Champagne From a Paper Cup
2004: The Year Indie Rock Broke
This episode explores the pivotal year of 2004, when indie rock transitioned from underground DIY scenes into mainstream culture. It examine
Key takeaways
- Death Cab for $for Cutie's mainstream breakthrough was heavily driven by exposure on the MTV series The O.C.
- Pitchfork's 9.7 review of Arcade Fire's 'Funeral' acted as a critical catalyst for the band's massive commercial success.
Main topics
- Indie Rock Breakthrough of 2004
- The Impact of Television Soundtracks
Notable quotes
We could go through that doorway, but just seeing what's going on in there is enough for me to know that I never want to walk through that door.
Conclusion
A nostalgic and detailed look at how technological shifts and media ex
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:03) We're in the Nokia Theater in Times Square doing the show for MTV with Nickelback, Mary J. Blige. Jeremy Piven is there having a very good time. And Sarah Silverman is doing comedy. This is a really fucked up situation to be in because nobody knew who we were. Speaker 5 (0:23) That's Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. It may be hard to imagine not knowing who they are now. But when this all went down in the mid-aughts, Death Cab had just released Plans, their major label debut. Signing to Atlantic Records, plus a lot of mentions on the O.C., got them an invite to perform on MTV. Speaker 4 (0:46) Someone at MTV had come to us and said that Jeremy Piven would like to sit in on drums with you guys. And we were like, absolutely fucking not. Like, why would I want? No, we have we have a drummer. It was just a really kooky, douchey scene backstage. Sarah Silverman was the closest person to like a cultural touchstone from our world there. But this was in her. I'm going to tell some super racist jokes and then pretend like I don't understand that they're racist, period. It was like we had quantum leaped into this world that we had no business in. Just kind of like tubby, nerdy white dudes. Yeah, we got this nice band. They're working on their economics degrees and they decided to grace us with their presence by playing a couple songs about feelings. It was very bizarre. Speaker 5 (1:48) 2004 was the moment when everything we'd been obsessing over in basements and tiny venues suddenly crashed headfirst into mainstream culture. Think about it. Death Cab for Cutie were getting name-dropped left and right on the OC, and suddenly your mom knew who they were. Pitchfork basically turned Arcade Fire's Funeral into an instant blockbuster with their 9.7 out of 10 review. The Postal Service somehow hit number one on Billboard's electronic chart. And then you had Modest Mouse with Float On, which was this completely unexpected crossover hit that you couldn't escape, even if you wanted to. For Ben Gibbard, 2004 was when he got his first real taste of what it felt like to be inside the establishment. Speaker 4 (2:31) You have these moments in your life and your career where you kind of like peek through a doorway and you say like, we could go through that doorway, but just seeing what's going on in there is enough for me to know that I never want to walk through that door. I'd rather just kind of stay where we are. Speaker 5 (2:44) Death Cab, like many bands, had to figure out what they wanted from their career. And that would mean making some compromises, as bassist Nick Harmer realized. Speaker 7 (2:54) We'd Speaker 5 (2:55) had Speaker 7 (2:55) conversations with Harvey Danger about their experiences. We'd seen what had happened to Jawbreaker when they decided to sign to a major. The notion that there was anything beyond doing it yourself, playing shows, putting your stuff out, was about as far as you really would go before you had to start to think about how much is your soul worth. It just seemed pretty stark. That line ends up softening as things move along into the 2000s. But I felt like there was this hard line that you just, it wasn't even like, did you want to? It was just like an impossibility. That also just informed and made you okay with the fact that like, are we ever going to go overseas and play in any other country? Probably not. That just seemed unavailable to us as much as anything. It wasn't even like a... Do we need to readjust our game plan here? Like it was just very much a decision by decision basis. And all of our favorite bands were doing the same thing at the same time. Speaker 5 (3:57) In 2004 alone, numerous indie bands dropped breakthrough albums. There was so much going on. This is 2004, the year indie rock broke, presented by Dropbox. I'm your host, Bethany Cosentino. I'm a musician and a big fan of this era of indie