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.
Depends, tbh. Most people's actions aren't an infallible series of conditional statements and will make concessions for this on a case-by-case basis (usually if the shitty actions came before or after they fell in love with the music).
Example: I never liked XXXTentacion's music and never will once I found about him being a woman beater, but I grew up listening to Burzum and can't imagine myself ever not throwing on Filosefum once in a while, dispite the fact that Varg might be the shittiest person in music, period.
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?”
Depends on how parasocial I am. Never gave much of a shit about Win Butler as a person, so I don't really think about the shit he's gotten up to, but the several months when I thought Conor Oberst might be a rapist were devastating
Win's is still so tough to me. I read through each of the statements and my final thought was: he did some bad things, but nothing that's going to get him thrown in jail. Similar to Aziz Ansari if I remember correctly. Now whether or not punishment would be morally right is another discussion, obviously our legal system is Very Flawed.
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
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?
To an extent I can, like Axl is a complicated one given his mental health issues. Nothing excuses his behaviour but he seems to have grown as a person and managed to somewhat control his shittier side.
But there's definitely a line. I can't really enjoy rammstein or die antwoord anymore
Die antwoord also adopted, abused and abandoned an albino (Edit: my mistake, he has hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia) child, Tokkie, who spoke out a few years ago. They're truly awful and Tokkie's documentary is worth watching.
Also Marilyn Manson has been evicted from my music library for sexual abuse. I have no interest in supporting known exploiters, and I can't listen to their music without thinking about how awful they are as people. No regrets, there's plenty more musicians out there worth my time.