Popularity turns fans sour, sellout bands receive underserved flack

At some point in our lives, we all have fallen victim to listening to the trivial notion that a once-loved band sold out. I’ve heard this sentiment countless times, and although it’s an alluring argument, I’ve recently started to question what exactly constitutes a band achieving the status of sellout.

With an increased fan base, there are clear financial payoffs that an artist can accumulate from an illustrious career. But once an artist taps into this success, he or she tends to hit a sour chord among initial followers.

Although it seems that various indicators of success should warrant the sellout claim, it is actually the artist’s newfound success on the whole that poses the greatest threat. When the success of these artists transcends what we originally knew, we lose our ability to associate with them as we did when they struggled as no-names. By calling them sellouts, we cast a shameful shadow over their success and mask the pain we feel when they surpass our expectations.

Some accusations against bands include playing at larger venues, increasing in size and gaining mainstream popularity. These allegations appear to make a valid argument as to how a band has gone down such an atrocious path.

Typically, I’ve found these accusations most persuasive when passionately spewed from once-die-hard fans turned bitter, but it’s all a facade masking a deeper issue. And I would like to offer up independent music and its aficionados as an often-guilty party.

When it comes to the realm of independent music, the magical road to selling out begins with a very specific narrative. This narrative — a story that many listeners seek — is that of the struggling musician. The image, whether intentional or not, has been a mainstay among independent artists trying to find their footing in the vast music industry.

The EPs and mixtapes of independent musicians float about, waiting for an eager listener who forages into every nook and cranny of every blog or basement record store in search of this music. Once found, the listener develops an intense bond not only with the music, but with the artists behind it. This intense bond typically gives the listener the delusional sense of discovering the band, leading to protective ownership.

This sentiment veers into dangerous territory when the band’s popularity soars past our expectations. Hearing others excitedly chatting about our treasured find threatens the sense of ownership and seems to ignite the strong desire within us to turn our backs on our beloved band.

Admittedly, I have fallen victim to this hype. The charm of the accusation has worn off: I have begun to see it more as a blindly ignorant claim than as an insightfully informed observation.

With a rise in popularity, there come consequences that are natural for a band achieving and sustaining its success. The band will often start with a studio-released album that entices a larger label to pick up the band and heavily promote its latest single via popular airwaves. It’s then usually supplemented with an increase in band members or instrumental talent, driven by larger and more expensive venues that will later reflect in the sound of the next album release — all indicators of a band selling out.

When you compare bands such as Radiohead and The Black Keys, however, it becomes clear that trying to define a sellout is not only an arbitrary endeavor, but also one that simply cannot be empirically supported.

Take Radiohead, for example, a band that has rarely come under sellout scrutiny but has shown some of the classic indicators. While the band has essentially maintained the same membership, its 1992 hit “Creep” will forever haunt the airwaves. In the past year alone, the band has seen a twofold increase in its average ticket price and played major stages such as the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

On the other hand, The Black Keys, which has been criticized for selling out, has increased its touring band size from two to six, had its successful single “Gold on the Ceiling” played countless times, seen a similar increase in ticket prices and will soon be playing venues just as large as has Radiohead.

Naming The Black Keys as a sellout while praising Radiohead for maintaining its independent status when the two bands are similar in so many regards presents the issue of how to classify a sellout. We could argue that one is more inherently talented than the other, gets more airtime or puts on a bigger concert production. But I think it’s quite clear what is at play here.

The Black Keys, a band that many 20-somethings have known since its beginnings — unlike Radiohead, which got its start at our births — has given many listeners a heard-them-first moment. It is when this moment is breached that our ability to relate crumbles and the struggling musician narrative shatters. Try as we might, it is not that we can operationally define a sellout in certain ways, but that we cannot handle the disparity between ourselves and the previously similar, now prosperous, artists.

So, I beg of you, dear indie music lovers, remove “sellout” as you once knew it from your vocabulary. Look inward to find that The Black Keys’ addition to a frat party’s music rotation did not occur because the band sold out.

Perhaps it is instead the inherent (and selfish) sadness you feel in the face of their success that leads you to this accusation. You words start to sound more like those of a crushed fan than those of a musical ingenue. It’s time to come to terms with a new narrative: These artists truly might not be sharing a two-bedroom apartment with four people and three cats like you are. Even if their lack of poverty makes them less relatable, re-evaluate the true quality of their music rather than the factors of their success before you defiantly remove them from your favorite playlist.

Csilla Thackray is a DJ at WPTS. She can be reached at csillathackray@gmail.com.