Posted on 01/16/2021 9:44:11 PM PST by nickcarraway
It can be pretty troubling to learn that your musical idol might harbour views that you consider problematic. Let our columnist guide you through the process
We’ve all seen the early signs, experienced the shock and sadness of watching a close friend or relative succumb to reactionary lies. The idea that it’s immigrants that have been underfunding the NHS since 2010, perhaps, or that it’s possible to get several hundred thousand identical fake ballots counted and verified just by lobbing them through the window of a voting station in a massive sack at 4am – all because of a grainy meme they saw on youtwatswillfallforanything.com.
There are protocols in place for such eventualities, to help you gradually ease them out of your life. The social media mute. The WhatsApp remove. The gentle but prolonged cough down the phone a week before Christmas. But when it’s one of your musical heroes turning up to cheer on the inciting of an anti-democratic terrorist insurrection by military-trained white supremacists and neo-Nazis with pipe bombs, zip ties and vans full of home-brewed napalm – as fans of chillwave Trump chump Ariel Pink are discovering this week – things get far more complicated. Unlike your family, you’re emotionally invested in them.
Discovering that a musician you’ve shared a remote empathetic relationship with has views and opinions vastly at odds with your own is an inevitable generational revelation. Liberal ‘60s blues rock fans got a shock in 1976 when Eric Clapton told the black members of his audience to leave the country, presumably leaving behind all their songs so that he still had something to play. ‘80s indie fans have been wrestling with what’s become known as the ‘But, but, but – ‘Vauxhall And I’ conundrum – aka The Morrissey Problem – for several years. Long-term punks might have thought they got off lightly with just Skrewdriver and the odd murderer, until John Lydon turned himself into a one-man Trump billboard.
Pre-internet, it was simply a case of pretending you hadn’t read the offending opinion for a couple of years until the inevitable “I was pissed” apology crept into the music press. These days, there’s a more complex process to navigate when your pop heroes, as is increasingly de rigueur, reveal their politics to be marginally to the right of Genghis Khan.
Unlike with the standard stages of grieving, you skip the shock stage, since we’re now fully anaesthetised to public figures doing Very Bad Things, and dive straight into denial. Even as their label drops them, their associates desert them and more objective commentators point out all their previous form and refusals to get their round in, you’ll shut out all the noise and try to tell yourself there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation. How could this poor, hounded kitten possibly be a fascist when they moved you so much?
At core, you’re wrestling with a clash of nostalgia and embarrassment. Fondness for a time, barely minutes before, when you could enjoy their music guilt-free, and shame at being fooled into fandom when all of Judgemental Twitter, with their perfectly attuned hatedars, could instinctively tell they were a wrong ‘un.
To convince yourself you’re not a bad person, you’ll find yourself scouring social media for posts supportive of your hero. Either you will recognise the total delusion in all the disbelieving apologists and set yourself on the road to ultimate recovery or, out of musical allegiance alone, start to entertain the excuses and begin to slip down the rabbit hole. Maybe he was misquoted, maybe there is a media plot against him, maybe we should burn democracy.
If you manage to survive your idol’s inevitable Twitter trending with any trace of fandom left, the denial stage will last until they release some new music. You’ll listen to it, it’ll be just as good as all the stuff you liked before, but now you’ll feel a little tainted, not least because there’ll be an undercurrent of victimhood in the lyrics of songs called ‘With Me Or Against Me’ and ‘Out Of Context Blues’. You’ll start to categorise their music into Before and After, trying to convince yourself that it’s okay to like their old albums, but their new material is no-go. You’ll try to go back and listen to their old albums, but they’ll feel tainted too. Bargaining and depression rolled into one.
Finally, crunch time. They do a gig. You go along, but the chat in the pub beforehand is all about The Conundrum, you keep your head down in case anyone from work sees you going in and the crowd feels different, divided. There’s a real us-vs-them mentality; the moshpit, now spattered with pushy, bald mod blokes in buttoned-down shirts that weren’t there before, is all the more fervid and devoted, while you and your liberal apologist mates all stand uncertainly at the side, too uncomfortable to get into it. The singer makes a flippant comment about the issue from the stage, half the crowd cheers and you leave before the end.
