Updated: Sellout Watch: Billy Corgan & U2—The comments
The 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 like a principled guy. And he just finished a presumably remunerative reunion tour. And now U2, once haranguing us about iPods, now has a tour sponsored by the Blackberry, creating all sorts of cognitive dissonance in the minds of celebrity-influenced potential smart phone buyers.
Comments:
Jeremiah:
Do music artists have an social obligation to remain poor, or at least, non-wealthy?
Can the work of a wealthy artist be taken seriously?
Can someone have a corporate affiliation *and* artistic vision, or are these mutually exclusive concepts?
HV: I didn’t say anything about wealth! There’s any number of ways a celebrity can make money, obviously. I’m juat drawing a line at a certain place, based on what I feel are issues inherent in the artistic medium they’re working in. And again, I’m not proposing a law. I’m just calling public attention and heaping ridicule. Entirely legitimate responses.
And yes, ultimately, they are mutally exclusive concepts. Rock ‘n’ roll is a cruel mistress.
J.T. Ramsay:
Is “Sellout Watch” really appropriate for a band that has been doing cross-promotional stuff forever? They did a ‘Batman Forever’-themed video in 1996!
HV: Movies are a gray area. Whatever. I thought the original iPod arrangement was bogus. The issue isn’t how cool the product is. The issue is selling one’s celebrity to boost a corporate product. If Bono liked iPods so much he should have done it for free. It’s a slippery slope. One day it’s an iPod and the next it’s a Garden Weasel. The problem is that at some point the artist gets to thinking, Will this sound good on a Pattery Barn commercial?
Jeremiah:
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….
HV: I don’t know the details of Corgan’s contracts, but I can’t imagine that, either in his first Caroline/Virgin deals (at the height of the image-conscious alternarock era) or anything that has transpired since, post-stardom, he would not retain veto power at the very least, and probably complete control through his publishing. See next comment.
JMG:
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.
HV: Just because it is a (not “the) new business model doesn’t mean it’s not selling out. Artists can of course do what they want with what they produce. The problem comes when one minute they’re up on stage acting all defiant and counter-cultural, and the next they’re backstage on a cell selling their songs to a SUV commercial.
Hitsville’s proposal: That artists with that in mind should take the time to stop at some point during their live performances to say, “Hey, these songs are available for purchase by any company looking to stir up a little brand excitiment with a contemporary youth culture soundtack. Call my agent or details; we can show you how your sales can positively jump with an exciting new sound to help make your image sing!”—and then go back to rockin’ the house.
Joe:
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.
Jody Macgregor:
“Not just any commercial, but a fucking terrible commercial.”
The kid’s got a point there.
HV: And … isn’t the song about suicidal feelings?
Of course, that’s how a lot of people feel when they see their Visa interest rates.
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HV: Just because it is a (not “the) new business model doesn’t mean it’s not selling out. Artists can of course do what they want with what they produce. The problem comes when one minute they’re up on stage acting all defiant and counter-cultural, and the next they’re backstage on a cell selling their songs to a SUV commercial.
JMG: Name one artist whose game is to act not “counter cultural” or otherwise weird. Acting “counter cultural” IS sort of apart of the act at this point, Bill. All the time Cobain was acting oh-so-tortured he went from Sub Pop to Geffen, Nirvana was being played on the radio and MTV, he was willingly on the cover of a zillion magazines and went on a world tour though he acted oh-so-tortured to be doing it. Counter cultural to what? The business of it all was exactly the same. After a brief moment of doing it themselves, a lot of these artists just dressed the part of being “counter cultural.”
Hitsville’s proposal: That artists with that in mind should take the time to stop at some point during their live performances to say, “Hey, these songs are available for purchase by any company looking to stir up a little brand excitiment with a contemporary youth culture soundtack. Call my agent or details; we can show you how your sales can positively jump with an exciting new sound to help make your image sing!”—and then go back to rockin’ the house.
JMG: Sarcasm does not translate well over the internet, Bill.
Everyone sells out.
EVERYONE.
Everyone has a price.
EVERYONE.
DMG: Right, most rock artists affect counter-cultural values in one way or another. Pop artists don’t, almost by definition. Rock artists who sell their songs to help sell some shitty product deserve to have the disconnect pointed out. I’m not proposing a law. I’m just saying I think it’s selling out.
(I withdraw the word shitty in that last sentence. *Any* product.)
Where’s the line? Should John Updike have done Brooks Brothers commercials? DFW for Ikea? Poets get no money—Maya Angelou for Estee Lauder? How about politicians? “Russ Feingold for Progressive Insurance!”
What’s your tolerance level? Is there any public figure at all who shouldn’t put their celebrity to use selling some sort of sugar water or overlarge vehicle?
Cobain’s story is a much more complex and, as you note, messier one. My own thoughts on it are here:
http://archive.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2001/09/24/cobain/print.html
> Right, most rock artists affect counter-cultural values in one way or another.
I’m not actually sure “most” is true any more. I remember when the Pixies broke, Black Francis said in an interview that his father had paid for them to record their demo (or something, I may not be remembering it exactly), so any idea that rock = rebellion had never entered his mind.
To me, Updike selling for Brooks Brothers wold be LESS bothersome than a band licensing a song, actually, since it wouldn’t involve the work itself. What’s so viscerally disturbing about songs showing up in commercials is that the meaning of the song itself is now tied up in selling something. (I admire Yo La Tengo’s approach: when someone wants to buy one of their songs, they’ve said, no, you can’t have it, but for a fee we’ll write you a piece of music to be used for the commercial only.)
That said, as I get older I feel more and more that it’s not really my place to be telling some band — particularly a young band whose financial future may not necessarily be secure — what decisions they should be making about songs they wrote.
The poster who asks “do music artists have an obligation to be ..non-wealthy,” points out an interesting aspect of this debate. Over the last five hundred years, western civilization has evolved a situation where everyone buys into the belief that artists are supposedly doing some kind of magical labor that’s worth more than all other kinds of labor. And I detect in many of the posters here a deepseated belief that this is so; thus, everyone has a “right” to sell their labor for advertising - because otherwise, you know, they might not be wealthy, and that would be a real problem, since rock is a spectacle that depends in part on its stars being wealthy to uphold the ideology of desire.
On one level the Azoffs and Rapinos of the world are simply reminding us that rock as-we-know-it is a collaborative effort - there wouldn’t be a spectacle without them - and they want their pay day too. It’s easy to call them greedy pigs, but they are no more so than Corgan and Bono and Co; indeed they may work harder on an hourly basis.
It’s also saddening to see that kid in the youtube video who takes Corgan’s “art” so seriously. Clearly he values it a lot higher than Corgan himself does - which is odd.
It is great to see that most people don´t have your teeange mentality.
Who fucking cares if someone sells out, you only have to care for the music.
all critics are frustrated.