The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time (2020)

it's interesting that the two greatest influences for this genre - The Strokes and The White Stripes - are contemporary American acts.

Is that true though? I don't enough about how these bands to comment tbh. When I think of landfill indie I think instantly of Scouting For Girls, who are like an abysmal take on Supergrass and assume most of these bands are post-Britpop.

Scouting For Girls supporting Tom Jones on a concert poster I saw recently.

The Fratellis are basically a ham-fisted attempt at The White Stripes' sound xp

never knowingly heard a scouting for girls song and not much motivation to spend 3 minutes changing this state of affairs

surely you must have heard 'she's so lovely'? that was scouting for girls.

At the age of 15 Roy and Greg were playing together at small gigs in west London. It has been noted that the band was looking for a spirited way of removing themselves from the drudgery of their everyday lives, looking to the whimsy of childhood fantasy through playing a Moog organ.

ok, checked out 30 seconds of it, more than enough for me, never heard before and never want to hear again.

wikipedia has descriptions of all of scouting for girls' music videos

The music video for "She's So Lovely" is set in a bowling alley. Roy Stride is trying to attract the attentions of a pretty girl (Louise Glover), but she has a boyfriend (Liyo Cassini) already. While the boyfriend is there, Roy tells the girl she looks beautiful. The boyfriend gets angry, but gets called away for his throw. As he scores a strike, Roy and the girl walk off down the hall together (although only their legs are shown, the shoes and jeans are the same as Roy's).

The music video for "Elvis Ain't Dead" was recorded in a studio and involved the band members simply playing the song. There are shots of Roy Stride wandering around town and seeing people with Elvis haircuts and wearing the sorts of clothes he wore. At the end of the video he sees the girl that he is attracted to and the song fades with the words "Elvis has left the building. Thank you and goodnight!", a line made famous by Elvis.

In the music video the band is seen playing at a lovers ball in front of young couples. Those who have love (or lust) for others are shown to have beating CGI hearts.

This music video is set in a restaurant, where Roy asks a number of girls to a restaurant. They all seem uninterested with him, and he pulls out the same flowers for them all. They all leave him, and near the end, Roy is sitting alone at his table when the young waitress sits down with him. They both laugh as the scene fades to black.

The music video has the band playing in tuxedos on a white stage whilst there are men and women dancing to the side of the band.

The music video consists of various clips of the band on tour and in various places including a casino. It shows them playing the song on a stage at a concert or festival. It was released to their official YouTube on 9 February 2009.[3]

The video for "This Ain't a Love Song" was filmed at London City Airport and a technical college in Rainham, Essex, and was directed by Eric Liss. The idea for the video came from the lead singer, Roy Stride. The original video was dismissed as being too dark so the version that was released was filmed.[4][5] These shots included a girl waiting for her flight crew mother, two male friends and an old couple.[5] The video also involved several night shots.[3]

The official music video to accompany the single "Famous" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 23 April 2010,[6] 2 months prior to the release of the actual single. The video features the members of the band sat around in an apartment, as per described in the lyrics "Staying in again on a Saturday night". Stride is then seen reading the owner's manual to the various television screens positioned in the apartment, which refers to the lyric: "I've got 900 channels, but there's nothing to see". The band then perform the single, all the while recording themselves, before placing a video cassette in the video player, resulting in the performance being shown on the television sets. The celebrities named in the video, including Bette Davis and James Dean are all shown on the television screens at various points throughout the video.

The official music video to accompany the single "Don't Want To Leave You" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 3 September 2010.[4]

The official music video to accompany the single "Love How It Hurts" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 27 May 2011. The music video shows a young geeky boy falling in love with a pretty girl as they soon started to become friends a cool bad boy comes over and takes the girl away. The geeky boy tried to give her a tape holding 'Love How It Hurts' on it. Yet again the cool boy interrupts and breaks it apart. Next they have all grown up and he is still in love with her. The geeky boy runs to meet her, intercut with scenes of the girl and geeky boy. He tries to marry her and (yet again) the cool boy interrupts, throws the ring off a nearby cliff and tries to walk off with the girl again. The music video ends when the girl stops walking and looks back at him.[1]
The band do not feature in the video, a first for them. Roy Stride said this was due to them touring Germany and that: "The record label just decided to make it without us!". The band made two 'Alternative Endings' to the video, and fans were to pick their favourite. It features bassist Greg as the geeky boy and leader singer Roy as the bad boy fighting over the girl, played by drummer Pete. It was filmed at a service station on their way back from a gig and according to their Twitter, "Total Budget £9.36".[2]

I hated nu-metal and pop punk when I was a teenager in the early 2000s, but if I hear that stuff now I feel a certain nostalgic fondness. I hated landfill indie at the time as well and I thought that listening to the spotify playlist I might discover a similar grudging affection, but it was just depressing. I think this is partly because landfill indie sounds quite similar to music I actually like, but really bad.

