A recent New York Times piece asks questions about music that conservatives have been asking for years.
A recent New York Times piece asks questions about music that conservatives have been asking for years.
L ast month, many people — many people on the Internet, anyway — were upset about a New York Times opinion piece titled “Should Classic Rock Songs Be Toppled Like Confederate Statues?” Well of course they shouldn’t! Who dares even ask such an absurd question? But despite the clickbait headline, the piece itself asks questions that conservative music fans have probably been asking themselves for years.
In the piece, Jennifer Finney Boylan considers the legacy of singer-songwriter Don McLean. For decades, his song “American Pie” has given Boomers the delight of explaining obscure cultural references to children and grandchildren (the more precocious of whom ask, “But Daddy, why does he say ‘the good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye’ — isn’t rye a type of whiskey? Shouldn’t he say bourbon and rye?”). But McLean’s ex-wife has accused him of psychological and physical abuse, which has ruined the song for Boylan.
Contrary to the outrageous moral equivalency implied by the headline (not even “Sweet Home Alabama” is as offensive as the Confederacy), Boylan asks a perfectly reasonable question: Should the behavior of an artist affect how we respond to his or her art? A new headline the Times editors sneakily gave the piece asks a more subtle question than the original: “Can We Separate the Art from the Artist?”
This is not a new conundrum, and it’s not restricted to rock. One of the more famous examples is when the modernist poet Ezra Pound received a prize from the Library of Congress in 1948 — despite promoting fascism and anti-Semitism during World War II and being charged with treason against the United States. More recently, rape allegations against Bill Cosby have complicated the experience of watching The Cosby Show.
Boylan could have mentioned countless examples from classic rock: What about songs written or produced by Phil Spector, the man behind the Ronettes, the Beatles’ Let It Be, and the murder of Lana Clarkson? And although the original headline, which aligns rock stars with Confederate soldiers, makes it seem like this is a classic-rock white-guy problem, accusations against Chuck Berry and (moving into the world of pop) Michael Jackson make clear that’s not the case.
Along the way, Boylan asks a second question: What should we do about songs whose lyrical content is objectionable? The prime example in this case is the Rolling Stones hit “Brown Sugar.” Boylan explains that the “track’s racist lyrics . . . refer to slave ships and rape” and also writes that singer Mick Jagger makes “nasty little appeals to the suppressed inclinations toward sexism, racism and violence, indulgence in which is not now publicly respectable.” Wait, sorry — that second quotation was from Allan Bloom back in 1987.
It’s true that Boylan’s concerns about lyrics sometimes sound a bit like something Bloom would have said a generation ago, but the piece never goes as far as The Closing of the American Mind or the Parents Music Resource Center in the 1980s (which urged record companies to put warning labels on certain albums), or even Amazon Prime’s “Explicit” warning today.
In fact, Boylan’s answers to these questions are nuanced to the point of being dull: We should give certain songs “a second look” because “reconsidering those songs, and their artists, can inspire us to think about the future and how to bring about a world that is more inclusive and more just.” This vague admonition sounds like a discarded lyric from John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
In short, the answer to the question of whether we should “topple” the songs — a clumsy metaphor which I suppose means ban them, burn them, or blow them up like a crate of disco records at Comiskey Park — is an emphatic “probably not!”
Still, as tempted as conservatives may be to heap scorn on the column, especially based on its original headline, I suspect most right-of-center rock fans have been asking themselves similar questions for years. Many rock and pop stars advocate political views, endorse public policies, and make personal decisions that conservatives reject; that rarely keeps us from listening to their music. The specific situations are rarely as extreme as the allegations against McLean, but they mean that conservatives are more used to the general context than liberal music fans may be.
Similarly, many of the songs to which conservatives sing along promote ideas, habits, and acts we think are either stupid, dangerous, sinful, or a combination of all three. Telling a star to “shut up and sing” doesn’t help much when the song is “Stand Down Margaret” or “American Idiot.” We don’t sing along with songs like that because we agree with the lyrics; we do so because we enjoy the rhythm, melody, or mood. The hook brings us back.
We do have our limits. Many conservatives can’t stand “Imagine” because John Lennon’s vision is vapid and his singing is cloying. Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” has a similar message but is superb, especially in Elvis Costello’s hands. I’ll join in the chorus of “Only the Good Die Young,” but I sit out the verses because they make fun of Catholic beliefs and practices. I could never hear Marilyn Manson without feeling the urge to be exorcised. (I feel vindicated there.) Then again, I’ll sing along to “Highway to Hell.”
Why do we draw the lines where we do? In some cases it’s the tone of the lyrics, whether they seem sincere or tongue-in-cheek. Other times the musical elements may be so enjoyable that they overwhelm any objectionable lyrics.
It isn’t the mark of a Philistine to be annoyed, disturbed, or troubled by songs for the ideas they express. In fact, the opposite seems more likely: Lyrics are often (though not always) significant, and strong positive or negative reactions can indicate that you take the artist’s work seriously.