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

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?

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