I love plenty of 50s trad and skiffle, this is why I was specifying "late 60s" as it seems to have dried up creatively with the arrival of The Beatles, idk maybe Chris Barber was still putting out good records then.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

in 1973 he released an album called _Drat That Fratle Rat!_, which is at least suitable for that thread of extremely '70s album titles. i do also think there's a pretty big difference between the us trad jazz scene (consisting mostly of older folks who'd been playing that kind of music from the '70s) and the uk scene. i probably should finish reading billy bragg's book on skiffle to see what he says about it...

this is from back when centuries of sound was in the 1900s, I had this thing I called the "dragnet method" where I used a javascript crawler to download mp3s from online music archives like archive.org, ucsb, russian records, etc. - at that point there were ~1000 surviving records per year, but it wasn't such a problem to listen to them all as at least 50% were these absolutely terrible opera recordings which could be safely skipped / deleted after 20 seconds.

there were also some good or at least passable opera records, but they were few and far between.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

see, at some point one of the deep dives i went on was a compilation called "the record of singing" and the accompanying books by michael scott:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Record_of_Singing

i do strongly recommend scott's books, they are _marvelously_ bitchy. anyway my general impression is that these recordings... in the early years nobody really had any sense that how one sung on a record could be different than the way one sung in a cavernous hall. i found that once i adjusted to the quirks of the era that many of them were very good... i'm particularly fond of amelita galli-curci.

Galli-curci is good, as are many on that list, I can even appreciate Alessandro Moreschi. But the majority of the cylinders are of a much lower quality in terms of performance, technology and preservation.

My favourite discovery from early 1900s opera is Maria A Mikhailova, this is a great recording of a great performance

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

it's very commonly said that the reason Caruso was such a phenomenon was that he was the first opera performer to successfully adapt his style to the new medium, but listening to this, no he wasn't the first.

Fuck Forever is the worst song of all time

I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it

I have never heard a single one of these

Some scruffy comments

47: “Annie, Let’s Not Wait” – Guillemots - Anyone else remember Green Gartside being a Guillemots fan? Did I imagine it?
42: “Gone Up In Flames” – Morning Runner - The Inbetweeners theme
40: “Romantic Type” – The Pigeon Detectives - My dad liked them simply because they were from Leeds. A depressing state of affairs.
38: “Hounds Of Love” – The Futureheads - I knew this years before the original. I liked the video because of the dogs but the track doesn't hold up.
37: “Munich” – Editors - I think I even prefer White Lies to the Editors. Primeval credits music suppliers iirc.
36: “Killamangiro” – Babyshambles - I hate this band.
35: “Somewhere Else” – Razorlight - "I met a girl, she asked me my name, I told her what it was"
29: “Monster” – The Automatic - Much like the Hoosiers, I felt some peer pressure at the time (I was eight or nine) to like this, and like the Hoosiers, I never could.
22: “We’ll Live and Die in These Towns” – The Enemy - Dreadful band but perhaps unfairly their awful lyrics attracted far more scorn than the Kaisers or Monkeys' similarly hideous efforts.
21: “Apply Some Pressure” – Maximo Park - Along with the Futureheads they had more clout i.e. Pitchfork acclaim, were on Warp. Not bad.
15: “Sofa Song” – The Kooks - I hate this band
13: “If You Wanna” – The Vaccines - I hate this band
11: “Boys Will Be Boys” – The Ordinary Boys - Don't mind this, weedy blokey 2 Tone done good by having Ranking Junior emcee on the second version.
9: “22 Grand Job” – The Rakes - Also don't mind this, although I've never quite got what put this lot on a higher rung for many.
8: “Mardy Bum” – Arctic Monkeys - More insufferable memories of my dad's car CD player.
4: “Naïve” – The Kooks - I hate this band
3: “Don’t Go Back To Dalston” – Razorlight - I will say I like 'Golden Touch', 10:15 Saturday Night rip though it is. Nostalgia innit. But all their okay songs are a rip on something.
2: “Fuck Forever” – Babyshambles - I should probably remind you that I hate this.
1: “Chelsea Dagger” – The Fratellis - See my comments for Monster.

