All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: We're All Sellouts Now

A guest post by Jason Myles

This guest essay (a meditation on what exactly “selling out” could even mean) was kindly contributed by my good friend Jason Myles. It’s a very different kind of thing than what you usually read here, but I always enjoy Jason’s writing, and I hope you guys do too. You can (and should) read him at Damage Magazine and check out his podcast This is Revolution.

All we ever wanted

Was everything

All we ever got

Was cold

-Bauhaus, The Sky’s Gone Out (1982)

I don’t think “selling out” has the same cultural cache as it did when I was growing up. The get tha bag” vulture capitalist mentality has become pervasive regardless of your political affiliation. Once upon a time, people had to make ideological sacrifices in an attempt to carve out a living for themselves. Millennials and Gen-Z have been fed a different bill of goods on the moral cost for survival. Nothing is to be sacrificed. You can have a harmonious balance of your personal and work life. As long as you’re “happy,” everything is fine. Your job isn’t tedious, because your search for meaning in your labor is a quest, and the perfect balance of work and play is attainable for everyone. But if there is nothing to be sacrificed, if there is nothing you hold sacred beyond your personal time, what hath thou created?

There was a nihilism portrayed in 90s and 2000s pop culture that understood “selling out” as the beginning of a slow death march into a banal existence. That empty feeling has dissipated and been replaced by universal acceptance of the neoliberal project of self-gratification. “Show me the money” isn’t just for greedy capitalists. We’re all Jerry McGuire now in a quest for “quan.” No one is selling out because selling yourself is just the deal, and as long as you can embody your beliefs in your personal branding you’re always “keeping it real”.

As the Bauhaus song states, “All we ever wanted was everything..” We can now have it all– the ability to be true to oneself, without the shame of selling out your ideals and morals for financial gain and professional advancement. If you’re a tech bro or a low level consultant at McKinsey, you can post on social media or simply “identify” as a socialist or communist or whatever strikes your fancy. No one seems to worry about how the dots connect. Looking back on it, I think Nirvana were trail-blazers in this kind of disconnection. They got to achieve massive amounts of financial and pop cultural success without being seen as having compromised their integrity, just because they struck the right pose. Kurt Cobain voluntarily posed for the cover of Rolling Stone, but he did it in a “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” shirt, and that made it all OK.

A lot of things have to fall in your favor for you to go from playing small rooms and bars to arenas and stadiums. First and foremost you might have to sacrifice some of that underground credibility and sign with a major label. There is no way Nirvana’s Nevermind would’ve reached a massive audience, had they not had MTV and radio airplay. They were able to have a budget to tour at a pace and scale that warranted major label financial support and infrastructure. People seem to have this idea that Nirvana was just so good that once people heard them they stopped everything, burned their Cinderella records, got rid of their Aqua Net, and bought a flannel shirt. Guys. That’s not how that happened.

Look What the Cat Dragged In: A Brief History of the Last Days of Hair Metal

The glam scene that preceded Nirvana leaned heavily into the pop aspects of the hard rock genre preceded it, and by 1987 had pretty much played itself out. Motley Crue, the biggest name in the pop/glam metal scene, were done with the loud colors and the make up–the most important aspect of the “hair genre” was the iconography. Once Guns N Roses started to achieve chart topping success with their more raw and raucous sound in 1988, they were pretty much the canary in the coal mine for the end of their look obsessed contemporaries. Hair metal is a post facto genre moniker and the music was the industry’s answer to make the more fringe aspects of heavy metal more marketable.

Before it was “glam” it was “pop metal” and when artists wanted to stay away from the dreaded uncool pejorative “pop,” for a time it was “fashion metal”. Regardless of what it was called, it was made for mass consumption and radio airplay, and the artists that were at the forefront yearned for mass success–so creating an image-based band was a convenient and efficient route.

The hard rock bands that came before the short lived glam metal invasion laid the foundation for this “new genre”, and the youth movement of Glam revitalized these hard rock heroes later in the decade.Think about bands like Aerosmith and Whitesnake for example, two groups that had a a successful history (granted, Aerosmith more than Whitesnake), but in the first half of the 80s many of these bands had a hard time building upon their 70s success.

