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The 100 Greatest Songs About the Music Industry: Staff List
Songs about the music industry: The 100 best tunes about the music business.
With lyrics that should be posted on every city limits sign in Los Angeles, Richard Marx’s debut single slyly excoriated the disingenuousness and moral rot at the industry’s foundations, a cautionary tale he made extra head-spinning by delivering via brightly hooky power chords its dark themes, about how nothing in Hollywood means anything until your check clears. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s second album, Second Helping, holds this tale of the group’s seven-year journey “from the Florida border up to Nashville, Tennessee” and contract with MCA and producer Al Kooper, a “Yankee slicker with a big ol’ Southern grin” who made promises of “lots of money” — although the band only got $9,000 for its initial deal. The post-grunge alt-rock gold rush of the mid ’90s certainly was a sight to see — particularly for a bunch of ambitious slackers like Pavement, who offer ambivalent reportage about the recent crush of crossovers throughout their classic almost-hit “Cut Your Hair”: “Music scene is crazy/ Bands start up each and every day/ I saw another one just the other day/ A special new band.” They may have been laughing at the new insiders, but they were also trying to sneak a foot in the door themselves.
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