Medium, Meet Three Imaginary Girls
Seattle’s sparkly indie-pop press is now live on Medium!
The Imaginary “Behind the Music” backstory
Three Imaginary Girls is a Seattle-based indie music website. I launched TIG with my musical bestie and partner-in-crime Imaginary Liz back in 2002 — before iPhones, social media, and blogs— with the goal of documenting our show-going escapades with boundless enthusiasm for the burgeoning music scene around us.
We enlisted a third friend, created our website, and named it Three Imaginary Girls, both as an homage to The Cure (their debut album is called Three Imaginary Boys) and as a nod to who we were: three women attending local live shows and relaying the experience to our readers in a familiar, approachable voice.
We aimed to educate, delight, and elevate our music scene by shining a light into darkened clubs and championing the incredible sounds we heard and community we found.
And elevate it we did.
We soon realized we’d become an integral part of the scene we were documenting. By attending shows with pads and pens in hand, people would get curious. Band members approached us and asked who were we writing for; we’d exchange contact info and links; they’d share the links to our website with their fan base; this would send more people to our website, and subsequently, more and more fans started attending local music shows. By championing bands and rallying up fans alike, the Seattle mid-aughts indie music boom had begun — with us as “Seattle music scene’s shrewdest cheerleaders.”
We were some of the earliest champions of great Northwest bands such as the Decemberists, Math & Physics Club, Fleet Foxes, Visqueen, Band of Horses, The Long Winters, Shelby Earl, The Thermals, and Death Cab for Cutie, all of which went on to find international success.
Three Imaginary Girls thrived alongside the bands and venues. Our traffic expanded exponentially, and soon we were asked to sponsor live shows and events. We also hosted one-of-a-kind parties such as our Rockstar Karaoke Bashes and various tribute nights for our favorite bands (like The Magnetic Fields and Liz Phair), which consistently sold out popular show venues like the Crocodile and Neumos.
It stands to reason that listening to live bands and hosting events is fun. But knowing we were responsible for elevating fun for so many people in our city brought a joy that transcended even the greatest guitar riff. Three Imaginary Girls had our hometown reveling in a shared love of music.
It’s hard to describe the rush of having a unique idea brought to life and relished by hundreds of like-minded people around you.
My favorite example was our very first event; to celebrate our first birthday, we hosted a “Rockstar Suicide Karaoke Party.” We asked 15 of our favorite local musicians to put themselves on the silent auction block, and fans could bid on the right to pick which song they had to karaoke. Whichever song had the highest bid when the auction expired, won, and the rockstar had to come onstage and sing the song, without knowing what it would be. The venue was so reluctant to take on this oddball idea of an event, they would only give us a Tuesday night.
We sold out the venue — and sang our hearts out until closing time.
Since that time, the site has grown to include reviews of albums, live music, film, interviews and more, in Seattle and beyond. The site thrives on constantly discovering and nurturing great new bands and sharing them with the rest of the (imaginary) world.
Life can get serious as one grows older. For so many, work and obligation can take over and not leave room for levity.
But fun is important.
It fuels creativity and innovation, and sustains and inspires us. Three Imaginary Girls helped show Seattle to value fun as a moral imperative, not as an afterthought.
Now we want to bring that sense of fun, creativity, and musical exploration to the rest of the world, via Medium.
Three Imaginary Girls on Medium
Firstly let me state this, calmly and rationally: OMG WE’RE SO EXCITED TO LAUNCH TIG 2.0 ON MEDIUM!!!!!!!!!!
I started writing on Medium in earnest just a few months ago. The community and support and fun I’ve found here have been — well, it’s been life-affirming, possibly even life-changing. Once I learned the tools as a writer and eventually, as an editor and publisher, I knew this would be an outstanding place for Three Imaginary Girls. Why?
- Here we have the ability to share our love of music discovery and storytelling with fellow music fans from all over the world.
- Here we have the ability to focus on just being creative — because the technical tools are seamless and easy to use.
- Here we have the ability to find new writers from all over, and to boost your work — and maybe you can even earn some money for your words.
We can’t wait to get started.
If any of this sounds interesting to you, either as a writer or reader, please follow us, leave a comment to let us know, and read on while we answer a few questions…
What kind of writers are you looking for?
Three Imaginary Girls focuses on musical discovery and storytelling.
We feature live show and record reviews, interviews, virtual mixtapes, photo essays, and other writing that helps readers discover and share excitement around new (or new-to-you) music. We also love to share stories about the impact music (or other elements of pop culture) have had in your life.
