Although rock music has for 55 years been the sound of rebellion, from Elvis and Bill Haley through punk and grunge, many people notice that it's not very rebellious at all. It repeats the same violent, masculine, destructive principles of society as a whole - rockers hold their guitar like a machine gun (and the mic like a pistol or penis). But what if you had a musical genre that privileged weakness, inaction, observation, sexual uncertainty, childishness, and innocence? For nearly 30 years that genre has been twee, the greatest and longest-lasting underground pop movement since the invention of rock and roll.
The godfather of twee was Dan Treacy of the Television Personalities. The band was born out of the late 70s punk scene, its name taking a mocking view of celebrity that was part of punk's desire to start a new and different version of entertainment or art (similarly the lead singer of the Adverts called himself TV Smith). Initially the TVPs made a name with raw-sounding recordings that satirised the music scene in songs such as Part-Time Punks ("They pay 5p on the buses and they never use toothpaste but they still got £2.50 to go and see the Clash tonight"). Co-founder Edward Ball went on to a varied career, with the Times, Teenage Filmstars, the Boo Radleys and solo projects, while Treacy has kept the band going on and off to the present, with album A Memory Is Better Than Nothing released in 2010.
Following their debut single "14th Floor" (1978) and a couple of punky EPs, the TVPs' sound matured for their first truly great song, and their first truly twee. Released as a single in 1980, Smashing Time celebrated a day that Treacy spent taking his cousin on a tour of London. It affectionately mocks some parts of the city, praises others, and overall sums up the joy, excitement, and nervousness of a provincial person visiting the big city: "we were scared in the London Dungeon, it's silly I know, and we were both slightly embarrassed in Soho ... and she thought it was really good and so did I."
This was followed by the album ...And Don't The Kids Just Love It (1981), kicking off a sequence of great releases in the first half of the 1980s. Lyrically Treacy varied from aching love songs like "Someone To Spend My Life With" (which makes twee-ancestor Jonathan Richman's "Girlfriend" seem hard-hearted) to the brooding "How I Learned To Love the Bomb", a slice of mid-80s nuclear paranoia pop to stand alongside Frankie's "Two Tribes" or Nena's "99 Balloons". At times he overreached himself, as with the over-the-top psychodrama "Back To Vietnam", but the best of his songs presented an overwhelming romanticism, sometimes childlike, sometimes hard-fought or snatched against the odds from despair.
Despite coming up through the punk scene, Treacy's influences were quite different. Rather than the Ramones or Sex Pistols he was more interested in 1960s British pop and psychedelia; as well as a musical influence on tracks such as "The Dream Inspires" and "King and Country", this can be seen in lyrically in songs like "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives". Treacy revered Syd Barrett, whose eccentricity and later madness offered an alternative role model to rebels like Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison - a radical withdrawal from the world (Barrett was unable to cope with his early success with Pink Floyd, retired from the music scene, and lived with his mother for in Cambridge many years) and a withdrawal from sanity.
Like the Smiths around the same time, the TVPs rejected the traditional iconography of rock music (which was mainly American, masculine, violent, celebrating freedom and rebelliousness) and preferred British popular culture, particularly from the 1960s (hence the song and album "I Was a Mod Before You Was a Mod" - the mods were smartly dressed, listened to soul music, and were the antithesis of dirty rock fans). He celebrated British new-wave filmmakers who explored working class life, often focussing on tragic young women (as in Cathy Come Home, Poor Cow, or Georgy Girl); TVPs song "Favourite Films" names actresses such as Rita Tushingham (A Taste of Honey, The Knack, Smashing Time). He also covered legendary eccentric British producer Joe Meek's I Hear A New World (Meek was a homosexual who recorded horror stories and predicted he would die on the anniversary of Buddy Holly - in 1967 he shot his landlady and himself).
The TVPs also put the Avengers on the cover of one album (And Don't The Kids Just Love It); not a twee symbol directly, but one of female empowerment. Treacy seemed to empathise more with women than men, and many TVP songs focused on tragic or suffering women, poor and rich. "La Grande Illusion", "Sad Mona Lisa", "Silly Girl", "The Girl Who Had Everything", and others were not love songs, and some were cautionary tales. But in "La Grande Illusion" he offers a recognition of the suffering of others, such as might be gleaned from watching and imagining from afar, a sadness redeemed only by the pain it stirs in Treacy's heart, the desperate sympathy of "Girl's got tears in her eyes - and I don't know what to do" establishing the cruellest of bonds between them. It's a bond the girl does not even know, unless she hears his song.
Treacy did not have a twee life. He was a heavy drug user, often taking amphetamines before performing. In the early 2000s he spent time in jail (on a prison boat) for drug-related offences. He
commented "Christ, Pete Doherty does 3 weeks in Wandsworth and he's the new Johnny Cash! Guess I must be the new James Brown/Albert [sic] Lee/Brian Wilson put together!" This seemed to renew people's interest in him, and there were benefits and collections that provided enough money for him to buy a guitar and record a new record on release. Prison had not hardened his heart, and although My Dark Places (2006) and Are We Nearly There Yet? (2007) were not his best work, they still had moments of pop perfection and overwhelming honesty.
