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 be an Indie-Yuppie if, you get pissed and pick a fight with someone that doesn’t like the Arcade Fire on the stereogum comments board.
You might be an Indie-Yuppie If you want an O.C. Mix CD and a subscription to Paste.
you might be an indie-yuppie if you are reading this…
oh crap
If you’re on your second (or more) iPod.
mainstream success is like, so lame, dude. where did i put my smack? *nods off*
You might be an Indie-Yuppie if your heart flutters anytime you see a raven entwined in red yarn.
Off topic, but if you go to Britney’s site, you’ll see she confirms her pregnancy, and refers to the fact that she was in the hospital over the weekend.
you might be an indie-yuppie if you’re one of those guys that has the sorta shaggy hairdo with it spiking towards your cheek bones against your face with more hair gel in it than I’ve ever used in my lifetime.
- and im an old b!tch!!
you might be an indie yuppie if you have any sort of disdain for people that listen to the arcade fire, and broken social scene and/or you work for vice.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you believe the Killers/Bravery row, could escalate into a Biggie/Tupac style gun-fight.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you believe Dizzee Rascal is down with Marx
You might be an Indie-Yuppie if you can suck your own knob.
You might be an indie-yuppie if the new Bloc Party LP really helped you get through those last few days to make sure you met your billable hours requirement at the end of the month.
If you use your Itunes as a source for “indie” music and your Ipod as a fashion accessory, you might, nay, are an indie-yuppie.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you love Death Cab For Cutie, but really want to know more about this post office band you keep hearing about.
You might be an Indie yuppie if you know the release date for Stephen Malkmus’ new record.
You might be an I-Y if:
- you actually know the bands name-dropped in this post, have their music, and have been to one or 2 of their shows
- you buy your “ironic” tees at full price, or at least not at a second-hand store
- you have ever worn your belt buckle a few inches to the right or left of your pants’ zipper
- you know someone who works at a magazine and have used their cred to get stuff
- you blog
You might be an indie yuppie if Rolling Stone, The New York Times and your favorite local record store have been replaced in the last 3 years by Pitchfork Media, Salon.com and the iTunes store.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you downloaded all the songs from today’s post and made a mix cd to show all youe friends that you’re “so into the music scene.”
You might be an indie yuppie if you are me.
or you might be an indie yuppie if you think the OC is a beautified version of “My So Called Life.”
If you think Nellie McKay is the new Nora Jones.
or…you might be an indie yuppie if you buy your ironic tee’s at urban outfitters.
you might be an indie yuppie if you think colin meloy is the new morrissey.
… you’re all meta-ironic.
you might be an indie yuppie…if you read vice magazine.
If your jeans cost more than an iPod, but your t-shirt cost less than a pack of gum…you might be an indie-yuppie.
you might be an indie yuppie if you learned about grime music from sasha frere-jones in the new yorker, and then felt hip when you downloaded some dizee rascal off stereogum.
Isn’t the O.C. is just a modern day 90210?
You might be an indie-yuppie if you’ll forever hate Zach Braff for bringing Iron & Wine’s cover of “Such Great Heights” to the masses, thus lowering your coolness factor with the girls you made mix CDs for that included the song as their coup de grace and also for the loss of said song as a staple in your mix CD stable.
You might be an indie yuppie if you love Death Cab and Bright Eyes and live in Newport Beach with your parents and drive around in Range Rover while homoerotic sparks fly between you and your semi-adopted, brother-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks. (And you date a lesbian because she’s soooo alternative and gets you free tickets to The Killers.)
you might be an indie yuppie if
-you own two copies of every indie album- one on CD and one on vinyl
-you spend all day on the Lower East Side waiting to meet Ryan Adams.
-you actually want to meet Ryan Adams.
If you’ve ever spent an hour and a half grooming yourself prior to going out to an indie show, with the intention of looking like you just got out of bed, you might be an indie-hippie.
If you’ve ever discussed your disgust of yayo immediately before blowing a line, you might be an indie-yuppie.
If you want Jenny’s (see above) phone number, you might be an indie-yuppie.
you might be an indie-yuppie if you poop. Do I get both the prizes or do I choose between them?
