WET LEG a girl band from the Isle of Wight on Domino Records

Anyway this new song is good

of what? marketing? promotion? press agents? big time booking agency? social media strategy? again these things are kind of the fundamental parts of music industry

For how many emerging artists is this a fundamental part of the experience, though? How does a brand new band go about getting a big time booking agency? Isn't this a chicken-egg kinda thing? Like the labels wanna know who books you and the booking agents want to know what label you're on and how many followers you have on Twitter and the manager wants to know how many streams you already have etc. I'm old so I don't actually understand how things blow up or go viral but surely this band's popularity is an anomaly, no?

xp
yes, IT'S good
yes IT'S good
yes IT's...good
yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes
goodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgoodgood

what came first, the chicken or the Leg

Every band that blows up is an anomaly, is the thing

Some that do have a pretty big head start, though

pretendstobeshocked.gif

Absolutely predictable that it is yet another female act that is going through "manufactured buzz" wringer. Did I just miss all the dozens of handwringing posts about how Yard Act suddenly appeared everywhere? (Well aware they've been referenced itt, but they are getting nowhere near the amount of shit that Wet Leg has gotten.)

The Isle of Wight propaganda machine can't be defeated.

Wight privilege

more like isle of white, roasted

pretendstobeshocked.gif

Absolutely predictable that it is yet another female act that is going through "manufactured buzz" wringer. Did I just miss all the dozens of handwringing posts about how Yard Act suddenly appeared everywhere? (Well aware they've been referenced itt, but they are getting nowhere near the amount of shit that Wet Leg has gotten.)

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 2 March 2022 22:18 (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol, you should see my response in the Yard Act thread, at least Wet Leg aren't...that

haha will say imago's hands are clean wrt yard act

lol, I didn't find it quite as eloquent as imago's skewering of BC, NR but still nice

I only brought them up as an example of a UK act that appeared seemingly out of nowhere with a huge label push.

They get a lot of attention cause their first single was catchy and funny with an amusing video c’mon this ain’t difficult people.

exactly

right. lol. like... a lot of talk about marketing wizardry and not so much talk about the fact their debut single is pretty killer. and i don't love the band but just like, objectively speaking... and i think ppl who have strong negative reactions should understand that a song able to provoke those kinds of reactions means there's ppl who feel as passionately in the opposite direction, and that's how you make pop magic baby

WHY IS THIS SONG MMMBOP EVERYWHERE WHAT MARKETING SKULDUGGERY IS AT WORK WHO GOT PAID OFF

I think it's a valid question with most pop music, actually.

Does ILM voting their debut single as the #1 song of 2021 count as a lot of people talking about how, um, killer it is?

well in this thread, no

Although if fixing the ILM poll was in the sights of a marketing team it could hardly be easier.

I don't see ILM tripping over itself to cover UK indie otherwise. There's that thread that lumps all the post-punk bands du jour together but I'm not seeing much chatter beyond that?

all of the criticisms here boil down to "I don't like this, therefore the people who do must have been tricked or fooled somehow"

Imago has said a lot about the music! I just don't think "I went to school and I got the big D" is the height of wit and the music seems kind of basic otherwise. I probably wouldn't care if it hadn't made #1 on the 2021 poll but I've no doubt that the people who like it actually like it.

completely missing the point that "basic indie" (the gist of his critique iirc) has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of the finished product, like it's a fucking pop song what the fuck do you expect

also I counter your lyric argument with "Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?" which is a perfect pop song non-sequitur IMHO

specifically to address imago, I am really fucking sick of you valorizing complexity and "innovation" as being somehow essential to legit enjoyment

sometimes you just wanna listen to the fucking Beach Boys, ya know?

Tunes, energy, interesting words 3xp the Beach Boys have all three (and were pretty complex and innovative!)

