The entire proposition of "selling out" is a ridiculous assertion and is an excuse for people who enjoyed a band prior to their genre shift/crappy album release to say "they used to be good." If you are seriously naive enough to follow such dogmatic bullshit, you need to pull your head out of your ass and see the music industry isn't as innocent as you saw it before.

Completely disagree. It's perfectly intuitive and reflects actual fact:

- a band, on a small label, is renowned in the music community for being audacious, adventurous, creative, daring and innovative
- they then sign a massive multi-million dollar record contract
- their output subsequent to signing the new deal is entirely commercially driven and conforms to pretty much every convention of pop/mainstream currently existing in the present market
- plainly, though this would be quite an extreme case scenario, it is certainly "selling out".

Selling out, basically, should be understood to be changing something in your product in order to capitalize on the market. Short of this, there is no selling out. You're simply not selling out unless you modify something in your creative output in order to make more money.

For this reason, statements made in songs like Tool's "Hooker With A P3nis" are odd. The satirical idea that by simply making a record you have sold yourself out falls plainly outside of the spirit of what 'selling out' is conventionally understood to mean. There is a wide gulf of difference between merely selling your creative output, and changing your creative output to make it more 'sellable'. The LATTER is what anybody who talks of 'selling out' means by it. Thus, 'selling out', as with any other term, is to be judged on the basis of how it is conventionally defined.

In all likelihood if a band did that I doubt they would care about the integrity of their own music in the first place.

I just grow despondent when people say "that band sold out" when they mean to say "their later albums showed a change in direction." It's like a hot button for idiots that like to insult a band without actually having to offer any logical reasoning.

That's very true actually. Like with Tool, for example - a lot of people claimed they sold out with 10,000 Days, just because it included two plausible Modern Rock Chart hits and people didn't like that. Truth was, there was no sign of selling out at all - they were just trying to mix things up a bit and make an album that had the progressive impulses of Lateralus, but with a little more melodic/songful sensibility.

Personally, I don't say that any bands... "sell out."

But I do think it means more than just changing the direction.

I feel that it means they began playing for the money rather than the music, therefore changing the direction of their focus AND music.

Do you disagree?

A little bit like Avril Lavigne and RJA. (Who are now both in Kohl's commercials.)

Red Jumpsuit Apparatus's singer is very egotistical in his ways, and gives off a very... "bow at my feet" presence. That's just my take of his attitude. >.<

I think RJA are OKAY, and I like A FEW Avril songs, but I don't think they changed directions they just got steadily worse. Same with Paramore, who I still like.

I personally just got sick of Paramore.

But they're an amazing band.

I like Avril's old stuff.

But now she's just too... poppy and girly and *twitches*

RJA's e-mails give off the idea that they think there's nobody better than them.

I don't know.

I feel that they're good.

But not good enough to have such an idea as that one.

C'mon, Avril was marketed from the start as the new image of a pop princess - one who is "punk" and "rebellious". They never really cared about the music that much, her image was just such a great opportunity.

But does American Idiot? I think that's his point.

No my point was they were shit when they started , they were shit then and they're still shit now .