Arcade Fire Sell Out For a Good Cause, Hipsters still Angered

December 4, 2006

Does it still count as selling out if you sell out to help fund medications for African AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria patients? Arcade Fire doesn’t think so.

The Canadian art-rockers have lent Funeral anthem “Rebellion (Lies)” to Bono’s [RED] charity campaign, which collects money for African wellness by skimming a percentage of profits made on select [RED] merchandise being sold by many big-name brands, including Motorola, Converse, American Express, Armani, the Gap and Apple. The Arcade Fire song is featured in a TV ad supporting the cause, which has made some know-it-all hipsters cringe with pompous rage, leading to whispers of selling out.

“The Red campaign is a bit self-serving,” one Arcade Fire fan writes on the band’s website. “Companies get to feel good about themselves, promote their image as caring, at the same time as getting more customers who wouldn't necessarily buy these products … Converse let you design your own Chuck Taylor All-Stars, choose the colour, patterns etc, and give a certain amount of the price to the Red campaign, so they are fighting AIDS, but the majority of their shoes are made in China, in probably dubious conditions, perpetuating poverty, which is often one of the key factors in the spread of AIDS, through lack of education.”

But Fire frontman Win Butler doesn’t see it that way.

"To some people this seems crass and capitalistic, and I sympathize with that position, but in the first week of the campaign, they have raised enough money for 10,000 women to have antiretroviral drugs for a year ... money and medication which wouldn't have been there without a program like this,” he writes on the band’s website. “We don’t give a fuck about the Gap or American express, and we are in no way endorsing their products, but as long as scientists are developing drugs that you can give to a HIV-positive mother and her newborn baby to help stop the transmission of AIDS to the child, the money could be coming from the devil for all I care, as long as people are getting the medication.”