Music vs Musician

Which song have you listened to the most in 2021? Starting on the first day of December, people shared on their Instagram stories Spotify's 2021 Wrapped. Since 2016, this music app has allowed its users to share their top 5 most-listened-to artists, genre, and songs on social media on the first day of December every year. With this easy and convenient feature, we get to visualize our taste for music and their producers.

Unsurprisingly, my top five most-heard songs were the ones that were released by my top 5 artists. Whether we like an artist because of his or her music or like the music because of the artist, there is a connection that exists between artists and their music. In addition, with the development of social media, our generation continues to expose ourselves to the lives of artists–which is more than their music. If we are allowing in so much information about the artists that we listen to, wouldn’t that information affect our interpretation of their music? Some famous and popular musicians are tied to serious crimes and allegations. For instance, Marilyn Manson, an American singer-songwriter, has received multiple accusations of psychological or sexual abuse from more than a dozen of women. In another case, Travis Scott, an American rapper and record producer, has been criticized for his actions during a concert at Astroworld that took place last November. During the concert, the crowd were suddenly rushed toward the front of the stage and were trampled to the ground as they became unconscious from the compression. This incident resulted in the death of ten people, including a 9-year-old child. According to the videos taken from the concert, the musician chose to continue the concert even though he realized that people were getting injured and medics and police were coming in to rescue. Instead, he encouraged people to raise their hands and engage themselves in the show. Because of his actions in the concert, he has been sued by the injured victims and their families. How does knowing this affect our view of these artists and their music?

Despite these behaviors and misconduct, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy (which presents the Grammy Awards), has declared that the organization "won't restrict the people who can submit their material for consideration.” Furthermore, Mason said, “We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria.” And as if he tried to prove his statement, Marilyn Manson was nominated for Grammy Awards.

I agree with Mason Jr.’s point that we should give music awards to those who have made music that deserves the award. But wouldn’t awarding the music that has been made or recorded by people who are tied to serious crimes and allegations encourage people to see and consider their misconduct with less severity? Wouldn’t awarding those public figures give an impression that the society does not care about their life choices, even though we read and hear about them through different types of media everyday? One of my favorite artists had been accused and confirmed of initiating bullying, drinking, and smoking in his teenage years. Consequently, he stopped appearing on shows and I stopped listening to his songs. Though I still like his style of music and lyrics, his music makes me uncomfortable to listen to because it involuntarily reminds me of his misconduct and that hinders the message and emotion of the song from reaching me. Therefore, I believe it is hard for me to enjoy the music of an artist of a known misconduct. To conclude, I think we should all make good use of the information from sources such as Spotify Wrapped and different types of media, including news and social media, to be aware of  things—especially music and artists—that we allow to influence ourselves.