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Death of the Rock and Roll Sell-Out

Posted on | February 10, 2009 |

sellout-1 Since Bruce Springsteen agreed to sell a greatest hits album in Wal-mart, and especially since he said that move was a mistake, the buzz has been negative for Springsteen. The term sell-out has been used. For those so offended, the Super Bowl halftime show only inflamed the wound.

Maybe it was the self-righteous seriousness of the nineties or the punk nostalgic crew I hung out with, but the term sell-out doesn’t seem to carry the same weight as it once did. Admittedly, it was always a half-defined term, most often thrown around by music fans who prided themselves on the obscurity of their tastes, but it often had a kernel of truth. Said enough by the right people, and it could effect a band’s image. But I don’t think it’s just the waning of 90s hipster egos that has taken the sting out of “sell-out.”

Until a few years ago, I think there were certain assumptions made by serious music fans. One was that getting a major label record deal was the only way to fame and therefore a goal for ambitious bands. Given that assumption, there were two ways to achieve this goal: 1.) Give the labels what they already knew they wanted– a popular sound for an established audience. 2.) Be so original and amazing that the labels will come to you, just like they came to Kurt Cobain. If this is your mindset (and to some extent it was true) it’s no surprise that you would only give credibility to the musicians that chose option two. The only debate among people who thought this way was weather certain bands had actually chosen option two.

Another concern of the recent past was the “control” the “media” had over culture and it’s messages. Particularly concerning were companies that owned radio and record labels. I wrote earlier about the decline of music radio. It’s obvious now that no one has control– influence maybe, but not control. If rock is supposed to be “anti-establishment” then who is the establishment now? Every media and distribution company is hard to demonize in an Internet connected world.

With record sales continually declining, record labels are largely becoming marketing and PR services. Bands now make the vast majority of their money touring and selling merchandise. Advances in recording technology means almost anyone can produce themselves. All this is common knowledge. The point is, that if which label you are on is less and less important and the only way to break through is just to get yourself heard, then everything including commercials, video games and ring-tones are just distribution channels to more ears. All these things used to be financial icing on the cake. Now, everyone knows emerging bands don’t sell many records. What they do make off of downloads isn’t much. Their only hope to rise above the din is to tour a lot and sell a lot of tickets and t-shirts. If a new band scores a commercial, they probably aren’t getting paid enough to be selling out, but they might get a little attention.

I used to be kind of sad when I heard a new band I liked on a commercial. Part of my reaction was an anti-corporate mindset, but I was more afraid that the song and the band would be synonymous with the product and the value of the song would be lost–a la Rhapsody in Blue and United. Now, I am usually happy. The commercial probably won’t run for long. I also think people almost look to commercials for music. The jingle is dead. If someone hears a great song on a commercial, they are more likely now to seek out that song.

Having said all this, there is something very different about being an already very famous artist with an already very famous song that has already graced your pockets with a lot of money and selling it to a commercial for millions of dollars. It is something different if you take a strong position, as Springsteen did for unions, and then drop that conviction when it is financially inconvenient. That is selling out. That is cashing in on cultural memory at the expense of that memory.

And having said all THAT, do we expect anything else these days? So many rock icons have cashed in on the cultural memories they created that it ceases to offend. The Sex Pistols reunited to form a zombie version of themselves. Queen tours with a Freddy Mercury replacement. So many iconic songs have been swapped out to sell chewing gum. Tonight Paul McCartney is on the Grammies on yet another rotation of the greatest-hits-on-repeat that he has become. No one can let the dead sleep and few can add something new, so we all watch the divas drag out another Weekend at Bernie’s style performance. But it doesn’t burn anymore.

So Bruce is slightly disappointing, but not surprising. Sell-out? Maybe, but compared to what? We have come to expect our memories and emotions to be commodified as many times as possible, especially by those who created them. Problem is, music is barely a commodity anymore. It’s a show. The people yelling sell-out sound as ridiculous as the record labels screaming that file sharing is theft.

Category: Music
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