Definitions of selling out - and not

[tasyfa]

Liz and I were discussing this the other day, the general ridiculousness of how quickly and erroneously people are to cry, "Sell out!" for a band or artist.  Green Day's pretty much been consistently accused of that since they signed with a major label and released Dookie, for pete's sake.  They just ignore it and keep doing whatever they feel like, and have been doing that for more than ten years now.  AFI's been accused of the same thing by their hardcore fans, because Sing the Sorrow is a more lyric, accessible album than their previous works with Nitro.  I guess it's a refrain that happens more often in the punk underground than anywhere else these days since so much alternative rock has become mainstream, but truthfully it simply doesn't make sense to me to turn your nose up at a band because they've found some commercial success.  Making money from your music is not the definition of selling out.  And neither is personal, musical or group growth.  The best definition I've seen was given recently by the guitarist for Audioslave, in an interview on Canoe about their new album, Out of Exile (which dropped today, btw):

"It's great to sell a lot of records but you can't chase that. The second that you start chasing that is when I think you mortgage your artistic soul. If you try to make records to sell records, then the artistry just goes out the window."
~Tom Morello

It's very much another side of what the best writers I know have said about the writing process: while ultimately you do want an audience, you must write for yourself if you want to write anything good. :-)