At a time when so many seemingly innocuous activities — from the type of car you drive to the pillow you sleep on — are loaded with political subtext that has nothing to do with an object’s actual purpose, it’s not surprising that music is more loaded than most.
Without taking away from the emotional investment one might have in a car or pillow, it just doesn’t compare to the impact on the human spirit that music can have — or the potentially problematic associations. And at a certain point, it becomes difficult to separate the song from the person performing or associated with it, and all the history and baggage they bring with them.
So if owning a Tesla truck has become the equivalent of a red MAGA hat, does listening to Morgan Wallen’s new album “I’m the Problem” have the same effect? And is enjoying — and financially supporting — a person’s creative work the same thing as endorsing or overlooking their stated beliefs or opinions, even if there’s no overt reflection of those views in their work?
The answer to that last question, of course, is yes and no. To be clear, we’re not talking about an artist like Kanye West, whose once-clever lyrics have metastasized into unapologetic hate speech; political rabble-rousers from Kid Rock and Jason Aldean to M.I.A.; or even some of Woody Allen’s films, one in particular that attempts to normalize the kind of romantic relationship with an underaged female that, in real life, immolated his reputation and career. Intentionally or not, those people placed certain messages into or in front of their art — it’s virtually impossible to hear even a completely non-political song like Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” and see past his red hat and some of the idiotic things he’s said.
While Morgan Wallen has done some very offensive things in public, he’s no Kanye West or even Kid Rock (although, ironically, in 2020 he was kicked out of Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse in Nashville and subsequently arrested and charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct — how badly do you have to behave to get ejected from an establishment owned by Kid Rock?). That same year, he broke Covid protocols just days before he was scheduled to appear on “Saturday Night Live,” clearly running the risk of infecting the entire show’s cast (the appearance was canceled but rescheduled for a few weeks later, after the requisite semi-apologies). Just a few months later, after an apparently inebriated night out, he called one of his white friends the n-word, unaware that a neighbor was recording him on their phone.
Things grew more serious in 2024, when he threw a chair off the roof of a six-story Nashville building and nearly struck two police officers. (Originally charged with three felony counts of reckless endangerment, he ultimately pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts and was sentenced to seven days in a DUI education center and supervised probation for two years.) And just a few weeks ago, he returned to “SNL” as a musical guest and abruptly walked off the stage during the traditional show-ending onstage grip-and-grin — later posting a photo of his private jet with the caption, “Get me back to God’s country,” tacitly transforming the incident into an owning-the-libs moment, complete with merch.
It’s all reprehensible behavior to be sure, even if some of those incidents sound like the kind of stupid shit your dumbass uncle, cousin or nephew might do (although they probably don’t have a security detail whose job it is to make sure that kind of stupid shit doesn’t happen). But at a time when an unapologetically sexist and arguably racist convicted felon won the presidency after running on a platform based on hatred, threats, intolerance and retribution, it also captures a spirit of this era and is even, arguably, a MAGA-flavored brand of punk rock.
Wallen has never publicly endorsed Trump, but he doesn’t need to: His behavior and image are indisputably MAGA-coded. His songs might be about drinking and bad decisions and being a badass — and defiance about the results of that drinking and those bad decisions and that badassery — but it’s hard to separate them from the very Trumpy, middle-finger-to-the-world spirit that his non-musical actions seem to reflect. Even the video for “I Had Some Help,” his airwaves-dominating song with Post Malone, is filled with (comical) bad behavior, drinking, pick-up trucks and American flags, and the song itself is about deflecting responsibility for bad behavior: Someone else is to blame for my current unsatisfactory circumstances, an attitude central to the appeal of MAGA and Fox News. (“I Had Some Help” is technically a Post Malone song, but it was written and recorded with Wallen’s team and was clearly a play for his vast audience.)
Whether or not that’s who Wallen actually is in real life — or whether a superstar’s “real” self, as opposed to their public selves, is even relevant — it still raises a question. Is playing and enjoying his music, and contributing approximately $.003 per stream to him and his musical collaborators and business associates, an endorsement of all of the above? Before saying yes, we might consider the following…
Is playing Chris Brown’s music an endorsement of physical abuse? Is playing Led Zeppelin’s or Marvin Gaye’s or Aerosmith’s or the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music a cosign for certain musicians’ well-documented abysmal treatment of women, allegedly including underaged women? Do you hear “Great Balls of Fire” any less often because Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin? Is jumping out of your seat when a favorite James Brown song comes on excusing his alleged abuse of two of his wives? Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Marilyn Manson, Dr. Dre, Danny Elfman, XXXtentacion, Ryan Adams, Nick Carter, Cee-Lo, Josh Homme and many, many others have said or allegedly done very harmful things.
