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A touchy issue indeed...
It's quite funny when people criticize a supposedly principled musician/band for "selling out" by participating in something mainstream. The way I see it:
1. Music is an art, but, as much as some purists hate to admit, it IS also a business. If a band's sole aim was to create music purely for its own and its listeners' intellectual gratification, they woudn't bother releasing albums; they'd sit in each other's basements and play to themselves. Nor would they sell albums at a profit; they'd give them away, or sell them at cost to break even. However, while it's a form of expression, essentially it's a job like any other.
2. The recurring hypocrisy of the trendophobe. People bitch and moan about the idiocy of the general public and their collective bad taste, their ignorance to worthwhile music while they happily swallow whatever top ten hit blaring on the radio at the moment. However, in some frantic attempt to jealously guard their image as ecclectic and 'underground,' they immediately damn an artist that makes their work accessible to the public, because, god forbid, what if everyone ELSE starts liking the same things that you, O enlightened avant-garde intellectual, enjoy as well?
Well, isn't that what you were just bitching about? That these people are ignorant to quality? A band makes its music digestable to the masses in the interests of sharing something it thinks is worthwhile, giving them the 'education' you think they so desperately need, and this makes them 'sellouts'?
Are you mad? ISN'T THAT THE POINT? To share the wealth with others?
Deep in the secret folds of your corduroy-draped, denim-swathed, toussle-haired, anti-establishment, indie-humping hearts, you cower in fear of assimilation. You desperately cling to your identity of being on the 'outside,' to the romantic notion that you, and ONLY you, are clever and anti-hip and abstract and enlightened, and if you suddenly became one of a multitude, you would have nothing definitive left to redeem your existence. You're DIFFERENT, by christ, and nobody ELSE is allowed to be different!
I would bet my literal life that if Sonic Youth were more popular, 80% of you assholes wouldn't be on this board.
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