Selling Out in the 90s

Band credibility was dependent on your level of poverty

The idea of ‘selling out’ and artists staying true to their roots, all feels rather quaint and a little idealistic.

Numerous bands succumbed to the big-money contracts on offer by the major record labels and instantly lost all street cred. They had ‘sold out’ their fanbase and betrayed their roots.

Oh, to be back in the 90s.

An innocent time when you could squat in a shitty bedsit with five other dirty humans and not care about making money. A time when heroin was in vogue, and being a pasty, white male with bad skin and anger at the world, was the height of fashion.

Selling Out was a real concern in the 90s.

Nasty men from the majors would descend on a gig with wads of cash, desperately hoping to sign the ‘next big thing’. Every shite band from Glasgow to Brighton jumped on the indie express hoping to lure a big money contract. When the pimps came calling, you showed as much arse as possible.

And who could really blame them?

Was the music any worse? A shit band is still a shit band, no matter how much cash you splash in the studio. You could try a dozen sound effects, amp your tunes through a techno blender, or even hire the latest and greatest producer, but you will always be a crap band. But now, you will be a shite band who sold their soul with zero cred.

What is cred anyway?

Is it the daily slog of living on the poverty line and barely surviving? Is it the ability to trace a musical lineage back to John Lee Hooker? Is it the amount of groupies you could attract or the heroin you could overdose or the drugs you could consume while remaining upright and coherent at a gig?

Credibility was bonkers in the 90s.

Boy bands were scorned, and anything produced by Stock, Aitken, and Waterman was considered anti-music and loved solely by pre-pubescent teens and your granny. She couldn’t get enough of sweet sweet boys sweating their way through love by numbers.

My friends, the cool indie kids who hated the world, would cheer when a band broke into the mainstream. Smashing the fourth wall live on television as they jumped around in an uncoordinated entanglement and screamed into the mics. Apeing moves for the camera directly into your living room while they performed on Top of the Pops (TOTP). My Dad would cringe and berate me for turning the volume up. “How can you listen to this? You can’t even hear what he’s singing!”

Did Therapy really play live on TOTP?

This wasn’t meant to happen. Happy Mondays, Pulp, Elastica, Suede, and even The Frank and Walters made an appearance. (The Fuck and Wankers NEVER had any cred despite being an indie band. We ALL hated them.)

I cheered them all (except you, Levellers, and your faux Irish dirge). I reveled in their obscurity. I gleefully informed my parents that they wouldn’t understand just how great a moment this all was. The kids had broken through. We had taken over. My scene, my peers, my fashion, my drugs. We were in control now…at least until we all sold out!

Appearing on TOTP was acceptance from The Man. It wasn’t subversive. Though most bands wouldn’t admit it, they secretly loved fulfilling their boyhood dreams of appearing on TOTP. It was a rite of passage and an opportunity to show the world how fucking awesome you could be.

That was until Nirvana showed up.

Altered lyrics. Weird voice. This is how you maintain credibility while ‘selling out.’

It felt like the entire grunge scene in Seattle was all on major record deals. Nirvana opened the doors, and every man and his dog jumped on board. Mudhoney, Tad, Butthole Surfers, Helmet (!), and Flipper, to name a few. Once you opened the floodgates, it was all normalized.

Except in the UK, we had a different view of how we liked our artists. The indie (alternative) scene was awash with bands postulating at the altar of cred. Nobody wanted to admit they were signed to a major.

By the end of the 90s, popular culture was flooded with this unique problem.

Movies condemned everybody who opted into the system. They urged people to fight against the corporates. To fight against the faceless behemoths out to destroy your creativity. Films such as Fight Club, Office Space, The Matrix, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, all made the same basic point. Conformity was a trap. Money will corrupt you. Bourgeois life is a fruitless existence.

Angry white males lapped up the message.

As Y2K loomed closer, it really did feel like the end was near. That life was pointless. Nihilism was in. Live life fast and don’t conform (thanks, Trainspotting). Office work was dull. Homeownership was boring. A good job was for ponces who sold their soul to the corporate or major labels.

Yeah…read that line again.

Tell that to the kids today, and they will laugh in your face.

“Wait, you were scared of owning a home and having a job? Was everybody THAT stupid in the 90s?”

It didn’t take long for technology to erase all our concerns.

We all sold out as we reached for the download button from Napster, leveling the market of all profits. We all nodded in a collective agreement. Smug in our righteousness that the majors would suffer thanks to their greed. They had brought this upon themselves by overcharging on CDs, umpteen remixes, and limited editions. Fuck them.

But everybody suffered.

There was no longer a line between the Indies and the majors. Labels collapsed. The industry was retrenched. Artists lost money. And still, we continued to download ‘free’ music. It was our right after years and years of being taken advantage of.

The CD-driven gold rush of the 90s came to a sudden halt.

The idea of Selling Out in a world of falling wages and spiraling living costs is incomprehensible today.

How was this even an issue?

In retrospect, I miss the innocence of those times. It all felt more clear-cut.