You might be an indie-yuppie if it bothers you that Vice Recordings figureheads can say sentences like “I don?t think we?re ever going to sign an indie rock band” when they’re the home of the Stills. [Who I do actually like, but are quite mundane indie rock.]
if you listen to the postal service & tell others “i listen to electronica, too”
If you ironically feign interest in the personal life of Britney Spears, you might be an indie-yuppie.
if you happen to be steve malkmus
You might be an indie-yuppie if you were offended by any of the comments above. Or you’re just soft.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you didn’t know that yuppie meant young urban professional, but you did want to ape his musical collection.
You might be an indie-yuppie if…
-You consider Pall Malls and Pabst a nice, balanced, vegan meal
-You say “X is the new Y” and can both mean it ironically and un-ironically.
-You’ve ever seriously played Their Older Stuff Was Better or Name the Obscure Band
-You have a complex, yet predictable, relationship with pitchforkmedia: Excitement, Exploration, Eschewing, Ennui
You might be a Yuppindie if you think it is humorously ironic to go back to Hot Topic because Urban Outfitters is just “too popular” or if you want your clothes to look second-hand but absolutely refuse to wear clothes that could have touched another body in their lifetime. Also if you’re willing to pay more than $15 for a t-shirt.
you might be an indie-yuppie if you actually listen to bloc party and read vice
and embrace terry richardson’s photos
…you go to Death Cab shows and scream out requests for Postal Service songs.
You might be an indie yuppie if you’re me.
You might be an indie yuppie, if you searched and searched for Matt Pond PA’s cover of “Champagne Supernova” to no avail, and wish you could be as lucky as that damn Cohen. Oh, and you just found about Paste, strangely, and found a lot of good music on their, sending you into a strange alt. country kick for the next month or two.
Wait, was this supposed to be true?
Bah, I’ll come up with something later…
VOTE FOR NELSON.
seriously, that comment made me spit out my evian.
er, i’m not an indie-yuppie. i swear.
You might be an Indie Yuppie if:
– your Ipod playlist is better than everyone else’s at work, and they don’t know who the hell anyone on it is.
– your parents were indie-yuppies back in the day and later became white-collar Republicans.
– you claim to watch The OC just for the music.
– you’ve either become depressed, had sex, gotten drunk, slit your wrist, AND danced to Interpol at different times.
You might be an I-Y if… your clothing budget is higher than your music budget. Plus, you actually have a music budget. (I know, you needed it when you bought your Prius).
You can afford tickets to all the good “indie” shows, and perfected the right amount of disdain in voice while saying “I hope this isn’t an all ages show.”
you might be an indie yuppie if you heard that phoenix band for the first time while innocently perusing the sales rack of the gap for some straight-leg jeans and then happily, and with no doubts, laid out eighteen dollars for the whole album.
alternately, you might be an indie yuppie if you thought that garden state was a really, really good movie.
wait, that would just make you an indie asshole.
What?
You all are Indie-Yuppies! Get over it!
If you wrote your congressman about MIA’s trouble getting into the US, you might be an indie-yuppie.
If you ironically shop at the GAP, you might be an indie-yuppie.
if people ask you how you find out about all those obscure bands…..and you just say “i don’t know” (because it’s just too complicated).
You might be an indie-yuppie if you check Insound before checking your email.
Sorry, make that GMAIL.
if you are reading my comment i’m making now because you read through the comments above acting as if it was a personality test for your indie-yuppieage, yeah i’d say you are an indie yuppie
You might be an indie-yuppie if you had a college radio show, but that college was Princeton.
Seriously though, as a certifiable yuppie, indie rawk has been moving my way for a long time. We staged a hostile takeover of Yo La Tengo and financed the leveraged buyout of Low’s slowcore (marketing thought it could use a “punch-up”).
does indie mean independent? because everything listed does not fall into that category. so maybe we’re just mainstream yuppies.
but to add to the list:
-going to shows just so you can say you have been.
You might be an indie yuppy if, while listening to a new CD, you secretly pray you’ll like it.
You might be an indie yuppy if trucker hats NOW seem pretty silly.
You might be an indie yuppie if all of the above comments resonated with you, except for that one about nellie mckay or nora jones, because you would never be caught dead listening to either one.
You might be a indie-yuppy if you jack-off to pictures of Ben Gibbard
I’m so conflicted. I want to group-hug my fellow indie-yuppies, but I also want to punch us all in the kidneys. I want to maniacally download new stuff to keep up (hearken to radio show days past), but I also want to get drunk, dance, make out and read the New Yorker while listening to Interpol (first album–GOSH).
