I remember my first awareness of the whole ‘twee’ phenomenon. It was on the Indiepop list. My first week of being online, sometime back in, when would it have been? 1996? There was a thread about ‘twee cars’. I waded right in. I probably made at least as many enemies as friends in those first few posts. C’est la vie.
I’ve always hated the notion of ‘Twee’. It’s not empowering. It’s not political. It’s not oppositional to rock. It’s not some badge of Pure Pop honour. It’s just demeaning and pathetic.
Of course ‘Twee’ is a conscious construct created by those striving to define themselves within the cultural milieu. I’ve got no problem with that idea at all. In fact I applaud it. To define oneself is the Pop imperative, after all. I just have a problem with the retrospective labeling of artifacts as ‘Twee’ that really are not.
Now there are undoubtedly a multitude of historical artefacts that could be called ‘twee’, but I would argue that their original contexts preclude them from being called ‘Twee’, regardless of whether they are seen as inspirational reference points for anyone who would willingly declare themselves thus.
For example, a large element in the self-definition of the Twee genre seems to be that of naiveté. But it is not natural naiveté. It is contrived. Forced. And intensely irritating as a result.
Jonathan Richman is the king of naiveté. With songs about abominable snowmen in markets and ice-cream men, he has often consciously embraced childhood themes and styles, but that doesn’t make him Twee. His exploration of the child-like impulse is instead more like that of Picasso; an energy that includes wonder and anger, frustration and enlightenment. And just as Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole, so he never was Twee. At least not in New York…
Similarly, Marine Girls made a perfect sound of naiveté, but were never Twee. ‘50s Pop princesses like Connie Stevens and Linda Scott were glorious examples of calculated teen-pop, but likewise were never Twee. The Shangri-Las and other girl groups were never Twee. Nor were Twinkle or Sandie Shaw, though her bare-foot shenanigans were cute as hell. But Twee? Non. And non aussi to the Gallic sounds of any French songstresses. Just because Belle & Sebastian covered a France Gall song doesn’t make it Twee.
And no, Belle & Sebastian were never Twee either. Nor were their adored Glaswegian predecessors Orange Juice. Fey and Camp, perhaps, but that was never Twee. In the context of the times that was about as Punk Rock as it was possible to be.
Now was Phil Wilson of The June Brides not recently described as ‘The Golden God of Twee’? I have never heard anything so ridiculous. The June Brides were a million miles from being Twee. The June Brides were Punk Rock.
And if Phil has been described as ‘The Golden God Of Twee’ then I am sure that Amelia Fetcher must have been called ‘The Golden Goddess of Twee’ or something similarly nonsensical. For Talulah Gosh are often touted as being some kind of key Twee touchstone. But Talulah Gosh were never Twee. Talulah Gosh too were Punk Rock. That’s fundamental. If you do not understand that then you understand nothing.
Neither were The Pastels ever Twee. Twee is not leather trousers. The Pastels are in the ‘rock’ genre in iTunes by default, which is as it should be. In your face Twee-pop losers.
So was the ‘Twee’ thing kick-started by Tweenet in the mid ‘90s? Did I read that they were using the term with irony because it had been used as a derogatory term in the ‘80s? The thing is, I do not recall anyone talking about Twee in the mid ‘80s. Hell, no one even used the term ‘C86’ until many years later. And that is a whole other can of worms of course.
But like I said, no one called June Brides, Talulah Gosh or The Pastels or the like ‘Twee’ at the time. Perhaps some of the mainstream music press used the term, but I do not remember. Who read the mainstream music press anyway? I certainly do not remember anyone using the word in fanzines. The Subway label, for example, was a Punk Rock label, and even rather dreadful groups like Bubblegum Splash were thought of as Punk. No one called Sarah records ‘Twee’ at the time as far as I recall. Actually there were few record labels that were more Punk Rock than Sarah.
Okay, maybe we also used the term ‘cutie’ for a short time, but that was fair enough. People were revolting against the dominant culture, which was all about commerce and polish and a desperate rush into adulthood and responsibility. It was a time when there were still relatively few youth culture tribes. Mods and Rockers were less of a distant cultural memory than the mid ‘80s Independent scene is to contemporary commentators now. Punk was effectively the recent past. There was still a sense of one thing versus another, rather than a fluid mass of multiple identities. It’s an important point to try and grasp.
I do remember when it all seemed to go downhill. Something happened in the late ‘80s, and there seemed to be a load of groups, records and fanzines that just seemed to be desperately building on a myth. The revolution into innocence was misinterpreted by people apparently too stupid to understand the original impulses. Either that or we got too old too quickly and got cross at a new generation grabbing ownership and taking it in a new direction…
Whatever. Everything seemed to suddenly be all about sweeties, lemonade, kittens and cuddles. It was truly horrible.
It continues to be so. How many times have I heard and seen groups who think they are picking up the spirit of some of those old groups from the mid ‘80s? How many times is it obvious that they really do not have a clue?
‘Twee as Fuck’? ‘Fuck Twee’ more like.