Sellout Watch—Billy Corgan
This is kind of sad; you’d think Corgan, a not unprincipled guy, made a lot of money during his fairly charmed career, and presumably made some retirement money last fall with the Pumpkins’ reunion tour.
He’s lost at least one idealistic fan, in the form of this industrious poster:
6 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Was Corgan lucky enough to have deals where he actually administers the rights to his work? Is it even his to begin with?
I ask (because I don’t know). If its a situation where his publisher just went over his head, then maybe the blame should be placed there….
No Jeremiah, Corgan has control over the rights to their work by virtue of the fact that they re-negotiated their contract with Virgin records right after Mellon Collie became huge. He can license his songs as he pleases.
But on that note, Bill, I fail to see how this is selling out. This is the new business model. Sure it sucks, but if it gets some kid to ask “hey, what’s that?” and provokes him/her to buy “Siamese Dream”, then Nirvana, then Garbage, then Hole, then the Ramones, then Television, then Velvet Underground, then Leonard Cohen, et. al., then I think it was a job well done. Though I’m sure Steve Albini might have something to say about it given his well known spat about that record with a certain critic.
Sure, it means something because Corgan has previously been very protective of this song in particular…..but that being said, I don’t think it means that people will suddenly stop liking Siamese Dream or any of the other work just because :gasp: the opening notes for “Today” is in a Visa commercial. Why the young fan above (and those like him) take this stuff so seriously is far beyond me. The same people who bitch about this also buy their clothes at Urban Outfitters…..which plays licensed music by the same artists who supposedly are too principled to not license their songs. Moby’s “Play” was used EVERYWHERE because he licensed the hell out of that album, but it’s still an album I enjoy. I still love Zeppelin….I don’t care that “Rock and Roll” was used in a Cadillac commercial. If you’re going to be picky enough that you’ll turn your back on an artist simply because he or she licensed a song, you’re turning your back on a very large and storied group of music. Go listen to classical music…..oh wait, THAT has been used in every single classic cartoon by Warner Brothers known to man. How about we all just hum to ourselves?
I’m going to listen to Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” right now….you know, the same song that was used in a car commercial only a few short years ago.
I wish I owned a huge media company. I’d offer that young man in the second video a few hundred grand to star in a Rockstar Energy Drink commercial just to see what he’d say.
Then make a YouTube video blasting him.
“Not just any commercial, but a fucking terrible commercial.”
The kid’s got a point there.
[…] use of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Today” in that Visa commercial (YouTube link at the bottom of this post) was sadder than most; as I said, Corgan always seemed […]
Hey Bill I thought of ‘Billy & his Visa Commercial’ (Wouldn’t that make a GREAT SP album title though?) when I read this weekend’s chicago tribune story about Lynda Barry. It was sort of an obituary for her career and sort of a tribute and sort of a “How can she live knowing she’s pissed away a chance to be Matt Groening?”
To sum up in a sentence, she’s living in Wisconsin, earning a living selling her stuff on E-Bay and leading a writer’s workshop- all because she refused to “Sell out” and the alt weekly press that publishes her work exists no more. I couldn’t help but see it as the flipside to this story- Billy gets millions but his music is the soundtrack to your Visa card, Lynda was earning $135 a week (and now can’t even get that), but she got to write anything she wanted. I honestly don’t know which I’d choose.