Indie Song Quotes

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Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells—Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly.
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
My advice to women who habitually gravitate toward musicians is that they learn how to play an instrument and start making music themselves. Not only will they see that it's not that hard, but sometimes I think women just want to be the very thing they think they want to sleep with. Because if you're bright enough--no offense, Tawny Kitaen--sleeping with a musician probably won't be enough for you to feel good about yourself. Even if he writes you a song for your birthday. Don't you know that a musician who writes a song for you is like a baker you're dating making you a cake? Aim higher.
Julie Klausner (I Don't Care About Your Band: Lessons Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated)
The best songs are written through our anger. Even though feelings change over time, our lyrics will always remain inside the song as a way of reminding us how far and how much stronger we've become since then.
Kastle King
Even if it was a song I didn’t particularly like, I needed to record it, listen to it and drink it in. I had caught the music bug.
Jamie Jones (I Blame Morrissey: My Adventures with Indie-Pop and Emotional Disaster)
From the Indies to the Andes in his undies And he never took a shave except on Mondays He didn't eat a thing but chocolate sundaes 'Twas a very, very daring thing to do
Hoosier Hot Shots
Indie; I think the ten-minute song is going to be really good. Jenna: I hope you didn't tell him that. Indie: No, I told him it's unmarketable. Hudson: And what did he say? Indie: He said I sounded like a Suit., specifically like Jenna Holden, and that Jenna Holden was hired to get him Balmain deals and negotiate fat deals with record labels, not produce his next album. He also said he'd once caught you nodding your head at a Maroon 5 song, and the fact that you're not dead to him after that is a miracle in itself, so you should not push your luck. Again, his words, not mine.>/b>
L.J. Shen (Midnight Blue)
I’m not religious about God,” Boon agreed, “I’m religious about Man.” “We believe in average guys,” said Watt. “What happens is, the system makes them all fuckheads.” “And I want to try to snap them out of that,” said Boon. “That’s why I write these songs, OK?
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
If you listen to the sun and the moon and the sky, If you listen to the clouds and the stars way up high, If you listen to the spirits, and the ground and the earth, If you listen to the pulse and the power of your birth, Then you will hear the songs of the birds and the bees and hold them in your heart and your mind. You will see...
Laureen Flanagan-Damaren
PABLO, The reason that I love thee remains strange & blurry Do I love thee for thy creativity? For the songs thou has written so carefully? Do I love thee for thy strangeness & mystery? Each layer of thy persona is a cure to my melancholy Allow me to worship thy beauty from afar My fated heartache...my unreachable star. Letters To Pablo (forever unpublished)
Miss Rainbow Moonfire
I am not great in a crowd. I don’t see a lot of rock shows because sometimes I am afraid I won’t get out. I used to squeeze my little self into the scrum and jump around and cause tiny trouble. Now I just want to sit down and have someone perform my five favorite songs while I eat a light dinner and receive a simultaneous pedicure. Is there some kind of awesome indie/alt/hip-hop/electronica music tour that can do that?
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
No,” he answered. If Stanton figured he was teaching the slave a lesson, Venture knew that by staying locked up he was depriving Stanton of his labor. He would stay in chains. “Well then, I will send you to the West Indies or banish you,” Stanton replied, “for I am resolved not to keep you.” Conditions in a Caribbean plantation meant a virtual death sentence. Venture was ready for this. “I crossed the waters to come here,” he shot back, “and I am willing to cross them to return.
Russell Shorto (Revolution Song: The Story of America's Founding in Six Remarkable Lives)
The word cod is of unknown origin. For something that began as food for good Catholics on the days they were to abstain from sex, it is not clear why, in several languages, the words for salt cod have come to have sexual connotations. In the English-speaking West Indies, saltfish is the common name for salt cod. In slang, saltfish means "a woman's genitals", and while Caribbeans do love their salt cod, it is this other meaning that is responsible for the frequent appearance of the word saltfish in Caribbean songs such as the Mighty Sparrow's "Saltfish".
Mark Kurlansky (Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World)
[H]e asked Renee, “What does rock and roll have today that it didn’t have in the sixties?” Renee said, “Tits,” which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlapped precisely with the nineties fad for feminism. The idea of a pop culture that was pro-girl, or even just not anti-girl -- that was a 1990s mainstream dream, rather than a 1980s or 2000s one, and it was real for a while. Music was not just part of it but leading the way -- hard to believe, hard even to remember. But some of us do.
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
I’d forgotten about them until this very moment, pushed out of my memory from years of dating boys in indie rock bands, boys who scoffed at my love of PJ Harvey, boys who saw my copy of Jagged Little Pill and asked why the fuck was I listening to her, boys who would’ve most certainly ridiculed my love of a cappella. And if they didn’t like my music, they wouldn’t like me, right? Right? If there are any young women reading this and those above sentences sound familiar, if you’re hiding parts of yourself to look cool or make someone love you, please repeat after me: fuck that noise. You are perfect. You matter. Hold on to what you love, the songs and books and style and obsessions and causes and questions that make you you. Find people who love these things, too. When you get lost, they’ll help you find your way back to yourself.
