The Record Company's Gonna Give Me Lots of Money & Everything's Gonna Be Alright: 5 Songs Hating on the Music Business

This week's songs are from Superdrag, Soul Asylum, George Michael, Motörhead, and Elliott Smith

Sinners, up for a record 16 Oscars this weekend, is the movie success story of the year. Not only because it’s an original movie, a genre movie, and a historic reclamation of culture, but because of the circumstances in which it was made. When making deal with the studio, writer & director Ryan Coogler secured a rare thing: ownership rights of Sinners after 25 years. For Coogler, ownership over his ideas and work was essential and a central theme within the film itself.

Filmmakers and musicians have a similar challenge: they give up a stake in ownership in order to make their art and have it distributed at scale. That compromise hasn’t sit right with many artists, even megastars. But the gripes with the music business aren’t always economic. Sometimes it’s more complicated than that.

I could run this theme for weeks and it would take years to run out of songs. But here are 5 songs that, for one reason or another, have a bone to pick with the music business.

John Davis: “One of the biggest changes I remember is just the grind each day of having a hit song on the radio, because that means that no matter what happened the previous night, your ass is getting up at 9:30 in the morning and going down to the radio station and playing an acoustic version of it.”

Don Coffey Jr: “All the sudden, your world becomes even smaller. What you have to do every day is be a professional-level employee and do what the label says.”

Superdrag - “Sucked Out”

Kissing the bride / 45 minutes a side
This was my dream / played out rocking routine
Who sucked out the feeling?

One of the more biting critiques of the music industry, it likely leaves teeth marks in part because of the arch of Superdrag’s career: small band lands a catchy hit biting the hand that feeds it, becomes a buzz band, feels uncomfortable out of the gate, second album doesn’t have a new catchy hit, major label moves on. But Superdrag’s story is far more complex and nuanced than that. They seem more like a group that liked making music together, but struggled at the attention and the expectations that come along with it. This is especially true if you consider that “Sucked Out”—the catchy hit—wasn’t some complaint song after the major label dropped them, but the song that turbocharged the attention. To hear them tell it, the song was less about the record industry and more about how as they played bigger local venues and got a record deal, it was about the Knoxville scene treating them differently.

“It didn’t have anything to do with the record business. It had to do with White Avenue. It had to do with going back there to a house party with a bunch of bands playing like we used to do, and not feeling like we belonged there.” - John Davis

I don’t play this song around the house all that much, but one of my daughters will sing along when it’s on. There’s a distinct punch to the chorus not entirely due to it being acapella, but the grating pain in which Davis sings the rhetorical question. He’s pissed. He’s hurt. It’s a great combination for power pop.

“I think it’s always been hard for rock bands to be a part of the pantheon of whatever the music industry is putting their promotional dollar into. It was a bit of a revelation when all of these bands, like The Meat Puppets and Butthole Surfers began getting attention and being on the radio or whatever…it was a nice time for rock bands for a minute there. MTV is no longer really an option, I don’t think. I’m not really sure – they still have the MTV logo.” - Dave Pirner

Soul Asylum - “Misery”

Released just over a year after Kurt Cobain died by suicide, “Misery” rakes the music industry that latched onto Nirvana and churned out copycats. Dave Pirner maintains that it’s more about corporate America in general than the record industry in particular. In an interesting bit of irony, the song was produced by Butch Vig, who was responsible for the polished sound on Nevermind that helped make it the mega-hit it was. Soul Asylum always struck me as a band that was constantly rewriting the same song, and for me, this is the best version of that song. It’s a bit angsty, but has an anthemic chorus; it picks at the truth with some creative imagery; there’s some loud guitars. More irony in that anthemic chorus:

Put me out of my misery
I'd do it for you, would you do it for me?

Imagining a theater of people shouting along to that always makes me laugh. As a critique of the early 90s music industry though, Pirner is just making the subtext text. That may explain why it wasn’t as big of a hit as “Runaway Train,” despite being significantly more radio friendly, and at least doesn’t sound like a downer. Pirner has said he’d been in talks with Mike Judge to direct the video, who had the idea to have kids crying tears into funnels with interconnected hoses out to a factory. He’s not sure why it didn’t work out that way. But I’ll blame the label.

“I’m sure a lot of people are going to believe all this is just some sort of gimmick … just another way to stir interest. But I’m also sure that most people find it hard to believe that stardom can make you miserable. After all, everybody wants to be a star. I certainly did, and I worked hard to get it. But I was miserable, and I don’t want to feel that way again.” - George Michael

George Michael - “Freedom ‘90”

It’s called “Freedom ‘90” in reference to a previous “Freedom,” George Michael wrote and recorded as part of Wham! which actually rejects freedom in favor of partnership. There’s some promises of commitment early in “Freedom ‘90,” but it’s ultimately a song about liberating oneself, and highly autobiographical.

