Indiecast - Matty Healy/Taylor Swift Dating Rumors, the Ed Sheeran Copyright Trial, Aerosmith Yay Or Nay, And Our Least Indie Rock Episode Ever

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Every week, Steven and Ian make it their business to talk about the latest news in indie rock. This week, however, they don't do that. Instead, they made the least indie-rock episode of Indiecast ever.The most indie topic on the docket is the rumored relationship between Taylor Swift and The 1975's Matty Healy (17:12). Is this (alleged) relationship too annoying even for them? And what does it mean for two superstars to "date" anyway? Does exchanging texts constitute a romantic hookup? Are they going to get frozen yogurt together on the fly?From there they move on to the Ed Sheeran copyright lawsuit concerning the supposed similarity of his 2014 hit "Thinking Out Loud" and Marvin Gaye's 1973 classic "Let's Get It On." (22:34) (This was recorded before the verdict came down in Ed's favor.) If you have heard the songs you have can probably tell that they sort of sound alike. But does that constitute a rip-off? Can you really copyright a vibe? Doesn't all new music in some way riff on the old?Finally, they get to the most important topic: Aerosmith, yay or nay? They ponder the legacy of this gross, ridiculous, and occasionally great (for four years in in the 1970s) group as they announce their reunion tour (34:31).In Recommendation Corner (54:40), Ian talks about the singer-songwriter Greg Mendez while Steven pays tribute to the late Gordon Lightfoot, who died this week at age 84.New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 137 and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's indie mixtape. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week. We review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about the Maddie Healy-Tarrowsmith dating rumors, the Ed Sheeran copyright lawsuit, and we yay or nay Aerosmith. Yes, very indie rock episode this week. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host.

He draws Atlantic Magazine covers for fun. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? You heard wrong. I redraw Atlantic Records covers for fun. So you might see my impressionistic and cubist takes on, I don't know, Stone Temple Pilots Corps or 10,000 gecks. It's just like a rich tapestry. So my joke there is referring to something that I thought was very funny this week.

Bono of you two. As if I have to say of U-2. Yeah, there's only one Bono. Bono, the dentist from Denver. No, Bono of U-2, he drew the latest cover of Atlantic Magazine. It's Zelensky is on the cover. And it was revealed when this cover was unveiled that Bono, as a hobby, apparently, likes to draw Atlantic magazine covers.

I think he gets the magazine in the mail and then he'll draw the cover on his iPad and I saw that this week and I was trying to figure out okay what's weirder Bono drawing Atlantic Magazine covers for fun or

and this is what I think the scenario actually is that he made up this idea that he draws Atlantic Magazine covers for fun because he wanted to ingratiate himself to the editors at Atlantic Magazine. Because I guess I cannot comprehend that this is actually true, that

Bono, when he's at home in Ireland, nursing a pint of some Irish beer. This sounds more like a Larry Mullen Jr. thing. Bono, I can't imagine, A, him living in Ireland or, like, nursing a pint or doing, like, anything normal.

Well, I'm sure he has a home. Okay. In Dublin. I know they also have, like, a vacation place in the south of France. I think like they all have houses next to each other. And like for real. I saw that, I feel like that was like in a 60 minutes interview or something. I just can't see one of the biggest rock stars in the world unwinding this way.

But again, maybe this is something that Bono does. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on this? I think that this is absolutely like this is absolutely the sort of thing I would expect Bono to do because, I mean, not to bring, to kind of underscore the indiness of this episode, you know, to bring up Elon Musk and people, or just him or any billionaire, anytime someone of that, you know, tax bracket makes an unforced error on social media. People say, you know, it's like, if I had that much money, I'd probably just like chill and stay quiet and enjoy my money. No,

when you're that rich, you're probably more likely to spend your time doing the same exact stuff you would do for free. And if you had to think about like what Bono, someone who is very, like, politically engaged and like seemingly liberal, but like not totally leftist, like what magazine they would read, it would absolutely be the Atlantic.

And, you know, just kind of given their forays into other forms of non-musical art, this is the exact, like, if I were to make this up about Bono, you would think, oh, it's a little too on the nose. So I'm not at all surprised by this. Just

surprise that it took until 2023 for it to be revealed. I totally buy that Bono would read The Atlantic, but this suggests that he's like a super fan of the Atlantic, that he's like making like Atlantic fan fiction here. He's like the type of dude to like know every single score of like emo albums I've reviewed for Pitchfork except like he's, I don't know, that for the Atlantic. I think those people exist. I mean, you know, God bless them because, you know, those of us in the media industry, we need people like Bono who are just like so into the publication that, yeah, they're drawing the album covers or the magazine covers. I mean, like these people that know every email score, do you think that they're drawing like the pitchfork page with your score on it?

Like they're doing like, they're getting like the easel out and they're like, you know, doing, you know, photo. realistic paintings of your reviews. I mean, that is the kind of fandom we're talking about here. I'm thinking it might be more like when dirty projectors made rise above where they like covered damaged, Black Flag's Damage from Memory. Maybe it's more like that sort of fanfic where they try to like, they try to remember like what I wrote about like that balance and composure album just from memory and to see what comes out.

The thing like that that I have lately is when I wrote about the Red Out Chili, Peppers and I said that Stadium Arcadium was the worst Chili Peppers record, which is a totally defensible opinion. I stand behind that. I haven't heard enough of their albums to know if that's true or not, but it's definitely the longest and therefore, like a good chance of being the worst. But anytime I write something now that someone out there doesn't agree with, that's the thing they bring up. It's like, oh, well, you think Stadium Arcadium is the worst Chili Peppers record. So that justifies your. opinion on XYZ.

