When Push Comes to Shove, Where’s the Line between Staying True & Selling Out?

Written by Brighton Bishofberger

What’s one of the most hot button topics in our scene? Go ahead, I’ll give you a bit to come up with some answers. Got one picked out? Actually, I’m too excited so I’ll just spill the beans. This article is going to be on the age old debate of “what constitutes selling out??” Now this can be a very broad topic and split into a lot of different subsections so I’ll try to keep it straightforward and focus on a couple of key questions. 

• What is “selling out” and what impact does it have on the scene?

• Are specific genres to blame? (Pop, Rock, etc.…)

• Where is the line between pandering and experimenting?

I chose these three questions because I feel they will best get us to the answer we are so desperately trying to find. Sound good? Awesome! Let’s get into it. 

To get a solid definition of “selling out” we’ll of course head to good ol’ Urban Dictionary. As defined by the site “selling out” is, 

“A rather obsolete term people use to describe bands that have become more mainstream/commercial, usually after signing to a major label. Of course, just because a band has become more mainstream doesn't mean they've 'sold out'- it just means they have more money to spend on professional recordings, greater exposure, etcetera. And as long as a band does not prioritize money over their artistic vision then they should not be accused of wrongdoing.” 

Slightly slanted in its tone, but you get the point. Just go to any majorly popular scene bands comment sections and you’ll probably find quite a few comments ranging everywhere from, 

“They should just play their old stuff. This new stuff isn’t as good.”

To, 

“I miss when they weren’t pop trash.” 

Or, 

“What happened to this band? Bunch of sellouts.”

Fans are passionate, and that’s not a bad thing at all! We have the right to criticize/enjoy art as we please, just as artists have the right to create whatever they so choose to. However, when is the proper time to use that definition when describing an artist’s work? Huge bands like Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, A Day to Remember, & Bring Me the Horizon are just a couple of examples of artists who have faced criticism when reaching the big stage of their careers. 

I think all music fans understand that bands work extremely hard to get to a point where they can comfortably sustain their career and reaching the mainstream isn’t something we frown upon. We want our favorite bands to succeed! However, we also want our favorite bands to get there the right way. Maybe it’s not a specific sound at all that we as fans chase from our favorite artists. Maybe it’s a feeling we get from them. A unique feeling that only that band provides. For example, let’s compare two massive scene bands that have both dealt with similar feelings from their respective fan bases over the past decade. Fall Out Boy and Bring Me the Horizon both gained a huge following early on in their careers and then eventually turned that popularity into mainstream success. Like many of us, I grew up on the From Under a Cork Tree and Infinity on High albums from FOB. Likewise for the BMTH fans that grew up on Count Your Blessings and Suicide Season. These albums meant something to us and gave us a lasting bond with these bands. Nostalgia driven or not, they are solid albums in their own right and were crucial to driving both bands ascent to stardom. So understandably, fans were a little upset as both bands started to move towards different sounds later in their careers. FOB started dabbling in Pop/Rock and Hip-Hop Collaborations, while BMTH moved towards a more Hard Rock/Pop influenced sound. 

Now which band do you think I have more quibbles with? Well If you guessed Fall Out Boy, you are correct. Now I still have a great deal of respect for the boys of FOB and it’s cool to see that they still seem to enjoy playing some of their older songs live. However, as a whole, their post hiatus releases have been very disappointing in my eyes. Save Rock and Roll and American Beauty/American Psycho were fine, I guess. They had some decent songs. Mania was a bit of a mess and honestly it wasn’t until their latest ep Lake Effect Kid that I finally felt some of that old FOB spirit return. I feel that FOB is a perfect example of a band who blew up huge, took a break, and came back trying to do way too much. I don’t think they have go back to the ‘Sugar We’re Going Down’ sound to succeed. The band has grown a ton since then and each member has a ton of talent and influences. I think Folie Au Deux was a perfect example of what their sound could be when mixing their old and new influences together. Instead, the band tried to incorporate way too many current sounds into each recent release and though the FOB catchy hooks remained, the soul of the band felt a little empty. 

Bring Me the Horizon on the other hand I feel very differently about. The band themselves have been pretty open and honest over the course of their last few releases about which sounds they were incorporating and I think that’s been very crucial to their transition. They had a very gradual shift in sound starting with Sempiternal that has carried on all the way to their latest release Amo. That’s the Spirit was the real middle ground as you felt a lot of the Rock/Pop influences of new start to blend into the band’s original sound. That album overall was pretty darn good. Sempiternal is a classic as well and one that most fans would probably list as their favorite alongside any of their Deathcore releases. 

Their latest release Amo really became the most debated album of their discography as it featured a ton of Pop influence as well as some strong EDM vibes, which took a lot of fans by surprise. For fans that have been there from the beginning, I can totally understand why. Their nostalgia was the ‘Chelsea Smile’ era. That era was a huge reason for their success and nothing will change that. Not everyone is a fan of pop or electronic influences either, which is totally fair. 

I give credit where credit is due though. Between lead singer Oli Sykes vocal health and striving to tweak their sound, I think BMTH actually handled their transition very well. Though some fans may still be angry that the band isn’t the same as they used to be. I think a lot can be said for their effort on each album. I harken back to the earlier definition of “selling out” to make my point. I think BMTH has always remained genuine and put in solid artistic effort with their music. That doesn’t mean that every risk they’ve ever taken has hit the mark. That’s almost impossible to do. However, when you start evaluating with other factors beyond first impressions and dig a little deeper, you can appreciate the art form a lot more. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I will be the first to tell you there is a lot of bad music out there. More specifically, there’s a lot of bad pop music out there. I’m the first to criticize lazy songwriting and instrumentation and nothing drives me crazier than pandering songs that just feel pointless. However, I will also come right out as a musician myself and tell you that no genre is harder to nail down than pop music. Now let me explain that statement.