Aerosmith, once rock n’ roll bad boys who had a string of influential hit records, solidified their status as hard rock heroes with albums like, “Toys in the Attic”, “Rocks” and “Draw the Line”. They would barely survive their massive drug addictions and rock stardom in the 80s to find themselves disjointed with new members and sonically irrelevant. They were not the MTV darlings they would become in the later half of the decade and into the 90s. It would take a new assurgent genre of music–rap to help bring Aerosmith out of the dustbin of history and into the eyes and ears of the masses. The “Walk This Way” duet with emerging rap superstars Run DMC was a resurrection for Aerosmith and they followed up "Permanent Vacation” which sold over 5 million copies–a far cry from their comeback flop “Done with Mirrors” released a year before their rock/rap cross pollination.

Aerosmith would go on to work with pop music producer Desmond Child and record their biggest hits and become a staple on 90s radio and MTV, well into their 60s. Their hard rocking credibility and influence on younger bands that were popular at the time like Guns R’ Roses allowed people to see this pop music pivot not as selling out, but just sonically maturing.

Whitesnake, a hard-rocking 70s band from the UK, never had the same stardom of 70s era Aerosmith, but with the help of glossy production, they re-worked some of their older material and with the help of singer David Coverdale’s then girlfriend model and actress Tawny Kittean, MTV helped propel the once struggling group into rock n’ roll superstardom.

Both Aerosmith and Whitesnake were inescapable during the late 80s and early 90s and their character was never brought into question. They remained hard rock royalty, and were never seen as “sellouts”. Time seemed to be the remedy that cured any notion that slickly produced videos and pop polished recordings meant “sellout”.

Whitesnake and Aerosmith were a part of a larger wave of 70s artists that had a resurgence in popularity during the heyday of MTV. Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, all these “dinosaur” bands that had a rough go in the early half of the decade eventually were able to repackage themselves and find not just success in the rock genre, but massive pop success as well.

Nirvana was able to be marketed as “authentic” but was that any different than their hair metal predecessors? The idea of “selling out” has always been about group consensus and clever corporate marketing. Signing to a major label was about “access” with Nirvana. It’s not like there was any difference between that and what Mötley Crüe was doing. They both craved that level of accessibility their music could achieve being signed to a major label, and many people don’t want to see the similarity. While the former was more uncomfortable with certain aspects of their fame, they still went through the motions, they posed in the big magazines and made all the videos, played the award shows, and the latter was just a bit more upfront with their lust for fame. Nirvana and many in the “grunge scene” (a moniker used as a way to market the hard rock and punk coming from Seattle) sold authenticity to people that had grown out of the over the top flamboyance of hair metal–but familiar faces and names helped pave the way for the early days of MTV. The advent of music television would go on to be a more powerful industry tool for market saturation than terrestrial radio. David Coverdale even stated in a 2011 interview that the success of their 1987 record on MTV saved them years of hardcore road work in the United States.

It’s a Killer, Thriller

After the breakout success of his solo album “Off the Wall” Micheal Jackson would follow up with his most sonically diverse album of his career. Melding soul, R&B, Rock and pop into the greatest-selling album of all time. Jackson could’ve “kept it real” by staying in the realm of “black music”--and after the success of “Off the Wall” he could’ve been fine financially and commercially–but Jackson and his producer Quincy Jones wanted more, and so they embarked on a historic musical journey.

They made Thriller, working with an eclectic group of musicians and arrangers (the band Toto for example were major songwriting, arranging, and musical collaborators on the album). For many, Thriller isn’t just the pinnacle of pop music, but the pinnacle of “black music” as well. Jackson was able to not just wow the world sonically, but was able to hire big time directors like John Landis to make a mini-movie out of the title track off the album. “Thriller” was a dance horror extravaganza. It had a Hollywood heavyweight director, big time choreographers and top dancers for the dance numbers, and world-renowned make-up and special effects artists. Most of these people are white. So, does that make this less of a “black music” classic? What exactly are the rules here?

