“gonna make it through this year” – great lake swimmers (2008)

The truth of the matter is, as Bono sang it, nothing changes on New Year’s Day.  However, humans are motivated and driven by milestones and traditions.  Within them, there is a comfort in the familiar.  A shared, communal experience that allows us to reflect on our lives.  Whether that be reconciling with the past or being optimistic about the future, holidays like New Year’s Day have some symbolic importance even if there may not be any cause-and-effect between the holiday and our personal lives.

A bit of a downer statement to start off a blog about a time when the whole world is celebrating, but I am fine with that.  I recall something the singer Patti Smith said when I saw her speak on a recent book tour this year.  She said she was not afraid to be the downer at the party.  And I really liked that.  There is so much pressure by society to be always happy and optimistic even if you do not feel that way.  The idea being that if you’re acting like a buzzkill, it brings everyone else down and is, therefore, a negative reflection of you.

I don’t mean to be a downer about New Year’s this year, but that is just how I am feeling about it this year.  That is not to say that I am not happy, or I did not have a great year.  I had a good year.  I went on some amazing adventures, met some wonderful people, and did some cool things.  This year was also significant for me because I started to get comfortable with who I am and the progress I have made in my life over the last few years. From a time a few years ago when I was pretty low to now when I am finally reaping the rewards of the investments I have made in my own personal and social progress.  I am feeling like I am finally breaking the chains of people from the past who told me I was just not good enough.  I am not completely at that point, but I am very pleased with progress I have made.

I have a couple of thoughts of why one would be kind of down around New Year’s, especially after all that has happened in 2019.  On a personal level, I had a lot of challenges.  A lame job, a close friend passing away, general anxiety, personal and professional rejections, and a few other things all stood in my way this year from getting what I want.  And not just standing in my way, but sometimes doing their damndest to knock me back a few steps.  I weathered some of them, and am still weathering others, so there is something to be said about how I am still able to fight on, but it just gets so damn tiring sometimes.

Around the world, so much has been happening.  I get depressed, angry, or scared every time I turn on the news. I don’t like feeling that way, but I feel some sort of obligation to know what is happening.  To not be blind to the injustices, even if I may feel powerless to help.  From racially profiled violence, migrant children in cages, the destruction of federal institutions, and the rise of fascist ideology at home and abroad, it can be challenging to be stay positive.  I still am positive, even optimistic, that things will get better.  Mainly because I know deep down that things will get better because of my fundamental belief in the principles of the Enlightenment and the nature of human beings to be empathetic.  But it does get hard.

With all of this, I am trying very hard to put into practice a new belief of living in the moment.  As a big planner, that can be hard.  And I don’t mean planning with regards to figuring out a vacation itinerary.  I also mean planning for the worse or other hypothetical eventualities that only serve to fuck my shit up.

However, I am trying to put more mental energy into the idea that there are things I cannot control.  I have always believed that you cannot help how you feel, but you can help how you react to it.  But, thinking about it more lately, isn’t how you feel also a reaction?  I used to think that mantra meant that reaction was a physical action. Now I am learning it can be a mental one as well.  That me dwelling in a negative headspace, replaying the same thing over and over in my mind, is just as damaging, maybe even more, than a physical act.

So, part of this new practice is to just accept my feelings and actually feel them.  Sometimes I am sad for no reason. It is not a depression, that I know.  But sometimes I am just not as happy or optimistic as I think I should be.  Things will seem a little less bright and I will feel a little less motivated.  This used to frighten me, and I would get such anxiety thinking something was wrong and I would scramble around to find a distraction to make me feel better, but actively trying to stop the negative feeling would only make it worse.  I would breathe life into something until it became a monster.

Now, instead of making it a monster, I treat these feelings like a bad roommate.  I allow myself to be aware of their presence but just go about my day trying not to acknowledge it.  Eventually, this shitty roommate will leave the apartment to go fuck off somewhere.  Just engaging with it would mean I would deal with more bad roommate nonsense.  That big pile of dirty dishes they left behind would just get even bigger, and I have better things to do than clean up after bad roommates.

I did not have a specific song in mind for this week’s blog, so I had to do some research.  I was surprised to find some so many songs about New Year’s that were actually quite pessimistic. None of those really captured the mood of how I was feeling but I did come across one that did.

Great Lake Swimmers is a Canadian folk band that I am only passively familiar with.  I had heard some songs in college that I enjoyed, but I never really ventured out to listen to them further. “Gonna Make It Through This Year,” released in 2008, is a song about feeling stuck, but still fighting on.  In the song, Anthony Dekker sings about feeling stuck under six feet of snow with his feet clamped, almost helpless and with nowhere to go.  But he keeps repeating his mantra that he is gonna make it through this year.  And when he says that, he becomes aware that things will improve, though he is not sure how and where he will end up.  Though, despite being down on his luck, he has a lot to be thankful for this year.