Alternatively, you could save yourself all this inevitable stress and heartache, leap straight to the acceptance stage and cut them cleanly out of your listening habits from the off. Consider their early albums as a wistful folly of your youth, but listen to the music they inspired instead. It’s the fast track to aural denazification, and boy, it feels good.
Frankly, people need to separate artists’ politics from their artistic achievement.
Wagner is an anti semite, therefore his operas are no good ?
Paul Robeson was a communist, therefore he can’t sing ?
Caravaggio hired a hitman to disfigure a former girlfriend, so his paintings are substandard ?
It’s nonsense. Appreciate their God-given artistic talent for what it is. rather than impose some politicized standard.
Mishima actually did attempt a military coup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima
Ban his books !
#16. There was no “allegedly” about it. Timothy was “toast”, or “roast”. Burp! Went down well with fava beans and a “mine” chianti - Ripple, I think.
As for leftist singers and politics. Most couldn’t find their heads and common sense up their asses with a searchlight and a team of proctologists.
I’ll take ONE Toby Keith singing “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” over dozens of Madonna’s (I love “Borderline”), Katy Perry, and the rest of the leftist, overpaid millennial and old-time once-was’s.
PS: I got a CD from a pro-America rally in DC in April 2003 which contained only one song. I put it in my son’s army training jacket that I wore that day in solidarity with him and the troops of the 299th Army Engineers (Bridging), out of Ft. Belvoir, who were fighting in Iraq during Objective Peach on the Euphrates River opposite Hindaya.
I then put that jacket on my chair at home, with the CD in it, never moved it, and gave it to him when he returned from combat and bridging operations later that year. It was the second thing I gave him, the first being a big salute and hug.
I’m an old rock and roller, and Vietnam/Cambodia journalist on our side. Most singers were on our side back them. Today, they are on the “STUPIDS SIDE” and our “ENEMIES SIDE”. My how the time have changed, for the worse.
America, we are in trouble but don’t support our domestic stupids and enemies by patronizing their music, movies, concerts.
I have a recording of an ad Todd Rundgren made in 1972 to encourage young people to go out and vote--presumably for George McGovern. In the ad, he announces that he will be running for president in 1984.
My favorite song by that group:
Could It Be You?--The Four Tops (1956)
I’ve been at odds with some of my musical heroes for many years.
One forum I go to to discuss an artist’s work is very very liberal.
I tell people that I don’t tell artist x how to play, and artist x doesn’t tell me how to vote.
How many weeks after Kent State was it still being called a violent insurrection and how much of the blame was on the people who got shot?
CCR isn’t even a band anymore because they can’t get along.
I saw Fogerty once in concert. All singing, no time for lecturing, I realized how much of his “singing” is screaming into a microphone (and there are a number of covers in the albums). Fake southern rock band.
It depends. If they simply have different views no problem. If they advocate censorship or harassment of me or my groups then they can FOAD.
> neo-Nazis with pipe bombs
false allegation and Lefties carried out THOUSANDS of bombings in the 1970s in the USA.
Weather Underground didn’t even start until 1970 and was active into the mid-80s.
FUNME
NME is butthurt that Morrissey mourns the loss of British English culture.
>>reveal their politics to be marginally to the right of Genghis Khan.
Sod off
Lefties piss on anyone to the right of Joseph Stalin.
This British wanker is upset that there are still entertainers who supported Trump or that even fans of some Lefty group might still support BRexit or Trump.
Oh boo hoo.
So he says they are to the right of Ghenghis Khan, are neonazis, and boots and braces skinheads looking to shank kids in the moshpit
Maybe grow up and stop worshipping mere people.
I’m pretty sure I’m not ideologically opposed to Ted Nugent. Although, Nuge would probably not call himself a pop star.
I wish all musicians were like Hendrix. He was heavily pressured by the Black Panthers and other radical leftists to push their messages and agendas. He graciously refused to do that. As a result, he is now remembered for his astounding guitar talent and the great songs he wrote, not some idiotic pandering to a satanic ideology. Sure, I can appreciate good music made by idiots who spout off leftist bullshit, but whenever I hear one of their songs it ruins it for me. I just can’t get past that. But it does provide some humor in my house. For instance, whenever a Bruce Springsteen (who I hate) song pops on the radio my wife looks at me with a mischievous smirk, waiting for me to say, “Ah! It’s Bruce Shitstain!”
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