Who Sells Out

I'm not really comfortable when the music business mixes with advertising. I lived through the alternative music era of the early nineties, when any musician not busking for the money to eat was considered a sell-out. Of course, the pendulum swung back the other way, and by the end of the decade, people were congratulating Moby for licensing all 18 tracks from his album Play. The pendulum hasn't swung back to anti-commercialism again, so we're still in an era when there's little consequence for musicians selling their soul to the ad biz. But even if fans and journalists don't punish artists, there are still some things to consider.

Level 1

Selling your song

This is when you let someone use your song in an ad. This seems like a harmless thing to do, and in the modern world, it's probably the best way to get your song heard. The problem is that the ad will now be by far the number one way people hear your song. So it's no longer your song, it's the song from the Nissan commercial.

This used to be considered selling out, but it's now acceptable to anyone not hanging on to their 90's flannel. The argument in favour of selling your sing for commercial use is that you have the song, what harm does it do if you let someone else user it? My response is to ask, how sure are you that selling this song won't influence how you write your next song? Which brings us to...

Level 1b

Selling your next song

X Ambassadors really cashed in when they had the luck to write a song called "Renegades" just as Jeep was introducing a new SUV called the Renegade. I wonder how many struggling bands have started reading the car mags to find out what models are coming soon.

This is also the level Fitz and the Tantrums are going to for their song, "HandClap," which is quickly infecting stadium playlists everywhere. I mean, it's great that it's displacing DJ Casper's "Cha Cha Slide" who's "Everybody Clap Your Hands" soundbite has been a crutch for hack stadium DJ's for years.

Level 2

Letting them change the lyrics

At this point you're really tarnishing your song's memory, since you're making the song literally about the product. This means that people will forever hear the commercial version in their heads when they think of your song. This still happens to me for "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" (Minute Maid) and "I Can't Help Myself" (Duncan Hines) even decades after those ads were on the air. My point is, you only resort to this when you are truly done with the song, and never expect that you or anyone else will use it for its original intention ever again.

Level 3

Changing the lyrics to something completely different

A few years ago I heard them play "Your Love" at a baseball game. It's one of those songs you know you've heard, but you can't place it, so I had to look it up on to identify it. It's by The Outfield, which I discovered is a British band, even though they're named after a baseball term. That's weirdness I can appreciate.

But in the Glee aftermath you're allowed to like eighties music as long as you pretend you're only liking it ironically, so the song has a huge value to advertisers. That's how "Your Love" becomes a baseball anthem, and how advertisers get interested in putting it into a commercial, thus looking hip and appealing to old people at the same time. But by allowing an ad to re-write the song to tell the story of a loser with a wrinkled shirt to sell Bounce sheets, the song becomes a punchline.

At this point, you're not merely damaging the song, you're turning it into a joke. I can talk about "Sunshine of My Life," and you may remember it as a great song, as long as you don't try to hum along with Stevie Wonder and find yourself singing about orange juice. But once your song is a punchline, people can't even remember the existence of the song and take it seriously. To put it another way, changing the lyrics is like killing the song, this is like killing the song and then erasing all evidence it ever existed.