Does a Musical Artist's bad choices effect your feelings about their music?

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a great example being someone like Michael Jackson. A horribly tarnished personal life, objectively. But Halloween rolls around and everyone shirks their moral outrage and moves their feet To Thriller's infectious vibe, leaning head first into the blissful ignorance. Do you hold all artists "de jure" accountable in your head or is it a matter of Aristotles, "there is no genius without a touch of madness." Please share your take.
michael jackson 80s GIF
 
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depends

first, I don't believe any of the MJ allegations, so I have no issues there.

but I do remember some singer of some metal band or something in the 90s arrested for actually fucking kids and like...buy a kid (or trying to) or something...so that's a no-go

outside of extreme cases, I can typically seperate the art from the artists.

For example, prior to my,,,uh...."conversion" away from atheism I used to get kind of annoyed at prince and some of his more religious songs...it was never a deal breaker, the songs were very good, I just didn't (and still don't, really) get onboard with some of his overt religious or social stances.

there are some great artists who produce amazing things, but in their personal lives they're deplorable, disgusting leftists...picasso is a legendary artist, but is way socialist. same with the beatles...some really great songs, but lennon was a communist. though upon typing this, I've never been a huge fan of either, so perhaps it has a subconscious or unintentional effect

IDK, I just don't really care about so much of the personal aspects of the artist in question.

it reeks of moral relativism (rules for thee, not for me), and there's nothing more intellectually dishonest or naive than moral relativism.
 

EtymonLegomenon

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1. No.
2. If you can't separate art from artist you are failing to separate the artistic side of your brain from the feeling you should be morally outraged.
3. That is not to say that information about an artist can't inform or color your opinion of their music. But "inform" should not be mistaken to mean "justify a preconceived opinion."
4. MJ was innocent. Per https://letterboxd.com/follow_freeman/film/leaving-neverland/ .
 
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1. No.
2. If you can't separate art from artist you are failing to separate the artistic side of your brain from the feeling you should be morally outraged.
3. That is not to say that information about an artist can't inform or color your opinion of their music. But "inform" should not be mistaken to mean "justify a preconceived opinion."
4. MJ was innocent. Per https://letterboxd.com/follow_freeman/film/leaving-neverland/
I am of the contention that the art made by an artist is a culmination of their life experience and one can't exist without the other.
 
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shiftycomfort

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yes, but not always, gg allen comes to mind. kanye makes me sad cause of the whole unchecked mental illness thing it hits too close to home, plus all that shit with politics was a turn off. actually the more i think about it i do make choices based on the artists personal life, cause i feel like im complicet in what ever they did by supporting them, its like "oh i fucked up but ppl still buy my music so i must not be to bad," then you can see how they could justuify more shitty behavoir with that line of thinking. oh, not a musician but woody allen is the best example i think.


the art made by an artist is a culmination of their life experience and one can't exist without the other.
this i feel the same way.^
 
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EtymonLegomenon

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I am of the contention that the art made by an artist is a culmination of their life experience and one can't exist without the other.
so if you don't like a "life experience" you can't like a piece of entertainment? what life experiences led to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"?

so art criticism boils down to guessing games about what an artist intended, whether they got the idea for some lyric from the time they were abused when they were 5 or the time they went to the carnival, etc. etc.?

if you don't mean something approximating either of these points, I don't think your statement is anything more than a tautology. "I am of the contention that whittling made by a whittler is a culmination of whittling knowledge and whittling cannot exist without people who know how to whittle."

creative pursuits always contain elements of craft, and "art" doesn't help us at all in this conversation. craft exists totally independently of a person - just like ideas exist independently (cf. Jung's belief that ideas possess the people who think them - simultaneous and spontaneous discoveries evidence this nicely). anyone who has created something can attest to the fact that ideas, concepts, techniques come to them with no previous movers or specific inspiration/s.

vaporwave is one of the most sublimely death-of-the-author art movements ever, because so much of it relies on essentially nothing but applying various craft techniques to existing works. where's the "intention" when all you are is a producer?

there are tens of thousand of other objections to this statement, but that covers the ones that are boiling to the surface at the moment.
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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Art is not the artist.
A building is not the contractor.
A car is not the manufacturer.

