Interesting article in the Guardian today – I don’t know who Dan Brooks is so I can’t really comment on his background or wider views.
He makes some interesting comments about the concept of “selling out” and how this was so important to bands in the 90s like Nirvana, but how the concept has now become a bit outdated and doesn’t seem to mean anything any more. Streaming algorithms (he argues) have helped to kill the concept of surprise and experimentation, and taken the mystery out of what sells and what doesn’t, so no one is bothered about acts “selling out” any more.
I know this kind of view is likely to rub some people up the wrong way on here, but I’m honestly not trying to start an argument and I do like to hear people’s views from both sides on this. I’m broadly on Dan Brooks’ side here, I think, but I can see why people would disagree with some of his pronouncements like “only a fool would write a song to make money” (a concept David Hepworth for one has argued vehemently against, as he pretty much sees all pop music as essentially driven by commerce and financial opportunism).
I had to laugh at one of the first comments, because it sounds exactly like an Afterworder. It’s not one of you lot, is it? “I’m in my 60s. I’ve been going to gigs for pushing 50 years. I personally think that music has never been more alive, exciting, accessible and varied. I’m loving every second of it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/nirvana-sell-out-data-music-industry
I’m not sure if I understand the point he’s making. In my mind, “selling out” means over-promoting with multiple lines of merchandise and sponsorships, appearing on every TV show and advertising cornflakes. The most extreme example is probably Kiss.
If you’re a more intense band like, say, Smashing Pumpkins – selling out would be dressing as a duck and trampolining with Baga Chipz on the One Show in order to get publicity and bums on seats at the O2.
There are still songs that are surprise hits that seemingly come from nowhere.
But there’s a fine line between your selling out and the one that says “as soon as you sign a record deal with the hope of having a hit you have already sold out.”
This is really a problem tat goes back to the late 60s at least, when, I recall, there was a split between ‘commercial’ and ‘underground’ musics, with strong tribal instincts and prejudices from the one towards the other (both ways).
That is definitely when the rot set in, reaching its cul-de-sac inevitability with the – try not to wince all at once – ‘indie chart’ – a.k.a. ‘the end of the end.’
If you don’t want to be the ‘Toppermost of the Poppermost,’ be a welder.
Intense though they may have been, Smashing Pumpkins were treated with immense suspicion on the early 90s scene and commonly viewed as slippery pole scaling careerists.
Quite ironic, given Billy Corgan’s latter propensity for commercial self-sabotage.
I agree he’s a bit wayward in the point he’s trying to make. The comments are quite interesting – I think the debate gets a bit more focused there.
Selling out doesn’t have the same meaning it once did, for the simple reason that we as a culture increasingly prioritize money over values, to the point where no one is ever expected to choose the latter over the former.
When I think of selling out in 2023, I don’t think of musicians, I think of sportspeople. It’s increasingly common to find top level footballers (to give but one example) who have built a personal brand on various social justice issues now jetting off to Saudi Arabia to fill their great grandchildren’s bank accounts shilling for some of the most appalling people on the planet.
And when they do so, the Internet is filled with people assuring one another that anyone would do the same in their shoes.
There is a far higher tolerance for hypocrisy than once there was, because the underlying belief is that only an idiot would ever pass up cash. Be it paying your taxes, walking the walk after giving it a load of talk, or just refusing to work for literal monsters, the default position is simple: get money. And in that context, the question of whether one should write music for the masses or for a smaller, select (yecch) crowd hardly seems pressing.
Nirvana were a perfect band because they embodied being a teenager. The odd mix of disaffection and idealism, all the noise and anger and sweetness and vulnerability. Using them as a yardstick for middle aged life in 2023 is so fabulously juvenile that it’s almost (but not quite) wonderful. We’re all meant to grow up and get over ourselves – if Dave Grohl could then there’s hope for the rest of us.
Beyond that, the Guardian article is so horribly written that it made my eyes bleed to read it. Although I am interested to learn more about Smash Mouth travelling the road Nirvana paved.
The ‘Orrible ‘Oo will teach you all you need to know about selling out.
