Indie is the new pop

Something occurred to me as I was bashing out copy for the music page of next month’s Arena [editor's note: 'bashing out' is what the kids are now calling 'lovingly researching and crafting']. I absolutely loathe the word ‘indie’. I’m not saying this to create an illusion that I’m far too cool for it (I know that would fail). It’s just, as a music writer, I don’t know what it means any more. The word has lost all resonance. Yet it’s still very difficult to get through a decent sized write-up of an alternative band without wanting to use it.

Back when Arena started, things were different. Indie was used as term for a music genre characterized by its independence from major commercial record labels and a self-governing, do-it-yourself approach to recording and publishing. It was a genuine subculture. Even ten years ago, the inclusion of a band like (Nimrod-era) Green Day would have been bracketed as indie.

These days I find myself watching an awkward teenage electro goth play an unpolished but amazing set to a small group of hard-core scenesters in an off-duty strip club, just so that Arena readers won’t be seeing the same music coverage one might find in Heat or Glamour. It’s not that I mind; I’d probably be watching these gigs anyway. It’s just I fear that in my bid to keep things on the cutting edge, I sometimes veer into slightly too obscure territory.

Take someone like The Kills. They’re exactly the kind of band I think are perfect for Arena: noisy, stylish and charismatic. Then guitarist Jamie took up with Kate Moss, society deemed the band cool and all of a sudden I can’t swing a cat in Borders without hitting a women’s glossy waxing lyrical about their music gravitas. Their music may still essentially be the same, but by becoming tabloid fodder, can they now really be considered an indie band?

The thing is, you could just say I’m sulking because I was late to the party. This may surprise some people, but there was a time when I didn’t spend my evenings running around north London throwing away my morals like confetti, and offending Arena bloggers with my appalling taste in pubs. Growing up, my parents taste in music extended to Simply Red and Gloria Estefan (I still rather like the latter). As the garage rock revival of 2002 kicked off, I was illegally necking tropical Reef in a cheesy pop bar called Baja Beach Club. Mortifyingly, it was my little sister who thrust me a copy of The Libertines’ debut album Up The Bracket. And I was 20 by then.

Britain’s premiere smackhead changed my life. Because after falling in love with Pete Doherty et al, I spent the subsequent two and a half years giving myself an indie music education. Everything, from The Sonics to Late of the Pier via Ryan Adams and Bright Eyes. Clearly I missed stuff, but I had a fucking good crack at it. Which is, why I suppose, I get really mad if I miss out on Bloc Party tickets because of a load of boys in striped polo shirts and Jesus Rocks belts heard a song they liked on Radio 1. In some perverse way I feel like I deserve to be there more than they do. It’s because I feel cheated that I missed out on the real indie scene, I suppose. If it were up to me I would quiz people about The Strokes and The Cribs before they were allowed into clubs specialising in garage rock. Not hard questions, you understand, just the basics. Because I’d really like to experience ‘indie’ as the subculture it once was and not what it apparently appears to be these days, the pop of this millennium.

Is that really so terrible?