I've Been Feeling Sinister: Indie Pop's Bizarre Affair with Existentialism

Is this you?

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”

-Albert Camus, The Stranger

“There’s a tombstone right in front of you and everyone I know”

-Vampire Weekend, “Don’t Lie”

This article primarily exists to explore one of popular music’s most disturbing oxymorons. The moniker "indie-pop" speaks far more to the public consciousness than a literal reading of two impossibly ambiguous words shoved together. Sweet, earnest, cute, pretty, it’s music for modern teenagers to fall in love with. It may be a bit off-color, a bit off-key, but it never strays far from that pop anchor. It’s music to tap your foot to, music to smile to, music to feel good about. The question is, then, why is some of the most life-affirming, inspiring music so depressing in content. More specifically, why does indie pop seem so especially fixated on death. 

Album Retrospective: Sufjan Stevens- The Age of Adz

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Sufjan Stevens was trying to be the artist who defined everyone in America.   In 2003, Stevens announced that he was going to attempt to make an album for each one of the 50 states.  He ended up just creating albums for Illinois and Michigan: albums that were filled with repetitive riffs, lyrics that were fun factual instead of being filled with emotion and vivid imagery, and that were filled with filler instead of new ideas and new concepts.  By adopting such a bold concept, Stevens ended up damaging his musical career: he never showed us his full musical palette (often just relying on his acoustic guitar,) he made all of his writings geographical and wrote nothing personal, and he was the "cute folk singer" instead of being the "voice of his generation." Stevens career up to the The Age of Adz was the equivalent of the fat kid who says he is going to lose 40 pounds and ends up gaining five, the writer who says he is going to rewrite the dictionary without being able to define himself first, and the felon who is going to turn to Jesus but he just has to "steal something first." Even though Stevens 50 states project and career were filled with good and bold intentions, the intentions were so bold and thought consuming that they ended up blocking him from reaching his real potential.