Fuck Forever is the worst song of all time

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:06 AM

i considered giving it a troll vote

I remember zines pushing Libertines/Babyshambles Doherty shit in the 00s as rock saviours. When I finally caved in and listened I was so confused I thought was getting trolled and I downloaded a fake album.

Nope turns out they really were that desperate.

Mostly NME

NME was a zine?

Editors had one truly great single in “An End Has a Start”, but everything else is completely forgettable

quite fond of 'bullets' by editors tbh

i got tix for glastonbury '05, and this stuff was a massive part of that mudfest weekend.
i saw the rakes, art brut, maximo park, babyshambles, the others, and heard morning runner from afar,
there were probably more of these bands on the line ups,
but i was too busy elsewhere.
i dare not look at the full line up now as i just know i probably wasted my weekend.
that said, art brut and the rakes were a lot of fun, and that first maximo park album still makes me grin.

the maximo park song is really good, i think i like “our velocity” more tho

Were Hard-Fi not good enough for this list or were they not really landfill indie?

I hate the angular choppy post punk side of this (figureheads, Maximo park etc) much prefer the stuff that rips of the strokes or has a romantic atmosphere.

“Munich” is the second or third best interpol song

I agree that “two doors down” is swell, I get a “come on Eileen” vibe from it.

re hard-fi : good call,
they totally should have been in the list.
i actually liked their thing for a while.
mainly the wrongtom dubbed up versions of course, but still ..

God what a nightmare. This is the reason poptimism exists.

"Two Doors Down" really sucks. At the time I really liked "Scarecrows In the Rain," and listening now I guess the hook isn't the worst I've ever heard. But I just don't have the patience for vocals or production that resemble this.

I blame ILM for convincing me to like the "Hounds Of Love" cover.

would be good to compile some of the actually good UK indie from the landfill years 2004-2008

I was about to say, "An Honest Mistake" might be the only track from this era that holds up, but turns out The Bravery are from NYC.

Xxxpost sorry not zines, magazines/blogs

my vote is for "apply some pressure" which is legitimately great!! the whole first maximo park album still really holds up, i revisited it not too long ago

let's listen to "the coast is always changing"

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

"our velocity" is also great tho i won't go hard for much else they did

i do have a soft spot for some of those razorlight songs... "golden touch" isn't on here but is prob their best. "somewhere else" is pretty good tho

the rakes debut album is also pretty good imo. catchy little post punk record. "22 grand job" is a good mission statement but "work work work (pub club sleep)" is still awesome .... perhaps hits harder for me now than when i was 15 since i've been to a wetherspoons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdO3ojPfTY

"strasbourg" is also a banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yXRCxrT83k

i also may have been tempted to vote for the cribs - "mirror kissers" if it was on here. great song! you could actually sing about "the hipster type(s)" in 2005 with a straight face...

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

i was working at tower records when all this stuff was in full swing (2003-2006), especially libertines/doherty shit talk. we stocked all the brit music papers and moka otm; they all went in full bore on this scene. fold out posters of the kooks, codes for arctic monkeys ring tone downloads, and i seem to recall a briefly ran serial column specifically for fan aacounts of pete doherty sightings.

i checked out babyshambles and just figured it was me that "didn't get it." most of the bands mentioned here passed me by. there was a local alternative station that really started to push razorlight for some reason. in hindsight, the whole thing strikes me as (and this might not be a very polite take, sry) the british press trying to "compete" with the american scene. like, "oh sure you have the strokes but we have (insert whatever hype band they were behind that month)."

is it unfair of me to laugh at most of this stuff now?

not unfair at all, it's one of the points of the thread.

