The Case For ‘Selling Out’
We want our favourite artists to get the bigger record deals, but we don't want the music to change too much. They need to remember the origins, as if they haven't made the music themselves. This criticism is tired.
Beyonce, Queen B, Beyonce Knowles Carter, is the queen of reinvention herself. A new album inevitably ushers in a new aesthetic, inspired by the genre she has lent herself to. She is probably one of the best at this process, perhaps because pop music welcomes this model of becoming. Bowie was able to switch from Ziggy Stardust to Thin White Duke, before his renowned Berlin era. Taylor Swift is demolishing her carbon footprint for her ‘Eras’ tour, performing hits and gems from each album cycle that encapsulates different stages of Taylor. And all of these switch ups and eras, from all these artists listed above, have been received with acclaim by their fans and critics across the board. In that case, why fix something that isn’t broken? Another Renaissance album that replicated the house/techno sound would’ve been appreciated by fans. As a non-fan of Taylor Swift, I would’ve engaged with a third album to close out the folklore trilogy. The answer is obvious, besides marketing in some part: a sign of a true artist is the ability to evolve and abandon the past for an unknown.
Enter Fontaines DC. The Irish quintet have made quite a name for themselves since 2019, earning a Mercury Prize for their debut album ‘Dogrel’. The band seamlessly managed to capture the characters and essence of life in a city you’ve started to become disillusioned to. This was followed up by ‘A Hero’s Death’, a departure from the post punk sound but still contemplative and tackling the challenges of youth. ‘Skinty Fia’ rounds out this trilogy of ideas, much built around the band’s move to London and contending with their Irishness in the face of England. A plaudit I hear a lot from fans of the group is that they’re authentic; they’re talking about real things here, real problems and making people dance at the same time.
Two years later, a video teaser was released, alluding to the newest album. Green slime pouring out from underneath the door, a large reverberating sound, a new vocal approach from lead singer Grian Chatten. Something has shifted. ‘Romance’, they announced, would be a departure from their previous sonics. Stepping away from their ‘Irish-centric’ themes would allow them to envelop themselves into an alternative universe inspired by atmosphere and colour, alongside visions of dystopia.
The band, debuting their new look in glimpses, would showcase this stylistic left turn in Crack Magazine. In the presence of spiked hair, was the absence of a previous drab (for lack of a better term). In this incarnation of the band are futuristic punks, a collage of existing aesthetics that cohesively depicts them. This realm is showcased in their debut single ‘Starburster’. A vibrant neon green tracksuit becomes the unofficial costume for Chatten, who appears in many versions of himself (disfigured, a tree of some sort, a sword wielding character from a futuristic manga, elderly man, kinked out, 70s sitcom father, a cowboy, a knight, a bum, and an angel) in this dreary scope of an English town with little to no life present. Sonically and physically, ‘Starburster’ solidified the new approach the band had adopted. Skittish hip hop with nu metal inflections, here we come!
And yet, time and time again, with each new photo posted from their Instagram came the question of, ‘is everything alright at home, boys?’. A comment section divided, some confused and lost on this new visual direction. Then the S word made an appearance and has been thrown at them constantly since. A reddit thread is titled ‘Their new style is a joke, right?’.
Signing with XL Records made the band a feasible target for the S word comment. A new budget, new team, and the record label being one of the biggest in the industry, the argument for the band selling out was supported by this shift. Their new style has been pinned to stylist intervention which has been refuted by the band. Music critic Stuart Stubbs states in his review of the album that ‘bands used to be up for dressing like maniacs’. Nowadays, ditching the dark drab oversized clothing you dubbed for a neon-coloured switch up is allegedly sellout behaviour.
We’ve been here before. The suave, cool, lounge approach that Alex Turner adopted has also received this type of backlash, although it’s aimed more at the sound that came with it. His long-swept hair and meticulous suits become more pronounced as his vision for a different Arctic Monkeys sound evolves further, simultaneously as fans grow further away from their dream of another AM album. What fans who whisper dreams of a Teddypicker 2.0 fail to realise is that it was the emergence of this darker, gelled back, cooler image that welcomed in the band's most successful album to date.
We encourage pop artists, especially female pop musicians, to constantly change their image when promoting a new album. Evolution is a part of the artistic process, shedding yourself of a previous skin in order to hone in a new sound and visual adjacent to the musical landscape a new project embraces is common practice. What makes it different here? Although the styling claims are found in nothing but projection and misinformation, I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with working with a stylist to execute an artistic vision.
The question of the sellout is underpinned by the question of authenticity. Moving away from lyrics that address the band’s native land and the shared struggles one inhabits within the Irish identity has now been conflated as a group of men lost, selling themselves to industry. A marker of authenticity is having a voice and a stance, something which the group has repeatedly shown signs of through their loud support for the Palestinian cause. A collaboration with Massive Attack and Young Father, guitarist Carlos O’Connell reading for Voices for Gaza, the presence of the flag during their live shows. If the so-called puppet masters of the industry were behind this ‘shift’, surely these calls for action would’ve been suppressed? I’d make the case for musicians staying silent on matters of mass oppression being sellouts instead.
What is current culture’s cynicism towards male performance? And particularly, straight male performance? We ask of pop stars to reinvent themselves every album cycle, for the sake of a new sound, a new image that encompasses the vision articulated through these new tracks. The band headlining the Park stage at Glastonbury on the Friday night is a sign for pop stardom, whether the parameters of genre allow for it to be as such. If anything, this new look feels somewhat of a natural progression. Breaking free of the constraints of expectation is a move made to set up what’s to come for the expecting audience. In an interview with NME, Grian mentions that “I didn’t want to go out on stage dressed the same as I was for ‘Dogrel’ or whatever. I wanted to put the audience in the right mindset to render them sensitive to the message we were trying to convey”. Drummer Tom Coll believes it’s down to the expectations of genre, stating in an interview “I feel like there’s certain expectations put on five guys in a band that they should just wear retro sixties revivalist clothing. If it was in any other genre of music, it’d be celebrated to use fashion as a form of expression’.
This criticism is tired. We want our favourite artists to stay authentic to their routes. We want them wearing the same clothes. We want them to get the bigger record deals, but we don't want the music to change too much. They need to remember the origins, as if they haven't made the music themselves. This is the paradox of musical acts who get why we reduce ourselves to simplicity by demanding pure music and restricting expression outside of the sonics. Everyone laments bands for replicating the same stuff churned out from the first album, and in the same breath, laments a new look as false and insincere. If selling out is to expand, I wish more bands sold out. Wear your influences and then some. What ‘pop’ musicians prove is that performance can be more than the instrument you play, and we’d have a lot more fun with it if we could begin to engage with thinking skills beyond the equation of change=bad.