Swimmer One: Comments

‘Call us snobs.’ Ok, you’re snobs

I read the NME today, for the first time in a while, curious as to whether it was worth Ash, our PR person, sending them a copy of the album. Clearly we’re not going to turn down publicity from anyone (we are not idiots) but it really made me cross, as the NME generally does.

There were two things in particular. The first was a piece called ‘what we’re talking about in the NME office’, about Emily, the Big Brother contestant who got thrown off the show for using the word ‘nigger’. The racism charge wasn’t NME’s objection to her, though. The magazine’s main issue was that she saw herself as a ‘bit of an indie rock and roll queen’. “Call us snobs, but indie is not a badge of cool that can be picked up by any old chancer,” went the objection. “Indie is a soundtrack to your life that informs your opinions as well as your haircut and clothes. Something to soundtrack your day as you walk down the street past fast food chains full of Maroon 5 fans. Readers, now is the time to pull together and vanquish the new evil: sniff out your local indie faker today and do what is necessary.”

Now, the NME has a long history of making knowingly obnoxious, illogical, and infuriatingly inconsistent statements just to get a rise out of readers, so that they write angry letters and continue buying and talking about the magazine. So it’s completely possible that it didn’t mean a word of this and was just having a laugh. But at the risk of taking the bait, let’s try and pick it apart. The case against Emily, as far as I can see, is that she is thinking of voting Conservative in the next election and “likes Lily Allen”. Does this mean you can’t be a genuine indie fan if you like music released on a major label and disagree with the magazine’s (presumably left wing, although it’s often difficult to tell) politics? Or are they just sneering at Lily Allen in particular? And, if so, what on earth did she do to deserve it, other than be very successful? And what exactly is the connection between liking Maroon 5 and eating fast food? Are they saying that, if you eat bland food, you probably like bland music? If that were true, gourmet chefs would surely listen to John Cage or Benjamin Britten (I have met some, and found that their taste in music is, in general, more likely to be quite conservative, because they are far too busy thinking about food to be obsessing about music). Or do they mean that Maroon 5 and McDonald’s both represent big, impersonal corporations – ie: the opposite of “indie”? If so, they are blatant hypocrites, since the NME is a glossy mag, owned by a large media company, that frequently accepts adverts and sponsorship from resolutely non-indie companies, and writes about bands on major labels. Even if it was the kind of snotty nosed fanzine it occasionally poses as, the line between indie labels and majors is so blurred now – major labels with indie imprints, indies behaving like majors, etc etc – that it’s virtually meaningless. It is ridiculously adolescent to pretend otherwise.

You could continue pointing out the many holes in the argument for much longer, but it’s pointless, because it’s obvious what the NME is driving at. It’s that being an NME kind of person, whatever that means, effectively involves signing up to something – thinking, dressing and cutting your hair in a particular way. It’s not just a badge of cool, it’s a whole uniform of cool, and I hate it, because it’s about excluding people. If you like the wrong band, or have the wrong haircut or the wrong clothes – whatever they happen to be at any one time - you’re not welcome. It’s the reason – at the risk of making this sound more personal than it actually is - why I got grief at school from the cool “indie” kids for liking A-ha instead of the Smiths (who I didn’t really get at the time, although I did later). I tried reading NME then, but found it baffling – insular, snobbish and self-conscious. So I read Smash Hits instead, which was more fun.

The NME has long been as shallow as the people it spends so much time attacking. It’s a music magazine, for heaven’s sake, not some kind of lifestyle Bible. I can’t think of any other publication so obsessed with the idea that you should define your whole existence by its brand values. I’m sure the NME thinks it has more integrity, depth and passion than magazines that identify themselves more obviously as lifestyle publications (I-D, say) because it’s about something solid – actual music, rather than some vague notion of style and cool that applies equally to various forms of creativity. And yes, it does find and champion a lot of interesting music (among all the dull, derivative music it champions too). But it works the same way, exploiting and feeding on people’s insecurities.

The other thing that annoyed me was this, the magazine’s verdict on Candie Payne….

‘If you happen to be a bohemian parent looking for something to ease the breeze of age then look no further than Candie Payne. Ok, so she’s not exactly Joss Stone, but it’s going to take more than a cool Dusty Springfield collection and a brother in the Zutons to prevent the Scouse revivalist being co-opted by the school run posse. A tasteful denizen of spectral otherworld wrenched from their self-consciously cool landscape by the snooze-patrols who tend to turn up at the gigs? It certainly looks like it. Ten pounds says your ‘hip’ stepdad buys her debut record for your birthday.’

It’s slightly difficult to work out exactly what the NME is saying here, but it has something to do with excluding parents from its supercool, adolescent club. As far as I can tell, they’re suggesting that someone older than you, to prove that they’re ‘cool’ (which they are not, clearly) will buy you, the cool young NME reader, a Candie Payne CD. Since the NME seems to approve of Candie Payne, this would, you might think, be a nice thing, but the implication is that you should sneer at your stepdad anyway, just, well, because. Another thing that may happen is that people who are not cool, parents mainly, will ruin Candie Payne for all the cool young things by listening to her (the impertinence!) thus making her no longer cool.

This bears so little relation to why people listen to music in the real world that it’s as if NME is floating around in some peculiar, drug-addled, supertrendy alternate universe. It is tying itself in knots trying to open up a generation gap that hasn’t really existed since Punk. The very same issue of the NME proves this – it contains a reverential interview with Johnny Marr, now in his forties. And another one with Muse, younger but indebted to 1970s prog rock, music NME once sneered at. And yes, I admit that some kind of generation gap seems to have opened up recently – bands like Enter Shikari and My Chemical Romance being impenetrable to many adults – but Candie Payne? Please. She sings nice, 1960s-style pop songs. You like the tunes, and her voice, or you don’t. There is really nothing else to say or prove here. Move along.

Thank heavens for the internet, I say. Sites like MySpace, for all their flaws, at least cut through all this foolishness. You find music you like, you talk to other people who like it too. You cut out the supercool, snobbish indie tastemakers, who make you feel small for liking Abba, or whoever.

Ha! I’ve probably ruined any chance of us ever being written about in NME now, haven’t I? Maybe I should write a blog slagging off Word magazine next (’what a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, self-satisfied, tofu-munching nerdy dads’ or suchlike). Or perhaps I can use the classic NME get out clause, that I was just being ‘ironic’.

Andrew

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‘Call us snobs.’ Ok, you’re snobs

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