By: Rob Brayl
For BiggerThanBeyonce.Com

MGMT has no desire whatsoever to be pop stars.

The New York duo (Andrew VanWyngarden & Ben Martin Goldwasser) was approached to tour with a number of super famous acts, but they immediately turned down the offers saying: “We’ve recently been offered support slots with a ton of big bands. Really huge, enormous, big bands – Like Lady Gaga and U2 and Coldplay and Foo Fighters,” said Andrew, “and we turned them all down. We really didn’t want to do any of that.”

Call MGMT pretentious for not wanting to support mainstream acts but I respect their decision. In a world where pop stars are viewed as products (hell, even Lady GaGa who claims to be about the “art”, released a nearly 10 minute video earlier this year with nothing but product endorsements slayed across the screen), the boys of MGMT view their music as something a bit more personal than simply a tool to earn buckets of money.

It’s now more clear than ever, that MGMT is about the art of music and not the product, which often pigeonholes singers and bands into boxes with little to no control over a vast majority of the creative process.

MGMT band mate Ben also feels that their music has been “blown out of proportion by everybody”. Contact Music quotes him as saying: “We don’t feel like pop stars, we feel like a rock band. We don’t want to play arenas. It’s not our mission.”

“I think on some level it is a reaction to the success of the first one. I mean, of course we were happy and felt lucky that stuff happened, but it wasn’t really what we were shooting for.”

MGMT’s Congratulations was released on April 13th.

Check out the interview with MGMT, below.

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