The Internet’s Biggest Jack Antonoff Hater Explains Himself
October 31, 2022 12:53 PM Subscribe
Less than 12 hours after Taylor Swift’s 10th album, Midnights, dropped on Oct. 21, a 25-year-old New Zealander posted a video on Twitter in which he recorded himself correctly guessing, one by one, upon first listen, every song on the album produced by Jack Antonoff. “I’m able to instantly detect if Jack Antonoff worked on a song due to a visceral hatred of his production style,” Caleb Gamman captioned his clip, which currently has over 84,000 likes. (archive.ph link)
I watched this video & really appreciated it for doing the work for me. I love this style when anyone but J. A. does it.
posted by bleep at 1:04 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by bleep at 1:04 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Well, it's certainly a hill to die on...
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:20 PM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:20 PM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
Folks commenting certainly are not in the music review scene or even in the pop music one -- this is a hilarious joke that's escalated over the years.
posted by yueliang at 1:31 PM on October 31, 2022
posted by yueliang at 1:31 PM on October 31, 2022
Seems a bit unfair. Jack Antonoff and you become a ubiquitous producer and multi-millionaire. Jack Abramoff and you go to prison.
posted by grobstein at 1:35 PM on October 31, 2022 [24 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 1:35 PM on October 31, 2022 [24 favorites]
"surely this, this is a big plate of beans"
Why? This is literally the kind of critical listening taught in good ear training/production classes.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:37 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Why? This is literally the kind of critical listening taught in good ear training/production classes.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:37 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Not sure what it was, but by the third or fourth song... I could tell.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by zengargoyle at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I can't imagine why anyone would collaborate with a producer that everyone hates so -- What? What's that? Taylor Swift just became the first Artist in history to own all of the Top 10 slots on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time? Oh.
posted by The Bellman at 1:45 PM on October 31, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by The Bellman at 1:45 PM on October 31, 2022 [17 favorites]
She won't love you back, you know.
posted by ominous_paws at 1:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 1:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [19 favorites]
I had a moment like this this summer. Some song came on the radio, and to begin with I liked it, and then it just started to grate, and by the middle of it I was "oh no, I bet Jack Antonoff wrote that". I looked it up, and sure enough.
I still like a lot of albums he had a hand in, well, a couple of Lana del Rey albums and the second Lorde record, but his schtick is so samey, that his output adheres to the law of diminishing returns.
posted by Kattullus at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I still like a lot of albums he had a hand in, well, a couple of Lana del Rey albums and the second Lorde record, but his schtick is so samey, that his output adheres to the law of diminishing returns.
posted by Kattullus at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't have great music literacy or an ear for that sorta thing I don't think, but after a couple listens, I think the one's that are jack's seem to put the music before the singer and kinda sound like more generic general pop/techno/modern music, like, anybody could be in that song it's just Taylor was put on these. The non-Jack songs seemed to be immediately focused on the vocals with the music to support it.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:51 PM on October 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:51 PM on October 31, 2022 [9 favorites]
@LooseFilter - I was reacting more to the way it's framed - "Area hipster man hates the thing that's everywhere" - not so much to the "I can identify something based on factors". I could probably do pretty well myself in contrast to say Aaron Dressner or a number of other producers. As for ubiquity - it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't swing a dead showtune without slapping Max Martin in the ear or Timbaland before him, etc, etc.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:54 PM on October 31, 2022
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:54 PM on October 31, 2022
I think the guy in the Twitter video hates Antonoff's influence as much as his actual sound, since his "sound" is so successful that it's really smotheringly pervasive due to ubiquitous--and mostly ham-fisted--imitation of that sound by other producers.
seem to put the music before the singer
This is a great way to put it, Antonoff imposes his own sound on every project regardless of the collaborator and the kind of material they create. So not only are my ears (like the guy in the post) really tired of his production, it sucks to see collaborators kind of steamrolled by his whole narrow aesthetic.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:59 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
seem to put the music before the singer
This is a great way to put it, Antonoff imposes his own sound on every project regardless of the collaborator and the kind of material they create. So not only are my ears (like the guy in the post) really tired of his production, it sucks to see collaborators kind of steamrolled by his whole narrow aesthetic.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:59 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
This stunt could easily be faked, no? If he's a good actor?
posted by beagle at 2:07 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by beagle at 2:07 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
parodied in "im able to instantly detect if a song is the monster mash"
posted by Emily's Fist at 2:09 PM on October 31, 2022 [35 favorites]
posted by Emily's Fist at 2:09 PM on October 31, 2022 [35 favorites]
Antonoff imposes his own sound on every project regardless of the collaborator and the kind of material they create. So not only are my ears (like the guy in the post) really tired of his production, it sucks to see collaborators kind of steamrolled by his whole narrow aesthetic.
Pop music needs its own “Mondovino” (J. Antonoff = Michel Rolland / Riccardo Cotarella)…
posted by progosk at 2:10 PM on October 31, 2022
Pop music needs its own “Mondovino” (J. Antonoff = Michel Rolland / Riccardo Cotarella)…
posted by progosk at 2:10 PM on October 31, 2022
Antonoff imposes his own sound on every project regardless of the collaborator and the kind of material they create. So not only are my ears (like the guy in the post) really tired of his production, it sucks to see collaborators kind of steamrolled by his whole narrow aesthetic.
People used to say that about Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, but I generally love the albums they produced more than a lot of others in their collaborators' catalogues. Jack Antonoff doesn't dabble in any waters that flow into mine, but maybe one day he'll make his Latin Playboys and things will get interesting.
posted by mykescipark at 2:13 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
People used to say that about Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, but I generally love the albums they produced more than a lot of others in their collaborators' catalogues. Jack Antonoff doesn't dabble in any waters that flow into mine, but maybe one day he'll make his Latin Playboys and things will get interesting.
posted by mykescipark at 2:13 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have a similar allergic reaction to The Antonoff Sound and I love this guy so much.
It's not hipster to hate on a dude whose production is impossible to get away from. People hated on Max Martin 20 years ago too. (Not me tho)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:22 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
It's not hipster to hate on a dude whose production is impossible to get away from. People hated on Max Martin 20 years ago too. (Not me tho)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:22 PM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is really interesting to me because when I streamed the album for the first time I genuinely went, what the fuck is this and why is it familiar but not Taylor Swift familiar
Then I saw that Lana Del Rey was on one of the tracks and I was like OH she's aping Lana, that's what's so weird about it
And then I saw this thread and realized the songs I actually liked were the ones not produced by Antonoff
So now I have an allergy, too, I guess
posted by The Adventure Begins at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Then I saw that Lana Del Rey was on one of the tracks and I was like OH she's aping Lana, that's what's so weird about it
And then I saw this thread and realized the songs I actually liked were the ones not produced by Antonoff
So now I have an allergy, too, I guess
posted by The Adventure Begins at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm impressed that he got them all. I wouldn't know a Jack Antonoff "sound" from any other producer, (except maybe Phil Spectre), but I am not into the current musical scene to this extent.
posted by Windopaene at 2:43 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Windopaene at 2:43 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I also have no knowledge of the different sounds/styles of music producers, so this was like magic to me.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Jack Antonoff and you become a ubiquitous producer and multi-millionaire. Jack Abramoff and you go to prison.