It's their way of saying you're an idiot, and you proved it when you said that Saddam Arcadium is the worst Chili Pepper's record, which it is. I will defend that. You can put it on my gravestone. We do not back down from making the hard calls here at Indycast. Absolutely not. I'm doubling down now. I'm tripling down.

Every time someone on Reddit brings this up, I'm going to quadruple down on it. I'm digging in my heels on the Stadium to take. This is the hill that Indycast is dying on. Oh, hell yeah. I'm dying on this hill, baby. I am not surrendering this hill at all. Before we get to the Medi-Healy, Taylor Swift stuff, because we shouldn't spend a lot of time on that, because that story is probably too annoying even for us. That's like a bridge too far, even for us. But we want to do like a short episode of media cast. We haven't done media cast before, but we're going to do a short episode of media cast because in the digital. media world, which you and I have been a part of for a long time,

it really feels like we're at the end of an era this year. And I just started reading Ben Smith's book, Traffic. I don't know if you've heard about this book. Oh, yeah. I've read, like, I read a really interesting review of it, and then I saw, like, kind of a pan of it that most media people were retweeting. So I want to read it before I read either of you. I mean, I'm enjoying it so far.

For those who don't know, this is a book written by Ben Smith. He was the editor of BuzzFeed News for a long time. He was a New York Times media columnist. Now he's running a new media company called Semaphore, which does newsletters. And it feels like there's a lot of smart people in the media who feel like that's the direction that media is going in, and that social media as a driver of traffic is over. I mean, at least that's the theory right now. Anyway, he wrote a book about sort of the beginnings of like the modern digital media era.

And he's focusing on BuzzFeed and Gawker and how those sites developed and how they rose to prominence and how they fell apart. And I'm just at the beginning of it, I feel like I'm going to be quoting this book. They'll probably be in future episodes of this show. But Vice, Vice declared bankruptcy this week. That was this week, right? Yeah, I think it was this week. God, it's been, as far as media cast goes, we could have had two episodes. There's just been so much going on.

And it's like, was it Vice News or was it BuzzFeed News? Like, a lot of stuff has happened in like billion, like the billions type tax bracket. Yeah, I mean, so Vice News was already, I think, shuddered. And then Vice just announced that they're declaring bankruptcy. Of course, Busfeed News was shuttered recently. There's been a lot of changes in sort of like, I guess, the legacy brands of online media. And it's just an interesting thing because this news coupled with this book, it just puts a cap on this period of time. And it's just interesting to look at an era as being over that, like, you live through for a long time.

You know, and it's like, wow, okay, so now I've reached the point of my life where like an era of the business I'm in has ended and now something else is starting now. I don't know. I'm curious for your take on this because, you know, I've worked in media full time for almost 25 years. And I worked at a daily newspaper. I worked at an alt-weekly. I've worked for websites. I've worked all over in many different areas in this business. And in that time, I think about all the newspapers, alt weekly newspapers, websites, magazines that have shut down.

And I was thinking about all those this morning. And I estimated that the number of places that have shut down when I've been in this business is about, I would say, 10 million. 10 million sites, give or take, eight or nine million. But something, there's been a lot. You know, and what I always see in the aftermath of someplace shutting down are media people going online posting a lot. Apocalyptic tweets about how this is the end of the business. Yes. This is the end of the world.

And then what always happens one week later is that no one remembers the place that just shut down. You instantly forget about Grantland, you instantly forget about Gunker. No, no, no. We instantly, we, I'm more Grantland, more, more, more, too, because I work there. I work there, but I'm just saying the world moves on. Yeah, totally. And media changes, but it doesn't end. But is this different? Are we in a different, because these are big places.

I will say that if you look at what each one did, I think it's kind of obvious why you they don't exist anymore. And it's basically the boogie night story in both cases. You have Dirk Diggler, has some success, you know, everything's going great. What is the prosthetic penis in this metaphor? Well, it's probably Shane Smith. Anyway, you know, you have some hit movies and then you buy a big house, you buy a fancy car, you start doing below 24-7, and then before you know it, Johnny Wad comes along.

and he's the new kid on the block and you're not the hot young thing anymore and all of a sudden you realize that you've totally over-extended yourself and you can't justify the amount of money that you're spending based on the amount of business that you're bringing in. And you look at Vice and BuzzFeed,

I think, you know, Vice had like a movie studio, they had a TV show, they bought like a big expensive office in Brooklyn. They're doing all these things that they probably did not have the business to sustain, you know, once all the venture capital money dried up.

I mean, BuzzFeed had a bureau in Australia for crying out loud. Like, are they doing investigative reports on kangaroos? Probably. Are they, like, profiling crocodile Dundee? You know, I'm trying to think of other Australian stereotypes I can say here. But I don't know. I mean, I feel like you can explain why those places don't exist anymore. A lot of bad decisions were made.

and I don't know if that's necessarily reflective of the business at large, and not to paint a rosy picture of the business, it's obviously very troubled, but I don't know. I mean, is this apocalyptic, do you think? Or is this something that we're just going to move on from and people hopefully find another place to work or how to make a living? Yeah, I mean, I wasn't sold on this being some sort of like sea change until you mentioned like BuzzFeed and Bice's legacy publications,

which, you know, compared to the Atlantic, which has been around, since, I don't know, probably the late 1800s. Like, I think they are kind of legacy publications because, you know, as much as we want to romanosite and, you know, you've lived through the kind of living on peanuts at the all weekly phase of your life. I think like BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News and vice, that was the equivalent for people who came up in the industry in 2014. You know, a lot of Pete, like for all of the, you know, obvious, you know, cultural,

all like the bad cultural shit that BuzzFeed and Vice put out into the world and by the way, if you've never seen the documentary now, parody of Vice, where Jack Plaque plays, barely fictionalized Shane Smith at a place called Drones. Go check it out.

