Most people have applauded Lynyrd Skynyrd for their decision, but there have been a few dissenters. CNN collected responses of fans who didn’t support the action. ”Good luck with your next release ‘Sweet home Massachusetts.’ I am sure it will climb the charts with a bullet in Yankee-land,” said one. “This isn’t the real Lynyrd Skynyrd anyway. They should have taken a name like ‘Obama’s Politically Correct Sell Your Soul Make Believe Impostors’ or something,” opined another.

Can someone reach out to this guy for comment?

For a successful artist to offer audiences the opportunity to participate in her show might well be seen as a bold gesture. It could be a chance to create something new and unique every night. As Palmer promised, “its almost as good as the circus.” [sic]

But coming from someone who’d just racked up a million bucks, it also seemed a little chintzy, to say the least. Seattle musicians union Local 76-493 lambasted her repeatedly on Twitter and created a petition declaring that “Musicians are workers, not volunteers.” As blogger Rachel Lynn Brody grimly noted, “Asking people to do what they love for free (plus beer and hugs) – is not a change in the industry model.” The producer Steve Albini was more outspoken in his assessment of Palmer on his own blog, saying, “Pretty much everybody on earth has a threshold for how much to indulge an idiot who doesn’t know how to conduct herself, and I think Ms Palmer has found her audience’s threshold.”

Palmer, who has always paid her band Grand Theft Orchestra, retorted that “If you could see the enthusiasm of these people, the argument would become invalid,” adding, “If my fans are happy and my audience is happy and the musicians onstage are happy, where’s the problem?”  

But it didn’t help her credibility when she defensively estimated she’d take home less than $100,000 after she produced her album and book and paid the artists and musicians involved in her project. And she didn’t exactly charm the pants off her critics in an open letter earlier this month, writing: “This isn’t about money. for me, this is about freedom. and about choices” and that “the reality of the players and the feeling in the room is more important to me than anything.”

That’s a fine sentiment – and one that many artists, whether they’re musicians or photographers or dancers or writers – share. After all, if you’re just looking for a quick buck, playing your cello in the subway or acting in your friend’s direct-to-YouTube drama probably isn’t the fast track to riches. Anyone who lives a creative life has at some point given his or her talents away, for the opportunity of greater exposure, as a favor, for the pure delight of the experience. Palmer’s no doubt speaking the truth when she says the musicians who’ve volunteered to get up onstage with her have been happy to do it. She’s done the same thing herself throughout her career, freely mixing love and money.

But the faint whiff of exploitation still hangs in the air. Palmer may have genuinely aspired to create a party-like group jam on her tour. Instead, however, she came off looking like she was asking for freebies after being handed a million dollars. And so, on Wednesday, Palmer changed her tune. She announced, “We have decided we should pay all of our guest musicians. we have the power to do it, and we’re going to do it. (in fact, we started doing it three shows ago.)” She also couldn’t help sniping, “I’m sad to realize that our creative intentions of crowd-sourcing – something that i’ve done for years, and which has always been an in-house collaboration between the musicians and the fans, never a matter of public debate or attack – are getting lost in the noise of this controversy.”

Not every creative endeavor is a cash transaction. We sing and dance and paint and play for the fulfillment of the experience, the joy of sharing it. But we also do it because it’s a job, and as such, worthy of respect and compensation. It says something important to those “professional-ish” musicians along the road that Palmer is now willing to treat them as such. Her album is currently in the Billboard top 10. It’s a success she achieved through her fans – one she invited them to share in, an investment they now truly have a stake in, every city in the tour.

Slate: With Ry Cooder’s angry new record, Bob Dylan’s blunt comments about race in his recent Rolling Stone interview, some of Springsteen’s no-holds-barred songs, and now “I’m Dreaming,” it seems that you and a few of your colleagues are getting pretty fed up. Is this a trend?

Newman: I’m not sure about a trend, but for me it’s a reaction to the Republican Party, which seems to have drifted farther to the right than a major party has drifted in my lifetime in any direction. It seems to have become almost a radical party. The hate and … I don’t think it’ll last. That kind of thing doesn’t seem to last.

Maroon 5 managed to do it, though. The group scored a No. 1 hit this summer with “Payphone,” which finds Adam Levine mooning over an ex-girlfriend while trying to reach her from, yes, a payphone.

It all harks back to a time when phone calls still meant something. Before texting, sexting and Gchat, people shared information by actually talking to each other. How’re the kids? What happened with that doctor’s appointment? How’s school going? This summer’s mini-wave of telephone nostalgia suggests that maybe we’ve reached a point where the saturation of technology is leeching out something essential about human contact.

Phone calls used to loom much larger in popular culture, even beyond Stevie Wonder dialing up to say he loves you or Tommy Tutone talking up Jenny. The American diaspora that began during the Depression and accelerated after World War II meant that extended families often no longer lived in close proximity, and staying in touch required effort. When written communication just wouldn’t do, there was the telephone, which wasn’t used lightly: phone calls were important, and long-distance was expensive, even in songs.

In “Rhinestone Cowboy,” for example, Glen Campbell sings about “offers comin’ over the phone” – that is, offers too important to wait for the mail. Or there’s Tom Waits’ “Martha,” where the narrator tells his old flame he’s calling long-distance and “don’t worry about the cost.” Or even Jay Farrar on Son Volt’s “Live Free” from 1995, wanting “to see your smile through a payphone.”

