Can you see the twee me?

Indiepopsters worldwide were excited to see the word "twee" written up in William Safire's NYT magazine column over the weekend. Me, I always thought of it as a good buzzword rather than a bad one. So do the friends of Kittyjoyce over at twee.net. (For a more contemporary usage, see this article.) Matt Haynes is certainly the right person to speak definitively about this, although Safire's last sentence in this excerpt may suggest he isn't entirely sold.

"In the U.K., the term twee is used only as an insult," says Matt Haynes of Sarah Records, home to many of the twee-pop groups. "It means 'unbearably cute with no real substance.' But later, twee-pop was used to denote a certain style of music, and people began to look on it as a description rather than an insult." Will Hermes, an American music writer, defines it as "nonmacho pop music with an indie-rock sensibility that critiques and tweaks rock's butch posturing."

We finally have a synonym for the American derogation itsy-poo.