Most of the characteristics of twee can be seen in the TV Personalities. There are the two main moods, joy and winsome sadness, which are both types of romanticism. There is a celebration of passive femininity and a denial of masculinity; and an obsessive self-referentiality about the music scene. But the movement goes far beyond Treacy. While antecedents can be found in Jonathan Richman, the Velvet Underground's self-titled third album, and some of the Beach Boys' more serious moments ("God Only Knows"), it is a movement that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s.
It really came to music fans' attention, and gained a name, with C86, a tape of up-and-coming bands compiled by the NME. More than half of the tape had little to do with tweeness (The Wolfhounds, Fuzzbox, Big Flame, Microdisney spin-off Stump, and the jangly but more masculine Wedding Present and Half Man Half Biscuit) but it did feature several tracks in a melodic guitar-based pop style that was often called "C86" after the tape. The immediate influences for this music included early-80s Scottish bands like Orange Juice and Josef K, bands associated with Postcard Recordings in Glasgow, who made sweet jangly introverted music far from rock and roll posturing, but in a harder, more rhythmic new wave idiom.
The most crucial C86 act, although they were not on the actual tape, was perhaps the band Talulah Gosh, who introduced the world to twee figurehead Amelia Fletcher. Following the rapid demise of Talulah Gosh, she has been in a series of bands all continuing something of the spirit of twee. Heavenly had more guitars and more of a rock influence, but split after the suicide of Heavenly drummer Mathew Fletcher, Amelia's brother. With a new drummer they became Marine Research who only released one album; later she emerged with Tender Trap, playing bright pop with often satirical lyrics ("That girl had a copy of Herjazz while she was at school ... Her record collection separates women from men; sometimes she lets them mingle then breaks it up again", "That Girl" says).
Primal Scream are perhaps the most famous of the twee bands on the original C86 compilation; they possessed a skill at genre hopping as great as Blur or Madonna, and quickly left twee behind to find dance and then rock. Their C86 track "Velocity Girl" not only helped define twee and lent its name to a jangly guitar band, it seemed to have an influence on Stone Roses and the more melodic side of the Madchester/baggy scene. The C86 era found its spiritual home on Sarah records, who released Heavenly, Another Sunny Day, The Sea Urchins, The Orchids, Field Mice, Northern Picture Library, and St Christopher (whose Terry Banks later formed the splendidly-named Tree Fort Angst). Another Sunny Day sang perhaps the definitive twee song title "I'm In Love With a Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist".
Mirroring Treacy's early tracks like "Posing At The Roundhouse" and "Part-Time Punks" were quintessential twee novelty act the Pooh Sticks, best known for "I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan Mcgee Quite Well", a song about getting in with the legendary record label boss who was
inspired by the Television Personalities to start a record label packed with jangly Glaswegian guitar bands (post-twee he signed Oasis).
In the mid 1980s, a time of Thatcherism, greed, and class war, twee offered a multi-layered critique of society. Drawing on forefathers like Dan Treacy and The Smiths, it questioned masculinity and celebrated outsiderdom, weakness, and failure; and it revived punk's amateurism and do-it-yourself spirit - although Treacy was a great guitarist his vocals were at best a whiny moan that conveyed considerably more emotion than tune.
Meanwhile in the USA, the tall, gangly, deep-voiced Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening was doing twee things in Olympia, Washington, going on to inspire much of the rock scene there (even Courtney Love namechecked him). He celebrated his dorkiness and awkwardness and lack of masculine success; his records were cheap and tinny like they were playing over an old AM radio ("I look at them out together and I see she's wearing my sweater", he starts "Cat Walk", a surprisingly cheerful song about being dumped for someone else). Johnson's influence also fed into 1990s emo, bands such as Sunny Day Real Estate, long before a distant version of that genre went mainstream.
On both sides of the Atlantic, tweeness led into Riot Grrl, genres with a crossover in fans and a common interest in writing and exchanging zines (self-published magazines produced on a minimal budget that originated with punk titles like Sniffing Glue, but were revived in the late 80s and early 90s until the internet killed them off). Both had a strong feminist interest, offering an alternative to the conventional male-dominated music scene that combined a strong subcultural identity with an easy-to-play style.
As time went by, the genre changed and diversified. Late 80s/early 90s Glaswegian drunks The Vaselines, fronted by the funny, forward Frances McKee and the more laid-back and debonair Eugene Kelly, mixed the twee with the offensive. Molly's Lips, one of their most famous songs, is either about a child's encounter with a grandmother, or about cunnilingus. Monster Puss has a similar duality, and they did a gender-confusing cover version of gay disco classic You Think You're A Man. The Vaselines like Calvin Johnson and the TV Personalities inspired Kurt Cobain, who sometimes wore a dress onstage and briefly threatened to overturn the masculine norms of rock and roll.
