Betwixt 'fey' and 'twee'

I was out doing some errands in the Metro Manilapolis, and while I was buying some Biogesic at Mercury, the song Hey, Soul Sister by Train started playing over the store’s speakers. I fled as quickly as I could, but as soon as I entered another store, there it was again: the same blast of ukulele doggerel playing over yet another store’s loudspeakers, forcing me to dry-swallow two Biogesic on the spot.

It’s hard to be this twee with the weight of the world on your shoulders, but somehow Coldplay manages.

What’s up with that song? It’s already two years old, and it’s still hanging around like a bad STD. The song that single-handedly made ukuleles uncool again (after a brief resurgence of cool when some Hawaiian guy beautifully played Somewhere Over the Rainbow on YouTube) irritates the nervous system more effectively than any Jennifer Aniston movie. Perhaps it’s the refrain, which goes something like this: “Hey, soul sister, ain’t that Mister Mister on the radio, stereo…” Well, which is it? The radio? Or the stereo? Take a stand, for God’s sakes! Man up! Or maybe it’s the diluted, fake reggae rhythm the ukulele scratches out that makes this song so hard to swallow, harder than a couple of Biogesics.

Or maybe it has something to with its basic level of twee-ness. Twee should be distinguished from fey, especially when we’re talking pop music, because the two terms often get confused. To help us understand better, let us turn to Mr. Webster. “Twee” refers to something “affectedly clever, dainty, elegant” or “mincingly cute or sweet.” It’s that mincing quality that makes one want to hurl upon hearing Hey, Soul Sister.

“Fey,” on the other hand, refers to something or someone “fated or doomed to death” in the old Romantic swooning sense, or alternately “whimsical, shy, elfin or otherworldly.”

By this criteria, we might think of Winona Ryder’s character in Beetlejuice as “fey,” or perhaps singer Morrissey. (Tina Fey, interestingly, is never fey. The creator/producer of 30 Rock probably has bigger balls than Ryder and Morrissey put together.)

Fey refers to a kind of world-weary malaise, a kind of sickness unto death or Byronic pose that afflicts certain poets and singers. The list of fey performers perhaps starts with Nick Drake. As great as he was, there was always an air of sighing otherworldliness about him, as though a stiff North England breeze might blow him over and away into the heather. Plus he was apparently fated to death, as his suicide in 1974 proves.

He’s not the only anemic English pop star on the list. David Bowie always did a good trade in fey, in his early years at least. (Sometimes with a dash of twee added for good measure, as in Kooks.) Certainly, Marc Bolan of T-Rex, another one fated to premature death, was a spokesperson for fey rock in his early Woodland Bop days. And he was nothing if not “whimsical, elfin or otherworldly.”

In fact, the Brits seem to have a lock on fey, emaciated singers, but look again across the pond and we find such 4AD bands as Red House Painters, whose adenoidal singer Mark Kozelek evinced an almost heroic posture of ennui. The doomed Jeff Buckley certainly had his brushes with fey, with his languorous high octaves, women’s shirts (a move borrowed from Morrissey) and unkempt hair. Meanwhile, Elliott Smith’s battles with depression on record were fey at first, then turned twee toward the end.

In modern times, fey is often a code word for “gay,” as in the case of someone like American Idol contestant Adam Lambert who can come on like Freddie Mercury in one breath, then seem as limp-wristed as Ru Paul in the next. But as another side of gay culture rears its head, “fierce” has come to replace “fey” in the self-description department, thanks to Project Runway contestant Christian Siriano. He’s someone you would never call “fey.”

Urban Dictionary online tells us of the existence of “fey bans” — round sunglasses with “garishly colored frames, usually worn by people wanting to be considered hippyishly cool” — and disparaged by actual Ray-Ban wearers. By this criteria alone, the Olsen Twins are the poster girls of fey.

And what of twee? Does any-one remember the ‘60s singer Tiny Tim, he of the curly black hair and ukulele who made the rounds playing ‘20s tunes like Tiptoe Through the Tulips in an affected, high voice? That’s twee.

Twee is anything overly precious, bijoux, sentimental or in love with itself. Bands like Panic at the Disco strike one as twee, along with the aforementioned Train. Jack Johnson is borderline twee, having launched a thousand hammock-swinging, acoustic-strumming purveyors of laidback self-contentment. Certainly Bruno Mars and Maroon 5 are twee.

Two times the fey: The Olsen Twins sporting their “fey bans.”

Note that twee isn’t always sick-making. Some twee bands are good. The occasionally twee band Ciudad are excellent.

The presence of glockenspiels or tentative vocals in your music is one sign that you’re twee. By that measure, the Velvet Underground opened up a big ol’ can of twee with their first-ever song, Sunday Morning. They say only a thousand people bought their first record, but every one of them formed a twee band.

The Velvet Undergound’s After Hours, sung by drummer Maureen Tucker, is a great twee song, while I’m Sticking With You, also sung by Tucker, is nauseatingly twee. Especially since it’s on the soundtrack to Juno.

In fact, let’s just go on record and say that everything on the Juno soundtrack is twee, simply by association with the movie Juno. Belle & Sebastian — no strangers to twee — appear on there, along with The Kinks’ foppish A Well-Respected Man, Cat Power, and even Sonic Youth, who carve out a feedback-laden homage to twee with their cover of The Carpenters’ Superstar.

Wikipedia traces the origins of twee pop to English bands that were decidedly less aggressive or full of angst than the prevailing punks. Aztec Camera comes in as an obvious touchstone, while Prefab Sprout opened up whole new vistas of twee with songs that were “affectedly clever” and “mincingly cute” all at the same time.

Coldplay, by any measure, are twee.

My Bloody Valentine is a band that has a lot of twee to answer for: their allegiance to pretty, stacked melodies embedded in layers of blissful feedback has launched a thousand shoegazer bands, even some in our own midst, such as Sleepwalk Circus. In fact, shoegazing itself is a bit twee.

In summary: “fey” applies to bands and singers who usually take themselves way too seriously, while “twee” outfits tend to be less concerned about heavy meaning, because they’re so in love with their own musical sandboxes that it tends to keep the blues away.

And The Carpenters? Well, The Carpenters just kick ass.