By Guest Writer and Music Enthusiast Holden Hartle*

 

What is a sellout? This is a word thrown around quite often in the music world. If an artist or band changes their style of music, they are immediately labelled a sellout. Bands like Fall Out Boy, Maroon 5, and Weezer have often received the insult. Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of Weezer, even wrote a song about being a sellout entitled “Back to the Shack” (great song, highly recommended). But that can’t be right. What if an artist wants to change their style simply because their interests have changed? According to most people in the Youtube comments, fans don’t care whatsoever.

In the music world, a sellout is attributed to someone who changes their style of music, for the purpose of making more money. Taylor Swift is a prime example of this. I realize I am making some very unpopular claims, but just stay with me. Taylor Swift started off as the sweet, innocent country girl, who wrote songs with her acoustic guitar and sang like an angel. Songs like “Our Song,” “Mean,” and “Sparks Fly” got into the heart of every twelve-year-old girl in America. But then she made a huge change. In October of 2012, Taylor Swift released the album Red. This album hinted at a change to pop music, with songs like “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22,” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together.” Then in 2014, Taylor Swift finally announced that she made the switch to pop with her album 1989, featuring songs like “Blank Space,” “Bad Blood,” and “Shake It Off.” Now she has an album set to release on November 10, 2017, entitled Reputation, featuring “… Ready For It,” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”

So, down to the real question, why? Why would she make this sort of change? Well, in every interview I could find on her (which is way more than I wanted to watch), she doesn’t really answer the question. She always finds some way to swerve around the question. This leads us to assume that she did it solely for the money. She saw the money she could make doing pop, and the dollar bill signs started flashing in her eyes. If you compare the sales of 1989 and all of her other albums, 1989 crushes any other album by a staggering 3,000,000 total albums.

So, in essence, this is what the music community calls a “sellout.” It is an insult that means you dropped the sound of your roots in order to make more money. The problem with this insult is that it applies to too many bands who do not deserve it. Who do you think is a sellout?

 

Editor: A.J. Patencio

*The above is the sole opinion of Guest Writer Holden Hartle and does not represent the views of thebirdonfire.org editorial board (in other words, Claire disagrees).