Selling out - D. Van Skiver

Sooner or later it happens. I don’t care what your favorite band is, or how cool they were when they started, or how cool they still are even though they’re such-and-such number of years into their career. Sooner or later, they will disappoint you.

Say what you will about not caring what people think, but no one makes records to have them ignored, and everyone, no matter how individualistic or antisocial they pretend to be, feels good when people like their music. A good artist makes music for himself and no one else, but he also, without trying, makes music that others understand, relate to, and most importantly, feel.

It’s a tough seesaw for a popular band to keep balanced; to change their sound invites cries of “sellout” and accusations of no longer having that certain something that attracted fans in the first place. The other choice is to keep treading over and over again across the same ground for years until most serious fans outgrow it. And so every artist has to try to maintain that balance between keeping the fans happy and playing the kind of music that they want to play. You might be excited to hear your favorite song fifteen years into your favorite band’s career, but they’ve played it every night for fifteen years and they’re not excited about playing it again.

The average run for a successful band, or at least one that is widely considered to have integrity, seems to be about a decade. After that seventh album, tenth year, or third line-up change, people usually begin to turn on them. The reasons are almost always identical, regardless of genre: “Their new stuff just doesn’t sound the same”, “I liked the stuff they did with the first guitarist better”, or simply, “I’m tired of that kind of music.” And every one of us is guilty of saying it at some point.

What eventually happens, in the best of cases, is that you stop listening for a few years. Maybe you didn’t buy the last two records they did… and then one day you rediscover what it was that made you love them in the first place. Or perhaps you just come to a different level of appreciation that doesn’t require burning yourself out on their records by constant listening.

In the worst of cases, you rediscover them a decade later, only to be embarrassed that you were so heavily into them ten years ago. The lyrics sound corny to you now, the music doesn’t have that urgent sense of currency like it did when it actually was current. The production makes it sound dated.

And so here is a recommendation from someone who has been in love with music for a long time… when your favorite band pisses you off by changing their sound and/or “selling out”, stop and be reasonable about it. They’re entitled to make the kind of music that they want to play. Nothing says you have to like everything they do, and nothing says that you have to hate everything they do. Take what still appeals to you and love it. Take what you think was contrived to appeal to the masses and discard it. But don’t let a change in their sound take away what was so personal and important to you.