Letters of Note: "Selling Out" -It's a virus

Refusing to “Sell Out” was a big deal for musicians in the 80s, with for example Timbuk 3 refusing a gazillion from Pepsi for their only hit, then Neil Young’s “This Note’s For You”… it seemed as if Rock &Roll was the last art form to reach the modernist phase of seeing itself as oppositional to capitalism. There are always individuals in every form that do so, but it was almost a part of the very DNA of Rock for a time to at least appear to critique The Man. “Sincerity” and “Authenticity” were still hallmarks of rock long after postmodernism, irony & etc. hit the literary and fine art worlds. By 1998 Todd Haynes’ film Velvet Goldmine explored some of these ideas from the vantage point of nostalgia for a time when music still “mattered”, and by 2002 it was no real big deal for an “Indie” artist like Ryan Adams to duet with Willie Nelson in a Gap ad.

lettersofnote:

In 2002, after reading an article by The Doors’ John Densmore on the subject of musicians allowing their work to be featured in commercials, Tom Waits — a songwriter who, a decade previous, successfully sued Frito Lay for more than $2m after they ripped off one of his songs to sell…