Why the sincerity of a veteran folk-rock duo is exactly what we need right now.
 | By Max Strasser Sunday Opinion Editor |
When Lydia Polgreen told me she wanted to write a column about the Indigo Girls, I was, I confess, a tiny bit skeptical. |
It's not that I think Lydia can only report from disaster zones and war zones or that she has to write about timely social issues (though as an editor those are probably the areas where I'm more comfortable). I know from our many conversations that Lydia is as thoughtful about pop culture as she is about politics. It's just that the Indigo Girls, a female folk-rock duo whose biggest hit came out more than three decades ago, seemed … so deeply uncool. |
That's actually kind of the point, it turns out. The Indigo Girls aren't just uncool, they are cringe. As Lydia writes in her column: |
Cringe: the ultimate insult of our era. It implies a kind of pathetic attachment to hope, to sincerity, to possibility. Cringe is not exclusively female; the musical "Hamilton," written by a man, Lin-Manuel Miranda, is definitely cringe. But in these hardened times, it implies a kind of naïveté that so often gets coded as feminine, a silly belief that human beings, through sincere effort, might actually improve themselves and the world. That things might, somehow, get better. Feminism? Definitely cringe. And if feminism is cringe, then lesbians are double cringe. And the Indigo Girls? We're talking cringe squared. |
And yet cringe is exactly what we all need right now. Amid a culture of cynicism and rage, embracing sincerity is, Lydia says, a way of fostering something else: solidarity. Yes, this column about the Indigo Girls is ultimately also about politics, about how to build a better world. Along the way, Lydia detours into other important topics: She writes masterfully about how music travels with us throughout our lives; how American culture has — for all its faults — shed some of the misogyny of the 1990s; how everyone is listening to the Indigo Girls these days. My skepticism was misplaced. |
While I was editing Lydia's column, I did my editorial due diligence: I put on my headphones, opened up Spotify and clicked on "Closer to Fine," the Indigo Girls' 1989 hit, which also appears in the new "Barbie" movie. Sitting at my desk, I found myself nodding along, humming even. No, not cool. But it turns out, pretty good. As Lydia says, "The Indigo Girls are great. Cringe but true." |
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