Yeah, but Anton & Abram are both feeling pretty great right now.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, but Anton & Abram are both feeling pretty great right now.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
(There's some kind of joke to be made about Phil SPECTRE, the Bond villain, but I'm not sure I know enough about either thing to successfully pull it off.)
posted by box at 2:58 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 2:58 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's not hipster to hate on a dude whose production is impossible to get away from.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with hating on him, but this is not a great defense against the charge of hipsterism. The entire essence of hipsterism is that the hipster knows it important to explain, repeatedly, why some popular person and/or trend deserves to be hated!
posted by mark k at 3:01 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with hating on him, but this is not a great defense against the charge of hipsterism. The entire essence of hipsterism is that the hipster knows it important to explain, repeatedly, why some popular person and/or trend deserves to be hated!
posted by mark k at 3:01 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’m so out of the loop I thought Jack Antonoff was the Twitter guy.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:29 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:29 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Jack Antanoff is a local guy, his uncle runs a pest control business around here. He used to be in this local band called Steel Train and those were some of the most fun & best local shows I've ever been to, really high energy.
No opinion on his production style, but his success really shows how far you can go if you work well with female songwriters. Underserved niche apparently.
posted by subdee at 3:31 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
No opinion on his production style, but his success really shows how far you can go if you work well with female songwriters. Underserved niche apparently.
posted by subdee at 3:31 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm having one of those glass-shattering moments where you go "ohhhhh that's it" because I've liked a lot of Taylor Swift's stuff, but not most of Reputation, and I'm pretty meh on midnights. As others have said, it feels a bit generic to me, too generic for someone of Taylor's stature, especially after Folklore/Evermore. And then I looked at the credits for Folklore and realized my least favorite songs on it were produced by JA (except for august, which is beautiful).
I think the one's that are jack's seem to put the music before the singer
The interesting thing is that Taylor's voice is not the most stand-out thing about her as an artist. It's a very pleasant voice, and she's grown a lot as a singer, but her strength is really as a songwriter. I feel like her collaborations with Aaron Dessner really bring out this strength, delivering songs that are really emotionally powerful. The collaborations with JA sometimes feel more muted to me. Like they're trying to cover the emotion with a layer of disaffection. Not always, though! Delicate is a really emotionally immediate song (though yes, the production is SUUUUUUPER generic).
posted by lunasol at 4:00 PM on October 31, 2022 [8 favorites]
I think the one's that are jack's seem to put the music before the singer
The interesting thing is that Taylor's voice is not the most stand-out thing about her as an artist. It's a very pleasant voice, and she's grown a lot as a singer, but her strength is really as a songwriter. I feel like her collaborations with Aaron Dessner really bring out this strength, delivering songs that are really emotionally powerful. The collaborations with JA sometimes feel more muted to me. Like they're trying to cover the emotion with a layer of disaffection. Not always, though! Delicate is a really emotionally immediate song (though yes, the production is SUUUUUUPER generic).
posted by lunasol at 4:00 PM on October 31, 2022 [8 favorites]
Unrelated, the production on Tears For Fears' The Hurting album is amazing.
posted by Chuffy at 4:11 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Chuffy at 4:11 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Okay, I workshopped it a bit on the ride home, and here's what I've got:
Phil SPECTRE has a plan to use the Wall of Sound to corner the global market on publishing rights. Can James Bond stop him with the help of the mysterious Darlene Love? In theaters this fall: The Feeling Who Loved Me.
posted by box at 4:15 PM on October 31, 2022 [10 favorites]
Phil SPECTRE has a plan to use the Wall of Sound to corner the global market on publishing rights. Can James Bond stop him with the help of the mysterious Darlene Love? In theaters this fall: The Feeling Who Loved Me.
posted by box at 4:15 PM on October 31, 2022 [10 favorites]
I'm just glad somebody still cares this much about the state of pop. I gave up on it years ago.
posted by philip-random at 4:18 PM on October 31, 2022
posted by philip-random at 4:18 PM on October 31, 2022
I was just glad to learn Antonoff's name, because now I know to avoid anything he's involved in. That 16th note bass, mega-pads, pulsed chords, and blissed-out vocals was okay the first jillion times he pulled it, but now it's gotten irritating.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:21 PM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 4:21 PM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
I don't see Butch Vig mentioned in this discussion and feel like he should be.
posted by mhoye at 4:52 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 4:52 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
As Marge Simpson says: "Music is none of my business."
posted by credulous at 5:09 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by credulous at 5:09 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't see Butch Vig mentioned in this discussion and feel like he should be.
I would say it depends on which Butch Vig you want to focus on. There's the early Butch Vig, the one who produced Killdozer and Die Kreuzen and Laughing Hyenas etc. The sludgy, noisy, cacophonous Vig, which I guess most folks associate with N*****a nowadays.
Then there's the later, widescreen Vig, who got a ton of money and produced a whole bunch of records which fit squarely into the '90s mainstream-alternative thing. L7, Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Garbage, etc.
For my money, he produced Freedy Johnston's This Perfect World, and that has to be one of the most gorgeously rendered singer-songwriter albums of the '90s. That album fits nowhere else in his universe, but it's what I think of first when I think of him.
posted by mykescipark at 5:26 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I would say it depends on which Butch Vig you want to focus on. There's the early Butch Vig, the one who produced Killdozer and Die Kreuzen and Laughing Hyenas etc. The sludgy, noisy, cacophonous Vig, which I guess most folks associate with N*****a nowadays.
Then there's the later, widescreen Vig, who got a ton of money and produced a whole bunch of records which fit squarely into the '90s mainstream-alternative thing. L7, Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Garbage, etc.
For my money, he produced Freedy Johnston's This Perfect World, and that has to be one of the most gorgeously rendered singer-songwriter albums of the '90s. That album fits nowhere else in his universe, but it's what I think of first when I think of him.
posted by mykescipark at 5:26 PM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Is Nirvana a swear word now?
posted by jonathanhughes at 5:44 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by jonathanhughes at 5:44 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
I was a hipster before it was cool to have done things before they were cool.
posted by signal at 5:53 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by signal at 5:53 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
ob1quixote: “[It] was okay the first jillion times he pulled it, but now it's gotten irritating.”Although, cf.