These days, whoever was making the offer would just text it to the Rhinestone Cowboy’s manager, and then pay him with Venmo. Ol’ Tom Frost could tag Martha in those old photos on Facebook. And Farrar could Facetime with his lady without worrying about running out of quarters midway through saying “I miss you.”

“I want to see your smile on a high-resolution smartphone screen” doesn’t have the same ring, obviously, but it seems entirely likely that telephone nostalgia will be a short-lived phenomenon. Apple releases a new iPhone soon, for one thing, and next summer will bring another vapid summer anthem with an irresistible hook.

And 25 years later, “Bad” — which is being reissued today with a bonus disc of demos, bonus tracks and remixes — compares very favorably to “Thriller.” Buoyed by Quincy Jones’ deft production (Jackson received a co-production credit), the album is far more muscular and sculpted, but doesn’t sound labored. Wisely, many songs put a nimble spin on the funk-pop production style popularized by Minneapolis geniuses Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The sizzling synths and sharp rhythms of the Stevie Wonder duet “Just Good Friends” in particular recall the work the duo did with another Jackson (Janet), while “Another Part of Me” is a flashy soul revue with horn bleats and oohing harmonies. Even the lightweight “Speed Demon” has a nasty, corrugated rhythmic underbelly. (The Minneapolis influence is likely no accident: Jones actually wanted “Bad’s” taut, disco-pop title track to be a Jackson-Prince duet, and the two pop stars even met in person to discuss collaborating.)

The atmospheric parts of “Bad” are almost more affecting, however. The soaring ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” blooms with soft-rock keyboards and one of Jackson’s most delicate, vulnerable vocal performances. And despite the casual misogyny of “Dirty Diana” — the titular woman is “dirty” for seducing musicians — the song is a dramatic, tension-filled vignette: Faded crowd noise and an ominous electric guitar solo by Billy Idol foil Steve Stevens contribute to music that reflects increased terror over Diana’s advances.

More impressive, Jackson ended up writing and composing nine of the 11 songs on “Bad” by himself, a staggering figure when compared to today’s pop-music-by-committee culture. (This was also a marked departure from “Thriller,” on which he received sole credit on only four songs.) As a result, “Bad” gave the notoriously reticent Jackson a chance to assert himself as a songwriter with mature desires. While on “Thriller” he sang “The doggone girl is mine,” which evolved into “Hey pretty baby with the high heels on / You give me fever” on “Bad.” If “Thriller” made him a global phenomenon, “Bad” made him an adult.

But as bulletproof as Jackson the pop star was by 1987, Jackson the human being was deeply insecure. In hindsight, this manifests itself in interesting ways on his love songs. The narcissistic viewpoint of “The Way You Make Me Feel” (sample lyrics: “I like the feelin’ you’re givin’ me,” “I swear I’m keepin’ you satisfied/ ’Cause you’re the one for me”) seems rooted in insecurity, judging by this casual aside that material things — not personal magnetism — keep the romance alive: “Oh, I’ll be workin’ from nine to five / To buy you things to keep you by my side.” On “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” Jackson interrupts cooing pillow talk with this brutally sad admission: “A lot of people misunderstand me/That’s because they don’t know me at all.”

Indeed, an undercurrent of loneliness and detachment snakes through even the most seemingly heartfelt songs. The fairy-tale love described in “Liberian Girl” is curiously idealized and full of references to movie scenes, making it a description of a Hollywood romance rather than a realistic affair. Even the non-Jackson-penned “Just Good Friends” takes a heartbreaking, laissez-faire attitude to being led on by a suitor: “Baby loves me / Though she never shows she cares.”

This sad-clown theme isn’t always evident right away, but it does make the optimism of “Man in the Mirror” stick out like a sore thumb. Co-written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard, the song’s self-improvement mantra (“If you wanna make the world a better place/ Take a look at yourself and then make the change”) rings rather hollow. While Jackson was always a gifted interpreter of uplifting music — and he finally had the personal capacity to articulate hope on later tracks such as “Heal the World” — the melancholy tone of his own “Bad” songwriting is far more insightful.

Tellingly, however, the song most indicative of Jackson’s inner struggles is almost an afterthought. “Leave Me Alone” is tucked away at the end of “Bad,” initially only appeared on the CD version of the album and wasn’t released as a single in the U.S. On a record with a staggering number of guest musicians and session players, the tune’s strikingly straightforward music also stands out: An insistent, thwacking rhythm pulses underneath funk-tinged synthesizers and digitally dusted, layered harmonies.

The lyrics, however, are another story. “Leave Me Alone” is a conflicted mix of braggadocio (“Ain’t no mountain that I can’t climb, baby/ All is going my way”), defiance (“You used to take an deceive me/ Now who is sorry now?”), confusion (“I love you/ I don’t want it”) and desperation (“Just drop doggin’ me around/ Don’t come beggin’ me”). The song very clearly represents Jackson trying to reconcile his relationship with the media, fame and success — especially his frustration over the increased attention toward his increasingly bizarre behavior.

That “Leave Me Alone” equates dissatisfaction with the press to a tumultuous romantic dissolution is significant: Much of Jackson’s self-worth and concept of success was driven by (if not dependent on) other people’s adoration. And so in retrospect, “Bad” was a very brave record — the Jackson solo album most representative of his creative vision. Despite the “Thriller” albatross, Jackson put himself on the line (and on the hook) for critical appraisal and commercial success. That’s a bold move for someone petrified of failure.  But more than that, it’s also a declaration of his musical acuity — a pointed reminder that Jackson wasn’t just a pop puppet, he was also an artist with something to say.