Matthew Bizer’s Reviews > Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion > Status Update

“How did ‘indie’ music get from Pavement to Carly Rae? After retracing that path—the softened Hollywood version of ‘indie’ that emerged after The O.C., the eclectic influence of MP3-era technology, the way a thrift-store fashion sense and the hipster archetype worked their way into mass culture—what sticks out most are issues of social class and self-definition.”

As a Zillennial indiehead, this takes a hard turn in the middle from “neat music history, I didn’t know all of this” to MAXIMUM NOSTALGIA

“My faith informs what I'm doing. It’s really the core of what I'm doing in a lot of ways. But the language of faith is a problem for me, and I try to avoid it at all costs. You could say that I have a mind for eternal things, for supernatural things, and things of mystery. I'm more comfortable with using those terms because they can be used without controlling or stigmatizing anyone.” - Sufjan Stevens

“The mix-and-match approach to genre had been encouraged by MP3 blogs, where one person's personal taste held more sway than any radio format, and iTunes, where songs that didn't fit into the existing industry infrastructure could still do numbers. As both fans and musicians gathered en masse at MySpace, the site became a petri dish for new omnivorous music scenes.”

“The early internet was a new frontier outside the control of traditional media gatekeepers, which made it much easier not only to discover indie rock but to immerse yourself in it.“

“As someone with average-or-worse charisma, looks, and athletic ability, who'd never had much to brag about besides my grades, I bought into the snobbery that often seemed inextricable from indie-rock fandom. ‘Hipster’ was an aspirational status for me, albeit one I always felt too sheepish and basic to fully achieve.”

Oh. Whoops.