When a band "sells out"?

Cafe Society
21

I think Pink Floyd’s problem wasn’t that they sold out, but that their lineup changed.

Just as they became much less psychedelic when Sid Barrett left, their music lost much of its anger and sadness when Roger Waters left after making The Wall and The Final Cut. He was the element that gave their lyrics so much emotional power, and without him (Momentary Lapse of Reason onward) they still had the instrumental quality, but the lyrics just seem empty.

IMO, they needed each other. Without Waters, Pink Floyd sounds like bubblegum pop, and without Gilmour and the others, Waters sounds like the grumpy old man who yells at everyone walking by his house.

22

I’ll be quite honest; I think this whole “selling out” concept is almost entirely myth.

The example of Metallica is a perfect one. We are, after all, talking about a band that started out calling itself “Metallica,” for God’s sake, a name I honestly thought was a joke the first time I heard it - a name that was obviously invented to sell the band. You cannot reasonably argue that commercial concerns weren’t SOMEWHERE in their values to start with.

But that said, why did Metallica’s music change? Did they sell out? Well, it’s conceivable they did, but it doesn’t make any sense to me why you’d “sell out” AFTER you got rich.

Instead, it’s my belief that 99.99% of all music acts only have so much original, quality stuff in them, and then they essentially run out of new ideas within the basic framework of their arrangement and style. It is my belief that almost all rock and pop artists just sort of run out of original material, and at that point can only do one of three things:

  1. Just recycle the same old crap and suck unimaginably. AC/DC has been doing this since about 1992. Sarah McLachlan only lasted two or three original albums before she started recycling her old crap. The Rolling Stones’s new material is a parody of what it once was; they’re up to Steel Wheels VII now, I believe.

  2. Start producing new kinds of music.

The thing with #2 is that sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t work. A band reaching the stage where they have to shift into Strategy #2 is usually no longer young, and is less in tune with new forms of music. Metallica, IMHO, is a perfect example; it’s not that they’re selling out, it’s that they’ve just run out of good ideas in their old style, and they don’t really know, or are not musically suited, for today’s cutting edge in music. I’m certain they would LIKE to produce original, cool music. I do not believe they are capable of doing so.

My favourite band, the Tragically Hip, is a similar case, albiet a slightly different style. They were great until about 1994. Then they had a few OK albums, and they’ve now devolved into sappy balladeers whose music couldn’t rock you on a boat. I don’t think they’re trying to suck, they just sort of ran out of good songs.

Or REM. REM for years was the best rock band in the world, bar none, IMHO. Their last album was the absolute pits; I use the CD as a coaster. I feel they just don’t seem to have any new ideas for songs any more.

For some bands this happens earlier than others; the Barenaked Ladies had maybe three album’s worth of good material in them, while REM lasted nine or ten albums. The Hip lasted six. Sarah McLachlan three. Michael Jackson had 4-5 great albums in him, though he’s a special case because he’s insane. Alanis Morrisette had one album in her, unless you count her disco work. They didn’t sell out, they just ran out of ideas.

23

I’m sitting at my desk with earphones in listening to Mettallica: Ride the Lighting (1984). The Metallica that made this album no longer exist but when they where good the were very very good.

R.I.P. Cliff :frowning:

24

That’d be Hell on the Chandeliers !

25

:smiley:

Lightning

26

Succinct and to the point. I knew that there was a reason why I never liked anything after The Final Cut. Saw Roger Waters in concert once and, even though he played lots of the old stuff, it just wasn’t right.

27

Actually Metallica started sucking around the time that Cliff Burton died.

28

As it happens, that song wasn’t written to be a Metallica song. Rather, it was James Hetfield’s attempt to cope with the death of his mother. One of the other members of Metallica overheard him playing it, and insisted that it be recorded for Load.

29

I’d agree that “selling out” is extremely rare, and without intimate knowledge of a band’s motivations (or they admit it, ie Bowie and “Let’s dance”, Chumbawumba and their pop album) almost impossible to actually diagnose.

I’d also agree that Metallica is not as clear-cut as they are often said to be. The ran out of creative steam, or stopped being angry, or something. I don’t think they “sold-out”, per se.

One band I don’t hesitate to call a “sell-out” is Sugar Ray. “Fly” was a fluke in a pretty hard band. Then every song they made sounded like “Fly”. Even that situation’s more complicated than it seems. I mean, they appeared in a Robin Williams movie, for the love of God. How legitimate could they have been?

30

Regardless of whether Metallica sold out or not, you would have to have been insane not to release the black album if you were in their position. That was one awesome album. The most critically (and commercially) acclaimed album they’ve written.

Its like the two guys who directed American Pie and About a Boy. The second was a completely different direction, but no one said they sold out.

“Of course we sell out. Every f***ing show” - James Hetfield

31

That’s how I see it too. IMO a better example than Metalica is Sugar Ray. They used to be a pretty good hardcore (or nu-metal, whatever, there are too many redundant labels) band, but then they released their softest single “Fly” and people liked it better than their other stuff. From that point on their songs lost their edge and became very poppy. Come on, what happen to songs like “10 seconds down” and “RPM”, that were actually good? <sigh>

32

You’re welcome to make that offer. However, if you didn’t want they to take them from you, why should you be overruled?

33

This logic is kind of flawed - you assume that all of those people who downloaded the song would have otherwise purchased said song as a single. There’s no way that would have happened.

This is the same logic used by people like the Business Software Alliance to inflate their “losses” from piracy. If someone pirates something that they never would have paid cash for in the first place, they still consider it lost income.

Actually, I think he’s saying that he never heard ANY of these bands on the radio, and only heard them via Napster.

