Sellout watch: Idolator demurs
Idolator ridicules Hitsville’s position on rock sellouts. (I wrote about Santogold’s grotesque rationales for selling her songs for a Target commercial.) You can read Idolator’s extensive comments on the site, or ponder this contention here:
I like Tom Frank too, but I have to wonder if, in 2008, “rock” really has the same quotient of “perceived coolness” that it did at its genesis, or even on Sept. 24, 1991. If anything, I’d say that the form’s darker days—which, yes, include some “selling out” on the part of its biggest names, from the awful of-the-moment dreck that so many legacy artists put out in the ’80s to the “suggestions” that certain bands work with proven songwriters (Diane Warren, anyone?) to the selling off of certain once-iconic songs to any brand that’ll have them, as well as the recent fragmentation of music, where artists like Santogold create music for and disseminate to, well, an audience that would argue about these sorts of points—has resulted in its coolness quotient going down some. If there is “coolness” (itself a loaded word), it’s not necessarily because of the music; it’s often tied up in ideas of exclusivity or “trading up” to fame in other arenas, whether they’re related to pure celebrity or acting or what-have-you. Pop music has become such a dominant idiom that people almost take it for granted.
I’m pretty sure it all comes down to that last sentence. There has always been pop music, populated by grinning figureheads doing what they have to do to become popular and maintain their visibility in a crowded marketplace. That’s a fine and honorable profession, from Patti Page to Maroon 5. And once in a while they create art, accidentally.
Rock music is something slightly different. I’m willing to debate what exactly rock music is, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve helping sell crap on TV.
As I’ve mentioned before, rock may be dead and this is a moot issue. But we’re in a weird area when this sort of thing is not only accepted, but the few dissenting voices are routinely attacked. (I got dinged by Idolator when the mighty Moby Quotient first reared its noble head.) I suspect that what’s going to happen is that, as has happened before, an appalled kid out there even now is preparing a thunderclap or two to remind us that we have been collectively taking leave of our senses of late.
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“I’m willing to debate what exactly rock music is, but I’m pretty it doesn’t involve helping sell crap on TV.”
so does ‘lust for life’ not count as rock music anymore, then? or ‘won’t get fooled again’?
i’m not trying to lead a horde against dissenters or anything. there was something about the criticism of santogold’s statements, which i thought were pretty matter-of-fact, that seemed very knee-jerk and really rankled with me. it’s not 1991 anymore, but the concept of ’selling out’ is still the norm among a *lot* of rock writers and i think in an era where fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for music it needs to be rethought, if not thrown out entirely. assuming that music (not to mention music that will be aesthetically pleasing!) will just happen without financing assumes a lot of privilege and it’s something that is rarely talked about.
as far as the idea that an appalled kid is preparing some cobain-style world-changing “thunderclap”… i’m pessimistic about the possibility of that happening because of the sheer amount of noise out there, the subcultures, the fact that fewer and fewer people seem to *want* to look outside their little bubbles, even in the face of tragedy and upheaval. at the very least, i don’t think any tremors this new artist causes will resemble a thunderclap … it’ll probably be more like a slowly gathering snowball rolling down a steep mountain.
Hey Bill, interesting posts on rock sellouts. It’s not hard to poke holes in Santi White’s rationale. But it makes me wonder how you look at other so-called “sellouts?” Nobody seems to knock Randy Newman for writing commercials. Pete Townshend has sold his music for commercials for decades, and people still think highly of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” (Will more people remember the Who for the CSI series’ theme songs than as a powerful rock band of an earlier period?)
Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what musicians do with their songs. The argument that rock is something different made sense when I was 24, but it just seems specious now. I can remember getting upset once in the ‘70s about “Revolution” being used to sell tennis shoes after reading accounts by fans about how it ruined the song’s meaning for them. That was the last time; if a song changes meaning because of the context in which you hear it, it’s not much of a song, or a memory for that matter. And I never think of footwear when I hear “Revolution.”
There was a time when I believed that rock was “something slightly different,” too. But I didn’t know about Townshend selling songs back then, or that Cream made a Falstaff commercial, or that the mere act of signing to a major label might be considered a “sellout.” We didn’t realize that Newman wrote the upbeat “I’m a Pepper” at the same time he was coming up with the decidedly downbeat “Sail Away.”
I asked Newman about selling songs for commercials back in the ‘90s. There are many of his songs, “Sail Away” is one example, that he would never license. Others, he said, are fair game; when Colgate came to use “I Love to See You Smile” in a commercial, he sold it. Has that knowledge changed my feelings about Newman’s artistry? Are you kidding?