Another lasting career began with the Field Mice, who recorded epic-sounding largely acoustic songs, often focussed on Robert Wratten's failed relationships. Their Kiss and Make Up was covered by St Etienne, and Wratten and other bandmembers continued in Yesterday Sky, Northern Picture Library, and Trembling Blue Stars. The best of their songs, like "Landmark" and "Willow", managed a clear-headed description of love and heartbreak that captures the drama and saddest thing about love, the way good intentions and sincere admiration so often lead to heartbreak. Although twee is commonly associated with childishness, Wratten's emotional honesty, clarity of expression, and lack of sentimentality make him one of the most adult of songwriters.
The Field Mice's "Willow" unusually features Annemari Davies, Wratten's sometime girlfriend, on lead vocals; she sings in a high, wispy voice lyrics which seem directed at Wratten, "I told you things that turned out to be untrue. When I said them I meant them. There are so many moments from when we were together that I do treasure. Don't you go thinking I never did love you." It's reminiscent of the poetry of Ian Hamilton, whose terse lyrics used the word "you" far more than "I" to express the sorrow of ended relationships.
Twee-influenced synth-pop band Bis threatened the mainstream in the late 1990s, famously appearing on Top of the Pops without a record deal and writing the closing theme for the Powerpuff Girls. Despite their childish image and roots in fanzine culture, they had little in common musically with C86, TV Personalities, or Calvin Johnson. In the face of widespread ridicule (some unfairly directed at singer Manda Rin's appearance, others more justly directed at their deliberately immature music) they never made it big.
More recently the standard-bearers in Britain have been Welsh eight-some Los Campesinos. Loud and boisterous despite their intelligence, they combine exceptionally clever and reference-packed lyrics with upbeat tuneful pop music. Combining the manically upbeat sound of Bis with fiercely intelligent lyrics and a close attention to popular culture (they're probably the most famous band to mention LiveJournal in a song), they established themselves as a many-legged fixture on the music scene, the saviours of twee.
Having said that, the band did not charm everyone, and the now sadly missed music journalist Steven Wells fought a particular
vendetta against them, claiming
Twee is a frequently reoccurring herpes virus under the foreskin of the popcock and Los Campesinos! are the weeping sore.
He did like Dan Treacy, and even saw a briefly radical impulse in twee
The Television Personalities (and their alter egos The O Levels) were not twee. The clue is in the fact that they didn't suck. They didn't simper. They didn't peddle a drained-of-all-ideology, passive-aggressive, un-analysed and hideously ill-defined porridge of cringe-worthy pederasty, noxious nostalgia, oblique poetastery, tuneless fax-pop, bourgeois arrogance (posturing as DIY separatism) and right-wing anti-proletarian middle-class smugness (posturing as anti-macho anti-sexism).
Was twee ever genuinely radical? Was it ever anything more than a cowardly retreat from subversion, empowerment and experimentation into a nauseatingly reactionary paedo-aesthetic? Surprisingly, yes it was—for about 5 minutes. In Olympia, Washington State in 1984, a young man called Calvin Johnson decides to rip the piss out of the brutally macho, one-dimensional, throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater straight white male travesty that is American hardcore punk with a superlimp pissrippery called Beat Happening — the first American twee band. Beat Happening make also-on-the-bill Henry Rollin's superbly muscled head hurt. He stares at this abomination like a confused dog.
Partly his disdain was class war, twee having a tendency to be middle class (although many of punk's greatest figures came from the middle classes and leafy suburbia). And partly because he didn't like quiet music.
As can be seen, twee has reappeared wherever young and innocent people have picked up musical instruments and tried to write songs that reflect their confusion, that combination of youthful optimism with a melancholy suspicion that you'll never be cool. One mid-90s example was the Australian band Noise Addict, who penned "I Wish I Was He", about American folk-rock singer Evan Dando of the Lemonheads ("he gets his NMEs sent by air not boat...") and also did a song in favour of sarongs. Another face of contemporary twee is Tullycraft, who since the mid 1990s have combined a retro surf-influenced sound with an obsessive interest in music fandom, as manifested in the knowing lyrics of tracks like "Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid To Know About" and "The Punks are Writing Love Songs".
Like most genres twee's soul is contested: is it about childish fun and upbeat music, or a genuine refusal of a still-masculine society and a narrow-minded rockist music industry? Or is it simply composed of people too sensitive for their times writing lovely songs about girls they're too scared to speak to? Middle-class perhaps, defeatist maybe, but always music for people who desperately need music that understands what they feel like. And equally importantly music that maybe they can make themselves, an act which can complete the circle of empathy - feeling something, hearing it expressed, and then expressing it yourself. It's punk for people who get beaten up by punks.
