Joni Mitchell to release albums through Strabucks - is it right?

This week, Joni Mitchell has signed with Starbucks' music imprint Hear Music with a new album due for release on September 24. She isn't the first to sign up with the coffee giant. Previous artists who have released new albums through the coffee chain now include Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.

What do we make of it all?

Once, Joni, Macca and Dylan were the leaders of the counterculture, like it or not. All three were, in their own way, seen as spokespeople for those who liked to kick against the grain and protest about the giant corporations who were taking over the world... and now? Well, seemingly conscientious artists are happy to make a buck through a company that have been criticised by Oxfam for crushing coffee harvesters in Ethiopia.

Starbucks have been criticised for many things. Their perpetuation of their faux 'ethnic' and 'liberal' look in their thousands of stores that have spread throughout the world like an infesting verminous plague. It's essentially the McDonalds for middle class people with iPods. Either that or it's just a coffee house that people like having a brew in. Either way, it's been the source of a lot of discussion and debate. So what has this got to do with music?

Well, it seems strange that Messrs Dylan and McCartney, as well as Ms Mitchell, should favour releasing their music through a company that has been branded a "neo liberal global capitalist thug" that destroys farming land and lives with their wages to farmers and workers alike. Not only are they a threat to the people they deal with, but also, a threat to the real coffee houses that once gave a voice to the underground beatniks and poets and folk singers like Dylan et al. Real coffee houses are being mown down with each new Starbucks that subsidises their costs and runs the local rival out of town.

Of course, it's been years since Dylan saw himself as some kind of troubadour, long leaving the Woodie Guthrie-isms behind. However, for Dylan to so shamelessly sign up with 'the man', it flies in the face of everything that he's sung before. However, Dylan and Joni might not be the problem here. His fans are probably the people who are part of this faux coffee house culture and it seems that the people who were once hippies are the ones who are now freely abandoning their values... I mean, Bill Gates was a hippie right?

So, what of the old hippies, with their mung beans, organic trousers and fairly traded cocaine? We can no longer look to these people for inspiration as they're the ones tearing around in 4x4s whilst singing along to the Grateful Dead. So to, we can't expect Joni Mitchell to give a thought to signing up with a company that relentlessly bullies the competition into submission. Then again, isn't that the same as the recording industry? Are we fools to expect better?

Protest folkies and ex-Beatles alike, they've all been working in the murkiest business in the land for years. Is there any point kicking up a stink? Should we care? I mean, these latest albums from sixties artists are nothing to write home about. Even though we feel betrayed by the people who once spoke to us and showed us the way to sidestep the common treadmill, these artists have all seen their glory days long ago and can't really offer anything new, fresh or exciting. In short, should we give a shit?

Comments

[David Walker]

Sonic Youth has a compilation out with Starbucks too. Personally I can't see any difference between it and a major label. They're both big faceless corporations.