Willie Nelson's Place in the World
The Dukes of Hazzard opens up this weekend, featuring among other things Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse. A couple of weeks ago, Willie came out with a new reggae album, Countryman (here's the Pitchfork review; Boing Boing explains the regular and "Wal-Mart ready" versions of the cover). Over on his personal blog (not to be confused with TAPPED or his space at TPM Cafe) Matt Yglesias asks what all of us must be thinking: "Does Willie Nelson just have so much cred that he can sell out in the most ridiculous way imaginable and no one will call him on it?"
posted by Doug @ 5:59 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
It all just seems so ironic to me. Are the things that the Dukes of Hazzard stands for the same things that Willie Nelson stands for? Or is he just trying to appeal to the widest audience possible? The farmaid fans AND the Dukes fans. The marijuana lovers AND the marijuana haters.
What's next, the London Philharmonic doing a tribute to Jimmy Cliff? I can see it now: "Putting the `Mon' in `Philharmonic' ".
Why shouldn't Willie Nelson do whatever he wants? I mean Elvis Costello sang with Burt Bacharach and no one had a fit over that...can you spell "sell out"?
I wasn't crazy about the end product between Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, but how is it a "sell out" to collaborate with an artist who is no longer popular?
Selling out depends on the observer. I have to admit that I didn't quite understand the selling out aspect of Willie and the Dukes. I thought it was a strange choice he made, but exactly who did he sell out to? Hollywood? Rednecks? I thought the Wal-mart case was a better example of selling out--to a powerful corporate money-making machine.
Sell out as a term is tossed around very easily. I was more struck by his odd career choices creatively rather than by his doing any of it to make money. How does he take on these kinds of projects and continue to be taken seriously? But the same can be asked of Elvis Costello, who was doing some odd NBC sitcom appearances not too long ago.
Maybe part of the problem is that we're just not used to seeing performers successfully cross over from one medium to another. Rock musicians try to become movie stars but can't pull it off. Movie and TV stars put out albums that tend not to be very good. Who was the last true renaissance performer who could move between media?
Harry Connick Jr.?
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