Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here

I'm probably a sad and bad person and should feel bad, but hating on that unwholesome creep does actually cheer me up a bit! Probably not healthy behaviour, but still not as widely corrosive as bringing ugly misogynistic murder dirges into the world to be lapped up by impressionable acolytes and working on a culture war cause celebre side gig. lol, wot a twat!

he should do a cover of Party Time

though i feel like that first Grinderman single was basically his version of Party Time, so it would be fun if he covered that one too

Cover bad news cycle with puns.

Priorities eh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCEhPw9W0AAKl7w.jpg

I think I'll be forever baffled by the inconsistency with which ILM chooses to bring out the knives for certain musicians' transgressions, while other transgressions are completely ignored. Which isn't to suggest there is any kind of one size fits all answer and each person gets to draw their own lines in the sand, but sometimes it's a bit surprising to see who gets completely dragged and who gets a free pass.

Who’s not being dragged enough

Morgan Wallen, imho. It's just interesting to compare and contrast the Nick Cave and Morgan Wallen threads atm. Like I don't have a horse in either fight, I'm hardly a Cave fan and thought his royal obsession is indeed stupid, but it seems weird to see him getting dragged left right and center while folks are engaging with Wallen as if he wasn't on video dropping the hard R.

Like I said, everyone can draw their own lines, just seems weird to me.

tbf i've got no idea who Morgan Wallen is

sorry, to phrase it less sarcastically i would say that's the main difference in the level of response

i remember i did read that thread last month, fuck that guy obv

yeah, Nick Cave has way more name recognition

Speaking only for myself, I ignore Morgan Wallen because he's a mainstream male country singer, of course he's a knuckle-walking racist asshole*. It's why I keep 99% of country music off my radar — who needs that shit in their life?

*yeah yeah, exceptions that prove the rule go right here _______________ .

tbf i've got no idea who Morgan Wallen is

Join the club.

I guess it just comes down to me that being a flagrant, open racist is for more worthy of being ignored that being an aging dipshit that's into the royals.

That’s why people hate morrissey so much, who they have actually heard of!

if this person is so worthy of being ignored, why should I go out of my way to learn about him in order to do so? I feel like I was doing just fine ignoring him already.

cave and morrissey are much closer to home to anyone familiar with indie culture. from an indie POV country music is where the racists are supposed to be so there's no surprise or sense of betrayal there. a tougher issue is whether we'll keep indulging other caves and morrisseys who are still in their plausible deniability phases, I hope we won't but it seems likely given the history

True but rather more prosaically the people most exercised about Nick Cave in that particular thread are from the UK, or live there, and I doubt many, of any, of them even know who Morgan Wallen is let alone whatever racist comments he's made.

"many, or any" that is

I live in Texas and I've never heard of him, but perhaps the scandal here is that assuming country singers are racists is a mean stereotype and he had the nerve to prove it true

To respond to jon's op:

I've never demanded others to stop listening to any artist ever, not here or in published work, nor do I condemn anyone for whom an artist's racism/homophobia/transphobia/misogyny results in an I'm-done moment. I have nothing to say about Nick Cave other than his comments strike me as more venal than what Wallen has said -- and done.

In the case of Wallen, I'd heard a few leaked tracks in December '20 before the incident occurred, though I was aware of his blatant, dangerous COVID violations. They were okay in a bog standard male bro manner. I liked about a third of Dangerous and thought the rest ranged from bog standard male bro shit to hot garbage. When the racist incident occurred I wasn't surprised given what we knew about the bastard already. Given that I owned a CD copy of the album before it happened, I wasn't contributing to the gob-smacking streaming figures that made Dangerous one of the biggest albums this millennium.

I try to distinguish b/w artists whose outspoken racism/homophobia/transphobia/misogyny produces racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynist art (i.e. Morrissey) and artists who've said the shit aloud but whose work (so far) doesn't outwardly reflect it (Wallen). I still listen to a few Smiths/Morrissey albums at home. I still blast Ghostface's Ironman and Nas' It Was Written, two albums whose reflexive homophobia offends me. If asked to write about any of these people in a critical manner, however, I'll wrestle with my ambiguity as well as I can.

I'd be more pained if a Margo Price, Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlile, or Miranda Lambert said racist shit; I've invested more in them as artists. But ftr at Pop Conference about ten days ago Lambert's probable Republicanism came up a few times and to what degree she's responsible for enabling Wallen and to what degree she has, thanks to a co-writing credit on the new album, benefited financially. By contrast Jason Isbell, whose music interests me less, did the right thing and donated his royalties from the song Wallen covered on Dangerous.

