Is Morrissey an "indie" act or is he "for the whole world"?

Do you consider Morrissey to be:


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Depends what you mean by indie act.

I think Morrissey means he doesn't want to be associated with the glut of substandard guitar bands who contribute nothing new, have no personality, pay very little attention to songwriting craft, and don't seem to care about their vocals. A few mundane riffs and a cliched catchy chorus and they've got a hit. They also usually work for major record companies and tend to get airplay round the clock.
 
I think it's really about him not wanting to be confined into the 'indie' world, which for him probably means being listened to/known by a smaller circle of people. He's always maintained that The Smiths were simply 'pop music' and he's said lots of times that he wanted to be a pop star eversince he was 6.

That's one of the contradictions that are so typical of Morrissey: he wants to be heard and seen by everyone, and if not to be loved by everyone (since he must be aware that's impossible) then to make an impression on everyone. But at the same time - he wants it on his own terms, without a compromise. He says with pride that he it's not in his nature to be agreeable, to try to endear himself to the public. And he constantly challenges everyone as if he wants to see if people will still love him no matter how much he gives them a possible reason to be pi$$ed off at him (example: the Canada situation).
 
definately indie (not meaning diy) i wouldn't want the whole world to have him and certainly not the vacuous pop world.
 
I think of Morrissey as a mainstream artist... his songs usually last 3-4 minutes, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, usual instrumentation, quite melodic and catchy. Not very different from Robbie Williams (which isn't a bad thing). Lyrically, well, he writes better than most mainstream artists, but his subject matter is often what you'll find in other regular pop/rock songs - love, loneliness, etc.

I never understood why mainstream radio doesn't play his songs. Though, unlike him, I really don't think being ranked high on the charts means anything. Then again, I guess that for him it means money, so I see why he cares about it.
 
I think of Morrissey as a mainstream artist... his songs usually last 3-4 minutes, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, usual instrumentation, quite melodic and catchy. Not very different from Robbie Williams (which isn't a bad thing). Lyrically, well, he writes better than most mainstream artists, but his subject matter is often what you'll find in other regular pop/rock songs - love, loneliness, etc.

That description pretty much fits at least 70-80% of "indie"/"alternative" artists of the 80s, 90s and 00s.
 
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For example...?
well, let's see:


Husker Du (minus their hardcore punk beginnings)
The Replacements
Violent Femmes
The Cure
The Chameleons
Echo & The Bunnymen
Dinosaur Jr
Screaming Trees
American Music Club
Dream Syndicate
R.E.M.
Nirvana
Hole
P.J.Harvey
Jeff Buckley
Afghan Wigs
Smashing Pumpkins
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
New Order
James
Pulp
Belle & Sebastian
Tindersticks
Placebo
Interpol
The Libertines and their spinoff bands, The Arctic Monkeys, etc....most of the today's scene promoted by the likes of NME
...

Surely some of these bands have had songs that were longer than 4 minutes or more experimental, but they have also had many more that weren't. It would be easier to name those who don't fit that description. Say...Pixies wrote pop songs, but with some rather unusual themes. Most of Sonic Youth's work has been very removed from pop, but they have recorded pop songs as well. And then there is a certain number of anti-pop artists such as The Residents.
 
I must admit that I'm not familiar with many of these bands, so I can't comment about them all. However, the ones I'm familiar with certainly don't fit my description of mainstream music. It's not only about songs that are longer than 4 minutes. It's about instrumentation and melodies as well. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Jeff Buckley, '80s R.E.M, '80s Echo And The Bunnymen (both of these bands started making mainstream music only in the '90s, in my opinion), Nick Cave - a lot of their songs don't have hooks, often have a dissonant sound, strange chord progressions, songs can be very loud, or if they're quite they often very dark and gloomy. I think this applies to the Cure as well but I don't know them very well.

To come back to the ultimate comparison - I can't imagine Robbie Williams sounding like that. Of course, mainstream doesn't have to sound like Robbie, but it has to be catchy, use "pleasant" aesthetics, not be too slow or too fast, being enjoyable even when only half-listening to it while doing other things... I agree that acts like Pulp, New Order or Placebo might fit this description. Maybe Belle & Sebastian too, though there's something too whimsy about them that prevents me from seeing them as mainstream. I'm sorry if I sound a little vague. I'm not sure if I can fully explain to myself why I catalogue certain bands as mainstream and others as indie/alternative/etc. I do feel that there is a difference.
 