“Taylor Swift Makes History as First Artist With Entire Top 10 on Billboard Hot 100, Led by ‘Anti-Hero’ at No. 1,” Gary Trust, Billboard, 31 October 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 6:07 PM on October 31, 2022
I dunno about Jack; I just like Taylor. This isn't her best album...but it's still Taylor.
I am a philistine, I guess.
posted by lhauser at 6:52 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am a philistine, I guess.
posted by lhauser at 6:52 PM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Great, this all ruined I Wanna Get Better for me, which in a vacuum in a great song
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:02 PM on October 31, 2022
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:02 PM on October 31, 2022
Yeah, but Anton & Abram are both feeling pretty great right now.
Must be “Jack” as a given name, right? Not the nickname he picked? I feel a little bad because I am certain there is no new territory to explore here joke-wise but damned if “I hardly know Anton!” doesn’t pop into my head unbidden every single time I hear the guy mentioned.
(I think I kinda like his style actually but I don’t listen to the radio that much so I’m not saturated with it.)
posted by atoxyl at 7:32 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Must be “Jack” as a given name, right? Not the nickname he picked? I feel a little bad because I am certain there is no new territory to explore here joke-wise but damned if “I hardly know Anton!” doesn’t pop into my head unbidden every single time I hear the guy mentioned.
(I think I kinda like his style actually but I don’t listen to the radio that much so I’m not saturated with it.)
posted by atoxyl at 7:32 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
The entire essence of hipsterism is that the hipster knows it important to explain, repeatedly, why some popular person and/or trend deserves to be hated!
The definition of hipster that always felt accurate to me is that a hipster is obsessed with image over everything. No sincere beliefs or interests, other than an interest in what it "connotes" to like or dislike something. So, classically, to hate what's popular and like what's obscure is coolest. Bullshit in the Frankfurt sense of the word, you know?
But since "poptimism" became a thing, that sort of hipster feels long-dead. The real bullshitter, tastewise, is the so-called populist who insists that there's no possible reason to dislike a popular artist apart from hipsterism of some kind. They go the smarmy route of essentially saying that numbers can't lie, and that—moreover—there is fundamentally no difference between a qualitative and quantitative critique of art. If lots of people like something, that thing must be critically approved—and if a critic approves of something unpopular or disapproves of something popular, their motives are inherently suspect.
I would argue that the "new hipster" is the kind of person who doesn't just love pop culture to the exclusion of everything else, but who aggressively asserts that other kinds of culture are inherently illegitimate. I'm not sure what the music equivalent of this is, but in film it's the Marvel/Disney/Star Wars brigade who insists that these movies are more than fun: they're cinematic masterpieces and politically radical and transformative to boot. Because they do buy into that old hipster canard that what you consume must define who you are, and therefore their consumption of culture must be critically and even morally beyond reproach.
I've seen a lot of people accuse this (seemingly very chill) 25-year-old kid of being a hipster, and it was weird to me at first, because he's not exactly aggro about his dislike. His video was funny and pretty laid-back; his interview showed that he knows a thing or two about what he's talking about. The arguments that it's somehow "disaffected" to understand music production enough to discuss it seemed really off to me.
But then I realized: what is the ultimate hipster trait, going back to time immemorial? Calling other people hipsters. And looking at a guy make a funny video about a dude with annoying production gimmicks and going, "Well, there's no possible reason he could be annoyed by this dude whose very flat sound has completely dominated pop music for a decade unless he literally can't feel joy..." I mean, that's as hipster of a worldview as you get.
Don't believe me? Allow me to cite noted MetaFilter scholar nasreddin:
We've had a decade of insisting that it sucks to be a hater, and—unrelatedly??—the world has gone to shit. Maybe we need to bring back good old-fashioned dunking on a rich and famous guy just because he's irritating, you know?
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:28 PM on October 31, 2022 [19 favorites]
The definition of hipster that always felt accurate to me is that a hipster is obsessed with image over everything. No sincere beliefs or interests, other than an interest in what it "connotes" to like or dislike something. So, classically, to hate what's popular and like what's obscure is coolest. Bullshit in the Frankfurt sense of the word, you know?
But since "poptimism" became a thing, that sort of hipster feels long-dead. The real bullshitter, tastewise, is the so-called populist who insists that there's no possible reason to dislike a popular artist apart from hipsterism of some kind. They go the smarmy route of essentially saying that numbers can't lie, and that—moreover—there is fundamentally no difference between a qualitative and quantitative critique of art. If lots of people like something, that thing must be critically approved—and if a critic approves of something unpopular or disapproves of something popular, their motives are inherently suspect.
I would argue that the "new hipster" is the kind of person who doesn't just love pop culture to the exclusion of everything else, but who aggressively asserts that other kinds of culture are inherently illegitimate. I'm not sure what the music equivalent of this is, but in film it's the Marvel/Disney/Star Wars brigade who insists that these movies are more than fun: they're cinematic masterpieces and politically radical and transformative to boot. Because they do buy into that old hipster canard that what you consume must define who you are, and therefore their consumption of culture must be critically and even morally beyond reproach.
I've seen a lot of people accuse this (seemingly very chill) 25-year-old kid of being a hipster, and it was weird to me at first, because he's not exactly aggro about his dislike. His video was funny and pretty laid-back; his interview showed that he knows a thing or two about what he's talking about. The arguments that it's somehow "disaffected" to understand music production enough to discuss it seemed really off to me.
But then I realized: what is the ultimate hipster trait, going back to time immemorial? Calling other people hipsters. And looking at a guy make a funny video about a dude with annoying production gimmicks and going, "Well, there's no possible reason he could be annoyed by this dude whose very flat sound has completely dominated pop music for a decade unless he literally can't feel joy..." I mean, that's as hipster of a worldview as you get.
Don't believe me? Allow me to cite noted MetaFilter scholar nasreddin:
The hipsters mark the point where rebels stop selling out and start buying in.I dunno. Sounds pretty poptimist to me. 😏
We've had a decade of insisting that it sucks to be a hater, and—unrelatedly??—the world has gone to shit. Maybe we need to bring back good old-fashioned dunking on a rich and famous guy just because he's irritating, you know?
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:28 PM on October 31, 2022 [19 favorites]
Also, from a sheer aesthetics point of view, it's really funny to me that Caleb is getting called a hipster when Jack Antonoff's entire look is the ne plus ultra NJ/NY hipster jawn. He's the year 2009 manifested in human form. (Linking for the photo, not the post.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:33 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:33 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
I can't remember the last time I heard someone accuse someone else of being a hipster (prior to the lively debate in this thread). I was thinking to myself, the cultural moment has moved on. But on reflection maybe I've just been hanging out in the wrong places.
posted by grobstein at 11:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by grobstein at 11:40 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Conversations about hipsters are always a bit weird. First of all, hipsters in the modern sense have nothing to do with the hipster of the 1940s and 50s. That was an extremely specific subculture, mostly localized to a few cities in the US.