Megan Stielstra (The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays)
Ever since the 1960s, upon the urging of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and the all-knowing Dr. Spock,* mothers have been encouraged to read to their children at a very early age. For toddlers and preschoolers who relish this early diet of literacy, libraries become a second home, story hour is never long enough, and parents can’t finish a book without hearing a little voice beg, “Again… again.” For most literary geek girls, it’s at this age that they discover their passion for reading. Whether it’s Harold and the Purple Crayon or Strega Nona, books provide the budding literary she-geek with a glimpse into an all-new world of magic and make-believe—and once she visits, she immediately wants to apply for full-time citizenship. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —author Joan Didion, in The White Album While some children spend their summers sweating on community sports teams or learning Indigo Girls songs at sleep-away camp, our beloved bookworms are more interested in joining their local library’s summer reading program, completing twenty-five books during vacation, and earning a certificate of recognition signed by their city’s mayor. (Plus, that Sony Bloggie Touch the library is giving away to the person who logs the most hours reading isn’t the worst incentive, either. It’ll come in handy for that book review YouTube channel she’s been thinking about starting!) When school starts back up again, her friends will inevitably show off their tan lines and pony bead friendship bracelets, and our geek girl will politely oblige by oohing and aahing accordingly. But secretly she’s bursting with pride over her summer’s battle scars—the numerous paper cuts she got while feverishly turning the pages of all seven Harry Potter books.
Leslie Simon (Geek Girls Unite: Why Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and Other Misfits Will Inherit the Earth)
I remember the summer of 1996, at a drunken wedding with one of my professors, a Hendrix-freak baby boomer, when he was complaining about the 'bullet-in-the-head rock and roll' the kids were listening to today, and he asked Renée, 'What does rock and roll have today that it didn't have in the sixties?' Renée said, ‘Tits’, which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlapped precisely with the nineties fad for feminism. The idea of a pop culture that was pro-girl, or even just not anti-girl - that was a 1990s mainstream dream, rather than a 1980s or 2000s one, and it was real for a while. Music was not just part of it but leading the way - hard to believe, hard even to remember. But some of us do.
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.
Brian Joyce
Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. It is improvised, and relaxed, and free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean, and African echoes, all mating on American shores. To Anslinger, this was musical anarchy, and evidence of a recurrence of the primitive impulses that lurk in black people, waiting to emerge. “It sounded,” his internal memos said, “like the jungles in the dead of night.”94 Another memo warned that “unbelievably ancient indecent rites of the East Indies are resurrected”95 in this black man’s music. The lives of the jazzmen, he said, “reek of filth.”96 His agents reported back to him97 that “many among the jazzmen think they are playing magnificently when under the influence of marihuana but they are actually becoming hopelessly confused and playing horribly.” The Bureau believed that marijuana slowed down your perception of time98 dramatically, and this was why jazz music sounded so freakish—the musicians were literally living at a different, inhuman rhythm. “Music hath charms,”99 their memos say, “but not this music.” Indeed, Harry took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane. For example, the song “That Funny Reefer Man”100 contains the line “Any time he gets a notion, he can walk across the ocean.” Harry’s agents warned: “He does think that.” Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with men like Charlie Parker,101 Louis Armstrong,102 and Thelonious Monk,103 and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars.104 He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them, and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction105 involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always “Shoot first.”106 He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”107 But when Harry came for them, the jazz world would have one weapon that saved them: its absolute solidarity. Anslinger’s men could find almost no one among them who was willing to snitch,108 and whenever one of them was busted,109 they all chipped in to bail him out.
Johann Hari (Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs)
The concert was magnificent. It was the second time she saw Floor and she loved them. Psychedelic rock. Indie. Hardcore. They always started with this great classic love song they sang a capella backstage while passing around some whisky. They each took a swig as they sang. The beautiful melodies that came out of this were amazing and the audience sang along. It was always a breathtaking moment.
Ruth Ann Oskolkoff (Zin)
Some days, I enjoy simply sitting outside on the green grass of this golden fairy garden of mine, under the tender sun, as I listen to the car radio playing indie songs in the background, and see the wind slowly stripping down the trees – I swear I could stay in moments like these for a lifetime, I could lay under the winter sun with nothing but sheer peace inside my heart – a peace I have craved for a long time.
Rita Teixeira (The Beauty of Every Day)
I loved music. What struck me most about a song wasn’t the lyrics or genre but simply the way it sounded. It’s like when you hear that right song, no matter where you are or what you are doing, the way it sounds just stirs something inside of you. Maybe it’s the melody, the instruments, or the singer’s voice, but for that short moment you forget everything else on your mind and just feel.