I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I told you so
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone else I've got to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Take back your singing in the rain
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

It would take eight more years for Michael to officially come out publicly, but this is a pretty clear admission in hindsight. It’s also an indictment of how he felt cornered into being sold as a sex symbol by record labels, which he hated.

But today the way I play the game is not the same, no way
Think I'm gonna get me some happy

Making his point known, he refused to tour, and refused to appear in the music video—a limitation that its director David Fincher embraced to maximum effect. “Freedom ‘90” is among the thousands of songs to sample James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” but the fantastically funky bass tracking is done by George Michael himself. Its a sound that brings to mind U2’s “Mysterious Ways,” which would come out over a year later. “Freedom ‘90” feels liberating to listen and the gospel chorus invites anyone to sing along.

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Chazz: Who’d win in a wrestling match—Lemmy or God?

Agent Moore: Lemmy.

Rex: ERRRGH!

Agent Moore: God?

Rex: Wrong, Dickhead. Trick question. Lemmy IS God.

- Airheads (1994), Michael Lehman

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Motörhead - “Fools”

As a teenager, Lemmy Kilmister was among the crowds to see the Beatles at the Cavern Club—a fact, that for some reason, made the hair on my neck stand up when I learned it. Maybe it’s because, like Pops Staples learning guitar from Charlie Patton, Merle Haggard in the audience as a prisoner watching Johnny Cash play San Quentin, Bob Dylan seeing Buddy Holly perform just three days before he died, or what seems like half the audience at the Sex Pistols’ first gig, it feels like evidence of something cosmic. Satellites receiving the message, translating it into their own language.

From 1979’s On Parole, “Fools” takes aim at “all you managers and agents”—naming names as the song gets its bearings.

They think they're cool to wheel and deal
Without a thought to how we feel
They pick you up and drop you flat
Then tell you life can be like that
You blew it all the day you signed
Your stupid name on some dotted line
We hate the men who make the rules
The ones who always try so hard to make us look like fools!

While lacking in any subtly and nuance—this is Motörhead after all—the song has a plodding, funky charm to it, including some horns laying deep in the mix in the chorus, and a little trip into outer space towards the end. The lyrics were written by Dez Brown, a roadie friend of guitarist Larry Wallis. Not that the band wouldn’t have plenty to gripe about: the band had to replace a producer days into the project, and went through a full turnover from recording in 1975 to actually getting the album released, re-recording nearly all instruments in the process.

“[DreamWorks] seemed like they liked what I was doing, and I liked [them]. They weren't, like, guys who looked like coke dealers and practiced their putting on a little contraption in their office…I don't really care about that stuff a whole lot. I really like Kill Rock Stars, but good records are good records—like, I don't really care if Quasi comes out on Up or Atlantic. There's all kinds of politics going on with indie labels, too.” - Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith - “Angeles”

I taped the 1998 Oscars so that I could see Elliott Smith’s performance of “Miss Misery.” I hadn’t yet seen Good Will Hunting, but had the soundtrack. Now that he’s got the mythology of a Tragic Indie Rock Hero™ it’s all part of his lore now, but that performance was captivating. I watched and rewatched the tape for a time and it was one of the first things I went looking for on YouTube as it rolled out as a repository for lost video artifacts. Later that year he released XO and I remember when I brought it into my drum lesson, the teacher got super excited to dive into it. I could see a flip switch in his interest over whatever late-90s rock albums I was bringing in at the time. In hindsight, having him validate that pick likely influenced the future direction my taste was heading in. And the back half of “Sweet Adeline” is a lot of fun to play on the drums.

“Angeles”, on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, but originally released on 1997’s Either/Or, shows Smith was grappling with success and the music industry vultures that circle it even before his work on Good Will Hunting leveled-up his profile considerably. While the lyrics are vague, there are enough details to suss out that Smith is weighing the trade-offs and consequences of taking a record executive at their word, viewing the compromise as a deal with the devil.

I can make you satisfied in
Everything you do
All your secret wishes could right
Now be coming true
And be forever with my poison arms
Around you

Ultimately, Smith would make that deal, as his follow up to Either/Or (XO) was released on DreamWorks Records. “Angeles” is among his most popular songs, and that’s probably because it’s a distillation of everything he did well: intricate layers of finger picking, near-whispered vocals, and a downcast melody conveying the quiet tension of someone struggling to do right while vampires lurk in the shadows.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.