Want to write about your favorite 90s-era Glaswegian noisy indie-rock band or your latest micro-song jangle-pop obsession? Great!
Want to share the lifelong impact of your favorite band, or share a favorite themed karaoke set list? That’s also excellent!
Want to write a tribute story when your favorite Irish chanteuse or game show host passes? Yes, yes, and yes.
We want your stories.
The TIG aesthetic spans from the smallest indie artists to huge stars, but generally focused on indie-pop, indie-rock, twee, lo-fi independent stuff. We also love britpop, shoegaze, new wave, riot grrl, scratchy lo-fi demos on cassette, bedroom pop on colored vinyl, 80s arena rock, 70s yacht rock — okay maybe those last two are just me and my soft spots. But if you wanna dazzle us with a piece about Michael McDonald* and Kenny Loggins, I’m not gonna be the one to stop you.
(Liz might be.)
((*Imaginary Liz here. I particularly take issue with Michael McDonald. “Shine, sweet freedom,” gross. Don’t shine your light on me!))
So, do we have to write about Seattle bands?
Nope! Taking Three Imaginary Girls to Medium means we want to hear about the exciting niches of local music happening in your city, or on whichever corner of the internet where you discover new music.
Do you have to be a girl to write for Three Imaginary Girls?
Again, nope! We welcome writers from any and all gender identities to contribute. We do have a bit of femme flair to our aesthetic a strict no misogynists allowed policy. If you can hang with that, then we wanna hang with you.
Who are your favorite bands/artists of all time?
This is such a hard question to answer, and Liz and I certainly don’t have identical tastes — though we have a lot of overlap.
Three Imaginary Girls RIYL:
- Dana: The Magnetic Fields, Nick Cave, Bowie, Prince, Tullycraft, PJ Harvey, Lana Del Ray, Squeeze, Hers, Liz Phair, Mitski, Visqueen, Taylor Swift, the Long Winters, Carissa’s Wierd, the Postal Service, Linda Ronstadt, the Smiths, REM, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Courtney Barnett, Angel Olson, Elvis Costello, Girl in Red, Wolf Alice, Thunderpussy, James, Amy Winehouse, Liz Phair, Childish Gambino, Math & Physics Club, and the Cure.
- Liz: Blur, Bis, Ballboy, BOAT, Bluetones, Bright Eyes, and other bands that don’t start with B like Allo Darlin’, Cub, Nana Grizol, Tullycraft, Heavenly, the Wedding Present, Le Tigre, Tacocat, the Thermals, REM, Math & Physics Club, New Bad Things, the Stone Roses, Billy Bragg, Sukpatch, They Might Be Giants, Los Campesinos, the Smiths, Urusei Yatsura, the Lucksmiths, the White Stripes, and more (why do I always blank when asked such an important list!).
Is the original Three Imaginary Girls website still up and running?
Yes — well, sort of.
Life caught up with us. Liz and I have big dayjobs, families, and other responsibilities that made going to shows 4–6 nights per week and running an imaginary (read as: unpaid) website at that level impossible. Those pom poms got too heavy to carry.
So things have slowed down.
I’ve been Imaginary Emeritus since 2009.
Liz has kept the site going, with help from some other amazing imaginary contributors. But our focus on writing about music discovery all but disappeared as we got absorbed in other areas of our lives.
And we’ve realized, we really miss it. We’re both still huge music fans. Liz hosts the Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About radio show weekly. I take my kids to loads of live shows and love storytelling about how music has impacted my life.
We’ve both missed working together. Liz is like the Paul to my John, or the Sean to my John, or the John to my John. Which is to say — we are each other’s creative complements. We just click. We balance and inspire and hype each other, and together we created something once-in-a-lifetime magical.
Or so we thought. Seems like something that good shouldn’t happen only once.
We’re ready to have that energy in our lives again.
So look out, Medium. We’re here!
Wanna write for Three Imaginary Girls?
I might write as All My Little Words, but in my heart, I am forever Imaginary Dana. I’m giddy to think of what lies ahead for Three Imaginary Girls here on Medium!
Ready to be part of the fun? Just leave a comment on this article with one of your desert island records and we’ll add you as a writer.
(I’ll start: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea by PJ Harvey.
Greetings!
I’m All My Little Words, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I write about career, music, feminism and perimenopause, cooking, ambition, fun, parenting, and more, with an offbeat perspective on how and why the world works (or doesn’t).
If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee? (Make mine an iced oat milk decaf mocha, please and thank you.)
