is its marketability connected to certain societal trends and attitudes specific to this time?

I think there's the 'cool dad' angle and the creativity angle. People get older and settle down but they want to feel like they're still part of the zeitgeist and they have taste and dress their toddlers in Ramones t-shirts etc. Hipster Runoff had a whole cool dad series of posts that tried to pick this apart.

Also there's the democratisation of a kind of small-c creativity - not tortured genius lock yourself in a room and write a symphony creativity, but take a quirky picture of a pelican and Instagram it, or bake cupcakes, or yes, write a little song on a ukulele, that got big in the last 10-15 years.

I think part of the purpose of the song in these ads is to to flatter the listener, a sort of transferrance of quirk.

maybe most people don't want to lock themselves in a room and torture themselves?

I mean the view that creativity is something to be pursued by all, and not just for artists, you have that guy a few years back saying 40 million Americans belong to the 'Creative Class', you have Subway calling their employees 'sandwich artists', I'm not explaining this very well, maybe I'm not creative enough.

Also there's the democratisation of a kind of small-c creativity - not tortured genius lock yourself in a room and write a symphony creativity, but take a quirky picture of a pelican and Instagram it, or bake cupcakes, or yes, write a little song on a ukulele, that got big in the last 10-15 years.

this is an interesting point, but though your examples seem to condescend to "small-c creativity" (perhaps unintentionally?), i think there's every reason to be suspicious of the "tortured genius lyiarawa symphony" version. especially to the extent that craft, the "homemade" and the cute are often derided due to their supposed triviality and femininity.

"supposed triviality"? some of this stuff positively revels in it!

it's called slave morality, maybe u have heard of it

I think part of the purpose of the song in these ads is to to flatter the listener, a sort of transferrance of quirk.

― B-Boy Bualadh Bos (ecuador_with_a_c), Saturday, April 20, 2013 10:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Awesome line.

Scene in Bridesmaids where the main character bakes a huge cupcake with Fiona Apple's "Paper Bag" playing in the background.

xxp ding

this music is generally used with upper middle class status symbols, and it's an easy, "no worries here" sound. it's late 80s yuppie pop updated for the 21st century.

It's also, insofar as it's in an ad, all the things it could be but isn't. Like, you can already picture the commercial that starts with this music, then there's the ''record needle suddenly lifted from the platter'' effect and then a ''hard rock'' or a ''gangster rap'' song or ''Bad to the Bone'' (or their 2013 equivalents) start playing, to tell you that these new spicy chicken bites are not soundtracked with sissy wussy yuppie music for people that never get their hands dirty! So the ad choosing this sound is telling the opposite story for a different set of people who imagine themselves quirky creatives. Both groups will end up eating the spicy chicken bites and neither of them get their hands dirty or quirkily create anything but it makes for an ad. The only real impact will be a wave of high school garage bands that explicitly define themselves in opposition to this sound and another wave slightly later of college bands appropriating it in some werid way that we can't yet anticipate.

http://imageshack.us/a/img832/9253/tumblrmlbzzz9agp1qzz5ic.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img199/66/tumblrmlbzzz9agp1qzz5ic.png

Doctor Casino, very well put.

I mute these ads as quickly as possible & have turned down money to make one with great embarrassment at having been asked, but I always feel like when a bunch of people are getting excited about them there's a whole lot to parse that doesn't get parsed, most of which might be answered by the question 'and this bothers you why, exactly?' like, for me, it's because a lot of this music is essentially my side of the street in some ways - (purportedly) clever somewhat bookish types with an occasional ear for melody. (There however we part ways, because I don't pine for my fucking pre-adolescence or romanticize it, I like being a grown-up and the best parts of adolescence do not seem to be, for me, what they are for most of my fellow white indie dudes. Fuck "innocence" and fuck even thinking about its "loss" imo.) So I'm offended, and embarrassed, that the best my class (in two senses: plenty of these people of course are much newer "classes") has to offer is...this shit. Poor unoriginal production choices, shitty lyrics, phoned-in sentiments without enough technical facility to make them worth scrutinizing, interchangeable melodies, the dullest harmonies. Awful arrangements. But there's music just this shitty, and much shittier, in literally all the other genres - and plenty of it gets used in ads as ubiquitous as tech ads, but it doesn't inspire the same rancor.

well, if it's pop-country it tends to end up making the ILM year-end top 20

@ aero, with jingles, the dullification of the music is typically done by request. I had a producer ask that I re-record a studio version of a song, redo it into a Boss Loopstation to create a more "demo'd sound". I've seen producers physically respond to a newly overdubbed glockenspiel with wriggling glee.

hedgehog90

First the Newtown massacre, then the Boston tragedy... now I understand that Band of Horses are going to be in a Toyota ad.

