Music

The Perils of Fan Loyalty: When Musicians Clash and Fans Take Sides

Thoughts on a rift between musicians and fans taking sides

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

I can’t find the post, but I think I wrote before on WordPress about a rift between two musicians I follow.

They had been best friends. One was the best man at the other’s wedding. When their bands were between albums, they formed a group and did albums together. I loved their work together. I love the one musician’s regular band. I loved the other’s solo work.

For a long time, no one knew they were no longer friends. It only came out after people kept asking if they planned to do another album together. It turns out they now seem to despise each other.

This then spilled over into the fan base. Fans of the one guy’s band decided they hated the other guy. Fans of the other guy decided they hated not just the one guy, but his entire band. There were angry comments back and forth. I thought it was dumb. I had no idea who might have been at fault in the fight. I continued listening to both artists. I’ve met them both and they were both very nice to me. I stayed neutral.

Fast forward to now. The one band is still making music and the lead singer is also doing solo work and duet albums with other people. He’s gone public with his struggle with anxiety. He seems happy.

The other guy is still doing solo albums. He was signed to a label. Things seemed to be looking up and then there were some issues with the release of his album. He seems to no longer be with the label and has independently released an angry song about the music business.

I watched the video of that song this morning and looked at the comments. One person commented asking if his anger was also directed at Wicked Cool Records and its founder Little Stevie Van Zandt. Then the commenter went on to tell this artist that he would stop listening to Little Stevie’s station on Sirius if he told him to.

All of this made me think about loyalty.

How much loyalty should we have to random artists we may or may not have met?

Enough to stop listening to another band because they fought with them?