A local Aussie band has been denied by Triple J Unearthed, deeming their music “too commercial”.
Self-proclaimed cig-pop, aka raspy garage jokesters, The Durries, were recently rejected by the Australian artist discovery platform after they submitted their song ‘Marlboro Gold’, with Triple J stating in an e-mail response to the band that the song “contains breaches of the Unearthed User agreement and has been placed on hold”.
Triple J explained their decision to not post the song, stating that “commercial references in songs on Unearthed must not be unduly frequent or unduly prominent” and that they “believe that the lyrics in ‘Marlboro Gold’ can be constituted as such”.
The radio station then went on to provide some advice on how The Durries can make have an online profile on the website, suggesting they either submit a new song, or drastically alter the lyrics from the existing ‘Marlboro Gold’, the closing statement reading as follows: “To be part of Unearthed, please remove the commercial references or replace this song with another.”
This all seems a little silly, the supergroup are a humours tongue-in-cheek band that have come together to pen silly songs about different cigarette brands, it’s not a serious love of darts but merely something for listeners to have a chuckle and rock to.
We had a listen to ‘Marlboro Gold’, which is an absolute Aussie belter, however we found the commercial connotations to the brand Marlboro no more prominent than other songs that both Triple J and Unearthed have had no problem promoting in the past.
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Take Little Red for example. Their indie pop-rock anthem ‘Coca-Cola‘, popped up on Unearthed back in 2006, receiving plenty of accolades from the likes of Richard Kingsmill, and went on to receive huge airtime on Triple J despite both verses and the chorus repeatedly singing the lyric “coca-cola”.
Not only that, but Canadian goofball Mac DeMarco’s popular tune, ‘Ode To Viceroy‘ has copped plenty of playtime on Triple J – despite the fact that this song is solely based on the love of the singer’s favourite cigarette, the J Plays website confirming that the song was played only four days ago.
It seems that Triple J and Unearthed are more than a little inconsistent with their rules behind refusing to play and promote songs with overtly strong commercial references, and they probably denied ‘Marlboro Gold’ because it’s about a cigarettes, not because of frequent commercial references, which they could have outlined from the outset.
Take a listen to ‘Marlboro Gold’ below and be the judge:
