IMAGI-BLOG

The "indie rock" revolution is dead

Submitted by Erik Gonzalez on September 6, 2007.

It has been a few weeks since I last peeked at the Billboard album charts and really, who needs to check with the #1 album since, well, the whole summer, seems to have been the soundtrack to High School Musical 2. Who knew that the soundtrack to the first High School Musical was the #1 selling album of 2006? Crazy.

Anyway, I looked at the Billboard album charts for this week and was struck by a number of things:

People love Christian music. No less than five Christian albums debuted in the top 100, including Casting Crowns The Altar and the Door at #2.
People love metal. Atreyu debuted at #8 and there has been a string of top 10 metal bands over the summer.
People love Dave Matthews Band wannabes like Ben Harper. He enters at #9.

Surprisingly (well, not really), I discovered that in the previous week, indie rock darlings Rilo Kiley and the New Pornographers put on pretty poor showings, debuting at #22 and #34, respectively. Compared to their brethren in Bright Eyes, the Arcade Fire and the Shins, this kind of surprised me. Where are all the hipsters and indie scenesters? Are they too busy at their internships at NPR or Google to go out to the shops to buy records? At least M.I.A. cracked the top 20 with Kala, but that was at #18, the same spot that Lyle Lovett debuted this week. I think we've seen the end of that revolution, thank you very much.

A few other fun debuts this week: Aesop Rock chimed in at #50, which is still too low for him. And after being in Germany, I was delighted to see the Scorpions come in at #63, even though all my German friends are baffled about why the Scorpions are popular. "They're not really that good," is what I always heard. Ah well.

categories: Aesop Rock | Atreyu | Ben Harper | Casting Crowns | Lyle Lovett | M.I.A. | New Pornographers | Rilo Kiley | Scorpions | Billboard

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1

imaginary dana said on September 6, 2007:

Ugh, how depressing!! Does anyone over the age of 14 own the High School Musical record (either of them)?

2

imaginary embracey said on September 6, 2007:

Yes, I'm afraid so. In related news, the original HSM DVD is in my SPL queue so I can attempt to figure out what all the craze is about. I'll keep everyone posted.

3

imaginary dana said on September 6, 2007:

Whoa, that was a whole lotta acronym! Definitely keep us posted.

4

IndieSucks said on September 7, 2007:

YAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

5

Imaginary-Kiku said on September 7, 2007:

To Dana @ 1: Oh yes, I know a few folks in High School who are digging High School Musical. Thats like, 17 year olds.

I've seen clips on The Soup, it looks hilarious :]

6

imaginary embracey said on September 7, 2007:

Dana @3, re the acronyms -- yes, and I hardly realize I'm doing it anymore. You know where I'm working...

7

julia said on September 7, 2007:

Indie rock will never die. Never. Well, MY internship is right next to Easy Street at least.

8

imaginary chona said on September 7, 2007:

no way. never!!

9

IndieSucks said on September 7, 2007:

Indie has been dead for years and I have been wondering how long Seattle will hold onto it. Why does John Richards still have a job?

10

julia said on September 7, 2007:

Indie is a way of life, and you can't destroy ways of life. It's like... how do you destroy your own personality?

.....

11

elle said on September 7, 2007:

Perhaps indie music has just gone back to being, well, indie? I mean, maybe now it's finally gone back underground like it used to be. I thought that was the fundamental of indie music, was that it isn't mainstream?
Either that or everyone is just too busy file sharing to shell out money for CDs.

12

Erik Gonzalez said on September 7, 2007:

Sigh. I never meant that "indie rock" was dead (I hate the term anyway), just the big sales we saw earlier may have been a flash in the pan ...

13

ChrisB said on September 7, 2007:

If there was an indie "revolution" I think it died with the stupid, stupid, stupid This Is Next CD last month.

I just think it means that people are not buying the new CDs from Rilo Kiley (which was put out by Warner Bros., not Saddle Creek) and the New Pornographers. Bright Eyes and the Shins got tons of airplay on mainstream radio (and the latter was on SNL), and I haven't heard much from RK and NPs. For indie rock to sell tons of records, I think it needs to be embraced by mainstream culture.

As much as I love "indie rock" bands (I write about tons of them here), there is not a single place I'd rather be this fall than at the Paramount on November 12.

14

Levi said on September 7, 2007:

I don't know where this fits in to the narrative, but someone called KEXP on Tuesday and asked to hear something from the High School Musical CD. True story.

15

Eddie B said on September 7, 2007:

High school musical is my guilty pleasure. We always try to keep a division from mainstream and indie. WHY!?

Some days I like oranges others I like bananas. Some days I like Patience Please others I like Vittorio Grigolo (opera).

Perhaps someday the scenesters and "cool kids" will hold hands and dance together... yeah probably not.

16

julia said on September 7, 2007:

All I know is that I'm going to be sporting my tighttight black pants until I'm fifty. Let us be the indie revivalists.

Another thing too is that I believe most of us buy our cds from Sonic Boom, Easy Street, Bop Street et al rather than Best Buy/Hastings/Corporate. But I'm unsure how they count all those cds for the record..

17

The Grim said on September 7, 2007:

I'm not really sure if the big "indie revolution" massive sales that you were talking about ever really happened. Don't get me wrong, the Shins and Modest Mouse sold a ton of records, but you can't really compare chart positions from week to week. Being #2 in the second week of January, when there aren't really a whole lot of hotly anticipated albums coming out, isn't necessarily better than being #15 in the middle of August when everyone and their mom is putting out an album.

The big problem all these indie bands have, chart-wise, as I see it, is that they're hyped up and hyped up and hyped up, so 90% of fans rush out and get the album its first week in stores. That's dandy, except for the fact those albums fall out of the charts pretty quickly, as they're not getting radio play, etc. to get casual fans and mainstream poeple into them.

18

Erik Gonzalez said on September 7, 2007:

Yeah, Grim @ 17, I thought of that too. August, though, tends to be a bit of a slow sales month too during the dogs days, but yes, the Shins and the Mouse all benefited from weak competition.

And yes, the indie-hip bands fall like lead pigeons too. Good times!

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