Moby Sells Out By Tim Grierson (excerpt from opening and closing paragraphs of lengthy editorial about Moby)
All 18 songs from Play have been licensed for a film or a TV show or a commercial or a trailer, an unprecedented feat. The record will go platinum soon — a happy exception to the rule that really exciting, unconventional music won’t be able to reach the mainstream.But instead of taking satisfaction in this fact, I can only see what looms over the horizon when band promoters take their own lessons from Play’s success. Moby might have deservedly crossed over, but we the listeners will be the ones who get screwed over in the process.
Not long ago, legitimate rock ‘n’ rollers would consider under no circumstances selling their songs to advertisers. Only hacks did that — musicians with no integrity. [snip]
Maybe songs just aren’t important anymore. They’re simply shallow, dumb, mindless drivel, and they’re not worth caring about or even respecting. There’s nothing artistic about them. Anybody can do it. A song is just a tool to get you to spend money — it manipulates your emotions for somebody else’s purposes.
That’s funny, because I thought Moby was trying to do more than that with Play....
Ya know, I don't wanna get all into defending Moby's politics or even his music (most of which I don't mind as modern background music, and which isn't noticeably politcal beyond a feel-good, can't-we-all-just-get-along niceness), but the guy who wrote that article you're quoting was clearly deluded if he thinks ANY art is anything more than an attempt to manipulate your emotions in a way to make you part with your money. No one goes into a recording studio except to try to make some money by creating a product. His leap of logic comes when he says "there's nothing artistic about them," as if there's something inherently contradictory between selling a product and being artistic. Rembrandt created paintings that he would sell. "The Night Watch" was a portrait commissioned by the town council of some Dutch burg. Was Rembrandt selling out?
Again, not to defend Moby or compare his art to Rembrandt's beyond that they're both products that the artist created in order to make some money with their talent.