In the world of Entertainment and especially pop music everyone is a critic. Not only a critic but an expert. People speak in absolutes when discussing music. Rather than say the more precise, "I don't like this", people will not think twice about saying, "this is bad". But when it comes to art taste is everything and what is bad to one fan is great to another. There is also a tendency to inflate one's own sense of worth by belittling someone else's achievement. If you, as an artist, are not actively disliked by some people chances are you will not be very well liked by anyone.
An example is the classic; Beatles verses Stones. In the early days of the British Invasion the Beatles were extremely popular, to say the least. Some people did not appreciate the Beatles, perhaps they resented their popularity or they just didn't conform to what had passed in the past as acceptable. Some people loved that they were new while others detested their innovations. We're talking here about young pop fans not the older generation or those too conservative to accept anything new, different or especially, foreign. For those who wanted a band to call their own and didn't want to be part of the Beatles scene, the Dave Clark Five were the logical alternative.
The Dave Clark Five were another British import right on the heels of the Beatles and very similar in most respects. They allowed entry into the British Invasion scene without having to follow the herd of Beatles fanatics. Then a year later the Rolling Stones appeared. The Stones, unlike the Dave Clark Five, were not a mere copy of the Fab Four formula but a London Blues band that were in most respects vastly different than the original Invasion acts. A lot of Beatles fans felt threatened by the Stones and hated them which helped make them the darlings of the anti-Beatles crowd. Two distinct groups formed; the Beatles fans, and the Rolling Stones fans. The Dave Clark Five dropped off the map.
The lesson is that it is better to be a polar opposite to whatever is currently all the rage than a clone of it. You'll have a market all to yourself, at least until your own clones start to appear, and the bigger your polar opposite becomes, the bigger you'll become. There's an old American Indian saying that a warrior is judged by the strength of his enemies. Another saying is "the enemies of my enemies are my friends".
Don't even try to make everyone happy for to do so will make no one happy. Do what you do and hopefully do it with honesty and authenticity and hold your ground. If what you do has any merit at all it will be perceived as being threatening and you WILL be attacked. I cannot name a single rock and roll band that became huge that didn't have a group of people that hated it at some point. The term backlash started being used to describe the phenomena of bands developing anti-fans, people who actively protested. Why would anyone take the time and energy to criticize a musical act? But is it an actual phenomenon. People will not only spend a considerable amount of time, energy, emotion and money, not just supporting the bands they love but also chastising and ridiculing bands they hate. Why bother to hate a band? It is only those acts that the fans feel are the polar opposite of their favorite band that accrue their wrath because that band has come to represent something to them. To represent something to the public should be a main goal of all bands but to represent something means having an opposite.
To repeat, if you're doing anything right you WILL be attacked. Sometimes the viciousness will be shocking, after all, what did you do to them? But take some comfort in knowing that by evoking strong emotions, even negative ones, you are controlling the public and the mere fact that everyone seems to hate you will be a huge turn on for others who will love you for it. If this wasn't true no one would have ever heard of Punk Rock.
An example is the classic; Beatles verses Stones. In the early days of the British Invasion the Beatles were extremely popular, to say the least. Some people did not appreciate the Beatles, perhaps they resented their popularity or they just didn't conform to what had passed in the past as acceptable. Some people loved that they were new while others detested their innovations. We're talking here about young pop fans not the older generation or those too conservative to accept anything new, different or especially, foreign. For those who wanted a band to call their own and didn't want to be part of the Beatles scene, the Dave Clark Five were the logical alternative.
The Dave Clark Five were another British import right on the heels of the Beatles and very similar in most respects. They allowed entry into the British Invasion scene without having to follow the herd of Beatles fanatics. Then a year later the Rolling Stones appeared. The Stones, unlike the Dave Clark Five, were not a mere copy of the Fab Four formula but a London Blues band that were in most respects vastly different than the original Invasion acts. A lot of Beatles fans felt threatened by the Stones and hated them which helped make them the darlings of the anti-Beatles crowd. Two distinct groups formed; the Beatles fans, and the Rolling Stones fans. The Dave Clark Five dropped off the map.
The lesson is that it is better to be a polar opposite to whatever is currently all the rage than a clone of it. You'll have a market all to yourself, at least until your own clones start to appear, and the bigger your polar opposite becomes, the bigger you'll become. There's an old American Indian saying that a warrior is judged by the strength of his enemies. Another saying is "the enemies of my enemies are my friends".
Don't even try to make everyone happy for to do so will make no one happy. Do what you do and hopefully do it with honesty and authenticity and hold your ground. If what you do has any merit at all it will be perceived as being threatening and you WILL be attacked. I cannot name a single rock and roll band that became huge that didn't have a group of people that hated it at some point. The term backlash started being used to describe the phenomena of bands developing anti-fans, people who actively protested. Why would anyone take the time and energy to criticize a musical act? But is it an actual phenomenon. People will not only spend a considerable amount of time, energy, emotion and money, not just supporting the bands they love but also chastising and ridiculing bands they hate. Why bother to hate a band? It is only those acts that the fans feel are the polar opposite of their favorite band that accrue their wrath because that band has come to represent something to them. To represent something to the public should be a main goal of all bands but to represent something means having an opposite.
To repeat, if you're doing anything right you WILL be attacked. Sometimes the viciousness will be shocking, after all, what did you do to them? But take some comfort in knowing that by evoking strong emotions, even negative ones, you are controlling the public and the mere fact that everyone seems to hate you will be a huge turn on for others who will love you for it. If this wasn't true no one would have ever heard of Punk Rock.
So how do you handle the hate? You don’t. You completely ignore it for it doesn’t exist in your consciousness. It doesn’t really concern you and there is nothing you can do about it or should do about it. You might, however, take some advantage of it. Another old saying is there’s no such thing as bad press. This is especially true in rock and roll but if you do get a particular scathing review do not spread the bad vibes by responding in an angry or defensive manner. Few people will have actually read your review and fewer still will remember it. What people will remember is your hurt and angry rebuttal which will make you seem weak and vulnerable. If you must respond, do so politely and with wording that makes the reader believe that you appreciated the review and were excited to see your band’s name in print. All things that could be true but don’t give any indication that the original review was negative. You’ve now doubled your press exposure and left the readers with a good impression of you negating the bad ink.
I worked on the first season of Fox’s Family Guy cartoon show. That show got hate mail for the promo it ran before the first episode even aired. After it premiered the hate mail poured in. The other production people, having worked on children's television, were unaccustomed to receiving any input from the public and they were in a panic thinking they’d lose their jobs. Some even thought Fox would cancel the show before it even started. I told them Fox must love all this attention, as the hate mail was even making it into the trade magazines.
Fox , which was still the new network at that time, had started as an “alternative” to the big three networks and had shows the other networks would never have aired. The Simpsons and Married With Children were their two biggest hits and both were considered unacceptable by a lot of Middle America. We knew Family Guy was suppose to be “edgy” and adult so the hate mail protests were simply signs it was working. Family Guy is still a huge hit.
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