Cancel Culture has become a big topic in the news lately and although it’s not new anywhere, it’s never been talked about as a problem in music.
What is Cancel Culture in Music?
So what am I even talking about? I’m not talking about the cancelling of an artist because of political views or bad things they’ve done. I’m talking about cancelling an artist because they got too good, achieved too much success, sold out, or worse yet overlooking an entire genre just because you don’t like it.
From Nickelback to Rick Astley to Rap to Country, we have set our preferences based on our community and in many communities it’s just not cool to like certain things and so we cancel them or give them the title of guilty pleasures. We call these songs alot of things cheesy, over produced, overrated, not my style and sometimes we say these things while deep down kind of liking it (that’s where the guilty pleasure comes in).
What Causes Cancel Culture in Music?
Music is an extremely personal thing and many times, especially in High School, it is what we build our lives and identities around. We start following a band, which leads to a community that like the same style, which leads to a lifestyle and many times that lifestyle built around that community creates underlying rules of what’s acceptable to listen too and what you get made fun of for listening to. That’s one of the ways music can be cancelled without even really being given a chance.
Since we have built these communities we also feel the need to defend our choices that’s where the arguments come from of “This genre is better than that genre” or “This band is better than that band” or “This guitarist is better than that guitarist” or “That band sucks”. Once we start making these arguments we are building a bias that is sometimes based on nothing more than a feeling that we need to protect our community and our choices.
Then, a few years later, everybody starts to like the band and many times the band hasn’t changed, but the community has gotten larger and you don’t feel as close to the band as you used to. I mean how could you everyone likes them? In some cases you burn their records, call them sell outs, and start the process over with another band that no one has heard of.
What’s wrong with Cancel Culture?
Everything I have described seems totally justifiable and is definitely hard to notice happening because we are too close to it, but cancelling music based on our community or even our preferences could limit our creativity. Not to mention in many cases music is cancelled due to popularity rather than anything actually being that different from what we like to listen to. Aren’t artists supposed to become popular? Isn’t that like succeeding at your job?
How can it hinder our creativity?
I believe any music that makes it to a certain level has something to it that caused it to rise up to get your attention. If it is even on your radar then something had to happen to get it there. I also believe that we can not only learn from, but enjoy things that don’t fit firmly into our standards of acceptable music. I also think that the overlords of our specific communities have held certain poppy gems at ransom for far too long and it’s time to listen to them in the daylight rather than in a corner of a soundproof room in the dark with the windows closed.
Music is meant to be embraced, enjoyed, and shared. Just because you are a prophet of one type of music does not mean you have to demean or dim the light on a style you see as a competitor to shine a light on what you cherish. Does music compete anyway?
How Can We Cancel our Cancel Culture?
I think it starts by giving some things another chance.
That artist you stopped listening to because they sold out, listen to a recording end to end. I promise there will be glimpses of what you love.
That genre that you “hate”. Listen to it not trying to find what you don’t like so that you can change someone’s mind, listen trying to find what you do like. If you can’t find that, listen to it with a friend that loves that style of music.
Rick Astley, Tiffany, Backstreet Boys, Rascal Flatts, Dan and Shay and many others find your guilty pleasures and start listening to them in the daylight without shame.
There is so much that we can learn as musicians by filling our playlist with a variety of styles and learning to play them and that’s why on my channel I am trying to stick to what I like and many times it will be a genre you may not, but hopefully you can learn something new and maybe get an earworm that will brighten your day.