Morning Runner Split Up

Posted by Danny Brown Oct 11, 2007

One of the things that I hate most about the music industry is how the few have's dictate everything over the have nots. Of all the bands and artists that are making music, you're probably lucky to hear around 5% of it through the mainstream media. Only the really big hitters like Kelly Clarkson and James Blunt (ugh!) will get full record label backing, whilst the rest have to scrape by on what they can scrounge.

Now this vicious circle has claimed yet another victim, with the news that British band Morning Runner have split up, due to the commercial failure of their debut album Wilderness Is Paradise Now. Signed to major label Parlophone on the strength of their indie following, Morning Runner have found out the hard way that yesterday's heroes are today's forgotten people, if your record doesn't sell a certain amount.

What's really galling here is that they were making their second album more radio-friendly on the advice of Parlophone, who then decided to tell them it wasn't what they were looking for and let them go. I'm not sure what wasn't radio-friendly about the absolutely beautiful Burning Benches from the debut, or the You Said demo from the second now-defunct album, but it's just more confirmation that record labels have absolutely no clue when it comes to music.