The second thing that trips people up is that people tend to focus on hipster men, but it could be argued that there’s no such thing as a male hipster, or rather, the male hipster is such an unstable social construct that there aren’t any specific social markers that last more than a few years.
Some years ago I did some digging around trying to figure out where the hipster subculture originated, and as far as I can tell it was in the Pacific Northwest generally, and especially in the college town Olympia in Washington.
There, around the year 1980, a group of women started reappropriating, in an ironic way, stereotypical 1950s housewife traits. They wore floral dresses, curled their hair, baked cookies, knitted and did other sorts of stuff that was linked to post-WWII femininity.
It’s hard to understand now how strange it all seemed in the 80s. Kurt Cobain remarked on it, with unironic admiration, but lots of others spoke about that scene in terms of them being a cult.
Crucially, though, the ironic housewife aesthetic and lifestyle intertwines and coexists with two very influential musical movements, indie pop and riot grrrl. Bands who were part of the Olympia scene sold records all over the world, thanks to a global network of independent record stores. It took a while, but by about the year 2000, that ironic housewife subculture, now rebranded as hipsters, had become a truly international phenomenon. And as far as I can tell, the basic model for female hipsters that was developed in 1980 in Olympia is still dominant.
However, there was no equivalent male cultural figure to the 1950s housewife for men to ironically reappropriate. The 1950s dad, a guy in a business suit who works most of the day, was still then, and still is now, a fairly common lifestyle. I guess the closest they came was reappropriating the term “hipster”, but there just wasn’t the rich trove of signifiers linked with 1950s hipsters, as compared to post-WWII mainstream femininity.
What there’s been instead is a quick cycling through of various types. The original male hipster, as far as I can tell, was a kind of ironic lech, e.g. Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening flashing his bellybutton at shows. Then you get high-voiced fey men, followed by grunge dudes, then trucker hats, then beardy guys, and so on. I know I’m leaving out some trends, but there have been so many that it’s hard to keep in your head.
There is such a thing as the female hipster, because this is essentially a female subculture, built first on the foundation of reclaiming a certain kind of femininity that had been rendered economically unviable due to the demand for labor, and also problematized by decades of feminist scholarship.
The ironic housewives of the early 80s had no intention of becoming actual housewives, but they recognized that there was a lot of value in making your own food from scratch, sewing, knitting and just female everyday culture, broadly defined.
They weren’t the only ones doing that, but because they had a fairly set and easy to copy aesthetic, and spread through a global network of music fans, they became the dominant youth subculture in the West for at least the first two decades of this century.
I suspect that the “hipster” label will become outmoded, but that the ironic housewife subculture, long since detached from irony or housewifery (because nothing stays nuanced under capitalism) will keep being the default for at least a little while yet.
I will say, though, that this summer I went to a big music festival in Finland that had people from all over Europe, and also a fair number of North-Americans, and there did seem to be a noticeable dividing line at about 25 in how people dressed, but I couldn’t tell whether that was to do with younger people just not having as much disposable income as their older, working age peers, or if there is indeed, a vibe shift happening.
If you skipped to the bottom of this much longer than intended comment looking for a point, it is this:
The hipster subculture is essentially a women’s subculture, based on the reclamation of female cultural practices. However, the “hipster” people talk about, is generally a male figure who doesn’t really exist, except as a temporary adjunct to the hipster subculture. Because there is no stable set of cultural practices for men to adopt., the “hipster” can be loaded up with all kinds of negative traits, that no actual person will recognize in themselves, and therefore is a perfect figure to disdain.
posted by Kattullus at 2:03 AM on November 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
The second thing that trips people up is that people tend to focus on hipster men, but it could be argued that there’s no such thing as a male hipster, or rather, the male hipster is such an unstable social construct that there aren’t any specific social markers that last more than a few years.
Some years ago I did some digging around trying to figure out where the hipster subculture originated, and as far as I can tell it was in the Pacific Northwest generally, and especially in the college town Olympia in Washington.
There, around the year 1980, a group of women started reappropriating, in an ironic way, stereotypical 1950s housewife traits. They wore floral dresses, curled their hair, baked cookies, knitted and did other sorts of stuff that was linked to post-WWII femininity.
It’s hard to understand now how strange it all seemed in the 80s. Kurt Cobain remarked on it, with unironic admiration, but lots of others spoke about that scene in terms of them being a cult.
Crucially, though, the ironic housewife aesthetic and lifestyle intertwines and coexists with two very influential musical movements, indie pop and riot grrrl. Bands who were part of the Olympia scene sold records all over the world, thanks to a global network of independent record stores. It took a while, but by about the year 2000, that ironic housewife subculture, now rebranded as hipsters, had become a truly international phenomenon. And as far as I can tell, the basic model for female hipsters that was developed in 1980 in Olympia is still dominant.
However, there was no equivalent male cultural figure to the 1950s housewife for men to ironically reappropriate. The 1950s dad, a guy in a business suit who works most of the day, was still then, and still is now, a fairly common lifestyle. I guess the closest they came was reappropriating the term “hipster”, but there just wasn’t the rich trove of signifiers linked with 1950s hipsters, as compared to post-WWII mainstream femininity.
What there’s been instead is a quick cycling through of various types. The original male hipster, as far as I can tell, was a kind of ironic lech, e.g. Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening flashing his bellybutton at shows. Then you get high-voiced fey men, followed by grunge dudes, then trucker hats, then beardy guys, and so on. I know I’m leaving out some trends, but there have been so many that it’s hard to keep in your head.
There is such a thing as the female hipster, because this is essentially a female subculture, built first on the foundation of reclaiming a certain kind of femininity that had been rendered economically unviable due to the demand for labor, and also problematized by decades of feminist scholarship.
The ironic housewives of the early 80s had no intention of becoming actual housewives, but they recognized that there was a lot of value in making your own food from scratch, sewing, knitting and just female everyday culture, broadly defined.
They weren’t the only ones doing that, but because they had a fairly set and easy to copy aesthetic, and spread through a global network of music fans, they became the dominant youth subculture in the West for at least the first two decades of this century.
I suspect that the “hipster” label will become outmoded, but that the ironic housewife subculture, long since detached from irony or housewifery (because nothing stays nuanced under capitalism) will keep being the default for at least a little while yet.
I will say, though, that this summer I went to a big music festival in Finland that had people from all over Europe, and also a fair number of North-Americans, and there did seem to be a noticeable dividing line at about 25 in how people dressed, but I couldn’t tell whether that was to do with younger people just not having as much disposable income as their older, working age peers, or if there is indeed, a vibe shift happening.
If you skipped to the bottom of this much longer than intended comment looking for a point, it is this:
The hipster subculture is essentially a women’s subculture, based on the reclamation of female cultural practices. However, the “hipster” people talk about, is generally a male figure who doesn’t really exist, except as a temporary adjunct to the hipster subculture. Because there is no stable set of cultural practices for men to adopt., the “hipster” can be loaded up with all kinds of negative traits, that no actual person will recognize in themselves, and therefore is a perfect figure to disdain.
posted by Kattullus at 2:03 AM on November 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
here is fundamentally no difference between a qualitative and quantitative critique of art. If lots of people like something, that thing must be critically approved—and if a critic approves of something unpopular or disapproves of something popular, their motives are inherently suspect.
I'm really impressed that this guy can pick out the JA tracks and would love to have a test across multiple artists and see how well he does. I don't think I could do it, because honestly all Taylor Swift music tracks seem really samey to me [as someone with young daughters who used to love Taylor Swift so I have heard her music a lot]. Fortunately, it's a pleasant sameyness so I don't mind it, but I'm not impressed by it either.
But to the point above, I think lots of criticism itself blurs those lines but just doesn't want to admit it, so for the average pop fan it's fine. Like if you really believe that MJ's 'Beat It' has one of the best guitar solos of all time, then I'm sorry but it's really suspect because it's one of the most popular songs of all time. If you had heard more guitar solos from less popular songs, I'm not sure you could credibly make that claim.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on November 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm really impressed that this guy can pick out the JA tracks and would love to have a test across multiple artists and see how well he does. I don't think I could do it, because honestly all Taylor Swift music tracks seem really samey to me [as someone with young daughters who used to love Taylor Swift so I have heard her music a lot]. Fortunately, it's a pleasant sameyness so I don't mind it, but I'm not impressed by it either.
But to the point above, I think lots of criticism itself blurs those lines but just doesn't want to admit it, so for the average pop fan it's fine. Like if you really believe that MJ's 'Beat It' has one of the best guitar solos of all time, then I'm sorry but it's really suspect because it's one of the most popular songs of all time. If you had heard more guitar solos from less popular songs, I'm not sure you could credibly make that claim.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on November 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think that a part of what's fun about music is its absolute lack of singular "qualitative" axis! Some of my favorite "brainy" musicians are devout pop fans: Brian Eno goes on about how music production's emphasis on texture wound up making simple chord structures compelling for far longer than some of the prog-rocky sorts expected in the 70s, and Vinnie Colaiuta—who played some of Zappa's most insane drum parts—talks about Ringo's hyper-simple work in "Martha My Dear" as some of his favorite work ever.
The fun part of that, for me, is that different people with broad tastes and lots of analytical intelligence can wind up loving or hating the exact opposite things. I can't stand Antonoff, but my opinion isn't an "objective" proclamation—if Aphex Twin gave an interview tomorrow saying he was really into Antonoff's stuff, I'd only be mildly surprised. It means there's no pressure to have right or wrong opinions, and no real tension between people who disagree either. And that might be more true of pop than of any other genre.
(Which is sorta why the trend I talked about bums me out. I can have a really interesting conversation with a Taylor Swift stan who can tell me the make and model of every guitar she used on every album's every track; I can't have a conversation with someone whose only opinion is that it's inherently pretentious not to buy every Taylor Swift album on launch day midnight. Oh well!)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:18 AM on November 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
The fun part of that, for me, is that different people with broad tastes and lots of analytical intelligence can wind up loving or hating the exact opposite things. I can't stand Antonoff, but my opinion isn't an "objective" proclamation—if Aphex Twin gave an interview tomorrow saying he was really into Antonoff's stuff, I'd only be mildly surprised. It means there's no pressure to have right or wrong opinions, and no real tension between people who disagree either. And that might be more true of pop than of any other genre.
(Which is sorta why the trend I talked about bums me out. I can have a really interesting conversation with a Taylor Swift stan who can tell me the make and model of every guitar she used on every album's every track; I can't have a conversation with someone whose only opinion is that it's inherently pretentious not to buy every Taylor Swift album on launch day midnight. Oh well!)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:18 AM on November 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Definitely because of the extra breathy noise on vocals I'm assuming. Hilarious.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:21 PM on November 1, 2022
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:21 PM on November 1, 2022
Antonoff produced Out of the Woods, my favorite Taylor Swift song of the few I know, so Antonoff does not bother me I guess. Anti-hero is fun too, but likely forgettable.
Taylor Swift Accused Of Releasing 'Midnights' On Carly Rae Jepsen's Debut Date To Burn Archenemy Scooter Braun lol
posted by jeffburdges at 5:56 PM on November 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Taylor Swift Accused Of Releasing 'Midnights' On Carly Rae Jepsen's Debut Date To Burn Archenemy Scooter Braun lol
posted by jeffburdges at 5:56 PM on November 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kattullus: Some years ago I did some digging around trying to figure out where the hipster subculture originated, and as far as I can tell it was in the Pacific Northwest generally, and especially in the college town Olympia in Washington.
This was all very interesting. Have you written it up anywhere else?
It's a very different flavor of account than is typical because, as you've said, the typical analysis has seemingly centered more around the male hipster archetype, which you diagnose as a kind of phantom which, because of its transience, has no party and can always be safely otherized and denigrated:
This is a good explanation but there is a sticking point for me. A frequently attested phenomenon of the (I suppose male) hipster is "self-hatred." Greg tried to explain and elaborate this in the comment from the old thread:
Some of this latter stuff kind of rings true to me. Like I feel like, it was supposed to be diagnostic of being a hipster that you would go out of your way to be like "I'm not a hipster." Like hipster as a term of abuse took on particular significance in the mouths of people who were hipsters.
At the same time, I am wary of the weight the account puts on its historical moment. Maybe I just can't see past my millennial cultural context, but it's hard for me to imagine that the predicament in which both conformity and non-conformity are traps is actually a new one. That just seems normal to me.
But, anyway, if we accept the primary female hipster hypothesis, it's interesting to think about why (and whether) the epiphenomena of the male hipster have taken on the characteristic forms that they are often claimed to have taken on.
posted by grobstein at 10:42 PM on November 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
This was all very interesting. Have you written it up anywhere else?
It's a very different flavor of account than is typical because, as you've said, the typical analysis has seemingly centered more around the male hipster archetype, which you diagnose as a kind of phantom which, because of its transience, has no party and can always be safely otherized and denigrated:
The “hipster” people talk about, is generally a male figure who doesn’t really exist, except as a temporary adjunct to the hipster subculture. Because there is no stable set of cultural practices for men to adopt., the “hipster” can be loaded up with all kinds of negative traits, that no actual person will recognize in themselves, and therefore is a perfect figure to disdain.
