This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Bret Detar of The Juliana Theory shared their story of working with Tooth & Nail Records on Tik Tok. Emotion Is Dead cost $12,000 to make. It sold over 100,000 records in the era where CD’s were $15. that’s over $1million in sales. What we actually made was beyond paltry. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9PzuxqJ3fG/?igsh=MXdhdmZ2YWNmYWl1ZQ== more Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos and other embedded content.
Of course he's right, but this is not exclusive to T&N. Most young artists get taken advantage of by record labels. "Christian" label or not. What gets me about the resurfacing of The Juliana Theory though is their desperation to make songs that sound like they belong in their "Emotion is Dead" and "Understand This Is A Dream" era. When in reality, objectively, "Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat" was one of the best (maybe THE best) sawn song album ever. It's a crying shame that it went so under the radar, but just because that last full length effort tanked, doesn't mean you need to take 10 steps back - musically, lyrically, and just pander.
No slight to Juliana Theory who I do very much like, but the whole "Christian punk/hardcore/emo" scene of the 00's was really insufferable to me as an atheist. A lot of gross self-righteousness mixed with old-fashioned beliefs and insular mentality really bugged me.
Even as someone who raised in a strict Christian family and very much believed, this scene was insufferable to me. I couldn’t take bands like Underoath or Relient K serious for a long time because of it. Underoath speak out about Christianity now and how they were treated by the Christian music scene but they didn’t mind headlining big Christian festivals, at the time, like Cornerstone