In February 2002, Danny McNamara, his brother Richard and three friends Steve Firth, Mickey Dale and Mike Heaton stepped out on stage to play a sold out show at London's prestigious Royal Albert Hall. This was a new peak for their band Embrace. The band opened that show with the track ‘Over’, probably because they thought it was. The band had just been unceremoniously dropped by their record label. On Richard’s birthday too. After a phenomenally successful debut album and two further critically acclaimed LPs, Danny McNamara wondered “will we ever be here again”. 

In the longer term, things turned out for the better. Embrace had joined the club of rock & pop artists who have been dropped by their labels only to go on and then make among their best - and commercially most successful - records. It is somewhat ironic when you consider that first and foremost, the record label’s function is to commercialise the music. Something happens to bands of longevity when they are judged in that way. They’re having none of it, basically.

Embrace’s 4th album, 2004’s Out Of Nothing, released on a new label, was a reset that took the band back to number one. It also contained the band’s only two top 10 singles, back in the days when singles were still sold in numbers on CD. It makes you wonder that, without the forced adversity, would the band have pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the way they did?

Bands dropped by their labels often go on to make amazing records, commercially and creatively. This has been the case with a large club of artists, here are a few examples, all discussed during my conversations with those artists on The Art Of Longevity podcast:

• Laura Veirs, dropped after her 3rd album with Nonesuch records, Saltbreakers, went on to make July Flame, her most successful commercial album

• The Wombats, dropped after their 3rd album with 14th Floor Records, Glitterbug, went on to make Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, a number 3 chart album and huge record on streaming

• Spoon, dropped after their first album release for a major label, A Series of Sneaks in 1998, the band’s next record Girls Can Tell set them on a course for a glorious discography of 10 indie-rock albums, including three in the Billboard USA top 10

• Alela Diane, dropped by Rough Trade after her Wild Divine album in 2011, the USA singer-songwriter went on to forge a successful career releasing albums through independent distributors, leading to her most successful album Cusp and new album Looking Glass

In each case, I’m sure there was a story behind the decisions made. A typical situation is that a band’s advocate within the label (usually the same person who signed them) has moved on elsewhere. Sometimes, as in the example with Embrace, the label went bust. Such events are outside of the artist’s control. Mostly of course, the reason will be ‘disappointing sales’ and therein lies the irony in many cases, when the band goes on to have longevous commercial success. 

 It doesn’t have to be that way

While being dropped might be bewildering and depressing for an artist (and perhaps in some cases their labels too) it is important to see it as a new beginning rather than the end. On the other hand, although counterintuitive at first, it follows that labels might think twice about dropping artists and perhaps rarely should. Only in extreme cases where all other remedies are exhausted should a hard-won, hard-worked relationship be forced to an abrupt end. Sticking with an artist that you believed in at the beginning is likely to bear fruit again at some stage - in the above cases the very next record. Most artists experience creative and commercial highs and lows as a natural ebb & flow of their long-term viability. That requires a long-term vision, which is not outside the scope of a music label even in these fast-paced times we’re living in. 

The careers of many other artists demonstrate exactly that, including the following for example:

• Norah Jones, who has released nine studio albums over two decades with Blue Note Records

• Death Cab For Cutie, in many ways a classic ‘indie’ band, has spent 18 years and six albums on Atlantic Records

• Arctic Monkeys, probably the most successful rock English rock band of their time, have been with Domino Records since the beginning - seven studio albums across 16 years

• Bjork has been with indie label One Little Indian for what will soon be 11 albums over three decades

• Fink has been associated with Ninja Tune since the band’s first record in 2006

In the case of Fink, when it became clear that the band’s music was somewhat of an outlier compared with that label’s core repertoire, instead of ending the relationship, the two entered into a long-term partnership under the artist’s own imprint, the fabulously named Recoup’d Records. It allowed Fink’s career stability and eventually long-term success. A win-win for the band and Ninja Tune. 

I don’t mean to label bash here by any means, that would be too easy and too simplistic. Take the case of Warner Music Group - a few of the labels within Warner are named above, yet the 18-year relationship between Atlantic Records and Death Cab is exemplary. The record industry is a wreckage site of indie bands that signed to major labels and could not make it work, yet the band is thriving on that label. Atlantic remains one of the few labels that still holds some intrinsic brand value as a company with artistic sympathy, harking back to the golden era of the 70s under Ahmet Ertegun. And it was Warner Music and another American iconic indie band Wilco that illustrated the idiosyncratic machinations of the music business so well in the early 2000s. The band was both dropped (Elektra/Reprise) and then effectively signed again (Nonesuch) by the same label (Warner). Although it has a bizarre angle to it, perhaps this should happen more often - the parent company making more effort to accommodate important artists but in the right home. Better than letting the band go, surely. 

 These examples are all testimony to the fact that labels can be partners and representatives throughout the whole process - not just as long as the hits keep coming. With the age of the ‘superstar’ in decline and the even greater unpredictability of hits, it is even more important that record labels find a way to build long-term partnerships with their artists. The markers of ‘success’ in the industry are changing and with it, artists' goals & dreams, which no longer fixate on fame & fortune. They would rather have stable, creative careers that enable them to make a good living. That might be the better focus for their labels and managers from now on. 

You can listen to in-depth interviews with many of the artists mentioned in this post on The Art of Longevity. Interviews with Embrace and Death Cab For Cutie are published next…