Just had to pullquote this from that Vice article:
“I feel like there has been created, in the past two to three years, an indie-yuppie establishment. Bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Iron and Wine, the Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, they are great bands, really great bands, with great albums, great songs, high quality. And to me, it’s just so fucking boring,” he says. “It?s like fancy-coffee-drinking, Volvo-riding music for kids. And kids should be listening to music that shakes them up more, makes them uncomfortable.”
Let’s hear your best Foxworthian “You Might Be An Indie-Yuppie If…” joke in the comments. Funniest one gets an O.C. Mix CD and a subscription to Paste.
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you might not be an indie-yuppie if you hate everyone who has made a comment. you’re all phony. especially the lawyer who listens to bloc party. how effing lame is that.
I have to agree with Ben, Joel M’s comment does take it.
The King of Zing got mine!
You might be a induppie if Aloha has ever “rocked” your iPod.
You might be an induppie if you have analysed, during a show, why the preferred beer of scenesters has shifted from Rolling Rock to PBR.
If this makes sense to you, you are an induppie.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you read Stereogum and enter a contest for a mix CD of songs on the O.C.
If you hide your New Radicals cd when company comes over, you might be an induppie.
If you are trying to make up for your straight-edge years at age 27, you might be an induppie.
If you have ever referred to someone you don’t know by what magazines you guess they read, you might be an induppie.
…you have over 200 friends on friendster and one of them is that thursday night party at Lit.
Rob Mitchum, in reviewing “Music From the O.C. Mix 4″ in today’s Pitchfork, calls out Indie-Yuppies far better than any of us have (or at least more completely as some of the quips posted here have been quite good). Is this the death knell for coolness by obscurity? The Internet has had it in a stranglehold for years, I suppose.
If the thought of that frightens you, you might be an Indie-Yuppie.
You ARE an indie yuppie if you don’t just want to FUCKING PUNCH WILCO IN THE BRAIN.
If you don’t listen to any music dated before 1980.
If you are both subculturally affiliated and and a functional adult.
you might be an indie yuppie if posting here makes you feel ironic
if you’re in finance and listen to squeeze, difford and tilbrook. the epitome of them both!
Are induppies people who don’t stop listening to new music just because they have a mortgage, or are they people with mortgages that have decided to broaden their music horizons?
I think a lot of the posts are more appropriate for the run-of-the-mill hipster. Induppies are a separate species. We’ve hijacked indie culture because we used to be hipsters. But we directed indie music away from abbrasiveness towards the Iron and Wine’s of the world. I think it happened sometime around Sondre Lerche’s first album.
Jed has my vote…”If you dont listen to any music dated before 1980″ that was good
Dong Patrol: You are right, Ultragrrrl is by far the biggest indyup.
If you listen to the Cure…
if you get excited because the Gilmore Girls just name dropped your favorite band….
I’ve been calling them Fuppies. Fucking yuppies who hang at the indie rock bars and try to look cool, but really just look like Marisa Cooper and Seth Cohen.
Anne Bowman and her fuck-marry-kill is the list’s bright shining star so far:
You might be an indie-yuppie…if you’d fuck Karen O., marry Jenny Lewis, and kill that sellout Liz Phair (because you’ve heard she used to be totally indie).
You might be an indie-yuppie if your idea of “uncomfortable” music aligns with Vice’s (i.e., grime and the Libertines).
I’m with topher. An indie yuppy is someone with baby vomit stains on their Talking Heads concert t-shirt.
…..if you think ultragrrl is actually totally hot and super sweet!! no way she’s not fat!!! she totally looked hot in her hot topic joy division shirt!!!……or if you ARE ultragrrrl and you delete the comments from you blog when people talk shit because you love the world and everyone should be super totally nice to each other cause we could like totally die tomorrow, like your dog.
……or if you are one of ultragrrrl’s friends and your pretend to like her stank ass because you are in a band and you are hoping she will help you along your path to selling out to the masses
……or you are leigh lezark and mommy and daddy totally support you but you don’t tell anyone because you are all indie and hardcore and shit….and you have herpes and no one really knows that!!!!
if you think any of the recent “indie rock” bands on itunes are really indie
If, surprised that you were not slaughtered to death by athletes in high school, you think the fact that you are alive is ironic, and display this through the clothes you wear and the blank faces and gang symbols you give whenever someone tries to take a picture of you, which isn’t often.
