One of these days, people will stop listening to music by artists like Ke$ha and Chris Brown. It’s a matter of time before fans are no longer fascinated by auto-tune and begin to realize lip-syncing at concerts isn’t impressive. Then and only then is when everyone will decide to quit supporting toddler-like tantrums by artists who beat their girlfriends and destroy dressing rooms.
The most successful bands and artists are those who give fans what they want and do it not for the profit, but for the pure enjoyment of turning their fans on. At times, they may stray away to indulge in the rock-star lifestyle, but as long as they return to making music for their loyal fan-base, they can have a career spanning a lifetime.
I don’t mean to burn bridges with those who idolize artists like Brown and Ke$ha. Some of their music can be catchy — until KISS FM annoyingly overplays them — however, these artists don’t make their music in the best interest of their fans.
It’s true the music industry is a business, and artists tend to “sell-out” to make it big. With pressure from producers to make music that maximizes profits, artists have to sacrifice a certain degree of intimacy with their music and fans. Once this intimacy is lost, it’s a slippery slope until the artist becomes irrelevant.
The Foo Fighters are a band with a successful career. After 17 years in the industry, the band has six albums, with the seventh — “Wasting Light” — coming out this today, April 12.
Like any other rock band, The Foo Fighters have had their hardships. The band has replaced their drummer along with multiple guitarists for creative differences and has combated certain member’s drug addictions. The Foo Fighters we’re even met with animosity when they started due to lead singer and guitarist, Dave Grohl, who previously played drums for Nirvana during Kurt Cobain’s death. But after all this, the band still manages to make music for their fans.
I say this because of the campaign the Foo Fighters have recently used with social media to promote their new album. Twitter has made it possible for musician’s to become intimate with their fans on a whole new level. Capitalizing on this, the Foo Fighters have been able to create much buzz around their newest album.
Having been four years since the last album, the Foo Fighters needed to reconstruct their image and bring their loyal fans back. Through Twitter, the band shared music videos, pictures, audio clips and made scavenger hunts for fans to decipher to attend small free shows. One of these shows will be at Fingerprints in downtown Long Beach this Saturday, April 16.
On top of all this, the Foo Fighters made a 3-D documentary of their career. The documentary, “Foo Fighter: Back and Forth,” was in theaters across the U.S. for one night only, and was followed by a live broadcast of a concert featuring their new music. The documentary was also played commercial free on cable music stations the following week.
What makes the Foo Fighters different from artists like Brown and Ke$ha is even after playing in arenas of over 80,000 people, they return to their roots and play shows of 200. They give the fans what they craze and, in doing so, keep the same intimacy they had with their fans back when they first started playing out of a garage.
Being much earlier in their careers compared to the Foo Fighters, both Brown and Ke$ha have the chance to connect with their fans; however, the way they currently carry themselves leads me to believe they will soon fade away, and probably forgotten in future generations.
Chasen Doerr is a junior journalism major and columnist for the Daily 49er.
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