360°Sound caught up with music journalist Dan Ozzi, author of the fascinating new book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007). Drawing on over 150 interviews and meticulous research, Ozzi’s 416-page book (out now on Mariner Books at HarperCollins) tells the stories of why 11 different punk and hardcore bands chose to sign to a major label and how it worked out for them.
Ozzi is also the co-author of TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, which made Billboard’s The 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time. He formerly served as a staff writer and editor at Noisey and has written about music for many publications, including Billboard, SPIN, and The AV Club.
The bands and albums chronicled in Sellout are as follows:
Green Day – Dookie (Reprise, 1994)
Jawbreaker – Dear You (DGC, 1995)
Jimmy Eat World – Static Prevails (Capitol, 1996)
Blink-182 – Dude Ranch (MCA, 1997)
At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command (Grand Royal, 2000)
The Donnas – Spend The Night (Atlantic, 2002)
Thursday – War All The Time (Island Def Jam, 2003)
The Distillers – Coral Fang (Sire, 2003)
My Chemical Romance – Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (Reprise, 2004)
Rise Against – Siren Song of the Counter Culture (Geffen, 2004)
Against Me! – New Wave (Sire, 2007)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
360°: What does it mean to sell out and why is particularly significant in the punk and hardcore scene?
What were the incentives for punk bands to sign with a major label?
In addition to likely more money upfront, it did seem like the things that drew people the most were you’d probably get a better sounding record out of it because you have a bigger studio budget. But also, the two things that were very enticing to bands who were kind of hitting their heads on the ceiling with indie labels was radio play because radio play is just like a very shadowy weird corner of the music industry, and it seems like you can’t really crack into it if you’re doing it yourself, and the other thing is international distribution. A lot of times indie labels can only get albums out locally or within the United States, and they don’t have that same power to get them overseas, especially pre-internet. Those seem to be big draws to people who are considering it.
Discuss the impact of Green Day’s Dookie and how it changed the strategy of major labels.
I always hesitate to call Green Day and Dookie a fluke because they were so hard working and had a little fan base that they built with a lot of hard work. Also, they were really talented, and that album is great. It’s hard to call it a fluke, but it did exceed everybody’s expectations by a factor of like a million. If you’re looking at it from the perspective of a record label employee, even if you don’t exactly know what it is about Green Day that resonates with kids, you can look at the sales charts and know something about it does resonate with kids. A lot of them went out looking for more of that. I don’t think all of them knew exactly what that was. Some of the smarter ones did.
There were so many bands in that vein at the time that were among the ilk of Green Day like All, Samiam, and Bad Religion. All of those within 1994 to ’95 did a major label record. Some of them did OK. I think Bad Religion went gold. But Green Day was this very special case where it couldn’t be replicated. Nobody really came close to doing what Green Day did, even themselves. Their follow-up records did not sell as well as Dookie did. It really wasn’t until Blink-182 came along that somebody was able to get in the same league as what Green Day had done. Sell 10 million albums worldwide in a single year, that’s a phenomenon, it’s very hard to match that.
My Chemical Romance is described in the book as a “social media band.” Their success seemed to mark a turning point in the music industry. Talk about how they were able to leverage the internet.
My Chem is such a huge example of that pivotal transition in the 2000s from traditional physical album sales to internet and streaming and this new world that we live in now. My Chem was so good at it. They were using MySpace early on. They were darlings on message boards. They were one of the first young bands who looked at the internet not as a foe but as an opportunity that they could use to their advantage. I’m sure it must have been crazy at the time.
Now it’s very obvious that people would put their albums online for free. At that time, I’m sure that was a very radical idea when they presented that to their major label, ‘We’re going to give songs away for free.’ Obviously, they’ve had so many accolades as songwriters and for their albums and everything, but I don’t know if they actually get enough credit for being one of the pioneers of that. I know Radiohead is often looked at as among the first to embrace ‘pay what you want.’ But I really think in that conversation we should not forget about My Chem.
What were some things that stuck out to you about the record business that you learned from writing this book?
Growing up, I always hated major labels even though it was very amorphous to me. Like it was just some shadowy thing that I was kind of afraid of. I talked to a lot of the real people who worked at major labels, and a lot of them are just people who want to help bands. Don’t get me wrong, there’s obviously some shady ones, too. But I always thought of major labels as this very shadowy vague looming presence, but you forget it’s made up regular people who make a salary helping other bands get big.
You write that Against Me! will likely be the last punk band to get a million-dollar check from a major label. The concept of selling out has faded over the years as well. Today, what do the major labels have to offer punk bands? And if we were to see another mainstream punk resurgence, how may it look different?
I think artists definitely understand now that they have a lot of power. They have a lot more power than they ever had. I think they approach it now much more through a perspective of, ‘Well, what can you do for me?’ If there were some kind of resurgence, it would be interesting to see. Having a team that can help you with getting on Spotify playlists or getting on the radio and doing things that you can probably do yourself, but it would just be nice to have professionals help you out. I feel like we’re in a world now where bands can maintain their own ship just by doing everything online, but it would certainly behoove them to have people who do it for a living helping them avoid the mistakes and do things on a larger level.
