Keeping the Faith
In the December 30, 2000 issue of Billboard magazine, the Wallflowers' third album, "Breach," is #123 on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart. Worse yet, the band's first single, "Sleepwalker," is no longer on the Top 100 Singles chart. And as Wall of Sound notes, since its October 10th release, "Breach" has sold only 300,000 copies. ("http://wallofsound.go.com/archive/news/s...")
Despite mostly positive critical reviews, the public hasn't embraced "Breach" and "Sleepwalker" as hoped. As the October 28, 2000 issue of Billboard magazine reported: "For the Wallflowers, the start [for Breach] at No. 13 with 81,000 copies seems off the stride of its previous album, which spent 20 weeks in the top 10 and had 12 weeks in which it sold more than the new one does in its initial frame." The news for the single wasn't much better: "Although there has been a lot of media attention recently for the band and lead man Jakob Dylan," said Billboard, "the first track ‘Sleepwalker' has not been the radio locomotive that previous Wallflowers songs have been." Unfortunately, "Sleepwalker" peaked at #73 on the Top 100 Singles chart.
What caused such lackluster album and single sales, so much so that "Breach" is being labeled a flop by many media sources? Perhaps a combination of two reasons--the fickle public's desire for teen pop fluff and free access to "Breach" through Napster.
While modern/alternative rock music flourished on the airwaves in 1997--during the height of the Wallflowers' popularity--radio stations and the music business have since turned their backs on that music. Although the Wallflowers joked how they've ignored record company warnings that it wasn't the best time to release their album, maybe they should have taken the warnings more seriously this time. As the Associated Press recently noted, "Just a few years ago, acts like The Wallflowers and Joan Osborne were critics' darlings and racked up millions in sales. But with today's focus on teen hits, those `serious musicians' who returned to the scene in 2000 found their audience depleted. Follow-ups by Osborne and the Wallflowers were largely ignored by the masses." ("http://www.postnet.com/postnet/stories.n...")
Feeding the frenzy for superficiality, the music business is too focused on churning out meaningless pop teen hits, rather than standing behind quality acts. Jakob Dylan's frustration at this was apparent in a recent Australian interview: "There's too many damn bands now," he said. "There's too much music, too much wrong motivation . . . There's too much crap out there, too many bad artists that you won't notice something special, because you've been infected by insincere music. The world wouldn't care or notice if there were a new Pete Townshend or a new Prince around."
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