*jumps off cliff*

"Motorbike to cemetery
Picnic on wild berries
French toast with molasses
Croquet and Baked Alaskas"

As it happens, I was listening to "Indian Summer" two days ago, and when this part came up, I thought to myself, weird, I would never think of Beat Happening as "twee" because, sonically, they're so NOT, but I had to concede that those were some pretty twee lyrics.

I like Beat Happening alright, there's a sense of painful wistfulness and unease in their "tweeness" that's at least relateable. I don't know what the hell these car commercial musicians are using as a point of reference for what they're trying to evoke, but it's something (thankfully) completely alien to me.

Also, surely Kina Grannis belongs here somewhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0

well, if it's pop-country it tends to end up making the ILM year-end top 20

that's the thing - whoever yr indie targets of the day are, sure their music is shitty, but it's just shitty in a more obnoxious/grating style, we're not exactly living in the golden age of songwriting

when did these children earn the right to be so light-hearted

There however we part ways, because I don't pine for my fucking pre-adolescence or romanticize it, I like being a grown-up and the best parts of adolescence do not seem to be, for me, what they are for most of my fellow white indie dudes. Fuck "innocence" and fuck even thinking about its "loss" imo.

I would say that romanticizing pre-adolescence is just as good as romanticizing any of the other things rock music likes to romanticize.

Also that, when carried out by men, the point of this move is often to reject as forcefully as possible some kind of boring idea about what adult manhood is supposed to be like, and this doesn't seem like such a bad idea; I mean, there's a reason Tullycraft and Bratmobile have similar-sounding names and were often listened to by the same people. (Whether Tullycraft could sell iPods is a different question. Also note: I don't really like Tullycraft.)

I've seen producers physically respond to a newly overdubbed glockenspiel with wriggling glee.

well guys, it's been a good run, but it's time to go.

http://i.imgur.com/DSfxaEf.png

I would say that romanticizing pre-adolescence is just as good as romanticizing any of the other things rock music likes to romanticize.

this, in big bold caps

I would say that romanticizing pre-adolescence is just as good as romanticizing any of the other things rock music likes to romanticize.

this is the kind of question I can argue about all day but let me just say, I disagree

q: why? a: because it's reactionary, which is not a necessary condition of romanticization but is of this one

Also that, when carried out by men, the point of this move is often to reject as forcefully as possible some kind of boring idea about what adult manhood is supposed to be like, and this doesn't seem like such a bad idea

and the thing is, I agree strongly w/this. but when I hear the results of this move, I feel like I wanna say, while I agree with where you may be coming from,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13muFXkEuIU

Also that, when carried out by men, the point of this move is often to reject as forcefully as possible some kind of boring idea about what adult manhood is supposed to be like, and this doesn't seem like such a bad idea

this thread hasn't fallen into misogyny but I think the venom that you see the nu-twee aesthetic producing elsewhere often does, and what you say is a big part of that - it's completely fair to dislike the placidly regressive middle class twerps we're talking about here of course, but the wholesale-and-then-some dismissal of everything surrounding them can amount to dismissing what I think can still be an important critical position to be taking wrt macho bullshit ideas of social and cultural legitimacy and the like.

you are otm but it just makes me even more disappointed by the music in question. presented with the good idea of not being macho, they respond by rejecting adulthood.

^^^

"Also there's the democratisation of a kind of small-c creativity - not tortured genius lock yourself in a room and write a symphony creativity, but take a quirky picture of a pelican and Instagram it, or bake cupcakes, or yes, write a little song on a ukulele, that got big in the last 10-15 years.

I think part of the purpose of the song in these ads is to to flatter the listener, a sort of transferrance of quirk."

this x10000

thing is, i'm actually totally in favor of ppl feeling empowered to ~get creative~, it just bums me out that pap like this encourages "non-creative" people to try their hand at, say, music* while totally codifying the acceptable ways to do that.

*i know more than one person who did not grow up playing an instrument who has recently taken up the ukulele. they're cheap, they're easy (or so i'm told), and you can buy one on a lark and not feel guilty if it gathers dust

My mom has started playing ukelele but only cause the leader of the hula group she's in has asked her to.

the uke isn't a bad thing, neither is the glockenspiel, you can play great ukelele (I like Jake Shimabukuro a lot, ymmv but that breeze 70s instrumental AOR feel lives on in him imo and I dig that sound) and you can do all kinds of cool things with a glockenspiel. It sucks that you sort of have to take extra pains to make sure your context doesn't read as a One Of Those Bands deal but not super-hard I don't think.

as an aesthetic move, some sort of engagement with notion/symbols of childhood and adolescence can be v. productive. i'll rep for sara records or kindercore and certainly beat happening all day. (and darla records stuff like flowchart too! and helium!)

i mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3XCgb8vsE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlG9BZKPyk

but the stuff on this thread is obv doing something very different than any of that was. and its not just "not drowning the melody in noise". its not the regressiveness but the lack of friction or movement maybe that gets to me. i'm sure there's a better way to articulate it.

what if hockey night in canada asked to use a song

maybe its music about not needing music, or not needing to make music.

so maybe it's just bobo music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobos_in_Paradise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2-S96FcFbk

Light-hearted, whimsical indie hipster music icons that seem specifically manufactured for cell phone commercials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjZ0rXSXeBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVERz5D1YEU

the lower level of this trend is even worse - like instead of big brands getting an actual song - loads of little shitty mortgage ads with a crappy ukelele soundtrack.

that iphone marimba clip is a great find, pretty neatly summing up this entire thread

Light-hearted, whimsical indie hipster music icons that seem specifically manufactured for cell phone commercials

that IS actually Wayne Coyne, isn't it...?

That clip sounds so much like Penguin Cafe Orchestra that it's uncomfortable. The problem is, I LIKE Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and this may be some roundabout homage to their song "Telephone and Rubber Band", which built around a phone busy signal. Nevertheless, I am sickened by these obnoxious hipster fucks!

that marimba clip is p. good and kiz seem to be working in a totally difft tradition than we're talking about here, although perhaps also suitable for tech ads (but not seemingly _manufactured_ for them!).

their youtube channel and website have any number of really enjoyable tracks.

(website being this: http://www.kizmusique.com/)

the new ryan hemsworth ep is great but i keep thinking of this thread. apple-trap.

https://soundcloud.com/ryanhemsworth/sets/a

I can't really get into that dude. A year back or so I was thinking often that trap-EDM or whatever you want to call it would be better if someone was bringing a more feminine vibe to counter the dudeishness but then someone did that and I'm like ehhhh. Maybe I should listen to this new stuff tho.

i feel like i should like these tracks more than i do, because i love chime-y melodies and it kinda sounds like old four tet with updated production, but nothing comes close to this: http://wedidit.bandcamp.com/track/the-happy-mask-shop

i guess they sound a little too contented with life, needs more giant choir drama.

does this belong here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKZxIrITsyo

i know one place it does belong, and that is with the rest of my tv that i threw out the window

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeVZi_GbaWM

cat power being in this thread is the single most baffling thing I have read here

http://whydopeoplesinglikethis.tumblr.com/

Time for that blog to be updated with Catey Shaw from the rolling worst music of 2014 thread.

(Hmm, guess I don't know how to link to other threads)

OMG the latest iPhone 5 commercial featuring the most inane (even for an Apple ad) song ever turns out to be Julie Doiron?!?

I think she has probably just smoked herself insane.

lyrics:

"I’m feeling hopefully feeling quite hopefully
with good people all around me I’m feeling hopefully

And the light shines bright all through the night and our dreams are making us nice stories
And my loves are well sleeping just right and I know know know now that we’re…
Living the life of dreams living the life of dreams…"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o84y-5-cO0

I don't blame Nick Drake for this. I do blame these fuckers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4

Is the trend for ads using teeth-gratingly bad stripped down cover versions a separate thing, or all part of the same general malaise of tweeness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o

Heard this at the gym (???) the other day and it reminded me that someone has to send a Terminator back in time to kill Ben Lee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTeZcHWHeW4

this genre of cloying crap that would fit perfectly in a tv commercial is called 'indie' now.

I never thought I'd get a chance to say this, but I actually really like this Ingrid Michaelson song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GBT37_yyzY

she is the WC Handy/Bill Monroe/Chuck Berry/James Brown/Kraftwerk of light-hearted, whimsical indie hipster music that seems specifically manufactured for Apple commercials. without 'The Way I Am' and "Be OK', there could be no Pomplamoose or She & Him.

I got into that song after hearing it at the grocery store a while back. I guess that made me think it was a bigger success than it actually was.

yeah, I've heard it a lot while shopping. I'm more surprised that 'The Way I Am' (which I despise) only got to #37 on Billboard. I could have sworn it was a major hit at the time.

I wouldn't really lump "Girls Chase Boys" in with the Apple commercials btw... different kind of pop, trying to catch some kind of observational gravitas and emotion. Within its world, there are things at stake. For comparison, check, I dunno, that awful Geico ad with the cheery lady singing about computers covered in bees. Whoever agreed to do the background whistling for that should be banned from the music industry on principle.

is this supposed to be mocking Robert Palmer, or is it just a coincidence?

what part of "(An Homage to Robert Palmer's 'Simply Irresistible')" fails to answer your question?

good song tho. nowhere near as horrid as pomplamoose and geico advert choon etc.

Ah, didn't click through so it didn't show me the title.

This seems completely consistent with 'Apple commercial' music to me. Maybe not necessarily Apple, per se, but definitely some tech bullshit