"Indie rock is like pornography in a way: most people can't tell you exactly what it is, but they know it when they see it. Er, hear it. It's loud and obnoxious (or quiet and polite), careless and sloppy (or meticulously composed), complex and pretentious (or simple and unassuming), and, to its fans, cooler and more relevant than any other style of music. It's impossible to list all of the bands who have been influential to indie rock -- doing so would require more space than we have here and would undoubtedly start some petulant silent feuds. One thing's for sure: it's cool." ~ http://www.epitonic.com/
 
I just think this world needs to let go of this obsessive need to invent more and more labels for practically everything. I mean, indie rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise-pop, lo-fi, math rock, post-rock, space rock, sadcore, emo...who needs these categories?

I love it when Morrissey says "It's just pop music".
 
There's a good article in this month's 'The Word' by Andrew Collins, that says, technically, 'the concept of indie is dead', and that it died out with the purchase of independent record labels by large corporations in the late 80's / early 90's. It helped that those record labels usually put out very similar sounding music and the bands all had that similar look / ethos that The Smiths were feted for. I think this is why The Smiths are often thought of as inventing 'indie'; it was guitar pop, it had intelligent lyrics, there was one iconic frontman who was a singer and (musically) nothing else, one exceptional guitarist, a sound amalgamated from a variety of old influences, a punk ethos, and above all it appealed to angst ridden teenagers.
But like punk, effectively, the word has become an elusive entity ... What is indie to some is not indie to others, but, for instance, when i go to a club night that plays The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Pulp, Led Zeppelin, The Libertines, Blondie, The Rolling Stones, The Arcade Fire etc, it's an 'indie night' because it describes a certain sound that embraces post punk, britpop, psychedelia and good old fashioned (credible) rock; all the stuff you rarely hear on the radio (unless it's 60's or 70's) and that was once thought of as anti - establishment; all the stuff you dance a certain way to and copy the style of the bands involved ... in other words guitar based music for different generations of kids that wasn't/isn't prissy pop.
In that sense, yes, Morrissey is indie ... you will only hear him played at an indie night. In another sense, no, he isn't, because he doesn't go for that sound or look any more. I don't share his obsession with lack of airplay, but i sympathise with it; he always wanted to be a pop star on a par with his heroes, he always wanted to be 'for the whole world' because he wanted the whole world to share his love of music and wanted a platform from which to communicate his views to as many people as possible. I would love everyone i encounter to at least know who he is (and some don't) but i'm not sure of my views on whether he should stand alongside The Pussycat Dolls and Justin Trousersnake on the mainstream airwaves ... if other artists of his ilk don't get played, then why should he be different? Also, in my experience, people who listen to radio one, and commercial / regional radio channels, aren't music lovers so much as music listeners; they don't seem to have an over-riding passion for a single artist and this is why they're happy to listen to dance remixes and sampled music (is that what Morrissey really wants to happen to his records?) Although, Virgin Radio, (the only channel i've heard since giving up on radio nearly 10 years ago) ought to play him, because they play other 80's / 90's 'indie'. I'd love more people to see what we see in him, but come on Morrissey, the indie crowd love you now (and we are legion), isn't that enough?
 
I remember him saying: "Lets just pretend that everybody in the world is intelligent - what a difference it would make!"

I this case he might be "for the whole world". Sadly it's not the case and it never will be.
 
My understanding of Indie back in the 80s when the term was first used was that the label the band was signed to was independent - i.e. was "small" and not aligned or owned by any large media or publishing organisation and did not have its own retail arm.

This all kinda changed when most of the indie labels got bought up by the big mass market labels or disappeared. Then it seemed to me that the term Indie morphed into something that described a certain type of music.

This is very general but it was something that wasnt pop - e.g. Stock Aitken Waterman trash etc etc that relied on image rather than substance and it was something that wasnt rock - Queen, Guns.., Bon Jovi etc etc that relied on guitars and haircuts!

For me it came to describe a certain British flavour of music that could straddle any description but that had a certain seriousness and integrity.

In the case of Morrissey and The Smiths it could be described as Pop - This Charming Man, Some girls, Ouija Board, Panic, Suedehead, There is a light, Playboys, First of the Gang to Die are all pop songs

or it could be described as Rock - How Soon is Now, What difference, November, That Joke, National front Disco, Life is a Pigsty are all rock songs.

