In my sophomore year of high school I remember there being a lot of buzz about Pearl Jam going around, mostly due to a part-time music critic who worked at the school. Into my junior and senior year the same people who raved about the band the prior year were not critical of them. The normal criticisms were that they had ‘sold out’ or were ‘too mainstream’ with the overall opinion of the peer group (openly anyway) that the band was no long ‘liked. Now I could understand having heard a song a few too many times, since pop stations have a habit of playing the same 10 songs over and over, but refusing to admit that a song is/was good simply because it gets play seems a little silly.

I wonder if these same opinions occur in other music circles, or if it is unique to what I would of-so-anciently refer to as the ‘alternative’ music scene. Did music lovers in the eighteenth century stop listening to Mozart after his music started regularly being played? Were there any remarks made that he had ‘sold out’ when kings all over played his compositions at debutante balls, eager to be viewed by their daughters as ‘hip’? Do christians stop listening to Amy Grant when she gets pop hits (I guess just one), claiming that she has lost sight of her followers? So many questions…