It's awesome. Yeah, I mean, usually we talk about on this show, I mean, these music publications that we only know still exist when they announce that they're shutting.

down and usually there are like a lot of people or not a lot of people like very few that's why they shut down in the first place uh you know some music writer twitter people talking about how the end of this publication or that is you know this real blight on our industry and i'm of the opinion that like music criticism which is different than music journalism doesn't need a lot of overhead or access to function but you know bus feed news and vice like they broke actual news they did actual journalism. And so, I mean, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, it's a resilient field and a different thing will, um, you know, a different thing will emerge in instead. Uh, my own, you know, I'm, I'm, a little bit torn up about vice shutting down, if only because

that was one of the go-to places I would, uh, pitch when I was more excited about a certain emo record than pitchfork was. So, you know, shout to Dan Ozzie. He really hooked it up back in 2015 or 16. But, you know, you just look at these things like, you know, Morrissey, like, you know, all, we gravely read the stones, all those people, all those lives. Where are they now? You know, paper magazine, hold your head, BuzzFeed, Vice, just Indycast at the end, you know what I mean? We are going to survive. Yeah, I mean, for people who, like, lost their jobs, I feel horrible.

And I think they have a right to be upset and to express that. I just feel like there's a lot of people in the media who aren't directly affected by this sort of thing, and they're always doom-saying about the business in a way that I find to be a little extreme and not necessarily reflective of the circumstances. I mean, I do think that we are entering a time where it's going to be less about scale and more about speaking to a specific audience. And that's related, I think, to how social media has changed. how it doesn't seem like you can just milk Facebook and Twitter for traffic

in the way that you used to be able to do in the 2010s. I still think that social media is good for individual writers in terms of connecting with an audience, but in terms of publications, that doesn't seem like it's really the magic bullet that it used to be. So I don't know. I'm curious to see how that changes. And that's the end of this episode of Me. media cast. Thank you for listening to MediaCast. We'll be hashing up more trends, possibly next week, when someone else shows down. What like today explained on Vox, we're just doing like a tight 25 and,

you know, not really offering too many opinions, just presenting it as it is, and we're in and out. This is the new Indycast, lighter, more aerodynamic. Indicast is not aerodynamic. MediaCast is. MediaCast is. MediaCast is. But let's get into Indycast here, which, again, this is not a very indie rock episode. that we have today, unfortunately. And speaking of unfortunately, do we have anything to say about this Maddie Healy, Taylor Swift story?

And this broke last night, which is Wednesday night this week, that there's rumors that these two kids are dating. And we were trying to figure out, before we started recording, if they dated in the past. Because I do think that there were rumors, right, that they were dating, like, in the mid-2000s.

Probably ones that now. Eddie Healy put out there, but I don't know. I mean, we got to get the writers back off strike. This is like the most clip show lazy plot line for Indycast imaginable. Like you said, it's like, is it too annoying for even us? I guess so in this phase. But I just want to know if this is really happening what the mechanics of dating are for people like this. You know, it's like, like where do they go? Like how many times they need to be in the same place before they're considered dating. just real Mandela effect with this one. You know, like what are the double dates going to look like with Charlie XX and George Daniel? You know, is this going to lead to an even more annoying 1975 album about being in love?

Or is it going to lead to like just the biggest shit bag like breakup album? I mean, from Taylor Swift's perspective, Maddie Healy does seem like the guy that you date after getting out of a long-term relationship. I mean, that seems pretty textbook. Yeah, rebound shit right here, man. Yeah, he seems like a textbook rebound guy. So I can believe it from that perspective that this is actually happening. Otherwise, this seems like something that the replacement writers would come up with. Like, you know, you got the real writers on strike.

Or the AI bots. Right now in Hollywood. Exactly. This is like an AI-generated storyline through and through. to the point where even for us, where I feel like this could have been written for our show, I don't know how much I even want to get into this because it does seem like,

it's too annoying even for us. And I never thought I would say that about our show, but it does seem true in this case. Yeah, I just, you know, I've mentioned on this show before I work with like almost exclusively swifties at my real life job, and now they've got to care about the national and the 1975s. And, you know, it's my time to shine.

I'm just, I am, like, waiting for them to either be like, who the fuck are these, like, bands or, hey, I'm really into this band now. Where do I start? And, you know, this is why they, this is why I have the job I do. I bring, like, you know, 40-something white guy taste diversity. Well, along those same lines, there was a story this week that Phoebe Bridgers wants to collaborate with Bob Dylan. So that's another, you know, like.

Yeah, so do we. I just want to put that out there. We are open to collaborating with Bob Dylan as well. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. Bob, if you want to come on our show. But, I mean, that could actually happen, though. Sure. Phoebe Bridgers, Bob Dylan.

And I just would love to see, like, Bob Dylan hearing about this and whether he's going to, you know, consider it or whatever. Do you think Bob Dylan is a boy genius fan? Absolutely. Like, I have so little doubt that he is. However, I think that, and I haven't read that book that he wrote with all the music criticism that got panned for like five minutes on music writer, Twitter. I think that he, A, likes Boy Genius and B has a very bizarre explanation as to why that is. It wouldn't be like, oh, I like their harmonies or like Lucy Dacus, like, writes very, very on point lyrics.