Making good original music is crazy hard. No matter the genre. We all know that the scene has bred some amazingly talented musicians who easily stand tall as some of the best in all of music. It is so hard to make original songs that are not only musically interesting, but vocally catchy and lyrically meaningful. It’s why few bands reach the top echelon of stardom and the others fade into irrelevance as quickly as they blew up. Pop music in basic definition stands for “Popular Music”. In theory, the songs that are successful are the ones that can check every box and appeal to a lot of people. For every mediocre pop star, there are a ton of really talented ones that work extremely hard to create well-crafted songs. 

So what is my point in all of this? Not just anyone can foray into the pop world. We’ve seen countless bands “go mainstream” and fail. It’s a huge enough risk to lose some of your original fans, but what happens when you don’t even reach the new fans of your music? That’s why I give a lot of credit to BMTH and many other bands who have seen mainstream success and maintained their artistic integrity. It’s a really hard thing to do and as long as these bands are creating from a genuine place, what’s so wrong with that? Amo may not go down as BMTH’s best album, but I really enjoyed it for what it was. Even the poppiest numbers like, “Mother Tongue” really worked for me. The production felt so massive and melodies worked perfectly. It never felt too gimmicky. You could feel Oli’s emotions in the song and that’s what sold it. Draw your inspiration from a genuine place and 9 times out of 10, you’ll have a good result. 

We’ll finish this thing with the topic of pandering and experimentation in music. This is a very hard line to define sometimes and it’s one of the biggest distinguishers between a strong effort and mediocre release. How many times have we seen a band member before a new album release say something along the lines of, “We just wanted to really expand our sound and evolve. I think fans will feel this is our best album yet.” Everybody raising their hands? Good. It’s probably also safe to say that we’ve all been disappointed at one point by one of these “experimental albums”. It happens! Like I said previously, making music is hard! It’s even harder straying away from your original influences and adding in new ones. 

It’s important to note that experimenting with your sound is never a bad thing. It’s how musicians grow and continue to make great music that generation after generation will enjoy. It’s how bands stay relevant and mature rather than stay stagnant. The Maine are a great example of a band that has always made great songs that resonate with people, but could’ve very easily faded into irrelevancy when the Pop-Punk/Boy Band era of the late 2000’s died out. The exact opposite has been the case though for the Arizona based outfit. The Maine have honestly gotten even better as a band and have always impressed me with how they were able to mature their sound while still keeping traces of what them so popular in the first place. It can be done! Interestingly enough, they’ve become a band that I actually enjoy more as an adult than when I was a teenager. I enjoy their older classics of course, but their more mature releases resonate with me much more. 

However, we’ve also seen a ton of bands over the years try wayyyyyy too hard to incorporate different sounds in their music and fail immensely. Often times there’s no cohesion and the whole album just becomes a jumbled mess. More often however, we see bands pandering to a specific audience. In its purest form, pandering isn’t a bad thing. Once a band finds an audience, why wouldn’t they want to write songs that their audience would enjoy? Why wouldn’t they also want to write songs that new audiences can enjoy as well? The problem lies when bands try too hard and lose authenticity in their art. 

I’ve noticed there are usually two paths bands take at this point. They either chase a current popular trend in music, or they become stagnant and never grow with their original sound. We’ve seen many bands from the scene sort of “jump ship” and hop on the different genre trains and that’s all well and good. That is if they can pull it off. Bands like The Summer Set, We the Kings, heck even Panic! At the Disco could count in this category (although I’ll give a lot of credit to Brendan Urie for being a huge role model in the scene and putting out solid tracks no matter what genre he’s producing). However, we saw a huge exodus from bands in the scene over the past ten years jumping onto the pop and rock trains and most of the results were not pretty. Many of them were exposed once they moved to a more pop-orientated sound. They got stuck in the “Twilight Zone” as I like to call it. They were now too pop to be a pop-punk band, but also not good enough to be a pop mainstay. Bringing it back to my earlier point, it’s hard to write good popular music, and a lot these bands just chased trends instead leading to bad pop songs. Instead of making at least one of your audiences happy, now none of them are. 

On the other hand, there have also been bands that get stuck writing the same songs over and over without any growth. This definitely isn’t the worst thing ever as at least you’re keeping one audience happy. However, I think bands that never change shorten their lifespans by a lot. They become dated and eventually, the fans that discovered them grow up. New fans will find them for sure, but they will never grow past the point of their original success. It’s a better problem to have, but it’s still a problem. 

In conclusion, how do we as fans discern the line between “selling out”? First, we appreciate and understand that making original music is extremely hard. Be thankful that our favorite bands put in the time and effort to produce music that we all can enjoy. Second, also understand that bands can take risks and incorporating sounds from other genres is a good thing when done right. Third, just because a band changes it sound doesn’t automatically mean they are now “sellouts”. However with these things in mind, don’t be afraid to speak your mind and be critical. We as music fans have just as much of a right to express our opinion as the bands do. If bands are being lazy, pandering, and not putting in good effort into their music, then don’t waste your time on them. Find amazing new artists and spread the word! 

I wrote this article to create an understanding. Bands shouldn’t be criticized unfairly for taking risks and trying to grow their sound, however they also shouldn’t be off limits to criticism and critique. Fans have the right to critique their favorite bands, however they should also understand the effort that goes into writing original music. If more artists and fans can find common ground with each other, especially in this fast paced media driven world, then maybe we can ensure that even more great music gets made. 

*Header photo courtesy of article on The New Fury*