9 Musicians Who Sold Out The Hardest

By Jacob Trowbridge / February 10, 2016

Maturing as a band and evolving your sound is not the same thing as selling out. Changing directions, artistically, does not automatically make you a sellout, nor does using different instruments or having your songs picked up by the radio. No, to truly "sell out" takes a special breed of musician. One that is indebted more to the business side of music than the artistic side. And sure, musicians can try to make those two sides coexist, but more often than not, the business side is going to come out on top. A lot of people really hate the term "sell out," because it implies that all musicians should remain committed to poverty for the sake of their music, when no other profession is required to do that. No factory worker gets called a sell out when he takes a job as the floor manager and moves away from the assembly line. They have a family to feed, after all. And, believe it or not, so do a lot of musicians. So know that just because the people on this list sold out to "the man," that doesn't make them terrible human beings. But it makes it impossible for them to hold onto their artistic integrity.