You hated the OC at first, then started liking it ironically a few episodes in, before going back to hating it after it became too popular. You started watching it unironically at the beginning of this season, and then decided that, actually, you don’t like it. You are now lonely, confused, and attempting to devise an unironically ironic way to start watching again so you can find out if Ryan and Marissa get together. You ocassionally watch One Tree Hill before crying yourself to sleep.
You think you might have forgotten the definition of “irony”, but you’re also not sure you ever knew, and you think that, in a way, it doesn’t really matter, but you’re not certain.
You think Blueberry Boat is a “really good album.”
The first thing that came to mind when you read the read the last one was, “I don’t know about album, record, sure.” You have now descended from the indie-yuppie to the Pitchforkian fuckface.
You know there’s got to be some way to sleep ironically.
You are an indie yuppie if you break out in hives as soon as the year’s Coachella lineup is announced.
hahah…if you let Hilary Fucking Duff, take over DJing duties at your weekly Misshapes party…YOU ARE A FUPPIE!
Kind of off-topic, but kind of not. A classic, tragic Freudian slip courtesy of Rob Mitchum (reviewing the 4th OC comp):
If that was all, “The O.C.” would be somewhere equivalent to “House” on my attentional scale, mere delay before hearing who’s been voted home. But, of course, to the world Pitchfork INHERITS, “The O.C.” has become much more…
I s’pose “meek” really is just Bible-speak for “indie-yuppie”?
You might be an indie yuppie if… what, you don’t KNOW?
You might be an indie-yuppie if you have ever used the words metaphysical, existential or naturalistic to describe a song.
Or you might be an indie yuppie if you post something on here and then spend the next three days checking your email and this blog trying to figure out if you won. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to do that, I’m just saying.
you might be an indie yuppie if you call yourself indie.
If the NY Press ranked you # 20 this year, of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers..
wimpy bands and kitsch suck!
You might be an indie-yuppie if you think that the indie-yuppie is the new bobo.
“If you are both subculturally affiliated and and a functional adult.” … fucking brilliant.
Thank god, i knew i’d fit in somewhere!
You might be an indie yuppie if you ever find yourself bragging, without a hint of irony, “Oh yeah, I’ve been listening to *insert fave indie band here* for ages; they were on a Starbucks Mix CD.”
You might be an indie-yuppie if you hate Kelly Clarkson and anything American Idol-related. But you profess undying love for Ted Leo – because he never sells out, man! And found yourself confused by that mp3 of Ted covering Kelly. Because you liked it, you really liked it. Oh and that bit with Maps, brilliant. But that was okay because it was ironic, right? Wait, or maybe not? Oh shit, I like that song. I’m playing it all the time. But you know that Kelly version’s better. OK, you think, I’m going to ironically like the Kelly Clarkson song. And then. And then this. You find yourself bopping along to Kelly: Since U Been Gone, yeah yeah! Come on, you know you’re singing along right now, you indie-yuppie,you. And it’s Kelly’s version that’s running through your mind.
I agree with Ben, Joel M should win. He hit it right on the nose.
i agree with topher’s comment
they’re the dawson’s creek, gilmore girls, and OC characters with white, white collar parents
who only believes in public transportation and only owns a bike, but secretly want to drive the hummer they got for their birthday
and (are able to) date their english professors
purposely goes to cafés with used books in them, but can also be found just as often at starbucks
i thought the comment about owning two copies of the album one on cd and vinyl is so true…only because i can guiltily relate to it
you ARE an indie-yuppie because you are reading this.
You might be an indie yuppie if you’re crossing your fingers and really just sweetly hoping that Joel M. takes this whole contest DOWN.