David Crosby and his pals did not sell out. He thought about a visit to the barber’s but then decided he would not give in to The Man and let his free flag fly instead.
My pal DuCool will testify that I have not compromised my principles in any way!
You won’t find me in a barber’s shop! No siree!
Stay clear of those scissors, Arthur, and you’ll be fine.
I thought it was “freak flag”.
Thankyou @chinstroker. You are absolutely correct.
It’s been a year or two since I last listened. More fool me! That harmony singing is glorious.
“Freak”. As in Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. There’s a word whose meaning has changed throughout the years since Frank and the Mothers freaked out.
I’m going to do a Kaisfatdad Special right back atcha here and do a Youtube link – the phrase about letting your “freak flag fly” originated from Hendrix in If 6 Was 9. Terrific song!
And the line about mountains falling in the sea was already there in Ben E King’s Stand by Me.
And staying on the topic of selling out, that line near the end of Easy Rider (which had If 6 Was 9 on the soundtrack) perfectly sums up the late sixties attitude to all the danger of putting commercial gain before authenticity: “We blew it”…
Excellent clip, Arthur.
Interesting to read this:
The verbal phrase sell out in the sense of “prostitute one’s ideals or talents” is attested from 1888 (selling out).
Much earlier than expected.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sellout#:~:text=sellout%20(n.),sold%22%20is%20attested%20from%201923.
When Wyatt says “We blew it” he means (I presume) that they haven’t lived up to the ideals of the hippy counterculture to which they belong.
You can only “sell out” if you have integrity in the first place.
Boris Johnson could never ever sell out.
“only a fool would write a song to make money”
Only a Fool Would Say That.
There was a time in the sixties when it was truly believed rock music would save the world and that Dylan et al were there for art’s sake not for money’s sake. Turns out, and it’s the same today, most of them are greedy money-grabbing bastards. Doesn’t stop some of them making great music, mind….
It does seem to be the sixties this concept originated, doesn’t it? Authenticity and selling out and all that? Maybe late fifties.
Or am I wrong? Did earlier musicians and artists worry about being too commercial?
Ask Col. Tom Parker.
I think jazz musicians like composers and artists (painters) all put their lives and careers on the line for the sake of art (money for God’s sake). As modernist experimentalists they faced ridicule and bafflement from audiences but stuck doggedly to their artistic beliefs regardless, more so than any rock musician or pop star. More daring and risky. To sell out would be to do something commercial and saleable. Unthinkable for many.
The difficulty with that level of painful authenticity is the same as it always was: how to pay the rent and feed/clothe the weans
Yes but somebody has to have that determination in order that the art form develops, otherwise you wouldn’t get those innovations. It’s a form of selfishness really but they are obsessed.
Scenes/genres historically rely on defining themselves again an “other” (it’s human nature). In that sense, most musical movements have probably at some stage inculcated some variation of the concept of not selling out.
But if we’re talking about the through-line identified in the article, the youth of the 60s were going to have their revolution and change the world, but signally failed to do so (or at least failed to do so in the ways they intended).
Cobain was born in 67 and a keen student of his own childhood. His interviews and lyrics are shot through with a acknowledgement that his own generation should attempt to avoid the same fate as their parents. For a short while, when he was the biggest rock star on this planet, that concept of never selling out held sway – I recall a lot of chat about “the mistakes of the 60s”.
Then he killed himself, and there was a swing away from that concept of authenticity, that unease around money and success. It’s quite difficult to continue to follow your prophet’s path when he’s just stuck a shotgun in his own mouth.
Within a year we had Britpop. At around the same time, Hip Hop went from Black CNN to All About The Benjamins, although that would have happened regardless of Cobain’s death.
I don’t think we’ve really had a concept of “no sell out” since then. Not in the mainstream, at least, although maybe I’m forgetting someone. I do think there’s a gap in the market now for someone a little more suspicious of the establishment though.
More like late 18th / early 18th century. Keats might’ve been the original model for the struggling working class artist in his garret, dying of consumption, underappreciated by the world, but forcing out one… more… ode! Must… ode
Though probably Van Gogh is the real model, right? In the modern imagination, anyway. Wading through bogs of madness and poverty, painting simply because he HAD to, barely ever making a bean from it. Never mind that if you’d offered him fifty quid for Sunflowers he’d probably have bitten your hand off.
I’m just wondering if Rabbie Burns was the original sellout? In his peak years he upped sticks from Ayrshire (my stomping ground, so I feel an affinity) to peddle his wares wooing the lords and ladies of Edinburgh with his bawdy poetry, obviously smelling the money and opportunity. From what I understand, he became a bit of a gimmick at upper class parties, and I imagine some kind of rough ned (a technical term) from the west coast being fawned over by the trendy elite looking for some novelty.
I used to feel that for some music fans”selling out” was almost synonymous with an act becoming popular. A good friend of mine to whom I mentioned Talking Heads in an approving tone, back in the day, sneered “They sold out after Psycho Killer.” He also believed that the Ramones had “sold out” after their first album. Happily, he’s calmer about these things nowadays.
I took that to the extreme of acts selling out after the Peel session. To be fair the debut album versions were often not as good. In the case of the Gang Of Four the Damaged Goods single had the best versions. Maybe they lost some spontaneity.
In the late eighties you used to see bands, usually of the “indie” persuasion, who actively tried to “sell out”, in terms of joining an unfashionable major label, taking the shilling and trying to reach a wider audience. I know, how dare they want to be popular! It was seldom pretty though…The recent C86 book by Nige Tassell has some good stuff on this issue.
Just started reading this last night @nick-l
So far Bobbie Gillespie doesn’t come out of it well…
You should try reading his autobiography then, the man is truly laughable!
Yep, I’d heard that.
Is he the Indie Donovan?
Not so much Donovan, more a man in his fifties still desperately trying to sound cool by acting a kind of sneery 1979 version of “punk and edgy.” No other way to say it but he does sound like a serious tosser as well. Now, I always suspected much of this to some extent but although I quite like a few Primal Scream songs I just can’t take them seriously any more.
Completely agree. Screamadelica was good in its time and I really like half of xtrmintr or whatever it was called.
But yes, a tosser trying too hard.
Speaking of DONOVAN, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66224984
Definitely dodged a bullet there.
WOW! Can you imagine?
I must confess I am still prone to jettisoning my allegiance to a hitherto favourite act, should they become popular. I am suspicious even of profligate
niche acts, worried that, if I buy all their product, they’ll start coasting…..
Bob Mould has said some interesting things about the new pressures that Husker Du had once they signed to a major, for example not being allowed to manage themselves.
In retrospect he believes that being signed to Warners was effectively the point that the band started to breakup
Yes but imagine how great Hüsker Dü would’ve been if their records hadn’t sounded like a fly trapped in a kazoo. Other than the Replacements I can’t think of an example of better songs with worse production. Maybe they should’ve sold out immediately.
If the Husker Du records had the same production as Copper Blue what a wonderful world it would be.
Have always thought it a bit odd that their Warners albums aren’t much of an improvement soundwise on their SST stuff
His contention seems really not to be about ‘selling out’ or being ‘commercial’ at all (he acknowledges they were pretty bogus distinctions back in the day anyway) but rather that algorithms and sophisticated product market analysis have taken the adventure and the ‘art’ out of popular music. I don’t agree.
Firstly some of the greatest pop music was created by people who were absolutely working to be popular and shift units – from the Beach Boys and The Beatles, to Goffin/King and Dozier/Holland/Dozier, to Stevie Wonder and The Temptations. They were ‘sell outs’ before they even started, and they took tried and tested formulae and made something new and exciting with them.
And, secondly, whether you like them or not, it seems pretty clear to me that Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Lana del Rey, Michael Kiwanuka, Laura Marling and many many others are making the music they want to make, not just what the Man tells them to, and which at its best is most certainly ‘surprising and alive’.
“algorithms and sophisticated product market analysis have taken the adventure and the ‘art’ out of popular music”.
“are making the music they want to make, not just what the Man tells them to, and which at its best is most certainly ‘surprising and alive’”.