The decision to work with a wide variety of artists on Thriller enabled Jackson to reach a mass audience beyond the limitations of what record labels believed Black artists could reach. For one, working with hard rock guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen on the track “Beat It” brought in listeners that would never listen to “black music”. After the success of Thriller, Micheal would become the “King of Pop” and his association with “black Music” was all but forgotten. Jackson, and Prince after the massive success of Purple Rain (the movie and the album) were able to transcend race and were simply “artists” or “visionaries,” or my favorite, “geniuses.” But did they sell out to achieve any of this?

To achieve any sort of massive cross cultural appeal one has to create something that will resonate outside of their immediate “scene.” Jackson would never write anti-Cold War anthems against the reality of assured nuclear destruction, but both artists were able to capitalize on the new televised medium of music consumption. Jackson and Prince understood that young people were beginning to watch and no longer just listen to music, and they made theatrical masterpieces and added visual elements to their songs to the point when you hear Thriller, if you’re of a certain age, you see it as well. Does this mean that Jackson and Prince “sold out” their authentic more funk sounds to fit the pop sensibilities of a video-oriented production that is more digestible for middle American audiences that would consider them “too urban”?

All the artists I’ve discussed here have all wanted the same thing, a mass audience for their music, and “selling out” was always more about attitude than actually making moral concessions around artistic output. Nirvana was a punk band that was able to transcend the punk moniker and through record industry marketing become something more substantive than their hardcore predecessors. The industry, and even MTV found that selling anti-corporate messaging was the profitable maturation of the “alternative” music of the 90s. This was so profitable, that post grunge, we get “alternative” as a genre, and when “alternative” becomes the dominant genre, what are you exactly the alternative to?

Many young culture critics also cite the punk and hardcore scenes of the late 70s and early 80s as true bastions of cultural rebellion, but were they? Or, were they more of a cottage industry carved out of a scene of young bands that also wanted the access and fame and the financial reward? What makes one true to their art and what makes one a sellout, after the artist has already decided to sell his artistic labor for money?

Kneel for the Fallen

“Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free. And I made a stand all people, not just Black people, should have thought about making, because it wasn’t just Black people being drafted. The government had a system where the rich man’s son went to college, and the poor man’s son went to war. Then, after the rich man’s son got out of college, he did other things to keep him out of the Army until he was too old to be drafted.”

-Muhammad Ali

Selling out can have some unintended consequences that, while they may cause irreparable harm in one aspect of your life or career, can open pathways we didn’t know existed. Let’s take a brief look at one of the more controversial figures of the last 10 years in sports, former professional football star Colin Kaepernick. There are some people who view Kaepernick as this generation’s Muhamed Ali, but let’s slow down and think about that comparison. Ali was willing to sacrifice his entire boxing career over his refusal to serve for the United States army and fight in the Vietnam War. Kaepernick may have “lost” more than Ali, but to truly understand why Kaepernick and Ali are not ideologically equal, we must examine the actions that led to Kaepernick’s original protest, and his modification of his actions that led to his ouster from the NFL.

2016 was a year, sadly like many in the United States, that had national stories of police killings of unarmed Black people, and there were two polarizing back to back cases in police murders of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castille in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Sterling was shot when the police thought he was going for a gun/ Castille was shot (and his death livestreamed as he was in the car with his girlfriend and her small child) during a routine traffic stop. Castille had a registered firearm he was licensed to carry, and while he went to get the paperwork to show the officer, the officer shot into his car, killing Philando Castille in front of his girlfriend and child.

None of the officers involved were charged with any crimes, and these deaths happened within a day of each other and around 1,200 miles apart. For many it proved that, despite the first Black President being in office, the United States was not a post-racial utopia. Colin Kaepernick was frustrated, like many people seeing these horrific tragedies play out on national television, and he decided, while injured, that he would silently voice his frustration through a passive protest of sitting during the national anthem. It was never against the rules to sit during the anthem, and unlike professional baseball, where the anthem has been part of the opening ceremony of the game, football didn’t institute players coming out for the anthem until after the attacks of 9/11.

