The music industry should not profit from death
Kaiya Lakes | The Chronicle
After an artist dies, their fans mourn the loss of not only the artist, but the loss of talent and imprisonment of their unreleased music – most of the time.
Watching Movies With The Sound Off by Mac Miller, The Party Never Ends. 2.0 by Juice Wrld, MTV Unplugged by Nirvana and Life After Death by the Notorious B.I.G. are just a few examples of posthumously released albums, or albums that record labels have launched after the artist dies. Like many people, I typically find this process of continuing the production of music after an artist has passed as an inhuman and immoral breach of privacy.
One of the issues I see with the process of releasing music posthumously is the fact that it reinforces this vile idea that Hollywood owns celebrities, even after death. I particularly dislike the fact that these record labels continue to profit off of these artists’ personal work. Work that we do not know they ever wanted their listeners to have access to.
To me, it feels like an invasion of privacy. We, the public, often gain extra insight into the deeper parts of these artists’ minds with posthumous albums – insight that we have not been given access to by any previous songs preceding their deaths. I will say that occasionally one of these albums feels like a little extra piece of a great artist – more commonly, however, this music feels like an unusually morbid exploitation, a cash machine for the record labels.
A prime example of a collection of songs that many people feel should have remained “in the vault” is Lisa Left Eye’s posthumous album; Eye Legacy. As smooth and effortless as this album may sound, when compared to all the music she previously released, these songs almost sound stuffy – kind of like she is a background singer on her own album. If you listened to her older music compared to the tracks of this album, you would notice just how out of character that kind of sound was for her music. This is just one out of a hundred posthumous albums that sound like the ghost of an artist.
I will admit that there are posthumous albums that are done right – albums that do not feel exploitative and manipulative, but rather a natural extension of the career of an artist taken too soon. Mac Miller’s latest release, Balloonerism is that exactly. Its light and airy content and sound make listeners feel transported back to the highlight of his career, whereas most other posthumous music feels forced and unnatural, like the record label tried too hard to copy a sound that has no replica.
The biggest problem I face with this business is how in most cases, the record companies capitalize on this music – not the artists, nor their families. It becomes a question not of what the record labels can do for the deceased artists, but what the deceased artists can do for their record labels; posthumous albums bring out the ugly side of the marriage between an artist and the label that signs him. As I said before, this process promotes the primordial, uncanny idea that Hollywood owns its celebrities – except in this case, the music industry owns its artists.
Some artists even feel strongly enough about it to make it a personal (and public) mission to never release music after they die- the best example being $uicideboy$ and their song All My Problems Always Involve Me. At the end of this song, they come on and state “Please do not release any music or videos that was not previously recorded before our death, please do not continue our music career as if we were still alive, in order to exploit our name for profit. Thank You.” In a similar sentiment, Anderson. Paak, a modern hip-hop artist, has a tattoo specifying exactly what to do with his music in the event of his passing. “When I’m gone, please don’t release any posthumous albums or songs with my name attached,” it reads, “those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the public.”
I think that too often these albums are a label’s last attempt at making as much money as they can off a particular artist before they have to come to terms with their passing and their inevitable loss of profit. From a business perspective, it’s obvious why these companies do what they do – the amount of money generated from fans playing these types of songs has made them nothing short of wealthy.
No matter if a record label releases a posthumous album for the profits or for the people, it still doesn’t sit right with me and many others. There’s a reason that artists keep projects private and “in the vault,” if they were ready to release music, they would have done so in their time on this earth. In the rare case of someone like Ed Sheeran, who has publicly spoken about work on an album that is only to be released after he passes, the principles behind posthumous music are altered. In almost every other situation, however, I strongly believe it is both morally and ethically wrong.
Even though these companies will continue in this business, people can begin to reconsider how they feel about listening to posthumous music from their favorite artists – were they ever meant to be public, or are they listening to private recordings of someone’s life?