Suddenly I Found Myself an Innovator

Should I really get lathered up about another old-guard rock critic laying down the gauntlet about the authenticity scandal that is pop stars selling their music to corporations to make money? Even after Maura has already intelligently replied to what amounts to a boilerplate lament?

No. But I will anyway.

Real quick: Bill Wyman thinks that Santogold selling some of her music to Target and speaking of it so blithely in interviews is “grotesque.” More specifically to his point, in his own words: “While art can be created out of commercial or propagandistic purposes…let’s face it, most isn’t.” Wyman’s proffered an unprovable argument here, one in which he sets the parameters for “art” himself, and scolds those who don’t live up to the standard. It’s the sort of rhetorical move that makes a dartboard out of someone by establishing an arbitrary platonic ideal (let’s call it “art”. No, “rock.”) and then faulting a person for not living up to it. Let’s try a different one: Santogold is not a crossword puzzle, because she’s not constructed from white and black checkered squares in which we write answers to vaguely-worded clues.

Of course, Wyman’s playing by rockist rules, which set the standards of music evaulation by an arbitrary, imaginary set of authenticity parameters, most succinctly summed up in his quote: “A rock artist is trafficking in the implicit independence of the form” (my emphasis). I’m not sure if he’s serious, or if he’s writing some sort of polemic and trying to get responses, but I’ll assume he means it. But how? By all accounts, Wyman’s a bright guy, with a long and respectable CV. But how can he have written about a subject for so long and still not be able to see past his own biases? Or, at least not call attention to them in his writing (or blogging)? How can he think that rock music, as a form of popular culture is “implicitly independent” of anything—commercial interests, cultural trends, industrial mergers, differently inflected ideas of artistic credibility?

What Wyman’s actually arguing for, though he doesn’t seem to realize it, is a return to the economic and popular culture climate of 1991 and before, when a band like Nirvana could appear to take over the zeitgeist completely and purely by virtue of their amazing music. It’s a romantic idea, to be sure, but it totally and conveniently ignores the fact that Nirvana, for all of Cobain’s purist posturing, was selling ad time on Saturday Night Live, and issues of Rolling Stone, and commercial slots on MTV. They were signed to DGC because that’s what Sonic Youth did, and DGC was a huge corporation (not as big as Target, or GE, or Viacom, who Nirvana also made tons of dough for), and that’s fine.

The tricky thing about nostalgia is that it’s most often a form of longing for a way of life that never really was. It’s okay to buy into Kurt Cobain’s “corporate rock still sucks” passive-aggressive rhetoric, because that’s part of the fun. But as a critic, there comes a point when you need to back up for a second and realize that pining for the past is different than critiquing these kids these days. I get the sneaking suspicion that most of Wyman’s anger comes out of the fact that Santi had the cajones to overtly support taking money from a corporation for her music (like these earlier grotesque sell-outs), instead of ironically distancing herself from it. No, what she’s doing is more an act of bravery, especially at a time when critics like Wyman still command a lot of attention.

Wyman’s a nostalgic idealist at a time when critics of his stature really need to be pragmatists. What he doesn’t do in his post is acknowledge that Santi’s playing by the rules laid out for her in the current music market, not making up new rules as she goes along. “Selling out” doesn’t have the same meaning (if it ever really had a meaning) as it did in ’91, or ’77, or when greedy scumbag Moby leveraged the rest of his career against a series of auto ads. When it’s become next to impossible for even a song as catchy as “L.E.S. Artistes” to make a broad cultural impact, it’s time to back up a bit and re-evaluate (5-6 years too late) that we’re in the niche era of fame now, not the more massified era of Wyman’s reveries. There’s not going to be another Nirvana anytime soon, Bill. There’s going to be 40 of them.