=( i like broken social scene.
and indie-yuppie is such a lame term.
I ironically feign interest in Britney Spear’s personal life, but not because I’m an indie yuppie…I’m just a sad case…
My votes for top 5:
1. You might be an indie yuppy if trucker hats NOW seem pretty silly.
Posted by: Joel M. at April 12, 2005 09:44 PM
2. You might be an indie-yuppie if…
-You have a complex, yet predictable, relationship with pitchforkmedia: Excitement, Exploration, Eschewing, Ennui
Posted by: Elliott at April 12, 2005 08:12 PM
3. You might be an indie yuppie if you saw garden state and now consider the shins to be “life-changing.”
posted by: me
4. you might be an indie yuppie if you have any sort of disdain for people that listen to the arcade fire, and broken social scene and/or you work for vice.
Posted by: jennie dimeglio at April 12, 2005 06:09 PM
5. You might be an indie-yuppie if you love Death Cab For Cutie, but really want to know more about this post office band you keep hearing about.
Posted by: Georgy at April 12, 2005 06:47 PM
You might be an indie yuppie if you are psyched that Volkswagen has some new commercials coming out.
Honestly, I’m a little saddened by some of the comments here. Get real! You read stereogum, you probably read other music blogs like music for robots, fluxblog, largeheartedboy, etc. I’m sure you visit Pitchfork and look down on Rolling Stone and Spin. Who are you guys kidding? You are all Indie-Yuppies. I am an Indie-Yuppie. Who cares? Of course, it all depends on how you define the term, but if you agree it means music snob then why are y’all pretending to not be one? It’s important to remember that no matter who you are, what you like, and what you believe in, YOU can be made fun of. I can mock anyone for anything and have it be apt. Quit worrying so much about it and decide on the things that you don’t care if someone makes fun of you for because those are the things that are important to you and that’s a big part of who you are. Accept others (yes, even earnest Britney fans) and then, maybe, you won’t mind yourself so much. Sorry to get all serious here, but I think it’s good advice.
BTW, if that advice applied to you, you might be an indie-yuppie.
You have a complex, yet predictable, relationship with pitchforkmedia: Excitement, Exploration, Eschewing, Ennui.
clever..damn clever. good job elliot.
amazingly enough, the same 4 steps apply to about everything we yuppies read.
You Might Be An Indie-Yuppie If… you check thecobrasnake.com daily to see your picture.
… you were confused by Elvis Costello’s absence from the film Napoleon Dynamite.
…if you drink sparks, shop at hot topic and claim to go to your family’s house in jersey on friday night because its “cool to be close to your family,” instead of admitting that they are really just giving you money because they support your LES apartment and habits.
INDIE-YUPPIE PRIDE!!!!!!!!!!!
…
don’t hate.
[you all secretly want to be as scene us anyways]
damn I have not worn my belt buckle in the center of my pants since, fifth grade HOMESKILLETS
you might be an indie-yuppie if you don’t think ultragrrrl is the anti-christ.
haha, riddles you funny. are you sure you’re name ain’t marilyn bateman? or whatever moniker the ultragrrrl hata used to use on the comments section.
Adam,
most of the people posting here are probably indie yuppies and they know it, and are not necessarily mocking indie yuppies, but being good sports about making fun of their own selves. But you misinterpret the term. It doesn’t mean “music snob.” If you look at how VICE is using it, he is trying to say that indie music has reached the yuppie generation, but he himself wants to listen to something that hasn’t reached the yuppie generation. Of course when that reaches the yuppies, he will stop listening to it and move on to something else, which makes HIM the music snob.
You might be an indie yuppie if you get back from a rock show, and don’t understand why all the kids were dancing the way they were.
You all talk about garden state, The OC, Britney Spears and Gap commericals. The people who that say the shins are “life changing” arent even indie yuppies, they are college meatheads and soccer moms, but isnt that always the cycle? You (Gawker and Pfork Included) hate on the oc and Britney yet give them more publicity than the pope and schiavo combined. Start caring more about how great the PIP soundtrack was rather than taking yourself so god damn seriously
So true indeed Jay, so true.