OK fine, sub in the greatest bubblegum hits

this is unimpeachable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pArjPVA-8

rank Wet Leg, Beach Boys, and Jute Gyte

and the flaming lips

Assigning values on a scale from Gifter to Grifter

Beach Boys
Jute Gyte
Vanity Fare
Flaming Lips
Grifters
Wet Leg

That is an unfair characterisation, sleeve! How's about I play a card to the table and show the sort of UK indie I value, noteworthy not for its complexity but its melodic generosity, sense of structure to the songwriting and emotional intensity. I choose Trust Fund for this as they've just today put out a new single for the first time in four years, but as a solo concern - here's their full-band swansong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYXc2EAbs0

I just don't think Wet Leg do much more than cutesy cheek and SEO My First Hooks, and they're already getting insane hype (lol be quiet sic) and winning ILM EOY polls on the first try. I don't hate them but something feels skewed; I do feel somewhat gaslit by it all. The new song is probably their best so far as they're throwing saxes and heavy guitars into the mix but it's all still pressing very familiar buttons; it isn't the simplicity I dislike (I'm a Fall fan ffs!) but the pat familiarity, the sense that I can see exactly where the cogs are

*throwing saxes and heavy guitars into the mix, achieving some sense of textural contrast at least, NOT COMPLEXITY, lol

“seeing where the cogs are” see i like this. it’s kind of a disco edit approach to guitar music and i’m into it.

Well, if we're limiting it to UK indie that's

- female-fronted
- cheeky
- ridiculously simple
- recent
- catchy
- cog-evident

...then here's something that does all that without sounding like it was run past a test audience of middle-aged poptimists first

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPRX3i1aOF8

it's about having character, dear folks

oh we definitely have a character on our hands

that’s a great video

imago you’re a middle aged poptimist surely. so you’re saying you want something that sounds like… you wouldn’t like it? not really following you

the subtext of all this criticism - too marketed, too on-the-nose, is that wet leg’s success (such as it is) is unearned. that they’ve had a “head start”. they’ve had unfair advantages. but what these advantages are seems hard to pin down. they have a label that has been successful at plugging their songs. that’s what labels are set up to do. that is their whole job! imago you’re saying they’re not formally adventurous enough for your tastes, that they sound “focus grouped”. ok. i mean rock music really doesn’t need to be formally adventurous to be good but whatever.

like why all the agonizing?? honestly very weird to me

we don't need to pit women against other women

otm ^

I did just turn 35 tbf. Game overrrr

I dunno, I've given two examples of songs I love from the UK indie/pop milieu that aren't formally adventurous at all, but which have a little bit of compositional spice, emotional heft or whatnot - songs which, to my ears, have an interesting POV. And yeah, my main beef with Wet Leg is the jet propulsion they're getting from all corners - which, combined with their highly polished sound and banal cool-kids vibe, feels like yet another victory for ennui

Re:Trust Fund, if it makes you feel better, "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie has 80 million more spotify plays than "Chaise Longue"

yeah but what about youtube and tiktok :p

right. lol. like... a lot of talk about marketing wizardry and not so much talk about the fact their debut single is pretty killer. and i don't love the band but just like, objectively speaking... and i think ppl who have strong negative reactions should understand that a song able to provoke those kinds of reactions means there's ppl who feel as passionately in the opposite direction, and that's how you make pop magic baby

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, March 2, 2022 11:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I have a hard time understanding why they even warrant such strong reactions either way. It's really only the aggressive sales push and the phoney-baloney self-mythologising I find irritating, the actual music's just kind of there to me, not exactly offensive but not particularly great. Middling indie.

I've said all I want to say about them anyway and frankly the WL Stans on here scare me a bit so I'm bailing out of this one.

The last thing I'll mention is WL putting a song called "Angelica" brought to mind this one from 1997 which think sounds like a kind-of proto Wet Leg in an odd way (although none of their other stuff did apart from this).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16indpzGa9U

the WL Stans on here scare me a bit

name names

and if you're including me, i mean... i never really think about this band ever except when this thread gets bumped tbh

wet leg stan is my new blues name