When Your Album Sucks - admit it
Jon Wilde has some hilarious insights into why artists fail to talk about their shitty albums until it’s time to release a new one. His best example is Joss Stone talking about her album -
She waited until the release of her third album before conceding that its predecessor, Mind Body & Soul, had been “half-assed”. But she was wrong about that. Her offending second album didn’t have any kind of ass at all.
In the age of the web and digital youth it would be refreshing if artists understood that there is no escape. If your fans think that your album is half-assed as Stone says then they will let everyone and their grandmother know. Labels and artists must put their heads together and ask themselves the deep and philosophical question - “Does this album change the game or are we just followers?” 90% of the new albums that hit the Moose desk or email inbox are from bands who are simply rehashing old and tired genres and no amount of free MP3s will help. In fact you might argue that free MP3s would actually harm sales once people hear how dull some of the music is.
There is so much great music currently available in the world today so hold off on releasing that CD unless it is truly amazing. And if you must release it then be sure to have your publicist include lines like this in your press release - [real quotes follow] “We recorded in a warehouse in a run-down industrial part of town. It sat right against the train tracks and you could feel the trains in the floor as they passed” Wow! “We cut Fault that night and I think you can hear it in the energy of that track, everyone was working really hard to find the right place, getting to know each other musically through recording was really special.” Special!
August 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am
@Dave–We creatives forget that people are conditioned in this culture of ours to accept mediocrity. Every McDonald’s burger consumed, every carbon copy cookie cutter band that sells another CD, every Hollywood film with two buddy cops and a chase scene where the guys in the airborne car going “whooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”…it’s what these people have grown up with. Not that I’m telling anyone here something they don’t know :-)
What we lament as half-assed is considered a major accomplishment by those who don’t work directly in the field. Part of the mythos of being one of the “chosen” (read–on stage, on screen, or on the air) is the idea that we’ve got rare and special talents which have earned us the place we have in front of the million billions. Joss Stone? She’s one of the special ones…she has a CD out. Although I am grateful that the net has diminshed this quite a bit from the way it USED to be since everybody and their dog are now using GarageBand to make albums.
This is getting ranty…they were complaining about this in ancient Rome just as I am doing here…but they were, of course, wearing robes. We’ve come SO far since then. Can you imagine playing a show wearing a TOGA? Coming to the Collesium this fall: BACCUS FEST
August 25th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
So much for “The Long Tail”, eh? Is there not room for comfort music? Why not just put out the album and let listeners decide? I like some of Bowie’s supposed “half-assed” efforts so in this day and age, I see no reason to hold back. You can preview just about anything and everything. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@Guy, I don’t think even Chris Anderson, who coined the term Long Tail, would agree that the Tail is an excuse for folks to bang out mediocre albums. And actually now I think about it, CD Baby serves those artists well, the ones who want to store 10 CDs on CD Baby’s shelves and hope that their marketing efforts drive sales. Comfort music can be amazing too BTW - Boards of Canada and Brian Eno’s ambient albums fill that niche for me. But if you mean comfort music as background filler then I’m going to have to disagree. Why is it left to Radiohead to be the band that delivers music as art? It’s hard to get excited about modern music these days as so few artists seem to really want to break the mould.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I guess I see more artists breaking the mold than ever before but a lot of listeners truly aren’t interested in new and exciting. Those folks should still be served by someone. For you and me, music as art will always be sought after. But, not everyone can be an envelope pusher, nor do they need to be. There should be room for all of it, unless it’s pure shit. In that case, the offenders should have their instruments taken from them. ;-)
November 24th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The only time an artist will admit their album sucks is when they released to get out of a legal contract and they want to screw the label out of any profit. Of course, talking trash about the record (even if it sucks) is likely to bring litigation from the label, who generally has more legal resources (i.e., money) than the average artist. The only artist I know of to ever publicly claim a new album was Elvis Costello, who was of course correct because all his albums suck.