It most certainly doesn’t stop with star performers. Phil Spector, producer of some of the most indelible moments in pop history (including songs by the Beatles), shot a defenseless woman, Lana Clarkson, in the face and killed her. Jim Gordon, drummer on dozens of hit songs and cowriter of Eric Clapton’s classic “Layla,” was a paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed his mother to death and spent the rest of his life institutionalized. (His former girlfriend Rita Coolidge, who he brutally assaulted in 1970, has claimed that she actually came up with the famous chord progression that underpins the song’s second half; Gordon was not an accomplished pianist.)
For that matter, Sean “Diddy” Combs profits from every Notorious B.I.G. song ever released and co-produced or raps on many of them. Deeply influential radio DJs like Rodney Bingenheimer and the late John Peel have been accused of sexual misconduct with underaged females. Getting even more granular, should we not listen to certain songs by Judas Priest or the New Pornographers because the drummers on those songs have been accused of child pornography (or, to use the official term for that odious practice, child sexual-abuse material)?
Needless to say, R. Kelly’s music, which was a romantic soundtrack for countless millions of people for many years, has taken on a completely different context in the wake of his horrifying but long-unpunished sexual misconduct — which the world seemed to forget about for nearly a decade. Even though he was arrested in 2002 after a disturbingly graphic sex tape was widely circulated, his attorneys stalled, witnesses and alleged victims refused to testify, and he bolstered his image with more hot songs — no one can dispute that R. Kelly is a deeply talented songwriter and musician — and the incongruously playful “Trapped in the Closet” song and video series. The world seemed to say, “R. Kelly” — or Bill Cosby, for that matter — “couldn’t have done those things! Just look at how funny he is!”
Diddy’s music seems headed to a similar purgatory as Kelly’s, although Michael Jackson’s regained its iconic status after his death. “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” can still fill a dancefloor in seconds; “Ignition (Remix)” and “It’s All About the Benjamins” probably not so much, even though streaming numbers indicate that a lot of closeted fans are probably bumping them in headphones on the low.
Politically speaking, Lil Wayne and Kodak Black received Trump pardons and have made the mandatory transactional public statements supporting him; Snoop Dogg, Carrie Underwood, Soulja Boy and Rick Ross performed at Trump inauguration events earlier this year (even though Snoop criticized other artists for doing the same in 2017).
Where do you stop? “Rocket 88,” which is widely considered the first-ever rock and roll song, was written and performed by Ike Turner, who was vilified — in a box-office-topping film, no less — for his decades of abuse of his former wife Tina. The vastly influential and much-revered Joy Division and New Order’s early music and imagery contain multiple Nazi overtones, as do countless punk-rock songs (the Sex Pistols released a song called “Belsen Was a Gas”). Sid Vicious’ alleged murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, certainly would be considered differently now.
Would you think less of a friend — or be concerned about your teenaged children — if they if they still played Kanye West’s music? What about the Rolling Stones’ slavery-themed “Brown Sugar,” or the Beatles’ stalker-esque “Run for Your Life”? (“I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man”) Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe”? Nirvana’s “Rape Me”? Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”? David Bowie’s “China Girl”? Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down”? The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up”? Countless intentionally offensive punk rock and hip-hop songs? Decades-old murder ballads? Or even insipid yet offensive songs like Genesis’ “Illegal Alien,” Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s “Blurred Lines” or Maroon 5’s “Animals”? Pro-Confederacy songs like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “The South’s Gonna Do It Again”? Songs using the n-word written by white artists who few people would consider racist, like Patti Smith and Elvis Costello? Rock and roll classics celebrating sexual relations with underaged women like “Sweet Little Sixteen” and countless others? Given Win Butler’s admitted sexual transgressions, is Arcade Fire’s music canceled because of their previously virtuous-seeming image, even though countless other prominent artists have done worse?
As if on cue, while I was writing this, Spotify autoplayed a live 1968 version of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” one of the most overplayed and cliché songs in rock history. But before I could hit “skip,” the groove kicked in and the band was pumping hard and then a 22-year-old Eric Clapton — who, long after this song was recorded, made a drunken, racist statement about “keeping Britain white” and became a notorious anti-vaxxer who recently raised $2.2 million for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ill-fated presidential campaign, calling him “a great man” — blasted off a ferociously exciting solo. I thought, is it wrong to be enjoying this and marveling at the young Clapton’s talent? Or is it wrong to rock to Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” or a Notorious B.I.G. song that the world might never have heard if not for Diddy? Is it in poor taste to play Phil Spector’s wonderful Christmas album every year when my family decorates the tree?
Sure, they’re just songs. But are they? Is it really just a big-screen version of our relationships with relatives or former friends whose actions or opinions have made it too conflicted to be around them?
We live in an era where it feels like we should do a background check before expressing enthusiasm or positivity about virtually anyone or anything — did that talented and/or seemingly virtuous person tweet something problematic in 2012? And by liking their song am I by extension endorsing or forgiving the perspective that is seemingly voiced in that tweet? It’s enough to make one consult with a crisis-PR firm just to get through the day.
But at the end of every day, we all judge whether we intend to or not, and the fine line of morality is a personal choice — and like so much else right now, the least-destructive path is simply to put your headphones on and keep the moral dilemma to yourself.