Now, I am an ardent supporter of "Protest with your wallet" so I will not purchase directly from a source I disagree with, but in this day in age it is very easy to enjoy all the content you love without supporting the artist.
I think that the inability to separate artistic work from someone's life choices shows an inability to actually experience the creativity the artwork expresses in a unique and individual way.
 
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Don't ever confuse or conflate the art with the artists. Lots of Americans fall prey to this fallacy, and in my experience Europeans understand this distance between the person and their creations.

An artist can be a vile person but can create sublime pieces of art, and just because they are deemed morally bad or against the current political atmosphere, doesn't mean we should boycott their art or gloss over them - if they were historically significant. Morality and art is a completely different issue and they tends to rarely overlap or complement one another.

We must accept art that is not afraid to challenge old ways of seeing or thinking, because if we do, we allow censorship in a traditionally free medium of expression, on that countless people look to for inspiration, entertainment and enjoyment.
 

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It depends on the severity of the crime. You can say whatever you like about separating art from the artist, but if there is cold, hard evidence that x famous person committed murder, it doesn't make me want to engage in their works.
 
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there are some great artists who produce amazing things, but in their personal lives they're deplorable, disgusting leftists...picasso is a legendary artist, but is way socialist. same with the beatles...some really great songs, but lennon was a communist. though upon typing this, I've never been a huge fan of either, so perhaps it has a subconscious or unintentional effect
The art is the expression of the inner self of the artist; leftist people make leftist art and it's pretty hard for them to do anything remotely right. Have you ever tried to catch the spirit of the song analyzing it? I do and one can say the character of the author with a nice degree of accuracy, just like one does with body language.

The Beatles make crappy music imo, the first time I heard "Yellow Submarine" I though it was a fancy nursery rhyme or one of those songs for children; makes you think about why boomers are so dumb in comparison to other generations, and it is because their music is braindead and was mass produced.
vaporwave is one of the most sublimely death-of-the-author art movements ever, because so much of it relies on essentially nothing but applying various craft techniques to existing works. where's the "intention" when all you are is a producer?

No, fellow, no. The Vaporwave art is intended as the artistic understanding and transformation of a piece of art, what it means it's a remix where the author uses the already made art to do something new with a new meaning upon the meaning such a piece already has. (kinda like the collage form)
 
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The art is the expression of the inner self of the artist; leftist people make leftist art and it's pretty hard for them to do anything remotely right. Have you ever tried to catch the spirit of the song analyzing it? I do and one can say the character of the author with a nice degree of accuracy, just like one does with body language.

The Beatles make crappy music imo, the first time I heard "Yellow Submarine" I though it was a fancy nursery rhyme or one of those songs for children; makes you think about why boomers are so dumb in comparison to other generations, and it is because their music is braindead and was mass produced.


No, fellow, no. The Vaporwave art is intended as the artistic understanding and transformation of a piece of art, what it means it's a remix where the author uses the already made art to do something new with a new meaning upon the meaning such a piece already has. (kinda like the collage form)
Complaining about "boomers" kind of makes you sound like a boomer

personally I'm not sure how you can hear something like "achellies last stand" (not the Beatles but still), and think "brain dead"....unless...maybe you....nah, couldn't be
 

Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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Complaining about "boomers" kind of makes you sound like a boomer
Calling someone a Boomer for complaining about Boomers kind of makes you sound like a Boomer.
 
