Controversies and Censorship
MTV censored, and later banned, the single's music video because of a lyric in the song that refers to sexual intercourse. Carlton said it was hypocritical for MTV because "All that is on MTV is sex. They are selling it all the time with sexy hip-hop videos with girls in their bras and panties doing their booty dance. But an eloquent statement about it from a female point of view...". After the conclusion of the Harmonium tour, A&M Records sent Carlton into the recording studio because they didn't feel that there was a potential follow-up single on the album. During her studio time, in which she wrote songs with Linda Perry and The Matrix, she had what she called a "revelation" about leaving the label to find another record deal.
In May, Carlton wrote to her fans on her official website that because "shortsighted (nonmusical bastards)" at the label did not believe the album would sell well if given promotion, there would be no second single released in the US. " worked my ass off promoting Harmonium in the ways that could control, but you can't sell records to someone in the middle of ndiana without a little help", she wrote. By the following month, Carlton had separated from A&M Records. Carlton explained the situation in an interview with Express in 2007:
| “ | Actually, I was given an ultimatum - basically like a slap on the wrist, like, "You shouldn't have made Harmonium; you should have done everything we said." Meanwhile, it wasn't supported by them, so of course I was doomed to begin with on that project. They pulled the plug on my record and then said, "See, it didn't work. You have to now reaudition submit your songs as you write them. You have to do everything that we say." So what's the point of having an aesthetic and being an artist if you're just some kind of puppet for a team of people that don't necessarily know their own aesthetic? There was no other choice for me but to leave. | ” |
Weeks before the announcement, PopMatters magazine wrote, "One has to wonder how long it will be before we hear the inevitable "the industry ate me up" stories from Vanessa Carlton. Perhaps when this record fails to outsell her debut and A&M drops her?". The Herald & Review said that Carlton " another one of the new millennium’s poster children for what happens when music labels are taken over by accountants and artist development is abandoned."
Read more about this topic: Harmonium (Vanessa Carlton album)
Famous quotes containing the word censorship:
“... a phallocentric culture is more likely to begin its censorship purges with books on pelvic self-examination for women or books containing lyrical paeans to lesbianism than with See Him Tear and Kill Her or similar Mickey-Spillanesque titles.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)