Here’s a story from 30 years ago that would make no sense today.
It’s 1992. Pearl Jam’s debut albumTenis selling well. But then MTV puts the music video for their song “Jeremy” in heavy rotation, and the band rockets into superstardom—shows suddenly sold out, fans smashing record store windows, the whole shebang.
That’s familiar enough, but what happens next is not. Pearl Jam responds to this hullabaloo byrefusing to make music videos for the next five years. They decline photoshoots and interviews. When their producer tells them that their song “Better Man” is a surefire hit,they cut it from their second album.1Nevertheless, that album sells nearly a million copies in its first week, setting a record. Then it sells six million more, staying at #1 on the Billboard chart for over a month.
They say thatthe past is a foreign country, and reading a Pearl Jamprofilefrom the early 90s, it certainly feels that way. The writer takes for granted that fame is inherently bad. And not just because fans might, say, break into your backstage dressing room and steal your notebooks—which they did—but also because commercial success and artistic integrity are so obviously at odds with one another. Kurt Cobain had mocked the band for catering to the mainstream, and the criticism clearly stung. It was understood that being popular was somehow, paradoxically,uncool, and that Pearl Jam owed everyone assurances that they hadn’t gotten too big for their britches.
I am just barely old enough to remember this era, when “selling out” was a bad thing you did with your career, rather than a good thing you do with your stadium tour.Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century, the book where I first read this story about Pearl Jam,quotes the 90s chronicler Chuck Klosterman: “the concept of ‘selling out’ […] is the single most nineties aspect of the nineties”. I gained consciousness at about the time that Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and the Spice Girls gained worldwide fame, and I understood that it was hip to hate them.2This didn’t stop them from selling millions of records, of course. But there was a sizable sector of society that refused to join in, a clutch of (sometimes snobby) purists who were ready to turn on anyone who got too big or too rich. As the music writerChris Dalla Rivapoints out, around this time, a rock band could losepermanently lose their street cred for appearing in a Miller commercial.
That feeling part of a larger anti-consumerist vibe percolating through culture at the time. This was the era ofSuper Size Meand the anti-World Trade Organization protests that came to be known asthe Battle of Seattle. My parents furnished me with copies of Eric Schlosser’sFast Food Nationand Naomi Klein’s anti-capitalist manifestoNo Logo.3My English teacher made the whole class read anti-consumerist YA novels likeFeedandThe Gospel According to Larry. I got so caught up in the fervor that I almost showed up to a school dance with a handmade sign that said “I AM PROTESTING CONSUMERISM”. I chickened out at the last second, but clearly there was some potent zeitgeist going on if a 13-year-old was about to stake their reputation on, I guess, not buying stuff?
Fast forward to today, and that zeitgeist is long gone. Meghan Thee Stallion is aPopeyes franchisee, Drake would like you totry online gambling, and Maroon 5 is covering Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” asa tribute to Hyundai.4Shortly after she charted her first hit, the rapper Ice Spice was partnering with Ben Affleck and Dunkin’ Donuts on anIce Spice Munchkins Drink.5We’ve got punk icon Iggy Popselling insuranceand Bob Dylan appearing in aVictoria’s Secret commercial.6Lollapalooza once featured alt rock and heavy metal; these days, you can catch a set by DJ D-Sol, better known asDavid Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. And if you love Lady Gaga’s albumChromaticaand the associated HBO specialGaga Chromatica Ball, then don’t miss theselimited edition Lady GagaChromatica-themed Oreos!
Hyper-commercialism is nothing new, in music or anywhere else. (See, for instance, the band KISS’ officially licensedKiss Kasket). People who bemoan our era of “late capitalism” rarely realizethat phrase is 100 years old. The only thing that’s unprecedented about these craven cash-ins ishow well they seem to be working. Selling out no longer carries a stigma—if anything, fans areexcitedfor tie-ins between their favorite bands and their favorite brands, no matter how shameless. The Chromatica Oreos reportedly flew off the shelves, earning a thumbs-upeven from theWashington Post’s food critic. Some people complained about thetexture and the color,or how it was simplya re-release of the much-hated “golden” Oreo, but they did not complain that it is cringe, perhaps even depraved, for a musician to collaborate with an international food conglomerate to stick her name on a million mass-produced sandwich cookies.
And if that doesn’t send Kurt Cobain spinning in his grave, wait until he finds out thatGen Z thinks Nirvana is a clothing brand.
W. David Marx, the author ofBlank Space, has a theory that I think is correct, but incomplete. He blames an ideology calledpoptimism: the idea that popular art (and especially pop music) is just as meritorious as any other kind of art. Poptimism was meant to be a reaction torockism7, a strain of cultural snobbery that insisted rock ‘n’ roll was the only authentic form of art—if it ain’t a white guy with a guitar, it ain’t real music! Both sides of that debate might sound stupid now, but the poptimist critique made sense back when people wereflocking to baseball stadiums to blow up piles of disco records:
Unfortunately, Marx says, the critics took poptimism too far, and they brought the discourse with them. They embraced pop music not only because they had suddenly discovered the musical genius of Britney Spears, but also because they realized the political winds had changed. In the words of one music writer, poptimism was “a kind of penance, atoning for past rockist misdeeds”. Saying that some art is better than other art started sounding too much like saying that somepeopleare better than other people. And once you’re unwilling to judge art for its artistry, you’re stuck judging it by its popularity.
Casual consumers have no such hangups. They don’t care whether every pop song they listen to is written bythe same middle-aged Swedish guy; they just want their eardrums vibrated, their retinas tickled, and their pleasure centers stimulated. And so, the more you cater to the consumer over the connoisseur, the more you’re going to be serving up slop. The internet makes this possible; competition makes it irresistible.