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vaporwavemaster1

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スキャンダルや論争の彼ら自身の公正なシェアを持つシーンには、ここに多くのプロデューサーがいます。このジャンルのパイオニアであった男性のヘアカットは、しばらく前に多くの悪い報道に直面しました。私はもう彼の音楽を聴いていません。私はスキャンダルのために彼を辞めませんでしたが、他の音楽があるという理由だけで私はもっと面白いと思います。その理由で誰かが彼の話を聞くのをやめるかどうかは絶対に理解できました。
 
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Sweet n' Comfy

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personally I'm not sure how you can hear something like "achellies last stand" (not the Beatles but still), and think "brain dead"....unless...maybe you....nah, couldn't be
Rock is the first music to be mass produced in such a big scale, that's why there's such a great amount of rares and blogs with download links to over 1000 albums of "psychedelic rock"; there's so much stuff recorded. That stuff sounds nice at the beginning but after getting deep into it you get bored and end up listening to other genres, that's my experience.
And yes, it isn't brain-dead but it isn't full genius either. It's just well done music with some effort and that's why it shines among the generic stuff, just like The Dark Side of The Moon in comparison to whatever Justin Bieber album. But both will never be as good as the Chromatic Fantasy by Bach. Capitalism has hardly ever created something everlasting but instead only very entertaining entertainment but nothing that fills your spirit.
 
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Hraelth

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Well it doesn't help that boomer music (speaking specifically of the Laurel Canyon stuff) glowed like a Christmas tree.
 
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cherchezlafemme

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I couldn't care less. People who bitch about "problematic" artists are insufferable to me. If the music is good I'll enjoy it, the artists themselves don't have to be good people or someone I'd support for me to enjoy what they've created.
 

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I couldn't care less. People who bitch about "problematic" artists are insufferable to me. If the music is good I'll enjoy it, the artists themselves don't have to be good people or someone I'd support for me to enjoy what they've created.
I think it more depends on what you are listening to an artist for. Most rap artists in modern day have done some horrible things (not all, but it's the only genre of music I'm aware of that theft, rape, and murder charges are fairly common) yet if you are just looking to blast some trap music in your car none of that really matters. Versus if I wanted to listen to a piece of music that's very emotional to me, like say Loveless (I know it's generic but still), then it would trouble me to learn that Kevin Shields was a rapist or something.

Artistic integrity is a very real thing, and the context which music is produced is important. Like it or not, if you learned that a song that you hold near and dear to your heart was made by a pedophile, or even an AI, it just wouldn't resonate with you nearly as much as it used to. Maybe that's just me though.
 
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For me it depends on how the allegations/wrongdoings could affect the context of their production.

Michael Jackson hanging out with children as a grown man is strange at the very least, but it has not stopped me from enjoying his early work. It has never come to my mind when replaying CDs of his work. I can't even have that internal debate on whether the listening is ethical because there's nothing in the production reminding me of those allegations.

Although no single people are being accused of crimes in this piece of media, I have trouble knowing whether I should be rewatching the Exorcist. It is a great depiction of the struggle of faith, but actress Linda Blair ended up with scoliosis because of the production and she was not prepared for the media frenzy the movie created afterwards. CGI wasn't an option back then, so a child had to play a child, but was it okay for her to go through all of that? It's a horror classic for sure, but when I watch the movie, I am reminded of the poor conditions this child went through. The actual media reminds me of wrongdoings so it's now harder for me to watch it. It's a horror classic, but I think the possiblility of child abuse should be mentioned when cinephiles praise it.

Another example of the actual production reminding me of something uncomfortable are the recent allegations on Viper the rapper. His music videos were hilarious to me before, but because the videos are clearly homemade, I am thinking about how it's possible that there's a kidnapped woman next to the room he's filming in. That makes what was once funny to me, grim and disturbing.
 
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punisheddead

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It depends, I usually try to "separate the art from the artist" but sometimes certain actions of artists can impact how I view what they made, especially if it's something that has impacted me on a deeper level other then "it's a good song". But that's for me personally, I don't care who listens to what.

Artistic integrity is a very real thing, and the context which music is produced is important. Like it or not, if you learned that a song that you hold near and dear to your heart was made by a pedophile, or even an AI, it just wouldn't resonate with you nearly as much as it used to. Maybe that's just me though.
Couldn't have said it better myself, especially because the former has already happened. Don't think I would care that much if it was AI though, I would be more surprised then anything because I don't see AI reaching that point in a long time, maybe ever.