rock. And we're about to talk about a lot of my favorite bands. Speaker 5 (4:19) Modest Mouths, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, The Faint, Antigone and Sarah dropped huge albums while A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers released his solo debut. TV on the Radio, Feist and The Libertines had memorable debuts. Rilo Kiley, Iron and Wine, The Walkman and The Black Keys made big waves with albums they released in 2004. And some albums from 2003 kept getting bigger and bigger. Think The Postal Service, Cat Power. The White Stripes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and Spoon. That's only the tip of the iceberg as far as indie rock in 2004 goes. What we didn't know at the time was that this scene was in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of events that helped it and the bands we love break through to the mainstream. Speaker 8 (5:11) Oh, 2004. It was so long ago. Speaker 5 (5:16) Yeah, okay, Colin Malloy of the Decemberists. We get it. Speaker 5 (5:26) Let's pause for a minute and zoom way out of Indy Rock to give you a look at what was happening in the world in 2004. George W. Bush had just been reelected and the U.S. was at war with Afghanistan and Iraq following the terrorist attacks on 9-11. Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriages. Former President Ronald Reagan died and future Stranger Things actors Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp were born. It was the year Facebook launched to Harvard students, but the predominant social network was MySpace, where you got to choose eight best friends and one song to define your entire identity. YouTube wouldn't exist for another year. The year before this, Apple launched iTunes to sell music for its incredibly popular iPods. People didn't stream music. They stole it online or bought it from record stores and ripped the CDs. Usher. Ludacris and Lil Jon spent 12 weeks on top of the charts with Yeah, the biggest song of the year. Usher, Norah Jones, and Eminem had the most successful records that year with combined sales of over $15 million. Outkast became the first artist to win an Album of the Year Grammy with a rap record. It was the year of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction with Justin Timberlake. Also, that was the year we made up the phrase wardrobe malfunction. Project Runway, Veronica Mars, and Lost all premiered, while Friends aired its last episode to 66 million viewers. Speaker 2 (7:00) The Speaker 5 (7:00) Lord of the Rings won 11 Oscars, while somehow Shrek 2 made the most money. Then there was the movie Garden State, a little film that had a brazen moment where Natalie Portman hypes one indie band so hard that their career was never quite the same. You gotta hear this one song. It'll change your life, I swear. Speaker 5 (7:22) James Mercer, the singer-songwriter for The Shins, didn't even remember he approved putting his song in that movie. And when he saw it, it wasn't exactly his cup of tea. Speaker 8 (7:32) I just kept getting people saying that they had seen Garden State and that I had to watch it. Natalie Portman is in it, and she actually mentions the band, and they play your song. While it was still in the theaters, my wife and I went and saw it. I just felt so... conspicuous when they refer to the sheds. It was too much. It made me feel a little embarrassed. Speaker 5 (7:58) TV shows were also working major music moments into their scripts, and the rise of teen dramas, which of course included The O.C., but also Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill, were soundtracked by songs from the indie world. Alex Patsavas, the music supervisor for The O.C., along with the showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, became some of the most influential people in music thanks to the show's soundtrack. Speaker 2 (8:23) Especially in 2004, I looked at it through my lens and the projects that I was working on. When I got to meet Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, Josh was very keen to have music be an important part of the series. He was a fan of indie rock. The characters were written in a way that to experience music and to be a part of pop culture was very natural. So it wasn't that I was trying to paste indie rock over a scene that it might not fit. It all fit very naturally. In those days, it was sometimes harder to convince artists that music was going to be used respectfully and the thought of... Visual media as a way to reach fans was more in its infancy. Ben Gibbard's band, Speaker 5 (9:14) Death Cab for Cutie, was heavily featured, and it made an impact. Speaker 4 (9:18) Once indie rock hit in 2004, all of a sudden people wanted this music