What a load of horseshit! Aren’t the Stills on Vice? No offense – I like those guys and all, but if you are going to construct this glass house (ie Volvo Riding Music for kids – which by the way is a complete assinine categorization) quit throwing stones. Vice is so up its own ass it’s sickening. Their ‘existing outside the lines of what is comfortable’ is just ridiculous as well. These jerk offs are people who base their opinion not on substance or true merit, but upon the opinions of the other trust funders in-the-know playing poverty chic roles with designer drug habits. Mr Shore should stop trying to be clever, because his attempts make him sound like an ass.
-jeremiah dumont
You might be an indie yuppie if you live in Manhattan and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, not because you enjoy it, but because it’s just so damn ironic.
…if the building you live in feels like your old dorm in college even though the tenants have chicer fashion sense.
…if you live near a project and have the gall to describe yourself as poor after blowing through a 50 dollar bar tab.
…if you “protested” the RNC, didn’t run votes on election day, and then spent the month after the election emailing polemics about how stupid the rest of the country is.
…if you’ve been saving up to have your zip code read 11211.
…you leave the bar early to go home and “write” but in reality you get high and watch repeats of Best Week Ever.
…you spend at least an hour in the UCBT ASSSCat line.
…you don’t see anything sleazy about asking for an iPod for your birthday from your parents.
…you would write more but you don’t have a laptop.
…Two words: Bulgarian Bar
…if you still largely define yourself by identifying what you are not.
If you are living the Jenny & The Ess Dog Dream and gleefully know it…
you might be an indie-yuppie if you don’t really understand the definition of irony, but continue to define things as “ironic”
you might be an indyuppie if:
- your car radio is set to the only two stations in ny you enjoy: 1) howard sterns radio show on kroc and 2) air america.
- you actually like coldplay but you claim they are little more than “radiohead-lite.”
…if you “shop at independent record stores… read blogs… download stuff from MP3 blogs…”
–Adam Shore
…if you like electronic music that is more organic than sterile.
If you hear a Nick Drake song in a Wes Anderson movie and think “Hey, that sounds cool, I wonder if he’s on tour,” you might be an indie-yuppie.
if you look for yourself on the craigslist missed connections.
You’re iTunes starts with !!! or +/- rather than Abba or Aaliyah…
or
and you sing the words a half second before they actually appear in the song…aloud…
Slight problem with Joel M’s comment, not the sentiment, it’s just that I thought Indy Yuppies don’t listen to cd’s they download all their music.
You might be an indie-yuppie if Trent Reznor has never kicked you in the face.
I think a lot of guys and gals who grew up indie worry about their cred too much and they miss out on a lot of fun stuff. Not to give Peter Pan advice here (Billy Joel reference)but loosening up and not worrying about this kind of stuff is pretty liberating.
you might be an indie yuppie if your name is Topher
vote for joel
IYI: you ask people if they have heard about that great new band modest mouse.
I bet in a few years a lot of us will look back on this indie-yuppie thing that many of us are in with the same kind of uncomfortable mixed feelings that we feel when we think about our past identities as scenesters, or punk or hip hop kids.
COLIN MELOY IS THE NEW MORRISSEY OK?!
Best one was the…
You might be an indie-yuppie if… what, you don’t KNOW?
No question.
The whole “what, you don’t know” thing is an old hipster joke, with the original being:
Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: What, you mean you don’t KNOW?
So while that comment may have been sort of funny five years ago, at this point it’s hackneyed.
You might be an indie yuppie if you briefly consider throwing down $100 on Craigslist for 2 Bloc Party tickets, then decide that said $100 would be better spent going towards a pair of Comme des Garcons white sneakers that look exactly like Converses.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you wore a Thomas Pink shirt to the Fiery Furnaces show.
this conversation is fundamentally depressing and logically inductive.
“…if you still largely define yourself by identifying what you are not.”
-derek
Ouch.
You drop $200 on craigslist for two tickets to see an “it” band at the Troubadour or Spaceland who’s record you have never actually heard, but the bloggers seemed to like. Then, you drive to the show in your ironic Volvo 240 station wagon from your Silverlake apartment that your parents still pay for since your “writing” career hasn’t quite taken off.
-you’ve contemplated an ipod cozy, but cannot get it in the exact fade as your designer jeans.
