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

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

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