Dan Ozzi’s Sellout follows 11 punk bands who made the controversial jump to the majors

It may be hard to fathom given today’s stan culture where fans actively push for the success of their favourtie artists, but in the punk, emo, and hardcore scenes, the idea of “selling out” has long been verboten. Even while many of the earliest punk bands were on major labels (including the Ramones, The Clash, and The Sex Pistols), as punk evolved the scene moved further underground. The DIY stance was central; it meant not only that bands should be on independent labels that kept their prices low for fans, but that bands should book their own tours, keep their merch affordable, and in general, be active participants in the scene that nurtured them from the beginning.

The idea of a punk band signing to a major label was considered the epitome of selling out, a get-rich-quick scheme for a band more interested in landing a big cash advance than in maintaining the tight-knit bonds of the punk community. Author and music critic Dan Ozzi puts that theory to the test in his new book, Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007) (Mariner Books). 

Ozzi looks at eleven punk bands that made the jump from the cozy confines of their underground scenes to MTV and the mall, along with the personal and professional consequences that came from those risky moves; Green Day, Jawbreaker, Jimmy Eat World, Blink-182, At the Drive-In, The Donnas, Thursday, The Distillers, My Chemical Romance, Rise Against, and Against Me! Each band gets its own chapter, allowing Ozzi to focus on the band’s background and their relationship to their respective scenes before their major-label signing. There are some very familiar names (Green Day, Blink-182), along with bands like Jawbreaker and The Distillers that have rabid fan bases but never achieved the mainstream recognition that the ‘90s punk explosion promised.

What becomes abundantly clear with Sellout is how different each band’s dalliance with the mainstream was. For every band like Green Day, who achieved massive success even while being ostracized from the very punk community they cherished, there are acts like the melodic punk band Rise Against, who toiled in the underground with little success eventually breaking through with their major-label debut.

Then there are bands like Jawbreaker, who devastated their passionate fan base when they signed to a major-label after passionately denying that they ever would. Even with the backing of DGC, the band’s major-label debut, 1995’s Dear You, was trashed by fans upon its initial release. Audiences went so far as to physically turn their backs on the band when they played new songs on the Dear You tour, and Jawbreaker subsequently broke up soon after its release. (The band would reunite in 2017 to headline Chicago’s Riot Fest, and are enjoying a far more successful second act of their career some two decades later.)

With open interviews with the bands, fans, record label staff, fanzine writers, and more, Ozzi has crafted eleven highly readable vignettes that paint a picture of punk rock at a crossroads. After the punk explosion in the mid-‘90s, major labels were signing up countless acts looking for the next Offspring or Green Day, and that promise was hard to turn down for many working-class bands who were hoping to reach the biggest audience possible with their music (and hopefully, be able to pay their bills).

Sellout is far from a polemic on the evils of major labels and the bands who “sold out”; while the wasteful and often ridiculous antics of major labels get their due time here, some of these bands did benefit from taking the leap, which makes their stories all the more fascinating. It’s those divergent experiences that make Sellout such an enthralling read, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of every band that Ozzi profiles here. Together, these eleven stories create a patchwork of ideas about what bands owe their audience and the ever-present push and pull between art and commerce that every band still has to navigate in their own way.

Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007) is available now.