I would love to hear his explanation for why that is because it is nothing that you could possibly come up. with. I mean, if Bob Dylan was writing about Boy Genius, I mean, I could kind of imagine what the pros would be like. It'd be like, you know, they were too smart for their own good. They were too smart to live on the road. Intelligence is not something you can buy. It's something that is earned over time when you live like a hobo in a train car eating out of a tin. You know, it'd be something like that. Like that's the kind of prose that's in that book. Well, that's how he writes. I trust you on that. Like in his book, he kind of will take like one lyric.

of a song and just like a riff on it for like a thousand words. So he'll be writing about like lionized by the Eagles and he'll be going into this like very sort of dark prose about, you know, treacherous women and, you know, being murdered in a gutter by a vagrant. You know, like that kind of imagery is like very endemic to that book. So yeah, I don't know. I could see Bob listening to the Boy Genius record and enjoying it and then maybe it gets to the Leonard Cohn.

song and he's maybe a little offended by that because he's a he's a he's him and Leonard Cohen were were bros so maybe he wouldn't like the Leonard Cohen this or maybe he would enjoy it because Bob has written many diss songs in his career so you never know he's an enigma you can't really figure Bob out I want to talk to you about this Ed Shearron copyright case and I know this is not an indie rock story at all although it could have implications for the indie rock community and just musicians in general. Because for those who don't know, Ed Shearan is being sued by, I mean, is that the proper

terminology that he's being sued? There's been a lawsuit that's been filed against him by the estate of a person named Ed Townsend, who was the co-writer of Marvin Gay's, Let's Get It On. And the allegation is that Ed Sheeran ripped off, let's get it on for. his 2014 song Thinking Out Loud. And this is similar, if you remember, to the Blurred Lines case,

you know, that Robin Thick song, where the Marvin Gay estate, it's always Marvin Gaye involved in these cases. His estate, filed a lawsuit saying that that song ripped off, got to give it up. And the court actually ruled in favor, the jury ruled in favor

of Marvin Gay's estate. So now you have this scenario where other people feel emboldened to file lawsuits for songs that aren't necessarily like taking like a melody or a lyric. It's more about like jacking a vibe from an older song, which if you listen to thinking out loud, you can definitely hear a similarity to Let's Get It On. I also think that in no universe would someone listen to Thinking Out Loud mistake it for Let's Get It On? It's like pretty clearly Ed Shearin doing his, you know, spin on like a let's get it on type song, which to me does not equate to copyright infringement. To me, I think that's what music is. People are inspired by a song that they love and they try to emulate it.

And in the process of emulating that, they come up with their own thing. And I think that's what Ed Sheeran did. But it's unclear as to whether the court will agree that this is something. that isn't just part of music. And if Ed Sheeran loses, I think it could have pretty bad implications for musicians everywhere. Of course, what was talked about this week was a quote from this trial where Ed Sheeran said that if he loses this case that he's going to quit music.

So, of course, all the music news websites jumped on that. Ed Shearin's going to quit music if he loses this case. And you had every terrible Twitter comedian coming out of the woodwork saying, oh, this is great. Ed Shearin's going to quit music if he loses this case, which is the dumbest possible reaction that you could have to this. Yeah, I mean. And it almost makes me want to defend Ed Shearan, even though, like, thinking out loud is a terrible song. Have you listened to that song? It's awful.

No. I mean, this is like, with the Marvin Gay estate suing Ed Shearer, and it just kind of reminds me of how the USPS was like suing the postal service. the band back in the day like oh you know I expect Ben Gibbard to deliver my mail and I'm so tired of being confused and misled by this um look I to your point about like about all the Brooklyn dad defiant type twit music Twitter accounts posting about Ed Shearin like I'll just quote drill like under no circumstances do I got to hand it to Ed Shearin like I do think that he is he absorbs a lot of the hate people feel about pop music in general but like are a little bit afraid to level at certain pop stars but shape of you and perfect are two extremely different songs that

I despise equally like I really really hate those songs and I cannot think of a single Ed Shearin's song that I enjoy which puts them at like a lower level than say Philip Phillips sometimes I hear home it sprouts and think this one kind of goes um and that being said you all like you almost got to defend edge here in here it's sort of like with buzzfeed and vice where you think like yeah generally speaking pox on pop culture and at the same time the implications of this happening are straight up bad um i also think it kind of reveals that you know for in certain components of the music industry. And I think this came up a lot

with Olivia Rodriguez album that one of the very, very few avenues towards making actual music revenue is just to like throw darts and sue people and kind of just hope that either the judge will rule in your favor or that you'll get like a quick settlement. I think of this lawyer I knew in New Orleans

who their, most of their business was suing cash money records and getting settlements because, you know, regardless of what you're putting out there. Odds are cash money records did sign you to an illegal contract. So it's a nice little niche you can make for yourself. But I think the question here, you know, I think the implications for music at large are bad. And then I think to myself, is this, are these kind of lawsuits going to affect any musician I actually give a shit about, you know?

Because, I mean, the biggest examples are Olivia Rodriguez. Robin Thick, Farrell, Ed Shearin, like, I, is this going to trickle down to, you know, when we actually do an indie rock episode of indie cast, like the sort of people that we might cover, or is it just going to be going after the big pocket? Well, yeah, I think that's a good point that a lot of the musicians that we like, they're not making the kind of money where you would want to do the throw a dart at something and try to cash in. because the money's not there.

I mean, I think you can look at it from sort of like an ecological point of view where if the big dogs aren't making money or they're under siege in this way, in some way that does trickle down to everyone else because those are the people that make the lion's share of the money. And if they can't exist, then there may not be a music industry at all, at least as we know it, which maybe that's not a terrible thing. I don't know. I mean, I guess am against this for more of like a philosophical point of view.

