The great rock'n'roll sellout - by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian
Gone are the days when bands would be scorned for getting into bed with corporate sponsors and brands, so what ever happened to "selling out"?
Excerpt:
The new battleground was adverts. In 1988, Neil Young mocked the practice in This Note's for You: "Ain't singin' for Pepsi/ Ain't singin' for Coke/ I don't sing for nobody/ Makes me look like a joke." But indie never faced such a dilemma – Coca-Cola weren't exactly in hot pursuit of Dinosaur Jr or Foetus in 1985. Marks says that at Homestead, "I'm not sure we could have sold out if we'd wanted to." Travis agrees: "It was a very different culture then. If someone had been clever enough to give the Smiths half a million pounds to do an ad, I would have been very interested to see what they would have said."
Gone are the days when bands would be scorned for getting into bed with corporate sponsors and brands, so what ever happened to "selling out"?
Excerpt:
The new battleground was adverts. In 1988, Neil Young mocked the practice in This Note's for You: "Ain't singin' for Pepsi/ Ain't singin' for Coke/ I don't sing for nobody/ Makes me look like a joke." But indie never faced such a dilemma – Coca-Cola weren't exactly in hot pursuit of Dinosaur Jr or Foetus in 1985. Marks says that at Homestead, "I'm not sure we could have sold out if we'd wanted to." Travis agrees: "It was a very different culture then. If someone had been clever enough to give the Smiths half a million pounds to do an ad, I would have been very interested to see what they would have said."
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