The popist-versus-indie music rivalry mirrors class politics as a phoney war

Evidence

In the UK, the rhetorical fight between “popists” and indie is as much a phoney war as the parliamentary political punch-and-judy show between Cameron’s Tories and Brown’s New Labour: a storm in a ruling-class tea-cup. In both cases, the social reality is that of ex-public schoolkids carrying on their inter-house rivalries by other means. In the case of both indie and popism, there is a strangely inverted relationship to populism and the popular. While the “popists” claim to be populist but actually support music that is increasingly marginal in terms of sales figures, the indie types claim to celebrate an alternative while their preferred music of choice (Trad skiffle) has Full Spectrum Dominance (you can’t listen to Radio 2 for fifteen minutes without hearing a Kaiser Chiefs song). — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1212

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Poptimism merged music criticism with progressive identity politics — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 120; Pop’s dynamism has been driven by mutual negation between rival forms — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1091; Serious pop criticism contested common sense while popism ratifies consumerism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1212 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Musical taste wars express a shared hatred of disobedience #expands (0.80)
• Serious pop criticism contested common sense while popism ratifies consumerism #expands (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1212
• Poptimism merged music criticism with progressive identity politics #complicates (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 120
• Pop’s dynamism has been driven by mutual negation between rival forms #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1091