Yael Naim New Soul Song - same song from Apple Mac Air Ad
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Stumble ThisA great song from a French singer you haven't heard of yet. I predict she will become very popular. Her album will be out in March.
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Yael Naim,Mac Air,New Soul,happy,smile Yael Naim New Soul Song - same song from Apple Mac Air Ad
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Lovely tune.
Hell, some of my favorite musical acts are the most succesful ever- Beatles, Kinks, the Who, Mark Knopfler, the Band etc,etc. Most on that list have at least tried to maintain some integrity, resisting the heavy temptation to schill for one corporation or another. I still enjoy those who have sold out if the work stands up.
I've been a Feist fan for years, I've been a stage hand for Broken Social Scene and Feist solo, and have always thought that she's a very clever song-writer and enjoy her tiny little voice- her vocal stylings bring a certain poignancy to the words. I just am completely nauseated by the constant playing of 1234. This singer- Yael Naim is it? Well, don't know anything about her, but she certainly will sell a lot more records as a result of doing the Apple ad than she would have otherwise- but she most definitely has sold out by doing it in the first place- Neil Young would not approve. That's okay though, the southern man don't need him around anyhow.
I look at it this way: an artist, the true, down-to-earth, sincere artist, is going to create art no matter what. The art, whether highbrow or lowbrow, gets made either way, and of course it will be judged whether the artist seeks approval or not. I think it's a problem when the artist seeks only the approval of others: "critical success" and financial success. You can say plenty of nasty things about that person, but the truth of it is they have some degree of talent and want to make money with it- that's fair. It's not ideal and it ain't the Beatles, but it's fair. Now... the "true" artist is ever-changing, ever-improving, and most importantly, ever-creating, no matter how she is judged. The twist is that it costs a lot of money to be any kind of artist, and even on a low budget, that artist is going to need money, even if only as a means to create more art. Thus, by allowing a song to be used in a big commercial (in this case for a corporation whose public image isn't too bad) she achieves that means. It doesn't mean her creation is meaningless, and it certainly doesn't mean that her future work will be either.
If you define "selling out" as "selling your art," then everyone does that. If you define "selling out" as "selling someone rights to use your music," then Yael here is clearly selling out. But none of these meanings seem at all "bad" to me. If I were to define "selling out," I'd probably go with "catering your creations to fit someone else's needs." Even that, though, doesn't seem all that bad. A fine artist who works commissions is essentially doing just that. Any hired illustrator is at least partially doing that. Any film composer or ad agency, same deal. Any of these people could be "selling out" just so they can fund the art that they WANT to create. Moreover, in the process of "selling out" they may find fulfillment in the work they are doing. In this particular case, Yael isn't even doing that; she's merely selling rights to use her song, presumably created as her own song and not a jingle, in a commercial.
On a side note, the commercial marketplace is becoming more and more viable a venue for music artists, I think. High-end ad firms have people that seek out, scout, if you will, the newest and freshest sounds. Obviously they are paid to do so for the success of the commercial and corporation, but that doesn't change what they aim to do. For a while, I kept my thumb on the pulse of popular TV like Buffy and the OC, which miraculously discovered piles of unknown(to me) bands. To relate to visual art (which I guess is the world I'm comfortable with), I'd liken being asked to be on the OC or an Apple ad to being asked to display in a commercial gallery with dozens of artists whose work you know and like. In this world, I think those who take on these jobs either learn to enjoy them, or simply use them to feed the efforts they DO enjoy.
Phew. Finally, upvote for the Lynyrd Skynyrd ref.