But because the artist has integrity, is serious, writes his (their) own material, is not generally bought by 14 year old girls then they are described as Indie.

it doesnt really matter to me - i reckon none of the genres have definite starts and ends and for me Morrissey is a genre all of his own.
 
PaulC said:
But because the artist has integrity, is serious, writes his (their) own material, is not generally bought by 14 year old girls then they are described as Indie.

stuff like Panic! At The Disco and Placebo are considered to be Indie as well. And 14 year old girls/boys buy it as well.

I'm really sticking to the idea that you just can't describe Indie. You know it when hear it.
 
they used to have these things called record stores back when they had records

is that a good start?

anyway, you'd go to these places and they'd have a section called "alternative" and one year alternative was Depeche Mode and the next year it was Nirvana. (Kurt probably was a depeche mode fan, too, and I'll bet he listened to them more than he did The Melvins, but whatever. when Kurt met Aerosmith he was shy and Courtney told them that he loved them growing up, but she probably just hoped they had some good dope or that she could get them to write her a song or something. When Eddie Van Halen came to meet Kurt, Kurt was starstruck, according to Thurston Moore.)

I think this sort of relates to Cod's post about when Indie and Alternative started meaning different things. Punk was an easier term to define and people hated each other based on who was a punk or not, so even that isn't clear-cut. But The Sex Pistols were definitely PUNK and were also hugely popular and Nirvana was Punk, too, whereas things like Blink 182 were less so, even though I have to give it up to them for not being able to play their instruments very well. Maybe we should not speak of this again.

Anyway, I think Indie is short for Independent and it doesn't matter what it sounds like, it's how and why it is made, and when a band "signs with a major" (and that used to be an issue) they aren't "indie" anymore.


read more about it here ;)
 
People who brand Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains as "indie" need to be shot! If you define Indie you will see that most of the bands sound somewhat similar to each other, whilst you can distinguish "indie" bands from each other, the gulf between bands in the "Grunge - Mainstream alternative" is far greater than anything I've listened! Grunge music is not indie, if anything it borded on along the lines of New wave! Was Adam and The Ants an indie band? No they were not, they were alternative. Indie doesn't not exist, what's Indie? Happy go lucky pop music? Are Blur indie? I always had them down a Brit Pop and Oasis as brit rock, same with Libertines and Babyshambles. Indie does not exist, it's a flash name to group different bands into one catergory. Are The Cure Indie? I always had them down a first wave emocore?! Were The Smiths indie? Nope, not to me they weren't, I'd define them a mixture between alternative and pop music, does this create indie?

To me the popular brands of music today are alternative, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam whose albums all sound different from the last one, you could place Morrissey there if you really wanted to. Pop music, you're Feeling, you're girls aloud. RnB is another one and emocore. Would you call Greenday punk? Indie? I'd call them a pop band, who about busted are they indie too? I always thought they were pop too, and what about McFly?

There is no such thing as indie, there never has been and there never will be. The closet music that comes to indie is Seattle Grunge and that's called Alternative! Indie is a shite name to describe that form of music! I call it alternative and bands like The Feeling, Feeder are not what I'd call alternative or as some call it Indie!

I'd call bands like Faith no more and Pearl Jam "Alternative"! I hate the phrase indie, most of the "indie" music out today has it's origins from bands of yesteryear! There is nothing original about it, therefore it's not alternative and the indie name is meaningless!
 
Well after not knowing what I'm talking about, I couldn't careless what genre an artist I like is in, it doesn't matter, if the lyrics have relevance and the music is good, I'll listen to it, like it and buy it. I brand my music taste as alternative, because my taste is diverse! Most artists nowadays cannot be defined in just one catergory, they can be placed into several, so is there any point of a discussion of music genres? There doesn't seem to be that much of an emphasis on it these days!
 
Well, music genres are still necessary. If you want to recommend a band to someone, and they say "what's it like" you could do some namedropping or just say "a bit of tweepop" ;)

Anyway, Kickstand, I don't understand why you were complaining about people calling grunge indie? I never heard that one before...
I always thought indie was alternative - alternative because it didn't get played on radio/tv and it wasn't accepted by the masses. Yes, lots of bands are still alternative in that way. But then I began to doubt the word "indie" since they began to play Death Cab For Cutie on the telly and it was becoming cool to dress indie and wear shirts of "indie" bands without knowing them...:rolleyes:
 
When someone mentions indie to me, I get an image of shite bands who are trying to be different and to compare that nonsense of Pearl Jam just vile!
 
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