This is a good explanation but there is a sticking point for me. A frequently attested phenomenon of the (I suppose male) hipster is "self-hatred." Greg tried to explain and elaborate this in the comment from the old thread:
Hipster self-hatred is the return of the repressed appeal to authenticity. After all, hipsterdom incorporated into itself all of its predecessors. The self-hatred, then, is the condemnation of everything it stands for by the value systems it inherited--which provide the only semblance of a normative content hipsterdom can ever manifest. This means hipsterdom is constantly at odds with itself, unable to resolve the contradiction between its countercultural heritage and its thoroughly capitalized rejection of authenticity. Authenticity, within hipsterdom, is a zombie--dead, yet unkillable, and always threatening.So on one account, the male hipster is a safe target for mockery because nobody sees in themselves the hipster. On the other account, the mockery is coming at least partly from inside the house, from the apprehension that the whole shtick the male hipster is undertaking is untenable, contradictory. The hipster is made a hipster by the same thing that makes him disdain the hipster.
Some of this latter stuff kind of rings true to me. Like I feel like, it was supposed to be diagnostic of being a hipster that you would go out of your way to be like "I'm not a hipster." Like hipster as a term of abuse took on particular significance in the mouths of people who were hipsters.
At the same time, I am wary of the weight the account puts on its historical moment. Maybe I just can't see past my millennial cultural context, but it's hard for me to imagine that the predicament in which both conformity and non-conformity are traps is actually a new one. That just seems normal to me.
But, anyway, if we accept the primary female hipster hypothesis, it's interesting to think about why (and whether) the epiphenomena of the male hipster have taken on the characteristic forms that they are often claimed to have taken on.
posted by grobstein at 10:42 PM on November 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
grobstein: This was all very interesting. Have you written it up anywhere else?
No, not really, except I think as a comment here before when I was in the middle of looking into it. I’d started looking into the origins of the twee subculture before I had the thought that it was the origin of the hipster subculture too. Before that, because male hipsters tended to cycle so rapidly through styles, I assumed that hipsters was just a catch-all term for lots of different subcultures. But then I realized that subcultures persist, there are still mods and rockers about, even some original 1950s hipsters, and all those male subcultures never did. There are no grunge men today, for instance.
This is a good explanation but there is a sticking point for me. A frequently attested phenomenon of the (I suppose male) hipster is "self-hatred." Greg tried to explain and elaborate this in the comment from the old thread
I think Greg’s comment is basically correct, as it pertains to male hipsters. I think the phenomenon of hipster self-hatred was a real phenomenon, and it rings true to me that it stems from a thwarted desire to be authentic. This comment is written in 2008, when the ironic trucker hat is giving way to the sincere beard, when the male hipsters dreamt to make their living from what they got most joy out of in life. Which is a kind of authenticity. Because all society had to offer male hipsters was a common media they could consume, they could only resort to being producers of what they consumed, brewing their own beer, for instance. This isn’t a new thing, of course, all writers started out as readers after all, but most subcultures have a kind of common project. As Greg points out, there was no common project for the male hipster.
I want to be clear that I’m not saying that only men strive for authenticity, but that young women had at the ready a set of cultural practices first developed by a relatively small group of women living in the Pacific Northwest. There was nothing equivalent for men, because capitalism, being patriarchal, expected women to radically change their lives, while men still have basically the same role in society they’ve had since the onset of rapid urbanization in the 19th Century.
Furthermore, I think Greg was correct in linking Derrida’s insight that authenticity is a mirage, a state of being forever deferred. It’s the trap of individualism, seeking meaning in yourself and yourself only is like playing chess with yourself, an intellectual exercise, but nothing more.
I think, and this is a fairly low-confidence supposition, that the persistence of the female hipster is exactly because it offers one gateway to a feeling of authenticity in its reclamation of certain kinds of femininity, female practices and female spaces. Is it nebulous? Yes, but then “the revolution” is nebulous and that was a common project of the counterculture.
posted by Kattullus at 5:01 AM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
No, not really, except I think as a comment here before when I was in the middle of looking into it. I’d started looking into the origins of the twee subculture before I had the thought that it was the origin of the hipster subculture too. Before that, because male hipsters tended to cycle so rapidly through styles, I assumed that hipsters was just a catch-all term for lots of different subcultures. But then I realized that subcultures persist, there are still mods and rockers about, even some original 1950s hipsters, and all those male subcultures never did. There are no grunge men today, for instance.
This is a good explanation but there is a sticking point for me. A frequently attested phenomenon of the (I suppose male) hipster is "self-hatred." Greg tried to explain and elaborate this in the comment from the old thread
I think Greg’s comment is basically correct, as it pertains to male hipsters. I think the phenomenon of hipster self-hatred was a real phenomenon, and it rings true to me that it stems from a thwarted desire to be authentic. This comment is written in 2008, when the ironic trucker hat is giving way to the sincere beard, when the male hipsters dreamt to make their living from what they got most joy out of in life. Which is a kind of authenticity. Because all society had to offer male hipsters was a common media they could consume, they could only resort to being producers of what they consumed, brewing their own beer, for instance. This isn’t a new thing, of course, all writers started out as readers after all, but most subcultures have a kind of common project. As Greg points out, there was no common project for the male hipster.
I want to be clear that I’m not saying that only men strive for authenticity, but that young women had at the ready a set of cultural practices first developed by a relatively small group of women living in the Pacific Northwest. There was nothing equivalent for men, because capitalism, being patriarchal, expected women to radically change their lives, while men still have basically the same role in society they’ve had since the onset of rapid urbanization in the 19th Century.
Furthermore, I think Greg was correct in linking Derrida’s insight that authenticity is a mirage, a state of being forever deferred. It’s the trap of individualism, seeking meaning in yourself and yourself only is like playing chess with yourself, an intellectual exercise, but nothing more.
I think, and this is a fairly low-confidence supposition, that the persistence of the female hipster is exactly because it offers one gateway to a feeling of authenticity in its reclamation of certain kinds of femininity, female practices and female spaces. Is it nebulous? Yes, but then “the revolution” is nebulous and that was a common project of the counterculture.
posted by Kattullus at 5:01 AM on November 2, 2022 [5 favorites]
There are no grunge men today, for instance.
What do you mean by that? I'd describe 'grunge look', which encompasses grunge music as the dominant 'rock' aesthetic on the radio (Nickelback is a grunge band - look at how they are dressed in their brand new San Quentin video), surpassing the short life of rock/rap/metal. Grunge as a dressing style was fairly generic and therefore timeless though. Flannel and jeans are still big.
So on one account, the male hipster is a safe target for mockery because nobody sees in themselves the hipster.
Disagree with this too - lots of people would happily describe themselves as 'hipster', but the difference is that 'hipster' definitely is a subculture, and as a subculture [ie: less dominant than the main culture] its members have hardened themselves to some online mockery. Offline [in real life] mockery of hipsters was never particularly common, so it's not that hard to brush some online mockery.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on November 2, 2022
What do you mean by that? I'd describe 'grunge look', which encompasses grunge music as the dominant 'rock' aesthetic on the radio (Nickelback is a grunge band - look at how they are dressed in their brand new San Quentin video), surpassing the short life of rock/rap/metal. Grunge as a dressing style was fairly generic and therefore timeless though. Flannel and jeans are still big.