Well I dunno, the Brit music press were also all in on the Strokes too and speaking of them in insanely hyperbolic terms, they were a better band than most of these chancers yes but Strokes, Libertines and subsequent bands were all viewed through the same "rock is BACK" filter.

xpost

Apply Some Pressure is the only legit answer here

It's funny how so many of these basically exist now as 240p Youtube videos from 16 years ago

re other genres I guess business techno would be an equivalent xps

every action having an equal and opposite reaction might explain the rise of the xx in 2009, ruining UK indie from the other direction

Galli-curci is good, as are many on that list, I can even appreciate Alessandro Moreschi. But the majority of the cylinders are of a much lower quality in terms of performance, technology and preservation.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

the phenomenon moreschi represents is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one to me... the whole thing was just super messed up. and the most messed up thing of all was that it was all just misogyny. as far as i'm aware prepubescent boys don't have any special vocal qualities girls don't. there was no reason for it.

I don't feel like Guillemots really count ITT. They were more like a less annoying UK(ISH) Arcade Fire than these swaggering schmindie blokes. I still have a big soft spot for 'Trains to Brazil'

I don't feel like Guillemots really count ITT. They were more like a less annoying UK(ISH) Arcade Fire than these swaggering schmindie blokes. I still have a big soft spot for 'Trains to Brazil'

― Do I look like I know what a jpeg is? (dog latin)

Trains To Brazil is such a great single. There's some good stuff on the debut album too. The second album was career suicide and they never recovered.

Oh not heard anything past the first album. How was it career suicide?

It was just a weird mix of styles, most of which didn't work. The hooks weren't as strong and it just seemed really unfocused and underwritten at times. The lead single, Get Over It gave them their biggest hit, but it's really jarring and miles away from Trains To Brazil and Made Up Love Song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNe0AjNXrs

There's a handful of songs on there I'd save like the opener Kriss Kross and the second single, Falling Out Of Reach which was lovely.

the phenomenon moreschi represents is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one to me... the whole thing was just super messed up. and the most messed up thing of all was that it was all just misogyny. as far as i'm aware prepubescent boys don't have any special vocal qualities girls don't. there was no reason for it.

― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

fwiw I think his voice does have a different quality about it - though perhaps much of this is due to the head voice he uses (which was standard at the time for opera singers.) Undoubtedly a great motivator for the continued existence of castrati was the culture/traditions of the vatican, moreschi was the maestro pro tempore of the sistine chapel choir, and his only recordings were made in the vatican.

okay finally went to dive into the playlist and fucking lol--- some of these aren't even available on us spotify! oh boy.

anyway, here we go...

guillemots are terrible, but i appreciate them for their shameless coldplay aspirations.

les incompetents sounds like someone successfully making fun of these kinds of bands. dreadful.

had to go over to youtube for the paddingtons and i regret every second. jfc.

(i'm not making it all the way through most of these btw. getting the cliche out of the way: THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME)

okay, i get what ya'll mean re: maximo park. "our velocity" sounds like they had an actual producer working with them. still not all the way my thing, but it at least sticks out (in a good way).

lol the editors. "riyl interpol"

"hounds of love" cover is vile.

I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY

may regret this but: two door cinema club isn't that bad - one of the better things on here so far!

bromheads jacket are fucking awful. that is all.

"we'll live and die in these towns" is downright hilarious. i like it. "so bad it's good"

this mystery jets is admittedly terrible, but i like how it goes full twee: twinkly synths, big stupid chorus, and hey even some sax. maybe it's just that it has some variety in the arrangement and that's why it sticks out, but i don't mind it.

lol the cribs - "dude, johnny marr's new band!" oh dear. on the better side of this stuff, but still. sigh of disappointment.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE SINGER IN BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB?? STOP THAT, FRIEND!!!

...sheesh, this stuff must be awful because "mardy bum" came on and i was like "oh that's not too bad!"

i remember reading a review of this kooks album (inside in / inside out) where the reviewer was really going to bat for them; "these lads are bringing something truly different to the scene and are surely the future of rock music" (paraphrasing). hoo boy, they sure do suck in retrospect.

aaahahahahahaha!! "fuck forever"!!! it's.... so, so terrible. still very tempted to vote for it. good times.

finally, the fratellis- meh, they suck. what's new?

really undecided on what to vote for. do i genuinely enjoy any of these songs? no. any enjoyment in this stuff always involves a bit of sardonic humor; even with the ones that aren't 'so bad it's good' i'm still enjoying it with a smirk.

Generator by the Holloways should have made the list. I remember Radio 1 calling it a song that it is impossible not to be lifted up by. Hehehe, one might say, but then it had the last laugh by semi-inventing Vampire Weekend.