J. Aleong (A Most Important Year)
He’d realized the importance of that, of making sure everybody was in on every decision and being on the same page aesthetically with him—and behind the sentiment of the song.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
The male-female relationship, as a subject for song,” Albini wrote, “is thoroughly bankrupt.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
believe in music in that way—if you want something to happen, you write a song about it.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
That’s where I started to discover that I had an ego,” says Barlow. “I just became so involved with writing my own songs and really getting into my own sound of things. Just getting totally self-involved. It was pretty great.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
That’s where I started to discover that I had an ego,” says Barlow. “I just became so involved with writing my own songs and really getting into my own sound of things. Just getting totally self-involved. It was pretty great. So when I played for Dinosaur, I was able to play for Dinosaur—do my thing and be quiet.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
No one could explain why a punk would ever follow any mainstream rule about how many songs you could put on a single.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
What we were doing wasn’t about being really good musicians,” Lewis says. “It always seemed to me it was about making a song. We’re just making a song.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
We write songs rather than riffs with statements.” “That was maybe the beginning of thinking, ‘Aw, I don’t know if we fit into this,’ ” says Mars. “So let’s have a hootenanny here, let’s settle down and have a hoedown and loosen it up and have some fun.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
It was a lot more wide open as to what a song was,” Ranaldo says. “A song was a lot more about sound and structure than it was about chords and progressions and stuff like that.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
It certainly made for music that relied less on melody and conventional song structure and more on mood and texture.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
Music can bind people in weird ways—socially, information—a lot of people get everything they know from songs and groups.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
it was a phrase, it had power, I had this riff. To me, that’s just sort of the alchemy of writing songs.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
we don’t write songs, we write rivers,
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
One dance, one song, one moment.
Indie Black (Destroyed (Tainted by Ruin Trilogy, #2))
McCartney II has similarly attained cult status among indie fans and artists who regard it as forward-thinking avant-electronica. But those people didn’t hear McCartney II in the context in which it was released. The album came out four months after McCartney spent nine days in a Japanese jail for possession of 219 grams of weed while on tour with Wings. The band fell apart after the tour was canceled, prompting McCartney to release his solo recordings as McCartney II. It’s not difficult to understand why McCartney was perceived at the time to be sort of dumb and perpetually stoned, and how this perception influenced the opinion that McCartney II was mere folly, rather than visionary genius. I think the truth about McCartney II is somewhere in the middle. I love the album because the songs are good and weird and utterly unlike anything else in McCartney’s catalog. But I also love it because the dumb/stoned aspects of the record are inextricable from the visionary-genius aspects. McCartney II is good because it’s good, and good because it’s bad.
Steven Hyden (Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock)
We are in the indie age of “don’t love ideas of people,” but ideas of people are all we have when they’re old and gray and forgetful and smelly," said Miguel. "It isn’t fair to punish someone for loving an idea when everything around us is an idea, the only difference is people change ideas, and I, quite frankly, am excited to see what certain people could change to. I love their intervals and their points.
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
Into the vacuum of my disinterest, music rushed to fill the void. It cracked a fissure, splintered a vein through the already precarious and widening rift between my mother and me; it would become a chasm that threatened to swallow us whole. Nothing was as vital as music, the only comfort for my existential dread. I spent my days downloading songs one at a time off LimeWire and getting into heated discussions on AIM about whether the Foo Fighters’ acoustic version of “Everlong” was better than the original. I pocketed my allowance and lunch money to spend exclusively on CDs from House of Records, analyzing lyrics in the liner notes, obsessing over interviews with the champions of Pacific Northwest indie rock, memorizing the rosters of labels like K Records and Kill Rock Stars, and plotting which concerts I’d attend.
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
I don’t see a lot of rock shows because sometimes I am afraid I won’t get out. I used to squeeze my little self into the scrum and jump around and cause tiny trouble. Now I just want to sit down and have someone perform my five favorite songs while I eat a light dinner and receive a simultaneous pedicure. Is there some kind of awesome indie/alt/hip-hop/electronica music tour that can do that?
Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
There’s no place like home / So where am I?” MacKaye sings with undisguised bitterness. “I just felt so betrayed by my friends,” MacKaye says, “for doing what I wanted to do, for doing what I thought was the right thing.” They performed the song only once, at their first show after reuniting. Afterward Baker and Preslar heaved handfuls of change at the audience.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
Fired up by the punk explosion, they wrote their first song—“Storming Tarragona.” Named after the down-at-heel housing development where Boon lived, the song was about tearing down the projects and building real houses for people to live in. Boon and Watt, it turned out, had a powerful populist streak. “D. Boon didn’t think our dads got a fair shake,” Watt says, “and I think he was kind of railing against that ever since.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
People have misconstrued the pessimism and anger in our songs,” Mould protested. “We’re really the opposite of all that; we’re not callous, insensitive people. But we’re frustrated by the fact that most people seem to end up that way—hopeless, defeated. We’re afraid of ending up that way ourselves, and that fear comes out in our songs.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)