Oh, absolutely. I just think that it's anti-music to crack down on artists, even artists we don't like in this kind of way. Like the principle of it, because I do think that that's just an inherent part of creativity, that you are building on what came before you. And as long as you're not just straight up copy and pasting, you know, lyrics or, you know, lyrics or melodies or something, I don't think that jacking someone's vibe

or ripping on someone's vibe is tantamount to copyright infringement. And I think if that is how copyright infringement is defined, that that's just like a terrible thing for music. I don't think it should be that way. Because again, I mean, I can't think of an album that I love that in some way

doesn't evoke something that came before it. I mean, I think that's true of all music. I wonder, though, if, you know, to play devil's advocate here, whether, like, jacking a chord progression or a melody is actually more tolerable to me than, like, jacking a vibe, because, you know, you think about that Volkswagen commercial where it's, like, hey, can you give us, like, a Beach House song, but, like, don't sound like, but, like, make it just different enough from Beach House, and, like, Beach House won that lawsuit, I think. In some ways, I feel like jacking the vibes a little bit more.

offensive to me when it's that overt. I mean, like maybe the deaf tones will, you know, just completely wipe out an entire swath of music being made right now because everyone's trying to sing like Gino Moreno without any swag. I mean, maybe that would be good for advancement, you know, of the art. But yeah, by and large, we can say this is bad. You know, you got, it sucks that it has to be Ed Sheeran for us to defend, but I've been looking for a reason. I think to defend Ed Shearin. He did fine in Game of Thrones. But I don't think that's enough of the platform for us to reconsider our boy right there.

Yeah, I mean, he's someone that, because I saw this on Twitter too, where people were like, well, Ed Sheard actually has some good songs. I'm like, no, he doesn't. I'm sorry. Charlie Brown had hose type tweet. Nope, that is not true at all. And like, like, Shape of You is like a detestable song. Detestable. Fucking awful.

Because not only is it, you know, just so, like, weak, but it's like a sexy song that's weak. It's Ed Shearin doing it a sexy song. Like, he has so many, like, sexy songs. He's allowed to, you know, Ed Shearin's allowed to get his fuck on. Like, whatever. Well, I'm not, I'm sure he's allowed to, but I'm just so. thing is music. It's not something. I can't comprehend why this is something people want to listen to, but a lot of people do want to listen to it. I mean, I defend Ed Shearin because I feel like he gets ripped for the music he does, and Harry Styles does, to me, the same thing. But he's just better looking. So people are more forgiving of Harry Styles. So on that basis, you know, of Ed Shearren just being like a normal looking guy, I defend him in. that respect. I don't know if he's normal looking. He's got like a bit of a lion tattooed on the middle of

his chest. Well, he's like a regular, I'm just saying, he's not like, yeah, he's not like a fashion model handsome guy like Harry Stiles is. He's just like a regular guy. And, uh, and, and, but he gets ripped for making like weak-ass pop music, but Harry Stiles makes weak-ass pop music and people treat him like he's a trailblazer of, uh, modern pop culture and the new David Bowie and all that crap. Um, Yeah, getting back to your, you know, jacking a vibe point. I mean, in some respects, I agree with you. I think jacking a vibe is lame if you don't put your own spin on it.

You know, the whole point is to take something that you love and make it your own. And I will say, I think Ed Sheeran did that with this song. If you listen to this song, it's awful. Again, it's awful. But he did put his own spin on it because let's get it on is a great song. And Ed Shearin is doing the same thing. and his is horrible. So, you know, in a way, the crappiness of his song

is a case for its originality. You know, like, if it were better... Let's get Ed Peoples on the phone. We got, like, the legal theory that's going to get him out of this mess. This would be my closing argument if I were Ed Sheeran's lawyer. I'd be like, listen to this song.

Like, you can listen to Let's Get It On and feel like, okay, yeah, this is like a really kind of sexy song that people would want to put on in their private moments of, of, I'm trying to think of a euphemism here that isn't totally gross. When you're with your partner of choice and you want to listen to Marvin Gay, you do not want to listen to Ed Shearin. This music is not sexy at all. So that proves that he didn't rip off Marvin Gay because it's not sexy.

Actually, I feel like I'm contradicting myself in this argument. This is why I'm not a lawyer. This is why I'm a podcast host. Anyway, let's move on here to, um, an equally gross topic, which is Aerosmith. Aerosmith, they announced their long-awaited

farewell tour this week. It's called the Peace Out Tour. A lot of thought. Let's just name, I don't know, Pucci. Pucci, you okay with everyone? Yeah. And this just seemed like a good opportunity for us to do yay or nay on Aerosmith.

Because, I don't know, this is a band that, I think is very fun to talk about. Like, I could just do an Aerosmith podcast, I think. But I don't know. How do we feel about Aerosmith here? Yeah, or nay. How do you feel about this band as they walk off into the sunset?

Yeah, I mean, contrary to the Ed Sheeran discussion, I do, under these circumstances, have to hand it to Aerosmith, who have had just a fascinating career despite making music that I more or less do not like a lot. I like the fact that they inspired one of, in my view, one of the funniest rap lyrics of all time where Dr. Dre says, no, this ain't Aerosmith. Like, oh, I thought Let Me Ride was indeed,

Janie's got a gun until now. I think that the Run DMC collaboration is like one of the most important moments of pop music in the past 40 years, even though it kind of sucks. I like how they served as the plot engine for dazed and confused, despite the fact that the title is from a completely different band.