You might be an indie-yuppie if…
on your lunch break from Microsoft, you drive your Jetta to the record store to buy whatever you just heard on KEXP (even if you don’t really like it all that much) while wearing jeans that cost more than my car payment and praying that we don’t remember you when you were nu-metal two years ago. Your idea of a great evening is going to the Cha-Cha and trying not to obviously gawk at assorted members of the Sub Pop roster while drinking a 40 of Rainier. You may have told people that “Bright Eyes isn’t the new Dylan, he’s the new Cash”, but you still listen to Britney Spears– in an ironic fashion. You actually don’t own any Cash beyond American IV.
Sadly, this is so true. Kids need a Black Flag record dropped into their laps…
You Might Be an Indie-Yuppie if you have a pair of glasses like Rivers Cuomo for fashion and a pair for reading
you might be an indie-yuppie if your ipod wasn’t a christmas present.
—-
because when your living on the cheap side of life (aka in college), you can sadly ill-afford such things.
this is just another purge from the cool kids
you might be POST-indie yuppie if
- you pretend not to know what the OC is then act pleasantly surprised when people talk about it having interpol on it and stuff. “Oh wow, so is it a good show as well or what?”
- your ipod contains lots of Sibelius, Big Daddy Kane and “Music Of Islam” volumes 2 through 9
- you think that arcade fire band are pretty good. they have a good live show, i guess.
- you dig like two death cab songs but dont really like them. a bit boring, really.
- you randomly interject dated hip hop slang like “def” and “suckas” into your otherwise white suburban vocabulary
- you make an attempt to show that your love for radiohead is superior to anyone else’s, particularly indie yuppies. say stuff like “man, that new steve reich-inflected radiohead joint is the jam!” and hate the bends
…if you think the jury’s still out on Maroon 5.
We’re guilty of at least 3 of these things at some point:
a) You laugh, remark to yourself “how very true” upon reading these comments…and then copy cobrasnake.com into a new tab on firefox, “just to see what it is.”
b) you’ve heard of malaysian Mogwai-esque bands such as Damn Dirty Apes (www.noisemonkies.com), and name-drop when you can.
c) You still read Vice, and the first thing you go to is the Do/Don’t section, and check past issues online to see what perfect Do/Don’t you may have missed.
d) You forked out for the new Adbuster’s sneaker (trainer), to achieve indie cred. Kettle/Pot interface somewhere here.
d2) you suscribe to Adbusters, after you picked up an issue at the Virgin on Union Square.
e) Loved Refused’s “Shape of…” for the longest time, then dropped it for NOU’s “13-Point Programme…”
f) With a highlighter and google handy, you’ve got the NYT article “Indie Designers Pin Hopes (and Clothes) on Indie Singers” boiled down to shopping tips.* **
g) You don’t think you are, but you are.
* : The NYT article in question from last year can be found at http://www.thecrusade.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=4874
**: And yes, I do love the Bellmer Dolls.
Subscribe, not suscribe. the shame…
If you think Napoleon Dynamite should have won Best Picture of the Year at the Oscars.
If you frequent many “indie” messageboards and ask for recommendations on a regular basis, and/or ask the other members to “rate your purchases”.
If you wrote a small essay for your English class on how to write for Pitchfork. (Which I did, I attached it below for the frick of it.)
Review Guidelines:
-Follow-up albums can only score 0.1-2.0 points higher than the album prededing it. However, the follow-up album is also free to be given a grade at anything lower than the grade the band got last time. Follow?
Ex: Album 1 got a 6.8. Album 2 can only go up to a maximum of 8.8, but can go down all the way to 0.0
-If you really liked an album from a band, the next anything you review from the band must score less. This is very ideal if the band quickly releases an EP, or a bonus track you can review on We are the World, etc. The harshness of the review should be directly proportional to how high the score of the album was.
Ex: Funeral gets a 9.7 (or whatever it was). The Arcade Fire Christmas thing (or the Talking Heads cover) is reviewed immediately after and got a pathetic 0.5 or 1.5 out of 5 score. There are no exceptions to this rule. Ever.
-In the event that you cannot deny that the follow up album is better, as I said, you are only allowed to give it a score of two points higher. Again: no exceptions.
-Generally, every alt. rock band/artist that was popular in the mid-90′s (and that, generally, you liked) must be destroyed in the new millenium. These albums should always receive a score of 0.0 to 5.0. If you’re risking pretention by giving it a low score, throw a 7.2 on it and call it “an uninnovative addition to an already-saturated canon”.
