Sheryl Crow Is Buying Votes?
SEXPOT-TURNED-ACTIVIST OFFERS FREE TUNES FOR VOTER REGISTRATION
By Mande Wilkes
FITSNews – August 25, 2008 – The FITS gals were Sheryl Crow fans long before her fire-engine red pout in “If It Makes You Happy” brought her to the attention of our founding editor. We stuck with her through her WTF hook-up with Lance Armstrong, and even after her songs took a hackneyed turn to the left. But alas, she’s finally gone too far … even for us.
As part of her involvement with Rock the Vote, she’s offering free copies of her newest CD to the first 50,000 people who get three others to register to vote. Rock the Vote is a nonprofit group designed to encourage political participation, particularly among youth. The organization’s current goal is to register 2 million young people to vote before November.
Like we feel about a lot of things that appear altruistic at first glance, we’re critical of what Ms. Crow is doing. It’s a nice sentiment, sure, but as we see it there are two big problems – one pragmatic, the other philosophical.
First, Crow’s primary goal is to engage young people in politics. Her adult contemporary genre of music notwithstanding, the fact is that Rock the Vote’s target demographic is also the audience who likes its music digital, free, and illegal. Offers of free tunes fall on deaf ears to a generation raised on Napster and its progeny.
Second, we’ve tired of the notion that stuff should be incentivized “just because.” Good behavior is leveraged to the point that nobody feels like they should do anything for “free.” And the truth is that they’re right: If one looks hard enough, he can find somebody offering something for that which already has built-in rewards in the doing.
Incidentally, as for the relative merits of positive versus negative reinforcement, time will tell how Crow’s incentive program will fare compared to P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die” campaign.
Sheryl Crow’s heart might be in the right place, but she’s going about it all wrong. If she really wants to make a culturally significant contribution, her best bet is to donate the rights to this song to the Obama campaign.
Comments
By FWFIV on August 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
You are showing your age here Mande. If the target demographic is around 18-22 years old, they were in middle school at the time Napster was all the rage. This targets the generation which came of age in the era of paying for music at iTunes, so I think it may be more to their liking than you think.
By Go Sheryl on August 25th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
It is about time the rock and rollers came out and got engaged.I grew up in the 60’s and respected those musicians who pointed out the senseless war in Vietnam.
Where are the musicians this time around as we were misled into the senseless war in Iraq? Most , with the possible exception of Neil Young and the Dixie Chicks, were too busy worrying about getting on MTV instead of delivering a vital message that rocks to educate their audience .
By Dave Van Hinkel on August 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Well Ms. Crow… are you trying to seduce me?