Great Simpsons cameo. We could probably do an entire podcast series. Like, we need to do an offshoot talking about how important the get-a-grip videos were to people of our age. And they invented rehab as a career reboot. I like how Joe Perry lived a lot of his life as an alternate history, Keith Richards, where, like, Keith Richards really gets into, like, weightlifting, and he's just super fucking jacked as opposed to. The Living Dead, although I think if you look at Aerosmith now, they are definitely very much in their

living dead sort of phase. Oh my God. They look, they are the worst looking classic rock man. That's, I mean, Kiss is still out there technically speaking. I mean, I just mean, I don't mean in terms of looks. I mean in terms of just like what the lifestyle has done to their bodies and faces. Like, they look, like, they're all in their mid-70s, and it's like a hard mid-70s. They make Joe Biden look spry, you know? Yeah, I mean, like, Joe Perry, you look at photos of him, and it's like, did he die in 2007? And his body's just being, like, weekend at Bernice. Like, for the last 15 years.

He was four years younger than Mick Jagger. Can you believe that shit? See, in Mick Jagger, you can tell that guy. is on a strict regimen of like, you know, Pilates. Yeah, like, he's, he's watching what he eats. He's probably getting, like, you know, blood transfusions from, you know, from, I don't know, like, like, young people.

Yeah, hyperbaric chambers, cryogenics, like, adrenachrome, all that shit. And then you look at Stephen Taller and you're like, this guy looks like a fleet of elephants just like walked over his face. I mean, it's like rough stuff. Also, like with the Stephen Tyler, you know, you have all of the like horrible stuff in his personal life that keeps coming out. Like there's that recent story where he had like an underage girlfriend in the 70s. And she's suing him now for gaslighting her essentially back then.

It is an interesting scenario with someone like Stephen Tyler where you're such a known sleaze ball already? Like, can you really be canceled? You know, is anyone going to say like, oh, Stephen, like, I'm shocked that this happened. You know, like, if you, you know, anyone who is on board with Stephen Tyler at this point, I don't know what it would take for them to say, oh, I'm not going to support Aerosmith anymore. I mean, I feel like the rest of the world is, like, already known, like, who this dude is. Yeah. Maybe they're just doing one last tour to, like, get the war chest up for the eventual, you know, like, uh, lawsuits. I'm going to go yay, though, on Aerosmith overall.

I will say, I think in the 70s, there were about three or four years where they were legitimately great. Toys in the Attic, rocks, both those albums, I think, are two of the best hard rock albums of that decade. And then you get into the 80s period, and you touched on a lot of the highlights already. I set to shout out, 1989's Pump, which was a big album for me in elementary school. On the cover, you have two trucks having sex, which isn't even the most ridiculous Aerosmith album cover of that era. Nope.

I mean, you get a grip where you have like the cows utter with a piercing in it, which I have called, and this is on Wikipedia on the get a grip page, I've called that the worst album cover of all time. So I have to stand by that. Is it worse than even Nine Lives, the one that comes next with, I think it's like what, like, it looks like a weird sort of like Grant Lee Buffalo or like just very much a 1997 alt rock on, you know, DGC type cover. Is that the one with the sexy robot? No, that's a Just Push play. Nine Lives is the one with the cat on the cover with knives being worn at it.

I'm Googling this right now. I can't remember the nine lives cover. I dropped out of Aerosmith by this time. Okay, so, I love this cover. I have to, because it's a cat. Is that a cat? Nine lives, I'm assuming it is, yes. Right, right.

Okay, of course. It's a cat wearing a t-shirt and jeans. And it's like, what is this? It's jacked. This cat is jacked. And this is like an actual cat. We're not. We're not like Stephen Tower calling people cats.

This is an actual cat with very muscular arms. The legs are pretty muscular too. Does not skip leg day. No. There's blue jeans on the legs, so you can't totally see how well-toned they are. But you could tell in the genes that this guy is rock hard all over his body. And they're throwing knives at the cat.

it's a metaphor yeah taste of india was i do not remember the single taste of india between that and the hindu times man like uh the late 90s they they were they were certainly a time i do remember some of these songs though yeah i don't remember is jaded on nine lives jaded um i want to say yes that's actually a pretty good song no that i think that was just push play right oh man so i so i'm like i'm apparently Yeah, Jada is Just Push Playhead. By the way, Just Push Play has a song called Trip Hopping on it. This is 2001, by the way. Okay, we need to go straight up into Aerosmithcast.

What a fun band to talk about, even though most of their music is just complete, utter ass. Yeah, I mean, they're a fascinating band. Like you said, like they created the rehab as a reboot move, which they've done several times in their career. They're the band too that like Extended their career by bringing in outside songwriters and doing all of these like power balance Diane Warren and Desmond Child and like Right I'm sure if I were to like look deep into the credits of

Just Push Play and Nine Lives We have not even talked about honking on Bobo yet I mean Jesus Christ I know see this band is a rich text I mean the Nine Lives cover I don't remember this at all I'm fascinated by this I love this cover I mean

Yeah Hard yay on Aero Smith The get a grip cover Is just like unpleasant to look at Because you're just like What do they do to this cow? Like why do they have to do this This

They learned here because they didn't Use an actual animal On the Nine Lives cover They drew a picture of a cat And then they threw knives at it So now you don't feel bad For the cat Because it's not real

And you're also like This is such a muscular cat It could take care of itself in a situation. Like it could bust out of this predicament and do some damage to the people throwing knives. So yeah, we're both yay on Arrow Smith. Even with like the terrible baggage with Stephen Tyler.