I had a brief fling with Napster myself. The two things that I downloaded were:

  1. Singles that I liked or found amusing but would otherwise never buy, either because they’re out of print or I don’t want any of the other songs on the album. If I could have purchased these songs fifty cents or a dollar apiece, I would have. Most of these are obscure one-hit wonder hip-hop tracks from the 80’s and early 90’s, random disco and funk songs, old punk and new wave songs, etc.

  2. Songs from bands that I have heard about but have no way of hearing.

It’s fairly easy to become aware of independent bands, but where are you going to hear them? MTV? The boring, trendy, interchangeable, 20-song-playlist, Clear-Channel-owned radio station in your town? If you’re lucky you might have a decent college radio station around, but overall the big media conglomerates are (actively/passively) conspiring to keep you from hearing anything that might keep you from spending money on their chosen pop act of the moment.

When I first got into Napster, it was overwhelming for me - I finally got to check out literally dozens of bands that I had read about or had recommended to me, but had never actually heard. I got to download a track or two, listen to it over the course of a few days, and decide if I liked it or not. I purchased albums by a lot of these bands - albums I never would have bought if I hadn’t found these bands via Napster.

I realize that there are probably a lot of freeloaders out there who used Napster to replace their purchasing of actual CDs, and this dosen’t suprise me. How I wish there was some sort of “music geek only” version of Napster, where the stuff that the Big Record Companies ignore, halfheartedly put out, or let go out of print could be traded amongst the type of people who will then go out and buy the album because they want to own a high-quality version with liner notes and want to support artists that they like and who bring them joy.

Sorry for the hijack.

34

The thread got this far and no one mentioned Blink 182?

My sister was into them a couple years ago, about the time when “Dude Ranch” came out. Back then, they were a fairly under-the-radar, juvenile little punk band. By the time “Enema of the State” came out, they were pretty much just a boy band for the TRL set.

Smash Mouth also blatantly sold out. Their first album was a cool mix of punk with some ska and rocked pretty hard, with the exception of “Walkin’ on the Sun”. Gee, guess what got played on the radio? So their next album comes out and every damn song is radio fluff.

35

Give them a break, they were kids back then. It’s a much better choice than ‘Blitzer’ or 'Red ‘Vette’, the two band names they were trying to decide between when they stole the name Metallica from some guy who wanted to use it for a fanzine (as I recall they told him the name sucked and convinced him to try something else, and then used it themselves).

36

Actually I don’t know a single real metallica fan (meaning someone who listened to them before the black album, or someone who likes songs off of older albums) who thinks that is a great album. Most that I know, including myself, think that album was the end of Metallica. No shredding solos, all songs 4 minutes long for the radio, no long intros and no heavy metal.

Actually that was Jason Newstead who said that.

37

No way man, no way man! Anybody who likes theire music is basicallly a fan. The difference between ‘real’ and ‘fake’, IMO is that the fake ones just listen to them to be cool, which, i admit, a lot of black album fans are. But not me.

Oh, whoops. I copied it from another board. Incidentally this has been argued extensively there and I think the ‘they didn’t sell out’ won.

38

A couple of points:

  1. If this is going to be about Metallica, fine. Then look at their overall progression as a band, and judge their hearts, if you will, as to whether they sold out. With regard to the Black Album, I have heard them and the album’s producer, Bob Rock, interviewed - they all basically said that Rock challenged the band to consider songwriting differently and not just string together a collection of riffs, but instead try to craft a more complete song. So, in other words, the concept of a 3 - 5 minute song that was a little more consistent in its structure became a challenge to the band and they crafted the songs on that album within that context. Guess what? Bands are allowed to try different things, and that particular direction, IMHO, seems reasonable - don’t get me wrong, I love their early stuff, but trying a modified approach to songwriting seems okay, too. For that matter, including a ballad - jeez, don’t all people grow up and get to share more complex points of view? Or look at Lars’ drumming - at first, he could only play on beat - he couldn’t “swing” (play off beat) to save his life. Then look at “Sad but True” - really cool swing to the beat. Artists progress and their music progresses along with them - even if individual fans don’t like where they need to go. As for Napster - if your music is being shared on a MASSIVE scale and you aren’t being paid, who am I to complain about your protesting? Sharing bootlegs is a cottage industry - Napster is industry infrastructure that could/will revolutionize the industry - they aren’t the same thing.

  2. When it comes to selling out - what is in the artists’s heart? Have the Goo Goo Dolls sold out? The struggled for 10 years on the punk circuit, but Rzeznik wrote his own songs, a mellower one caught fire and they moved in that direction. That type of song was always in his heart, and he used the public’s feedback (millions of CD’s sold is a clear indication, right?) to move in that direction. Was the desire to make money in there? Sure, but are the songs good? That is an individual’s call, but Rzeznik is writing them.

What about a crap band like Starship (originally the Jefferson Airplane) or a good band gone bad like Genesis? Those are bands that had credibility and seem to have completely thrown it away for the almighty dollar.

Any band that wants to make money must look at what sells; the real question is whether their music is artistic and only the individual and time can be the judge of that.

39

Could a band that was unabashedly seeking popularity from near the beginning as the Beatles “sell out”?

Anyway, I judge Metallica fans by when they think the band sold out.

  1. When they did a video for “One” (hardcore fans from the Cliff Burton period)
  2. When they released the ‘black album’ (most remaining general heavy metal fans)
  3. When they cut their hair short, wore glam suits, and released Load (the few fans they had left from the 1980’s)
  4. When they released Reload (the people that became fans after the ‘Black Album’).