Hey, I admire Tom Waits, Neil Young and others for not selling their songs to commercials, too. But this seems like a non-issue. To knock everybody who has sold a song for an ad seems awfully simplistic to me. I’m curious what your feelings are about “selling out” in a more general sense.
I was just introduced to you by the Canadian, CBC, Radio program Q. Very interesting dialogue. I agree with all I heard you say about a lack of integrity exhibited by those shilling their music.
I’ll return again to read more of your blog!
Ani DiFranco was quoted some time back saying something that is more true today, (thanks to the digital environment enhancing and expanding the physical touring world), than ever: “If you are disgustingly sincere and terribly diligent, there are ways for any serious artist to operate outside the corporate structure.”
People can rationalize their choices all they want - but the bottom line is still the same. You don’t need ads to get your music out to people. You don’t need to make a choice between going with Starbucks or a major label. etc. etc.
It’s possible to achieve success in rock and other forms of popular music without shilling. Whether you measure success commercially and/or artistically, it’s a wonderful time to be a creator in music.
Yup. Lust for Life and Won’t Get Fooled Again don’t count as rock anymore. They are now jingles. It’s terrifying how unwilling to accept that fact people are, but just saying “they still rawk” doesn’t make it so. They don’t. Also, aesthetically pleasing music has happened without financing before. This is a fact, and not an assertion. Really!
This is actually a very old debate. Was Elvis ever the same after Sam Philips sold his contract to RCA? He did some great stuff, but never again Mystery Train, Blue Moon of Kentucky or Milk Cow Blues. Nothing with that purity. And what about the “betrayal” of folk music perpetrated by Dylan–Judas, indeed. It still sticks with me, Oh these many years later, a Sunday afternoon watching a basketball game, during one of the commercial breaks of which, I beheld the spectacle of Nissan trucks tearing up some archaic highland turf in a mechanized polo game to the stirring opening synthesiser strains and crashing chords of “Baba O’Riley.” I still blast that song but always somewhere in my thoughts is the dismaying memory of that particular betrayal.
But, truth be told, wasn’t rock always about some poor white kid “making it” big? I forget exactly what the Ray Davies song is on Lola, Powerman and the Money go Round, it might be Top Of the Pops, but at the end the crass manager says, “Now we can really make some money!”
I don’t understand why you feel like you have something at stake if your favorite artist uses their song for an advertisement. Does it REALLY “worsen” the song? Could it really retroactively cheapen a recording you found pleasurable to begin with? Sure, I cringe at all these Beatles songs in advertisements. Then I change the channel and move on. If you could just get over the concept of rock as something beyond simply aesthetic production and composition choices in music, maybe you’d be okay.
I don’t expect you to headbang during a Carribean Cruise commercial, but like the dude above mentioned, there’s Lust For Life, one of the most “rockin” tunes ever, blasting away. I will argue with you till the sun goes down if you’re going to insist that the presence of someone’s music or EVEN someone writing an original jingle for an ad at all lessens their recorded output or how hard the “rock” in concert.
I think people moved on from the 1991 “sell out” idea because troubled and confused people like Cobain took it to its logical conclusion. Dude shotgunned himself in the face because, in part, he thought he was a sell out. That’s preposterous.
There might be a kid out there about to form a “thunderclap.” That’s great. I hope he doesn’t find this blog post and ever let the “sell out” argument enter his brain because if his “thunder clap” is really good, I hope the mofo gets paid.
[…] of the smart comments my contentious commentary on rock sellouts have gotten. You can read them all here. I’m going to discuss them in a series of […]
You young people are all so cynical! Now its us oldsters trying to talk ethics, when the kids are all about getting paid. Seriously: I just graded two hundred papers by (supposedly) super smarties who argued that universal health care is necessary not because its moral or just but because it will save us all money in the long run. Which, incidentally, is why they think that obesity, particularly childhood obesity, is practically a criminal offense - because it costs us all money. I see that same “bottom line” argument in all these arguments defending commercials, and it makes me sad for people. Clearly “you say you want a revolution” truly was demeaned when it was made into a commercial, because no one gets it now.
BTW dude shotgunned himself in the face because he was a heroin addict, not because he thought he was a sellout. Though he probably looked askance at all the people around him who were. Can you say Sonic Youth?
[…] bands should sell their songs for use in TV commercials. Hitsville’s original post drew some substantive comments, which I am highlighting in ongoing […]