MUSIC: the official thread.

It's not like there weren't plenty of chart acts in the 80s & before who shilled products.

 

of course, but it's far more endemic now

the "country" superstar Faith Hill sings the sunday night football theme song on NBC (an opening that is a perfect example of American overkill, bombast and poor taste)

that is the type of the gig that would have once gone to someone washed up and desperate for cash (Hank Williams Jr.)

the Maroon 5 faggot and Christina "Oversinging = soul" Aguilera star in a TV show that endeavors to find similar, phony, career-minded pop-wannabes

Busta Rhymes was shilling for 7UP for a few years

In the 1980s and earlier, it was generally only huge entertainment stars like Michael Jackson or critically dismissed entertainers like Pat Boone who did commercials... you wouldn't have found very many music stars who were willing to sell their songs to car companies... it's the ultimate irony that The Who, once the creators of a an album called "The Who Sell Out" filled with satirical ads mocking the practice of selling out, now sell their (Townshend's) songs to anyone and everyone for advertising purposes and for the theme of a ridiculously campy American cop show

 

I'd say that says much more about changes in the approach of corporate advertising than the integrity of shit pop stars.

 

asking famous musicians to shill for you is nothing new... saying yes en masse IS

 

Oddly, the Rolling Stones have had more of their songs or melodies used in television commercials than any other recording act in musical history.

Sell outs.
























No I mean they keep selling out stadiums at 158 years old.

 

The Rolling Stones....I think...made sure they were always going this way from about 1975 after being totally cunted by Allen Klein at the end of the 1960s, start of the 1970s.


In fact, I think cdogg might be off the mark with his 'Maroon5-take-it up-the-ass-from-Pepsi' comment- a whole lot of artists from the 1970s are breadheads now...

 

And I've never really understood the whole 'selling out' thing. There's a huge gap between being sales whores like KISS and Adam Levine doing a Pepsi commercial.

Maroon 5 just really isn't my taste in music, but it doesn't make their music any more horrifying.

 

To my memory, 'Selling Out' was always a phoney-phrase that Punk/New-Wave artists always threw around in the 1970-1980s.
Until that all ended from when The Clash agreed to support The Who on their 1982 US 'stadium-tour'. ::

 

The Clash never 'sold out' in any way. Just for the record.

 

In my mind, selling out means changing your original sound to sell more records. Some bands never changed their sound but still went underground to popular. These bands get called "sell outs" unjustly. Some bands though, changed their sounds (often softening it and changing the format of the songs to make them radio-friendly) for the sole purpose of selling records and being played in commercial radios. That is selling out. Not that I have anything against it, bands have the right to earn money playing music, but I thought the distinction had to be made.

 

Yeah, selling records doesn't equate to selling out. And I'm with you. I don't care.

 

Selling out rarely even sells, to be honest. Usually it just alienates the original fans.

 

I'm curious: does anybody know any real life Coldplay fans? I've never spoken to one in my life & I'm beginning to suspect that they're some sort of MI6 pysch-op.

 

I bet Cristiano Ronaldo likes them

 

It's music for people....who don't really like 'modern-music' (or know much about it)

 

I'd say it's for people who adore modern music

 

The pop charts were always horrible cat shit with few exceptions.

 

I bet you if you went back from 1955 (the first year of modern Billboard style charts) to present day and looked at the top 40 albums or top 40 singles, there would be at least a handful of them that I would really like right up to the late 90s... yeah, there's always been awful pop music and the charts have always largely been shit, but to me, there is not a single top 40 hit in the last 10 years I'd ever want to listen to... there is no way I'd say that about any other 10 year stretch

Here's the present top 20 in the US:
1. "Locked Out Of Heaven" - Bruno Mars
2. "Diamonds" - Rihanna
3. "Die Young" - Ke$ha
4. "Ho Hey" - The Lumineers
5. "One More Night" - Maroon 5
6. "I Cry" - Flo Rida
7. "Home" - Philip Phillips
8. "Some Nights" - fun.
9. "Beauty and a Beat" - Justin Bieber featuring Nicki Minaj
10. "Let Me Love You" - Ne-Yo
11. "Gangnam Style" - PSY
12. "Girl On Fire" - Alicia Keys featuring Nicki Minaj
13. "Scream and Shout" - will.i.am featuring Britney Spears
14. "Don't You Worry Child" - Swedish House Mafia featuring John Martin
15. "I knew you were trouble" - Taylor Swift
16. "Try" - Pink
17. "Cruise" - Florida Georgia Line
18. "The A Team" - Ed Sheeran
19. "Swimming Pools (Drank)" - Kendrick Lamar
20. "Too Close" - Alex Clare

Is there a song you even find tolerable out of that list?

 

For the hell of it, I looked through lists of the top 100 singles of each year and my suspicion was correct... every year from 1955 into the late 90s, I found at least one song I really liked... in many years there were a dozen or more along with plenty of guilty pleasures...

 

and I am hands down the biggest asshole on this board when it comes to music, so if anyone is going to be a dick about pop charts, it would be me

 

I just looked at June 94, 84, 74 in the UK singles charts and there was a grand total of 3 songs I considered 'OK'. And one of them was ABBA.

 

I think it all went really downhill from about '98. Britpop was the last time there was good mainstream music in this country. Sure, it isn't a patch on music produced in previous eras but it certainly wasn't awful, and it had good intentions.

 

Vietnamese roast duck, 100 quid headphones & Caribou. Whoever said he couldn't buy happiness probably hadn't tried this.

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Brit Pop was really horrible.

 

It wasn't. It was decent, not exceptional but listenable. I know I didn't mind listening to the radio back then.

 

You were 12.

 

Irrelevant. I can still enjoy some of it now.

 

I really miss the 90's, man. Great times.

 

yeah, but you hate Led Zeppelin

 

They define shite, yes.