Good Indie Music Quotes

In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available. ~ Brian Joyce

I have so many indie bands on my iPod. What I don't really understand is the attitude that if a band is unknown, they're good, and if they get fans, then you move on to the next band. ~ Taylor Swift

Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it ... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me. ~ Jason Reitman

I guess my music taste is pretty predictable: I like new indie rock stuff, older stuff. ~ Aziz Ansari

Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock. ~ Jess Row

[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

It's just weird that indie rock heads and so on are connecting to my music. ~ Prefuse 73

The indie kids, huh? You've got them at your school, too. That group with the cool-geek haircuts and the charity shop clothes and names from the fifties. Nice enough, never mean, but always the ones who end up being the Chosen One when the vampires come calling or when the alien queen needs the Source of All Light or something. They're too cool to ever, ever do anything like go to prom or listen to music other than jazz while reading poetry. They've always got some story going on that they're heroes of. The rest of us just have to live here, hovering around the edges, left out of it all, for the most part. ~ Patrick Ness

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. ~ Brian Joyce

There's a certain type of indie fan who would balk at the prospect of there being value in pop music, but I think that's foolish. They're not really listening. ~ Autre Ne Veut

But, then again, I wouldn't call myself an indie-rock supporter even if there are some really good bands out there and there will always be some real good new bands. ~ Stephen Malkmus

I'm really into the indie-music scene and listen to a lot of De La Soul. ~ J. R. Celski

Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status ... Hipsters, then, are the direct result of this cycle of indie, authentic, obscure, ironic, clever consummerism ... It is ironic in the sense the very act of trying to run counter to the culture is what creates the next wave of culture people will in turn attempt to counter. ~ David McRaney

I'm not really interested in the audience's enjoyment,' Cave mumbles once he has changed into clean pants. 'It doesn't bother me one way or another. I just don't give a shit. People feel more and more disappointed with each concert because less and less happens. It's really easy to suck an audience in. Like, I can wiggle my bum and back-flip on my head and they love it. I could make an audience love me until the end of my days. There's just no point in it any more. I wish they'd just ... die. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Mal Blum's arrival on the indie scene gives us all hope for the future of smart music. ~ Melissa Ferrick

Ah, reality TV: where opportunists delight in exposing opportunism! It's kind of like the indie music scene. ~ Diablo Cody

It's funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you've always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else. ~ Brian Joyce

I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about it. And I stepped back and thought 'Why are you bitter? You can't just stand there like every other indie musician and criticize this so-called 'generic' music when you're not doing anything to challenge that.' ~ Marina And The Diamonds

I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days. ~ Brian Joyce

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that. ~ Justin Vernon

The American indie underground made music for like-minded people who thought for themselves. Thinking for yourself is intrinsically subversive. ~ Michael Azerrad

The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody. ~ Brian Joyce

If you can't be of good character, write a good character. ~ Rosen Trevithick

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer's famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions - our schools and our workplaces - tells a very different story. ~ Susan Cain

I'm not talking about what came later, indie music, or whatever you want to call it, but the music that came before that - that's an important story. So many interviews with musicians get the time or context wrong. You have these older bands, usually men, who tell stories about "Oh, we got into this huge fight, this guy punched that guy," that's the wrong sort of story. My view of the time is truly pioneering. ~ Ian MacKaye

I tried so many different musics. I kind of burned out on classical and wanted to make it fun again. I started playing with indie bands and country bands and finally realized electronic music brought my style to life. ~ Lindsey Stirling

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists. ~ John Oates

I just like boys who are good-looking, really! I like people who are tall with a good sense of style. My faves are the indie look, the smart look or the surfer look. ~ Pixie Lott

I like music, indie stuff, but I don't like liking music that other people like. ~ Esther Earl

Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's. ~ Brian Joyce

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst. ~ Rob Sheffield

I've always seen myself as the person listening to alternative music and all that - generic indie person. I always tried to be the least pretty I could be. ~ Jenny Hval

I always thought of indie-rock as being rock music by bands that were on independent labels, and that's a great thing. ~ Britt Daniel

That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares. ~ Brian Joyce

Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me. ~ Brian Joyce

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

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. ~ James Iha

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad's garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who's just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There's no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there's a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It's a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we're wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It's acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it's a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever. ~ Karl Wiggins

What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway? ~ Brian Joyce

Society gets by from the help of its citizens. ~ Brian Joyce

We create music to express ourselves and when the world relates, that's a beautiful thing. We're all trading off each other's culture, so no matter what lines you put-country indie rock, rap, we're all somehow gonna find a way to come together. ~ Jay-Z

The good thing about the studio is that, when the movie comes out, they will put their marketing and their money behind it, which isn't necessarily true with indie movies, just by the nature of it being an independent film. ~ Jamie Linden

Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free. ~ Brian Joyce