Morgan Wallen is a shit person who makes shit music - no more compelling to talk about than Ted Nugent or Kid Rock, aside from the way his continued existence undermines the concept of 'cancel culture.'

today i learn about morgan wallen. guess after liking one song i can go back to being ignorant of his existence.

xpost - Thanks for the thoughtful answer Alfred, appreciate it, genuinely. I'm definitely not suggesting any other ilxors are in the wrong or judging them for what they choose to support or ignore, I was just surprised by the relative level of vitriol Cave was getting for something that seems, to me anyway, less harmful (though I don't pay a lot of attention to Cave lately, so maybe there is more context than I've been privy to). It just seems, again to me, unsurprising that an outdated guy like Cave would hold outdated opinions on the monarchy. Whereas with Wallen, growing up in central Illinois with a lot of racist, country music loving folks around me, his racism feels much more real to me and, therefore, more harmful. So it's easier for me to slip into, "fuck that guy forever" once I saw the video.

Yeah, as others have said here, the ppl attacking Nick Cave in that thread have most likely never heard of this dude, it's not any more complicated than that I don't think. I get why it would scan strangely but that's just how it shakes out in a forum with ppl living in wildly different cultural and geographic contexts.

jon wisely chose to employ this thread

I think reading Jon’s statement as “why aren’t the people attacking Nick Cave attacking Morgan Wallen” is specious at best. I don’t think asking “why is it that the people engaging with Nick Cave conversation are willing to tear him a new one over his views on the British Royalty but the people engaging with Morgan Wallen are flat-out ignoring his well-documented-in-that-thread racism” is a question meant to make the people talking about Nick Cave defensive.

Fair.

DJP otm, I guess I was hesitant to state it as plainly when maybe I just should have done it.

Are they the same people,though?

Certainly not!

Yes, "why are you a fan of this racist?" is certainly a much different question than "why are you upset about this one shitty person but not about this other lesser known (to ilxors of a certain age) shitty person?"

trust me, no one but people who follow chart toppers care or know about Wallen. i have never heard of him— racist country singer? wow!

uh it's not as simple as that -- if you follow country you know Wallen because he's so dominated the genre. You avoid writing about him, which is tacit acknowledgment.

That's like writing "no one but people who follow chart toppers care or know about Chris Brown." If you write about R&B and listen to R&B radio, he remains a goddamn force. It has nothing to with your framing.

i didn’t state my point clearly— unless you follow country or are a music journalist, there is no reason to know who Wallen is. i’m on social media, i haven’t heard anything about him ever.

That's more accurate. I'd also add "if you listen to top 40 radio" because he's finally crossed over, but I don't expect anyone here to have done that.

Knowing of his existence seems pretty unavoidable to me but I don't know what a few posters who willingly listen to him have to do with the Cave thread of different people who are unlikely to listen to pop bro-country at all, much less the extra racist version of it.

I assume he's a marginally more competent version of this crime against humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnujskEgHnY

I think about people like this in a similar way to how I think about Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate, I know of them primarily because I know they are awful people, and I'd rather not spend a lot of time digging into the details of their awfulness because the more I learn, the worse my life becomes. The world, especially the internet, is far too full of people who thrive on negative attention.

another aspect of this is that I am more interested in learning abt Nick Cave's awful behavior because I have friends who post about him in an adulatory fashion and I want to bring solid arguments to them, whereas nobody in my feed knows or cares abt Wallen except (apparently) some of y'all and like one other person, so I don't need to keep up with his bad behavior.

I'd also add "if you listen to top 40 radio" because he's finally crossed over

In the USA. I had a look at his thread last night and I don't think there's a single post (out of 100 odd) from outside North America.

“British Morgan Wallen fan” is a truly cursed concept.

lol

It's a crap name for a country singer, sounds more like the name of a private equity firm

Also OTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vooevgm4HIQ

milo, just to yr point about him being unavoidable to you: as others have mentioned, this might be a regional thing. Texas? yeah he’s probably unavoidable. but i live in Philadelphia. i go months without hearing any pop country music in an ambient setting.

It's a crap name for a country singer, sounds more like the name of a private equity firm

― calzino

or a krautrock group