Well I guess this is growing up

Today, we all are (apparently) Arcade Fire fans.

Please, don't confuse my snark for displeasure. Arcade Fire are a great band and deserve whatever accolades come their way. But somehow this feels less like a victory and more like watching something you love slip away.

For what feels like the past ten years, the Grammys have meant almost nothing to any serious music fan. And even less to casual music fans. Serious music fans are lucky if a handful of artists considered "good" win anything of merit (and it's always off-camera anyway). Mainstream fans already know what they like. A trophy changes no one's mind. I am sure the Academy Awards committee has a good laugh over the music industry's most important night of the year -- the one which manages to celebrate the most safe and mainstream manifestations of it's art form and still screw it up.

Think of all the iconic Grammy moments. Milli Vanilli. Alicia Keys winning a number of trophies far too large for her to carry. Elton John and Eminem. I list these disparate things with less than 100% certainty they didn't happen during MTV's Video Music Awards or some other music award show no one cares about for more than the day after it airs.

But last night one of us -- one of the good guys -- finally broke through, took down the Biebers and the Gagas and the Antebellums and changed the music world forever.

The thing is, Arcade Fire is pretty fucking popular. And I don't mean just with the cool kids. I mean, they won a Grammy, they must be popular. Kidding aside, they cracked your parent's subconscious by attaching "Wake Up" to Where the Wild Things Are (a film which I am sure falls into "the trailer is markedly better than the feature" category). Their songs were used in NFL broadcasts. Honestly, they are just a slower-developing, more critcally accepted Kings of Leon at this point. Now, with a trophy to show for it.

As fans of any degree of something labeled as "indie" (or counterculture or whatever tag you choose) will tell you, the day you watch your favorite things grow up and are co-opted by the masses is a sad, angry one. I bet this is how Watchmen fans felt. Or Nirvana fans. On the one hand, yay! Success for the thing you like! On the other, "these people don't like X like I do." But once things go from writing on the wall, to watching the acceptance speech, well it's tough to go back.

It can be done. I watched M.I.A. go from unheard of, to "Paper Planes" becoming every college girl's anthem, to obscurity again. "So, what do you guys think of MAYA? Oh, you remember M.I.A., right?" I'll stop the hypothetical there. Radiohead half did it, performing at the Grammys while still being awesome. But even they are in the Guitar Band video games, where a new generation can learn how mediocre Pablo Honey is via "Creep."

I don't love these artists any less than I did pre-breakthrough (well, a little). But they lose...something. An edge? A mystique? A feeling of intimacy? They won't mean as much to me as the bands I love who will (hopefully) never breakthrough (sorry, guys).

I've learned nearly all my Facebook friends are Arcade Fire fans today. Who knew? It's the most pretentious thing one can do -- decry something once loved after it becomes popular -- but I feel it happening. Arcade Fire just seems less special now that millions of people are listening to Funeral for the first time. The chances I hear "Ready to Start" or "Month of May" in some bar just went up by 1,000 percent.

I want to wish them well. To wish them all the best on whatever wonderful opportunities await them post-Grammy. But I can't. I won't wish them ill, but indifference. I'll buy (pirate) their next record and probably enjoy it. But I'll scratch them off the list of "bands to see before I die." I don't feel like fighting hundreds of thousands of people through Ticketmaster the day they go on sale, selling out Madison Square Garden.

Welcome to the mainstream.