Ex: Wait for the reviews of the new Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, etc.
-Mainstream rap releases automatically score 8.0 or higher to show that (a) you, and the site as a whole, have diverse tastes and (b) you, and the site as a whole, are unpredictable.
-Every couple of months, review a metal album. Score it around 7.5. Make no reference to the other releases of the band, because you have no heard them. When explaining how the band sounds, come up with something like “aggro-grindcore-sludgemastery”. The more hyphens, the better the review.
-Hype something a lot in the news. Score the hyped artist 6.8. Just like that, you helped Pitchfork single-handedly create the buzz and create the backlash!
-Review something that generally should not be reviewed on Pitchfork because it’s so common/obviously bad that there’s no need to further beat a dead horse (Gwen Stefani, Moby). Beat that dead horse. This ties in to the next point:
-Always spend about twice as long writing about an album that gets a 2.3 than you would for an album that gets an 8.8. If you don’t know what to write for an album you hate, make a lot of stuff up (post AIM conversations, have your nephew jump on the keyboard for 20 minutes, etc). You write for Pitchfork and you have no obligation to explain why you didn’t like it.
-The fifth review listed for the day should ALWAYS get a 6.8-7.5.
General reissued albums guideline:
-Take an album that is generally a masterpiece. Take the score down to about 9.6, because reissues should very rarely get perfect marks (too predictable). Instead, go even further and take it down to about a 9.1. In the review, try and subtley say that the album wasn’t really that good
We are the World/singles:
-This is a great place to distance yourself from artists you’re stereotyped as being in love with. Score as follows out of 5:
Popular indie artists: 0.5-2
Mainstream artists, pop songs: 2-5
Live covers: 0.5-1 (use “unnecessary” as many times as possible in that little paragraph)
Popular rap artists: 5
I think I covered it.
—
is the worst nudity in this game breast -Leon Srtife asking the pertinent questions about God of War
From: Fracture | Posted: 4/12/2005 2:24:18 PM | Message Detail
Oh yeah I forgot one:
In the rare event you need to give a 10 out because people are calling your site to cynical:
-The band is always an indie rock band. Nothing fancy, no real outgoing influences being put on display, just a nice small rock band who write 3-5 minute songs. Bonus if they’re Canadian. Album should be described as “ethereal”, “ideas so familiar presented in such a startling and new fashion”, “uplifting”, “free”, “fresh”, etc.
Oh yes, I am a yuppie, but I’m good at it.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you believe that the bigger the gig the better the band are. On the other hand, you might be an indie-yuppie if you’re the only one in the audience at a gig.
You ARE indie-yuppie if
- the band you’ve liked for a ‘couple of years’ gets played on mainstream radio, and suddenly the band disappears from your monotonous list on Faceparty, Myspace or any other ‘look at me’ site.
- you put a song on the jukebox in your favourite bar, simply because you know you’re the only one who knows the words
- you’re friends with more than five people in separate bands and you often crash at their houses
- you read the kind of music a person likes on their profile and decide what kind of person that makes them
- you own Converse in every colour
- you claim music is your life – then study Law or Medicine at a high-rate University
- you’re outraged at what NME prints… but you still buy it.
you might be an indie-yuppie if…
you’ve been dedicated enough to read all the way to the end of this Looooooooong list of comments.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you can say with a straight face that you totally think Conor Oberst is the new Bob Dylan.
…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).
…if you’d buy the O.C. Mix, rip it, then burn it to an unlabeled CD just in case anyone who rides in your Honda Civic happens to see the disc.
Q: Why isn’t the Indie Yuppie good at Karate?
A: They can never get past the White Belt.
You might be an indie-yuppie if you slag off bands you used to love in the 90′s, yet secretly rush out to buy their new album the day it comes out to add to your still growing “collection”.
You might be an indie-yuppie if… You ever worked for both VH1 and Spin magazine, all while maintaining a blog for other yups like yourself, only to move ahead and create your own indie-yuppie label, to release more indie-yuppie music to the masses, therefore paving the way for your own mainstream yuppieism.
Someone stole my transmission.
Joel M wins hands down for this gem:
“You might be an indie yuppy if, while listening to a new CD, you secretly pray you’ll like it.”