-have never fallen asleep during an OC episode
-go to so many shows nightly that you’ve forgotten the concept of sleep.
-speak of the frontmen of your favorite bands with the same reverence as God, or perhaps ‘The power of cheese.’
-you love everything 5 minutes before it becomes 5 minutes ago
-you have had at least one wasted encounter with someone of your own gender. You can barely remember, but are still angry when they don’t call. Maybe you cry.
-are upset that the weather has turned un-scarf-worthy. And your pale skin hasn’t seen sunshine since before you were scene. Again, maybe you cry.
leigh lezark has herpes…!?
You might be an indie-yuppie if time reading Pitchfork ends up as a billable hour.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you’ve owned two cars since you last had a Misfits sticker on your bumper.
You might be an indie-yuppie if nothing could ever be as great as Loveless.
Face it, us yuppies are taking indie rock down, just like we did with “college rock” back in the early 90′s. What’s going to happen is that teens will stop listening to their parents’ indie records and come up with something new, which we won’t ever “get”. And then the natural order will be restored.
It’s the circle of life.
yes leigh lezark has herpes
she also let Hilary Duff DJ for her, because you know, Hilary is also an indie yuppie idiot
You might be an Indie Yuppie if at this very moment you are sitting at a desk in an office park in the midwest, frantically Googling “Leigh Lezark”.
You might be an Indie Yuppie if you claim to be going to the U2 concert to see Kings of Leon.
*LOL*
My iTunes *does* start with +/-
“Q: Why isn’t the Indie Yuppie good at Karate?
A: They can never get past the White Belt.”
- King of Zion
Beautiful.
“You might be an indie-yuppie if you hate Kelly Clarkson and anything American Idol-related. But you profess undying love for Ted Leo – because he never sells out, man! And found yourself confused by that mp3 of Ted covering Kelly. Because you liked it, you really liked it. Oh and that bit with Maps, brilliant. But that was okay because it was ironic, right? Wait, or maybe not? Oh shit, I like that song. I’m playing it all the time. But you know that Kelly version’s better. OK, you think, I’m going to ironically like the Kelly Clarkson song. And then. And then this. You find yourself bopping along to Kelly: Since U Been Gone, yeah yeah! Come on, you know you’re singing along right now, you indie-yuppie,you. And it’s Kelly’s version that’s running through your mind” – raymond
Damn it, man.
In the end I’ll have to go for Joel, because of the fucking hats.
If you own a “independent” record label funded by major label cash, you might be an indie yuppie.
If you decry indie rock bands while releasing records by indie rock bands, you might be an indie yuppie.
If you claim people who shop at independent record stores, who read blogs, who download stuff from MP3 blogs, who go see two or three shows a week, who buy records because they feel a little guilty as your target market, then shit on people who shop at independent record stores, who read blogs, who download stuff from MP3 blogs, who go see two or three shows a week, etc. because, unlike you, they’re just part of the establishment, man, you might be an indie yuppie.
If you’re capable of holding all these contradictary thoughts in your head at the same time while snorting blow and trying to think of hilarious variants of common racial slurs for your magazine, well, you might be an indie yuppie.
…if you’ve ever been interviewed on Gothamist.com
*You might be a fuppie if you’ve ever used the word “rockist”. Especially as a verb.
*You might be a fuppie if, omigod, you are SO OVER The Kaiser Chiefs, OKAY?!??!
*You might be a fuppie if — ehh, too much effort (sigh).
You might be a fuppie if http://othermusic.com/
You might be an indie yuppie if:
– you never listen to half of the music downloaded on your Ipod because you don’t like it, but have it on there to save your “credibility”
– you’re afraid to admit The Secret Machines suck
– you roll your eyes and call people posers at shows, when you’re wearing a Marc Jacobs blazer and “vintage” tee, and a $300 pair of jeans
– said in public that a certain band is overrated, only to be in the vicinity of said band member’s girlfriend… and this has happened on more than one occasion.
– you’re so caught up in the “indie scene” that you’ve completely lost focus on what it was all about: the music
– you voted for Kerry and bitch about how Americans are misguided, only to become a right-winged Republican yourself within the next five or ten years.
