What I don't ever get is why someone is so quick to change their mind on a band after they've shown up on MTV or the radio, saying they've 'sold out'. The words 'sell out' are definitely two words that I don't like being after one another in a sentence. After the release of "Fast Times at Barrington High" people were complaining of The Academy Is...'s more 'poppish' sound or how they were conforming to what people wanted to hear. Then it got worse when the 'About A Girl' video was played on MTV after 'The Hills' people were saying that they had 'sold out.' I don't get that. The Academy Is... are still playing the shows for the fans. Not once have they been playing the shows for the money or writing the records for the money. That's what the definition of 'sell out' means for me. Either you've stopped playing shows for the fans, or the music and you're playing for nothing but the money.
That brings me to Fall Out Boy who have been being called 'Sell Out Boy', remember the "The Takes Over, The Break Over" video? After the release of "From Under the Cork Tree", mainly "Sugar We're Going Down", that's a lot of what I've been hearing. "Fall Out Boy has sold out" or "They were so much better before 'Sugar We're Going Down'. I don't know, I thought fans wanted their bands to do well, for their bands to succeed with what they were doing with their music. After a single song release and the band gets popular, you turn on them and say 'They've sold out'. I don't know. I think Fall Out Boy have done an awesome thing by doing the smaller club shows and then what they tried to do with the Folie A Deux release in Washington Square Park.
To say a band sold out I think is just accusing the band of playing for the money which I haven't seen a band do in a long time. I think the words sell out should never be used unless the band actually say 'We're not playing for the fans, we're playing for the money.'
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