Pity the modern musician. In a viral video posted by BBC Backstage Music Pass this week, Liam Gallagher—former lead of iconic rock band Oasis and then Beady Eye, generally regarded as one of the greatest frontmen of all time—can be seen brewing his own cup of tea and railing against the dismal state of recording profits in the music-streaming era.
A transcription:
Now in the ’90s, I got someone else to fucking do it. But now I can’t. Fucking money is tight, too tight to mention; gotta do it yourself, haven’t you? No one buys records these days. In the ’90s, I had about four people doing it. Little geezer doing the kettle, our kid, some other little [censored] doing that and some other little fucking idiot doing that. Now, you gotta do it yourself these days ’cause these fucking little smart-arses download fucking tunes for nish. Then they wonder why there’s no real rock-and-roll stars around. ‘Cause this is the shit you’ve got us doing. Fuckers.
He’s not wrong. The rise of services like Spotify and Apple Music, whose per-stream payouts are much lower than the royalties that physical or digital album purchases reaped in the CD and iTunes eras, has caused many an artist to complain. Steely Dan’s 69-year-old cofounder Donald Fagen had to go back on tour. So did deceased singer Ronnie James Dio—as a hologram. Strange times in music these are.
That said, Gallagher admitted the tea he made himself was “fucking good, man.”