Yeah, I learned something this week. I was watching a video by Pat Finnerty, who I'm a big fan of YouTube music critic. He does like really funny videos. And he was talking with Andy Green of Rolling Stone who... Among other things, he wrote that great live article that we talked about on this show. And anyway, Andy Green was talking about other bands that he's talked to that are very dysfunctional,

and he brought up Aerosmith. And he said, and I don't remember hearing this anywhere else before this, but he said that in the late 2000s, Stephen Taller apparently was using again, and he was in really rough shape. And the rest of the band was so angry at Stephen Taller that, they were thinking about firing him and replacing him with Lenny Kravitz. Okay. You know what?

You speak it of someone who like really escaped the lawsuit era of jacking vibes. I mean, I would be into the Velvet Revolver version of Aerosmith, which actually no, Velvet Revolver is the Velvet Revolver version of Aerosmith. But I'd be into that. Like I think that Aerosmiths should have been. writing like fly away type songs instead of you know armageddon ballads i i actually want that we missed out there i mean i'm just imagining lenny crabbott singing you know like love in an elevator i can absolutely hear that or do well i don't know dude looks like a lady i mean it's not about like

it's not i don't know if it's necessary transphobic it was supposedly about like poison or like hair metal bands but yeah not one that holds up really well Oh my God. Dude looks like... Do you think they still play that? Or do you think Aerosmith is sensitive to the cultural moment that we're in? Maybe they give like a disclaimer before they do it. I don't know.

By the way, we talked about like the luminaries of pop music and contributing to 90s Aerosmith records. We forgot to of course mention Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw of Dan Yankees who made... Who did shut up and dance on Get a Grip, which not to be confused with the Walk on the Moons or I guess the Walk on the Moon song. Man, a rich text. My God. See, we might have to do a spin-off Aerosmith cast.

Just talk about every Aerosmith album, every music video. I feel like that could be a very rich mine of material. The song they did on the Beavis and Butthead Experience album, the fact that they called their greatest hits album, Big Ones. I mean, what a band. That's the most. half-assed album cover of all the cover of big ones that is so like we spent like not even five minutes on that cover um let's get to our mailbag segment uh i think we have time for one of our letters here

we were going to do too but we uh talked way too long about aerosmith or not even or not long enough about aerosmith that's true um do you want to read uh our letter here yeah so this comes to us from uh Pedro in Mexico City. First time, medium time. I would love to know more about what Pedro means by that. But anyway, Pedro loves the show. And one thing he's been wondering recently is why non-English language indie music doesn't break through to the U.S. English media.

For most of my life, this wasn't really a question. While English language music dominated our airwaves, non-English language music barely made a dent in the U.S. or England. But for the past decade or so, that has been changing with the rise of K-pop and reggae Dayton, so much that Pesopuluma, just top billword global and Bad Bunny, who prides himself on not singing English headline Coachella. However, from my vantage point, it seems like the indie media and the U.S. and England still focus exclusively on indie accent English.

First, do you get that sense? And second, why is that? Is because indie criticism is deeply tied to lyrics and it's hard to criticize music in a language you don't understand? Or is it just time constraints, given the amount of music needs be covered? Thanks so much for the show. Best, Pedro. All right. Well, thanks Pedro for writing in.

And it's an interesting question. I mean, he's definitely right in that non-English music in general is bigger in America than at any moment in my lifetime. I mean, some of the biggest stars in pop music, starting with Bad Bunny, who is he the most streamed artists on Spotify? I think the weekend is number one. Bad Bunny, I think, is like top three or four. Yeah, definitely up there. For sure. and then of course you have like

BTS all the K-pop people that get a lot of coverage I mean the the simple answer to this I think is that when you're talking about acts who don't speak in English it's really almost impossible to interview those artists

so like in terms of like that kind of coverage it's a challenge and you've seen that like with you know a group like BTS I don't know how much English they speak maybe they speak English in their interviews but I mean they get covered in places like Rolling Stone because they're so popular

if you do a story on BTS you're going to get a ton of traffic from covering a group like that so there's you know along with the journalistic reasons that you cover a group like that because they're so popular it also just makes sense from a publication standpoint because they bring a big audience but it turns of like indie music I actually feel like

there has been more coverage of non-English music then again that that I remember seeing in the past I mean I'm thinking for instance of of like a lot of the guitar music that's come out of Africa in the past like decade or so like acts like Tenorwin and Mdu Mokdar

who have collaborated with English speaking artists and have put out music on like big indie labels here in America I feel like that music actually has been covered, like pretty far and wide. There's also been like, you know, this bumper crop of like dream pop acts from South Korea, you know, thinking of like a group that you like a lot, like Parenthold from earlier this year.

There's a band I like a lot called Se Suomi that got a fair amount of coverage. So I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm wondering like to what degree would be like the right amount of coverage for these acts. It probably could be more than it is, but it seems to be in greater numbers than I remember seeing in the past. I think there is more of an openness toward this kind of music than there used to be. Yeah, I think maybe what Pedro is referring to isn't so much, you know, like the, you know, the acts from Africa that you mentioned, but more like, you know, Paranoil or, say, Sumi, where it's music that sounds, like, it's very easy to say, oh, yeah, this is indie rock, except it's an, it's an indebted. different language because I feel like with a lot of the coverage of Bad Bunny or K-pop or even, you know, Mdu Moktar or what have you, it's very much music from that part of the world.