So on one account, the male hipster is a safe target for mockery because nobody sees in themselves the hipster.
Disagree with this too - lots of people would happily describe themselves as 'hipster', but the difference is that 'hipster' definitely is a subculture, and as a subculture [ie: less dominant than the main culture] its members have hardened themselves to some online mockery. Offline [in real life] mockery of hipsters was never particularly common, so it's not that hard to brush some online mockery.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on November 2, 2022
The_Vegetables: What do you mean by that? I'd describe 'grunge look', which encompasses grunge music as the dominant 'rock' aesthetic on the radio (Nickelback is a grunge band - look at how they are dressed in their brand new San Quentin video), surpassing the short life of rock/rap/metal. Grunge as a dressing style was fairly generic and therefore timeless though. Flannel and jeans are still big.
I agree that the grunge look has survived, but the subculture that produced that look through a number of anti-consumerist stances inflected by local pride, didn't survive for long. It strove for authenticity in the everyday existence of people in the Pacific Northwest, and once it became an international "look", any authenticity withered away.
lots of people would happily describe themselves as 'hipster'
Happily? Back in my own hipper days, I'd've grudgingly conceded that I was a hipster, but never happily. Though I will say this that "hipster" as a self-identifier seems to have lagged well behind the existence of the subculture, and the original pejorative sense. From memory, the original use was heavily tied with gentrification, and no one likes to think of themselves as a gentrifier.
Grumbling aside, you make a good point. Something does happen in the early 2010s, which makes self-identifying as a hipster seem okay to people.
posted by Kattullus at 3:04 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I agree that the grunge look has survived, but the subculture that produced that look through a number of anti-consumerist stances inflected by local pride, didn't survive for long. It strove for authenticity in the everyday existence of people in the Pacific Northwest, and once it became an international "look", any authenticity withered away.
lots of people would happily describe themselves as 'hipster'
Happily? Back in my own hipper days, I'd've grudgingly conceded that I was a hipster, but never happily. Though I will say this that "hipster" as a self-identifier seems to have lagged well behind the existence of the subculture, and the original pejorative sense. From memory, the original use was heavily tied with gentrification, and no one likes to think of themselves as a gentrifier.
Grumbling aside, you make a good point. Something does happen in the early 2010s, which makes self-identifying as a hipster seem okay to people.
posted by Kattullus at 3:04 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
but the subculture that produced that look through a number of anti-consumerist stances inflected by local pride, didn't survive for long.
I don't think this ever existed. The steps between say Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam/AIC/Soundgarden and the vast majority of grunge bands to hair metal is a really small number. The authenticity of a few small bands like I guess the Fastbacks and original grunge band Mudhoney who never made it big didn't really define the entire subset.
From memory, the original use was heavily tied with gentrification, and no one likes to think of themselves as a gentrifier.
Yeah, but that's the same as 'nobody likes to describe themselves as rich'. Doesn't mean it's not true.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:39 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't think this ever existed. The steps between say Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam/AIC/Soundgarden and the vast majority of grunge bands to hair metal is a really small number. The authenticity of a few small bands like I guess the Fastbacks and original grunge band Mudhoney who never made it big didn't really define the entire subset.
From memory, the original use was heavily tied with gentrification, and no one likes to think of themselves as a gentrifier.
Yeah, but that's the same as 'nobody likes to describe themselves as rich'. Doesn't mean it's not true.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:39 AM on November 3, 2022 [3 favorites]
When Sub Pop put out Nirvana's first album, the promotional material said "They're young, they own their own van, and they're going to make us rich!"
posted by box at 8:05 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 8:05 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm from the Pac North West and, I suppose, would've been around and paying attention when the first serious hipsterisms started presenting. If I could pin a date to it, it would be a loose one -- sometime toward the end of 1980s, the early 90s. All the proto-stuff that would eventually get the grunge label stuck to it (for worse more than better to my mind; I've learned to be wary of movements).
But if I had to name one single artifact that didn't so much kickstart hipsterism as indicate that it -- whatever it was -- was here, it would be the movie Slacker, which was shot in Austin, Texas, 1989. Which (again) is not to say it started there. Far from it. I recall exiting the theatre (it would've been 1990 by now) and feeling I was in some kind of trance. Which after a beer or two with the friend I'd seen it with, we concluded wasn't a trance at all -- simply the fact that the "reality" of the movie was so similar to our everyday "reality" that it felt like the movie hadn't really ended, but rather we'd taken it with us out of the theatre. In fact here we were, half drunk, talking about smurfs and Krishna ... or whatever.
posted by philip-random at 8:06 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
But if I had to name one single artifact that didn't so much kickstart hipsterism as indicate that it -- whatever it was -- was here, it would be the movie Slacker, which was shot in Austin, Texas, 1989. Which (again) is not to say it started there. Far from it. I recall exiting the theatre (it would've been 1990 by now) and feeling I was in some kind of trance. Which after a beer or two with the friend I'd seen it with, we concluded wasn't a trance at all -- simply the fact that the "reality" of the movie was so similar to our everyday "reality" that it felt like the movie hadn't really ended, but rather we'd taken it with us out of the theatre. In fact here we were, half drunk, talking about smurfs and Krishna ... or whatever.
posted by philip-random at 8:06 AM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
This digression on hipsterism is interesting because, given my instinct to listen to, study and contextualize music in a musicological/analytical framing (part of my gig), I don't think nearly as much about the social cultures that arise around music listening habits, which seems more sociological to me. So this whole era of hipsterism looks to me to be ancillary to the actual evolution of Punk music, as a sub-genre of Rock.
Regarding the music itself, as part of the group of players who became producers and label owners in the 80s, Butch Vig was an important catalyst in third-stage Punk (i.e., skate punk); musicologically, I see Punk as having four distinct stages before it kind of merges into Post-Rock, or whatever we come to call the minimalist, rock-electronica fusion typified by, e.g., Radiohead (Punk Rock fans, this is a suuuper simplified summary): first stage, proto-Punk, created by the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967; second stage is Punk Rock proper, led by the UK cohort of bands; third is Skate Punk, where the bands became the producers, record labels and distributors [something in common with the roots of early Hip Hop, selling tapes out of car trunks] [I also think there is some connection between second-stage Punk and New Wave/Synth Pop that foreshadows Post-Rock but that's a real digression and really just an instinct I haven't done the research on]; fourth stage is Grunge and then that stream merges with electronic music to evolve in a "post"-rock direction.
