Can you separate the artist as a person from the music?
For example, I personally can’t listen to Guns and Roses without immediately thinking “that Axl sure is an asshole”, and that sours the entire experience.
I mean, theres 3 categories for giving them a pass on their transgressions (as a fan, not legally or morally speaking) IMO.
The art/performance was just so far beyond good that you cant deny the cultural significance. E.g Michael Jackson, Elvis, Tupac.
You had a personal connection to the art before they did the shitty thing or before it came to light. (In my case: early Chris Brown, Kid Rock) They were big in my late teens and early 20s and I have positive memories associated with their songs. Not the percieved quality of the art.
They had their day in court, did their time and time has passed. E.g Mark Wahlberg, I dont know the guy, I dont know if he is a good person or not these days. But the last documented occasion of him being a huge violent racist asshole is 1992… 32 years ago.
Eric Clapton is an anti-VAX conspiracy theorist and a racist. Van Morrison is anti-VAX conspiracy theorist and a racist. John Lennon is a serial abuser drug addict, beat women and abandoned his own son. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith is a pedophile. Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot chili peppers is a pedophile.
Etc.
Anytime I learned something horrible about someone famous, I write them off completely.
It was to me too, had to go looking - guessing this from Wikipedia is what it was:
Kiedis acknowledges in his autobiography Scar Tissue that he had sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl when he was 23, before and after learning of her age, in the 1980s. This inspired him to write the song “Catholic School Girls Rule”.
Not defending anyone here, but a paedophile is someone who’s sexually attracted to prepubescent children. I believe these days it’s extended to the early stages of puberty as well.
Most girls are well over that phase at age 14.
A 23 year-old having sex with a 14 year old may be morally and legally wrong depending on culture and jurisdiction, but the cases where it’s actual paedophilia are likely a small minority.
Again, I’m not defending anyone, but calling every person who’s attracted to minors a paedophile only serves to diminish the effect of the actual ones.
Don’t forget Ted Nugent helped funnel Russian money through the NRA for Trump and is a pedophile, Meatloaf is anti-vax, and Roger Waters openly supports Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
Seems to me Waters has walked back that remark about Ukraine. His schtick is generally that he says provocative stuff that opposes western power structures, which sometimes causes him to overcompensate and say something in favour of, say, Putin.
I was at his concert last year and he was hardcore antifa, anti-supreme court, anti-establishment, anti-billionaires, anti-zionist, anti-nazi, pro-choice, and so on. Pictures of every U.S. president with the words “war criminal” captioning them. He seems like a class act to me.
In fairness to Eric Clapton, he did have an extremely rare life-threatening reaction to the vaccine. He may be off the deep end now, but I think at the time of recording Layla etc. he was a fine guy as far as I know.
In 1976, on stage, Clapton praised Tory MP Enoch Powell, and declared that Britain must stop itself from becoming a “black colony,” and said “England is for white people, man.”
He went on to say:
“I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch’s our man. I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking… don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don’t want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country. What is happening to us, for fuck’s sake?”
Yeah I can. Gonna get a bit hippie on you here but it really comes down to how the art make you feel and not the artist. One personal example is jeepers creepers for me. I love that movie but victor salva is a POS that deserves to be castrated. Now another question you should ask yourself is the actual companies behind the media could be evil too, overworking their employees, underpaying them, etc…, are you going to stop watching it? A good example of this is the anime industry or some record producers
Generally I don’t have a hard time separating the art from the artist. And it’s probably bad and selfish, but if I had to stop listening to David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and John Lennon, I’d be so depressed. The world is deeply shitty, so I’m hanging on to whatever happiness I can find. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I had to look this up, didn’t know about Bowie. He had underage groupies, at least as young as 15 (Lori Mattix). Apparently she remembers that time fondly, but today we would rightly call it coercion and pedophilia. She was treated kindly, probably given all the drugs she “wanted”, but that’s still a child.
There’s a counter argument about how later in life, he refused a kissing scene between him and Jennifer Connelly during Labyrinthe, and that shows he understands the age gap is wrong.
I don’t regularly listen to David Bowie. I can sometimes separate the art from artist, but I’m now gonna have trouble knowing he was having sex with (raping) a 15 year old girl.
This is the first band that came to mind when I saw this thread. Even though I liked their music when it came out, I would feel gross listening to it now.
Same. I listen to a few bands that have had a member accused of sexual assault and of emotional abuse.
But Lostprophets are beyond tainted because Watkins is one of the most deranged convicted paedos in British legal history. It’s impossible for me to separate his music from his utterly sick crimes. Gary Glitter is up there too.
So many musicians and other artists are not only complete assholes, but also complete morons. But, I don’t listen to their music for their antics or their intelligence, I listen for the music.
I still listen to Johnny Craig and the Lost Prophets even though I know how horrible they are in real life. Because to me, the music is about the feeling that it elicits in me, not about the creator. I don’t care who made a thing, I care about the thing.
Edit: that said, I’ve not purchased music by those two, and instead pirated it.
If I like the song then I don’t care who the artist is but if I really don’t like the artist and feel so strongly about it that I want to make a statement then I simply don’t listen to them.
Just today I wanted to show a friend UnDeadwood, a western horror one shot by the critical role crew, and learned they’ve removed ALL content with Brian W. Foster because he turned out to be an abusive piece of shit. I understand it on a certain level, but at the same time that’s an INSANE amount of actually amazing content just gone because one dude turned out to be a piece of shit.
Yes. You listen to music without knowing anything about who wrote it and you feel something. That feeling has nothing to do with the composer or performer. Now if you find out the composer/performer is a “bad” person, I would recommend not giving them any money that could contribute to them spreading their “bad stuff”. I’d still enjoy the music because your enjoyment isn’t furthering their bad agenda.
That’s fair, but could still be undermined depending on the content of the music itself - eg if the music was all about respect for women, and then it turned out the person singing was an exploitative abuser, then wouldn’t your feeling about the music still be coloured by that, because it’d now seem insincere?
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