These two quotes don’t, to my mind, stand in contradiction to each other. ‘Talent borrows, genius steals’. The core of that cliche lies in the attitude. The penitent beggar apes what was successful, the flourishing artist grabs the very latest achievements of humanity, learns how it works and strides forwards to unforeseen peaks.
‘Selling out’ is in effect saying I don’t know what I’m doing, let somebody else take artistic control and pull my strings.
The concept of the suffering artist dates back to Goethe and the Romantic movement. His novel Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) about a depressed young artist who eventually commits suicide was an enormous success throughout Europe.
Morrissey nails it well in Half a person.
“She was left behind, and sour
And she wrote to me equally dour
She said in the days when you were hopelessly poor
I just liked you more”
Young Werther didn’t sell out. He checked out.
True that. Also, the idea that William Wordsworth sold out his youthful radicalism for royal patronage was the theme of Robert Browning’s poem “The Lost Leader”:
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote.
Excellent example @Pessoa.
I had to check their birth dates to be sure, but, as I suspected, Browning was one of the younger generation who felt let down by a man who had been one of his idols. It’s a great poem.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-browning
(1812 – 1889)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth
(1770 – 1850)
Rather like Taylor Swift having a pop at Bob Dylan? Except that the Bobster is old enough to be her grandad.
Yeah, Werther was the original.
Look, someone had to say it…
There are so many, diverse comments on this concept of ‘selling out’ and I would like to answer each and every one of them from my perspective. It’s quite fascinating to me that we all have different, though possibly complimentary or even divergent views on this.
The concept of ‘selling out’ inevitably brings market economics into an area which could be just artistic and cultural.
If you’re selling music to make money to exist, thrive or prosper beyond worldly imaginings, you are a craftsperson, a muso, and good luck to you.
I was on the beach at high tide on a German island earlier this month. If I positioned myself well, I could be shunted violently and involuntarily coastwards. It was exhilarating, because unexpected. It raised my game and for an infinitesimal moment I was top of the charts, number one. Now, I could have tried to repeat that experience, but the waves were not best placed to give me magic shove (not till the 7th anyway). But my record company wanted an instant repeat of that spectacular one-off. So I abandonned my fun of frolicking in the waves, trying out this and that playful move, looking for where the next big wave might be coming to, and focused on trying to repeat, in exactly the same spot, what had gone before.
Sure, I got a follow-up single, and it sounded quite a little like the first one, but it just didn’t have the same power, and all the others in the water around me (let’s pretend there were some for the sake of this analogy), similarly flopped a bit listlessly under the under powered wave.
We’ve let the tail wag the dog, haven’t we? Sure, we can let AI and all the future successors to Amazon’s ‘you bought or searched for this, now buy Dan Brown/E.L.James, you muppet’, and we might enjoy such machine-tooled fodder, and a lot of it is very well- targeted.
But AI is a great servant and a dumb master. We are creative beings, far in advance of the dumb schmuck, point me in the right direction and I will do everything, AI approach, if we want to be. We are nimble, we are agile. We experiment with silly combinations, with a consciousness ever semi-aware of the bigger evolving, sentient, compassionate picture touching on our peripheral vision.
Shunt yourself and your music into the mainstream if you want to. But don’t be surprised if you turn up on a midday Magjc FM playlist, with your soul dried to dust.
This seems like the perfect thread to give this classic an airing.
No flim-flam indeed….
oh YES. Preach, brother.
The concept of “selling out” has always been nonsensical.
A pandering to (and in fact deliberately creating, in many cases) prejudices among the punters.
Pop/rock/r&b/jazz music-making is a commercial activity and has been since before all of us here were born. Applies to much of folk music too.
Unless all you want to do is play for your family and pals, at home, it needs to pay it’s way to some extent. So there you go, you’ve sold out.
Remember Todd Haynes’ 1990s glam-rock movie “Velvet Goldmine”? It took the crime of selling out rock n’roll very seriously indeed (and maybe aimed it at Bowie?): part of that same 1990s rock romanticism discussed in the article, I guess.
This is pertinent to the conversation. And peak Graun, of course…
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/19/barbie-indie-director-film-maker-greta-gerwig
Ooh, very pertinent. Interesting.