The Fold Being Sued By Miley Cyrus

The Fold playing at Metro Chicago. (Link opens in iTunes)

A few weeks ago we bloggy mcblogstered a video from one of our Chicago favorites The Fold that was shot on their iPhone 3GS parodying pop punk to the tune of Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The USA.” As you may have heard on AbsolutePunk, The Fold are now being sued. Most of the activity on the boards was supportive of The Fold, but unfortunately for The Fold, Miley and friends–it wasn’t all nice.

Alas, she is not to blame in this particular scenario. I would imagine it’s her record company, Hollywood Records, who are making the big stink–like you needed another reason to hate a big record company. The Fold have unfortunately removed most of the mentions of their parody song from their MySpace and hidden the video from YouTube, but luckily here at Assault, I flat out do not care about getting sued because quite honestly, I don’t have a record contract of any kind, and I also don’t have any money! Plus, the file isn’t hosted here, and who knows who could have uploaded it? I just found it.

If you’d like to see the entire video in it’s entirety, you can download it here: The Fold – Every Band In The USA.

The one thing I couldn’t help but notice about the majority of the negative posts, especially the ones coming from Aaron Marsh of Copeland, was that the band deserves what they get because they made a parody–with t-shirts–with the direct intention of making a buck on the mainstream appeal of the Miley Cyrus song, coupled with digs at the Glamour Kills/3OH!3. Of course they did it to get mainstream attention. What do musicians on YouTube do when they want to get more views and more fans? They do a cover of a popular song with their own spin. What internet meme, or catchy one liner doesn’t get turned into a t-shirt in this day and age? The Fold is merely playing the game.

But when they printed those shirts it stopped being about their music and started being about the stunt, and I think that sucks. It sucks that bands have to resort to things other than their music to get attention. Maybe that’s just the way music is headed.

Feel free to disagree with me on this, but shouldn’t a band be doing everything it can to make mainstream success if it means nothing more than the ability to keep making music? (And Aaron Marsh isn’t out of line in what he said–he’s a talented musician and has valid points in what he said on AbsolutePunk.)

This whole situation reminds me of what Jim Powers of Minty Fresh Records said in his presentation at Tour:Smart Plus. He held up a venn diagram that he had drawn before his presentation, (Remember those?) which had the words, “The Mainstream” on the left side, dollar signs in the middle, and the words, “Your Creative Vision” on the right side. For extra emphasis he had a huge arrow pointed to the dollar signs in the middle with the words, “BOOYAH!!!!” above them.

In case you can’t visualize that illustrious description like me, former art college student can, the point was that you have to find the crossover in your creative vision that appeals to the masses to open up more doorways. Sure you can just stick to your guns, tour for 10+ years with the same band, van, crew, and fans, but most bands will never achieve the success that most musicians envision when they decide to make music their life.

Achieving, “mass appeal,” as The Situation would say, is always going to come at the cost of some of your ideals in the form of t-shirts and the occasional stunt–at least The Fold is having fun doing it. I have a feeling there are plenty of guys playing one man acoustic shows at your local Potbellies, or opening up at 5pm on a Tuesday at your local VFW who refused to compromise their creative ideals too.

If the worst thing a band I like ever did to me was release a cover song as a stunt to sell some shirts then that’s just fine with me. (See Rise Against – Making Christmas)

It’s also good to see the lawsuit hasn’t damaged their besties status with Miley. She’s still their top friend on MySpace. So I’m guessing this whole thing was a big joke–but nonetheless. I digress.

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About the Author

Tim is the co-owner of Assault, and tends to think he can party twice as hard as anyone. Follow him on twitter @assault
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