ANOHNI has revealed that she was offered $200,000 for her music to be used in a commercial for Facebook.
Her cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive has been a live staple for some time, particularly earlier in her career. It transpires that, in June of this year, Droga5 (an advertising agency working on behalf of Facebook) approached ANOHNI about licensing a live recording of her cover from 2001.
After the debacle, ANOHNI went to the studio to record her version properly. She released the cover on her own channels last week and shared a statement explaining what happened and her reasons for turning the offer down.
“Although I really could have used the money, I said no because I didn’t want to be complicit in Facebook’s hosting of fake news which might enable the re-election of Donald Trump.” She wrote. “They wrote back saying that they were placating other participants’ concerns by making donations to their charities of choice, in addition to paying them. I woke up the next morning and realized this isn’t even advertising; this is politics, and i don’t even know how deep this water is. This company Droga5 worked with Obama and Google and others. I had to walk away.”
Months later, ANOHNI saw the advert and discovered that another singer had been hired to emulate her rendition of the song. “It was a nauseating feeling” ANOHNI reflected.
Listen to the cover in the player above and read her full statement below.
In June, Facebook offered me 200,000$ to license an old live version (2001) of me singing “I Will Survive” for an advertisement that represented Facebook as an advocate for small businesses. Although I really could have used the money, I said no because I didn’t want to be complicit in Facebook’s hosting of fake news which might enable the re-election of Donald Trump. They wrote back saying that they were placating other participants’ concerns by making donations to their charities of choice, in addition to paying them. I woke up the next morning and realized this isn’t even advertising; this is politics, and i don’t even know how deep this water is. This company Droga5 worked with Obama and Google and others. I had to walk away.
A month later I saw the ad. Facebook had hired another singer to emulate my version of the song.
It was a nauseating feeling.We all know that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and others now seem to be destroying our lives, our minds, our jobs, our cultures, and our societies’ ability to govern themselves.
We as artists were the first ones to be led to the stall to begin feeding, and being drained by, companies including Apple and Facebook.
And now as artists, we should be the first to leave. We must show that it is possible to live without Instagram, without Facebook, without Google and Amazon. We must endeavor to rebuild our lives and our communities, our private conversations, in ways that don’t rely on manipulatiThve infrastructures and interfaces provided by the world’s richest corporations.
After the Facebook debacle, I felt compelled to complete my studio version of “I Will Survive”. It was the first song I ever sang in nightclubs in NYC when I was 20 years old. I sang it hundreds of times. In those days I sang it thinking of Marsha P. Johnson and the underground queer community struggling to survive in the face of AIDS. Now it seems to me like an anthem for the future of life on earth.
Obviously, Youtube is owned by Google. I haven’t closed all my accounts. But I want to talk to you about this; I want to be a part of this conversation.
The news follows the release of another new track from ANOHNI, inspired by the Republican National Convention. Listen to R.N.C. 2020 below.
https://youtu.be/L20ptUYN2lo