Kaepernick played for the San Francisco 49ers, and grew up just a few hours from the team in Central Valley of California. While he wasn’t a fan of the team, he was a fan of the game, and while he was not highly recruited out of high school as a two sport star athlete (baseball and football) Kaepernick would attend the University of Nevada Reno where he would put up record-breaking numbers, making him a 2nd round draft choice of the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick was able to get playing time early on as he successfully filled in for the injured starter, Alex Smith, and even led the 49ers to a playoff victory against his favorite team growing up, the Green Bay Packers. A few seasons later, injuries and poor play would start to harm his storybook NFL tenure, and once the media got wind of why the 9ers’ star quarterback was sitting during the national anthem, it would ignite a national conversation.

When local reporter Steve Wyche asked why Kaepernick wasn’t standing with the team during the national anthem during a preseason game, he responded, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder", and with that the match was lit, and the resulting fire in the press would soon end Kaepernick’s career.

After Kaepernick’s comments made the sports news rounds, they soon made the mainstream media rounds as well, making Kaepernick the face of Black resistance against racism and police violence…but was he?

Colin Kaepernick was now the main topic of discussion on mainstream media, and they weren’t talking about police repression in poor and working class communities, or racism, the media narrative quickly became about Kaepernick being a spoiled athlete and his disrespect to the flag and what it stood for. Soon, a retired Army veteran and Green Beret, Nate Boyer, would write an open letter about his disdain and disrespect he felt on behalf of all service men and women. Kaepernick reached out to Boyer and agreed to meet with him to discuss the matter further, and during this “protest summit” Kaepernick and Boyer agreed that Kaepernick would no longer sit during the anthem, but kneel as a show of respect for the fallen soldiers…that fought to protect the police’s right to shoot unarmed Black people? I kid, but seriously, just writing this feels insane. HE KNEELED AFTER MEETING WITH A GREEN BERET! Can you imagine Martin Luther King meeting with the Ku Klux Klan before the march in Selma? How about King letting them go over his speech to make sure he didn’t say anything they found offensive? Maybe you want to say that’s not the same thing because Kaepernick was protesting the cops, not the military, but so, why did Kaepernick start it all by saying he wasn’t going to stand for “the flag” of a “country” that was oppressing Black people? Make it make sense.

Anyway, it all started with Kaepernick silently sitting out of the national anthem. Had a local reporter not randomly asked him why, he would have just continued to sit out, and none of us would know why, and maybe he wouldn’t go on to do humanitarian work globally? Soon after his kneeling season, which was marred with subpar play and several coaching changes, Kaepernick would find himself out of football. He would file a grievance against the NFL, win a large settlement, and sign a multimillion dollar contract with Nike.

While we’ll never know the true impetus behind Kaepernick wanting to meet with Nate Boyer, I have to believe that much of his actions were designed to protect his image and make sure he could keep his job and secure brand deals. The silent sitting and especially the kneeling was passive and never even began to threaten power. He was never planning a massive walkout, or organizing a strike. These were his personal choices, in the beginning to not even bring negative attention to the team or anyone associated with him. While we’ll never know how good, or horrible Colin Kaepernick could be as a professional football player, we do know that he was part of an image conscious generation that understood the power of marketing. They had grown up in the “Be Like Mike” 1990s, and Kaepernick, like many professional athletes, wanted to be more like Micheal Jordan than like Muhammad Ali. So…did Kap “sell out”?

Kaepernick, like Nirvana, are never considered sellouts because there was a marketing campaign around them that was able to harness their angst as rebellion, and there is nothing more profitable for capitalism than anti-capitalism. What’s interesting is how marketable alienation has become. You don’t need to build an organization or a movement—you just need a look, a message that makes a convenient hashtag. You can easily create a platform that makes it feel like you're resisting. For Nirvana, the sound and the look of grunge became aesthetic shorthand for outsiderdom, even as the record labels, fashion brands, and the movie industry cashed in. For Kaepernick, the kneel became a symbol that required no mass mobilization, no direct action—just a moment that was easily packaged by Nike into a narrative of personal bravery. Their protests against authority were self-serving–and in their performative displays they were able to present themselves as rebels with a cause–martyrs and saviors all while maintaining tha bag.

Oh, to be the cream

Oh, to be the cream

Oh, to be the cream

Oh, to be the cream

-Bauhaus, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything (1982)