That's a larger framing, compositionally and stylistically, than most people are used to thinking in, but listening to the music and pairing that with known cultural influences, timelines, etc., it really makes sense to look at Punk as a ~30-year span of active stylistic and cultural evolution of a substantial sub-genre within the broad style of Rock. So then that makes me think that hipsters likely have their roots in the latter-day Beatniks and Beat culture, given the time/place/people in and around The Velvet Underground in the late 1960s.
(A colleague and I actually did a 3-episode podcast arc on this a few years ago, it was super fun to dig into and if you're really interested you can follow links from my profile to listen to a deep dive with examples.)
posted by LooseFilter at 8:31 AM on November 3, 2022
Regarding the music itself, as part of the group of players who became producers and label owners in the 80s, Butch Vig was an important catalyst in third-stage Punk (i.e., skate punk); musicologically, I see Punk as having four distinct stages before it kind of merges into Post-Rock, or whatever we come to call the minimalist, rock-electronica fusion typified by, e.g., Radiohead (Punk Rock fans, this is a suuuper simplified summary): first stage, proto-Punk, created by the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967; second stage is Punk Rock proper, led by the UK cohort of bands; third is Skate Punk, where the bands became the producers, record labels and distributors [something in common with the roots of early Hip Hop, selling tapes out of car trunks] [I also think there is some connection between second-stage Punk and New Wave/Synth Pop that foreshadows Post-Rock but that's a real digression and really just an instinct I haven't done the research on]; fourth stage is Grunge and then that stream merges with electronic music to evolve in a "post"-rock direction.
That's a larger framing, compositionally and stylistically, than most people are used to thinking in, but listening to the music and pairing that with known cultural influences, timelines, etc., it really makes sense to look at Punk as a ~30-year span of active stylistic and cultural evolution of a substantial sub-genre within the broad style of Rock. So then that makes me think that hipsters likely have their roots in the latter-day Beatniks and Beat culture, given the time/place/people in and around The Velvet Underground in the late 1960s.
(A colleague and I actually did a 3-episode podcast arc on this a few years ago, it was super fun to dig into and if you're really interested you can follow links from my profile to listen to a deep dive with examples.)
posted by LooseFilter at 8:31 AM on November 3, 2022
The_Vegetables: I don't think this ever existed. The steps between say Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam/AIC/Soundgarden and the vast majority of grunge bands to hair metal is a really small number. The authenticity of a few small bands like I guess the Fastbacks and original grunge band Mudhoney who never made it big didn't really define the entire subset.
With the caveat that it’s been a long time since I was digging around for info, but grunge was definitely a subculture, rooted in the Pacific Northwest. People in that subculture shopped in thrift stores, wore flannel, and didn’t get haircuts to show they weren’t part of consumerist society. And the bands dressed that way on stage to show that they were just like their audience. That’s how you got those bands looking like that.
One of the interesting aspects of the grunge subculture is that it had a strong feminist bent, thanks to its intersection with riot grrrl.
posted by Kattullus at 9:25 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
With the caveat that it’s been a long time since I was digging around for info, but grunge was definitely a subculture, rooted in the Pacific Northwest. People in that subculture shopped in thrift stores, wore flannel, and didn’t get haircuts to show they weren’t part of consumerist society. And the bands dressed that way on stage to show that they were just like their audience. That’s how you got those bands looking like that.
One of the interesting aspects of the grunge subculture is that it had a strong feminist bent, thanks to its intersection with riot grrrl.
posted by Kattullus at 9:25 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was an older teenager when grunge broke, and an anthropologist might’ve identified me as part of the grunge subculture, and this analysis is really interesting to me because it didn’t feel at all like that at the time.
Everyone I knew shopped at thrift stores, because most of us had shitty jobs or were living off student loans (ask me why we didn’t get haircuts). We wore flannel shirts because it gets cold, and that’s what you found in thrift stores. Anti-consumerism was a thing among the more well-read types (much of that reading coming from zines and distros), but then and now it was a luxury that not everyone could afford. And the bands dressed that way because those were the clothes they owned and, often as not, they were us. Lots of friends and acquaintances in the audience for house shows and all-ages gigs.
And there was tremendous scene-crossing. Everybody I knew who liked grunge, even the people in grunge bands, liked other stuff as well, punk or hardcore or metal or indie, and more. It would have been really hard to separate things—some of these folks also went to raves, some of them to jam-band shows, and almost everybody went on to like the first RATM album (me not so much, I didn’t have the words at the time but it seemed very 101).
‘Grunge’ felt less like a distinct thing and more like an attempt to put a name on something so the money guys could swoop in.
posted by box at 5:39 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Everyone I knew shopped at thrift stores, because most of us had shitty jobs or were living off student loans (ask me why we didn’t get haircuts). We wore flannel shirts because it gets cold, and that’s what you found in thrift stores. Anti-consumerism was a thing among the more well-read types (much of that reading coming from zines and distros), but then and now it was a luxury that not everyone could afford. And the bands dressed that way because those were the clothes they owned and, often as not, they were us. Lots of friends and acquaintances in the audience for house shows and all-ages gigs.
And there was tremendous scene-crossing. Everybody I knew who liked grunge, even the people in grunge bands, liked other stuff as well, punk or hardcore or metal or indie, and more. It would have been really hard to separate things—some of these folks also went to raves, some of them to jam-band shows, and almost everybody went on to like the first RATM album (me not so much, I didn’t have the words at the time but it seemed very 101).
‘Grunge’ felt less like a distinct thing and more like an attempt to put a name on something so the money guys could swoop in.
posted by box at 5:39 PM on November 3, 2022 [2 favorites]
Everyone I knew shopped at thrift stores, because most of us had shitty jobs or were living off student loans (ask me why we didn’t get haircuts). We wore flannel shirts because it gets cold, and that’s what you found in thrift stores.
Yeah, I agree that flannel among the majority of the population was not made popular by grunge. It was standard work-wear across the entire US.
I also kind of disagree that 'grunge' was particularly 'feminist' especially because the vast majority of the artists wrote way too many 'mad at their girlfriend' songs, though they were more direct about sex than hair metal (ie: fewer silly double-entendres than AC/DC or ZZ Top, which is actually a pretty low bar). And because they wrote too many 'I want to rape you songs - I'm looking at your Nirvana and STP) about the visceral 'horror movie-esque' reaction to rape, but without much else behind it - ie: they weren't deep. Also NIN with Closer (not grunge but adjacent) wiped out any goodwill fringe bands might have created. Also riotgrrl was not grunge, so the fact it was deemed a separate genre tells you something.
I'm basically saying Taylor Swift is far more feminist (and the contemporary pop music of the time), even if her music is sanitized for the masses, than grunge ever was.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on November 4, 2022
Like for example 4 Non Blondes (even though I personally am crushed by What's Up's terribleness).
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:39 PM on November 4, 2022
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:39 PM on November 4, 2022
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posted by drewbage1847 at 12:59 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]