Damn, all you guys must be about 14. Please stop fighting that muffled voice in your head telling you that YOU’VE somehow sold YOURSELF out. You have. Get over it. To believe that this contrived, image obsessed, music snob “indie” sub-culture is some kind of enlightened, unique and inspired state is truly sad.
You are partly to blame for the current state of affairs in modern music. Yes, I agree Ryan Seacrest is annoying and that American Idol is a little silly. The facts that I sometimes watch that show and that I may also know something about Sufjan Stevens aren’t mutually exclusive.
The good news is that all of this ridiculousness can be undone. Like a song because you like it. Like a freaking t-shirt because you like it. Don’t worry about what store it came from. Stop denying that you hum the damn hook to some top 40 song in the shower. RELAX. Feel guilty yet? You should.
joel should win, but which one?
I prefer the trucker hats one
I dont get the other one.
can someone explain it… listen to a cd and you like it? huh?
Leo J, Joel’s post was pretty much self-explanatory, in the aspect that some people are so caught up in being “cool” in this whole indie scene, that you know that somewhere in there, there are people who don’t even like a lot of the music but feel like they have to or pretend to like to because “everyone else does” and it’s supposed to be “cool”.
So when they buy it and begin to play it, they’re praying that they will like it because they’re “supposed to”.
At least that’s the take I’ve gotten on it.
The Jeans You Are Wearing At The Show Cost More Than The Band That Is Playing Is Going To Make
You might be an indie yuppie if you know yourself that you are one, but just thought you would post to be funny.
You might be an indie yuppie if you bought your BMW because of the iPod adapter.
You might be an Indie-Yuppie if Death Cab is after Kanye West on your “Songs to Pop Your Collar to” mix.
[vomits profusely]
You might be an indie yuppie if you’ve named a compilation of songs the “Extra Hot Latte Mix”.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you’re an faded icon and you bring a canadian band on tour with you because they cover a 25 year old song of yours which rekindles your relevance.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you just bought the domain indieyuppie.com and plan on creating an indie-yuppie portal with real-time rss feeds of all relevant indie-yuppie blogs, and then monetize that traffic by selling ads via adbrite.com.
Please let me know where I should email my address to collect my OC mix cd along with my subscription to paste.
all your blogs are belong to us.
“You’re iTunes starts with !!! or +/- rather than Abba or Aaliyah..” hha my i tunes starts with !!!
“because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is do you, Mister Jones?”
You might be an indie-yuppie if, after reading Joel M’s comment (“…while listening to a new CD, you secretly pray you’ll like it.”), you frantically looked for a new album that got decent reviews, so you could ‘listen’ to it and ‘hate’ it. Thereby, proving to yourself that you actually listen to music you like – reviews be damned. Way to go, you independent-thinker, you.
Many of the jokes here are about indie-wannabes, indie-idiots, and indie-assholes. Indie-yuppie is something else.
My 2nd vote goes to gobblegobble for
“You might be an indie yuppie if you bought your BMW because of the iPod adapter.”
You might be an indie yuppie if you felt the need to write more than two lines for this post. Yawn.
You might be an I-Y if…
You have spent more than one minute wondering what Ted Leo was up to with that Kelly Clarkson cover. “Well the Lemonheads actually put themselves on the map with their Luka cover. Hmmmmmm….”
you are wondering what music you’ll listen to once indie rock goes mainstream. (The board is set, the pieces are moving…)
you are curious about Malkmus’ upcoming release.
your reading list takes a hit on pitchfork vacation days.
you know it’s spelled “aeroplane” and not “airplane”.
you are old enough to remember the Nirvana backlash when Nevermind was released. “Bleach is such a better album”
your five year old daughter brings your copy of A.C. Newman Slow Wonder in for “favorite song day”.
….if you’ve been accused of writing http://someblogsarebetterthanothers.blogspot.com
You desperately try compose music on your newly purchased PowerBook with GarageBand…
BTW, the name of my new band is ‘They Might Be Indie Yuppies’
You might be an indie-yuppie if you’ve been posting here under assumed names talking up your own entries. Go Joel!