Like it's, you know, it's K-pop. It's, you know, Bad Bunny's music is inherently Puerto Rican. And, you know, Tanaroan is making music that, you know, clearly comes from Africa. And some of that music, you know, comes forth. You know, it just breaks through in a mainstream way. But I think that you're, I think that it's less interesting, I guess, from a critical standpoint or a journalistic standpoint, to talk about music that is, you know, functionally American or British, except the only difference is that it's in a different language. But I do think that if you are more into shoe gaze or dream pop or metal, that's where you might see foreign language bands break through because in various ways, like the lyrics don't mean as much. Like, I don't know

what the fuck my bloody Valentine is saying. So why should I care if, you know, pink-shoddy ultra blasts like a Russian band is singing in a language I don't understand. And I think with a lot of emo music, particularly from Asia, some of it's actually better if you don't understand the lyrics. You know, but I also think of a band that I saw a couple nights ago called Forrest. They're a Singapore emo band that's been around for about the past decade. And they sound and, you know, their music sounds like it was from Philly in 2009. The big difference, though, is that, you know, when they saw them, like they were, you know, wearing, like, Korean streetwear brands, which I'm totally into because, man, I just

wish more emo bands would just wear all black. You know, they're up on stage wearing, like, crocs and shorts and you know we we got to get some drip going on in emo and that's what for us do so um yeah i do think it would be cool if more foreign language indie rock soundy bands were covered and i also get it because it in a way it doesn't often broaden the discussion in the same way that talking about like nigerian pop or afro beats or you know hip hop from a different like from a very distinct cultural viewpoint is. Yeah, I was going to say to piggyback on your point about how some genres

seem more amenable to not really caring about the lyrics. I think that's also true of like psychedelic rock. Oh, yeah, totally. A band that's been around for a while, like Dunian is another example where I have no idea what he's saying, but it doesn't really matter

because it's not, you don't really cover that music for lyrical content. I mean, I think Pedro is on something that you know music critics tend to latch on to lyrics and if you don't have that aspect to write about it can be limiting i know like with umdo mockdar for instance one thing that was stressed with him is that you know there's like a lot of political lyrics in his songs so but you can't quote his lyrics it's more about sort of like what the overall meaning is uh but again you're you don't have the ability to dig in deeper as you would with an anguish language artist than

and I'm sure that affects how these bands are talked about. And again, I just go back to how if you can't talk to someone in an interview situation, I think that that's a big disadvantage for foreign acts coming into America. And you will see sometimes that they do speak English in interviews, even if they don't in their music, for that very reason. It's easier to promote yourself if you can actually speak the language that the media person is speaking. We've now reached the part of our episode

that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about something that we're into this week. Ian, want you to go first. I want to give a brief mention of an interview with a band named Panchiko that should be up at Abroxa today.

I don't want to spend too much time on it because the story is just so bizarre that I feel like you can spend another entire episode on it. Essentially, it's a band. They had a demo that was discovered in a Nottingham Thrift shop. and got uploaded to YouTube like 20 years later.

And everyone just kind of assumed it was a hoax, but it turned out to be three guys in their 40s in the UK, and now they're actually making a career of it. So check that out. But as far as straight ahead recommendation corner core, Greg Mendez is an artist that's been getting a little bit of burn for his new album, which is out today. He's been around for quite a while in Philly

doing the Alex G. Elliot Smith sort of, intimate songwriter thing. And it's really hard to stand out in that realm. However, I think the difference here is, and not to be too crass about it, is that Greg has been through some life over the past decade, the type that accumulates over the past decade rather than like, you know, a couple months. And that really comes through in the music. So it's very soft-spoken, but subtly brutal and also very tuneful. It's got like some of the early Elliott Smith's style like melodic construction, which is very impressive. If you were to put it to like a beat guitar,

you would assume it's like a power pop craftsman. And so it's the kind of like intimacy that lets you think like, oh, I'm getting to know this person. So it's self-titled, even though it's his third album, but he's got a very, very large discography. So we're checking out. Greg Mendes. So I want to talk about two, I guess I'll say,

deceased singer-songwriters that were in the news this week. The first is Gordon Lightfoot, the great Canadian artist who passed away this week at the age of 84. And Gordon Lightfoot is of the same generation of all the great classic rock bards that get so much praise. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell. Arrowsmith. But he often isn't put in the same. But he often isn't put in the category as those artists, I think because he has more of like a easy listening pop reputation. And if you listen to oldies radio, you've probably heard songs like Sundown and Carefree Highway and if you could read my mind in early morning rain, all these songs that are distinguished by, I think, one, an amazing acoustic guitar sound and also the sound of Gordon Lightfoot's voice,

which was this very sort of classic masculine sounding old school folk type vocal that is just so strong and great. I really think that Gordon Lightfoot made a lot of really good albums that are I think a little bit slept on. And he's definitely someone that if you are unfamiliar with his music or if you just know his hits, it's worth digging into. I would definitely start with the album Sundown from 1974 where he's sitting cross-legged on the cover with sandals on. and he looks like Walter White from Breaking Bad, except he has a beard and curly hair. And then the next record, Summertime Dream, is also a great album.

And you may recognize the most famous song from that record, which is the record of the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of his most famous songs. That's also a really good record. But really, any album that he put out in the 70s, I think is worth checking out. Also, have to shout out my man, Warren Zivon, who was not inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week,

because the Rock Hall is a perpetually disappointing institution. But I did write about Zivon this week. I wrote a beginner's guide to Warren Zivon's music, wrote about every album, live records, bootlegs, the great book that was written about him. So if you've heard Warren Zivon's name and you've heard it if you listen to this show, but you still haven't dug in,

go on Up Rocks, check out my article. It I think is a really good way to learn about the man and get into his music. That about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news and reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix Taped newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie. And I recommend five albums per week and we'll send it directly to your email box.