New Year’s Day is certainly a time to celebrate, but you don’t always have to.  I get the pressure to be on during the holidays, but it is just fine not to be as well.  No year is completely amazing.  Every year ebbs and flows, has its ups and down, the good and the bad.  The only thing is that you just cannot make it worse and living in the moment helps with that.  And living with the moment isn’t all about savoring the sweetest things in life, it is also accepting that sometimes you’ll bite into something bitter.

“all i want for christmas is you” – mariah carey (1994)

Love it or hate it, Christmas music is inescapable this time of year.  And with each new year, it seems that the season for caroling and jingle bell rocking just seems to get increasingly longer.  Christmas music is a melodic reminder of the all the different aspects of the holiday season blended together.  From the joy of spending time with family to the dregs of a consumer-driven capitalist economy, there is a saccharine Christmas classic for every mood, story, and situation one can think of.

I, for one, love Christmas music. And I love it unironically.  I find so much joy in the camp value of Christmas tunes, where everything just seems so sickly sweet and ridiculous, that the only reasonable thing to do is just forget about all the terrible shit that happened all year and enjoy the simplicity of a winter wonderland. Even if it may be manufactured.

There is a lot to explore within the world of holiday music beyond all the standards, traditional and contemporary, that dominate the holiday airwaves every year.  For me, I like finding the more obscure Christmas songs that really rely on the novelty factor.  And curated playlists help me discover Christmas songs that would otherwise never be found anywhere else.  Such collections of adorably abominable Christmas not-so-classics include A John Waters Christmas, a collection of the Pope of Trash’s favorite Christmas abominations, or the annual Sound Opinions Christmas show, featuring a curated collection of obscure Christmas singles presented by the president of Jam Productions Andy Cirzan.

Since starting this blog, every Christmas entry has been focused on the more obscure and lesser-known holiday songs.  And I could continue that tradition with this entry.  Certainly, there are plenty of holiday tunes that I, and my readers, have never heard.  However, I am going to put the brakes on that this year and go in a different direction.  Instead of going on the beaten path, I am sticking to the mainstream.

If Christmas music only felt like it was impossible to avoid growing up, the advent of the Internet certainly made the holiday season a truly unstoppable assault on the senses.  Memes this time of year run the gamut from celebrating the holidays to complaining that our consumer culture celebrates Christmas earlier every year (inadvertently adding to the general holiday noise) and have made a bugaboo about a season that already can feel overwhelming and stifling.  And that is not a new phenomenon, social media is a content aggregator and it amplifies the significance of something even if it is unwarranted or not actually based in reality.  But the content aggregation of social media allows users to constantly share and repost media until it changes meaning before coming back full circle.  And one modern Christmas classic better represents this than any other.

In 1994, Mariah Carey was 24 years old when she her fourth studio album, a collection of Christmas songs called Merry Christmas. From the album, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became one of the biggest hits of her career and a landmark song for the holiday season.  With its recognizable intro, soulful melody, and up-tempo holiday enthusiasm, Carey’s Christmas classic was a manufactured pop juggernaut that has dominated the holiday season every year since its release.

However, despite being a massive success for Carey with a longevity driven by the holiday season, the song did not hit the top of the charts when it was initially released.  In 1994, the song only reached number three.  However, after 25 years, the song has finally hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100.  If there was any doubt that Carey was the Queen of Christmas radio before, there cannot be any now.

The reason “All I Want for Christmas Is You” hit number one after so many years is because of social media.  Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have evolved form being a platform to connect with people to becoming content aggregation sites.  What this means is you just log on to see what memes people are sharing and to perhaps share some yourself.

One of the key features of this content aggregation is to constantly recycle jokes, themes, and ideas to fit whatever new meme format is the flavor of the week.  And it is with this system that allows the oversaturation of the holidays to continue to grow, or perhaps create the illusion of that oversaturation.  Last year’s meme of Grumpy Cat expressing their disdain for Carey’s song is this year’s Baby Yoda sipping tea with the caption “me when people tell me they hate Christmas music.”  Same joke, different format. However, in this case, same song, different year.

This is not to say that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is a bad song.  It is a damn fine song.  It just suffers the same fate as other massively popular things; people will hate on it just because it is popular.  And while it is one of the biggest staples of holiday music every year, it is also now a reminder of the impact social media has on our culture and its inability to progress.  It is an arena where a criticism can amplify praise, and vice versa, and result in a seasonal holiday song to hit the top of the pop charts a quarter of a century after its release.  There is an inherent power there that should be disturbing to those who are dismayed by the lack of choice in media these days.  That when we go to share our thoughts on social media, we add to the recycling and regurgitation of content that prevents new things to replace what has always been around.

While I love Christmas music, I know other people don’t have the awareness, or even the time, to pursue other holiday music options.  There have to be ways for truly great lesser known songs to become popular.  However, social media is not the answer to that.  If anything, it reinforces the status quo.  What has to change, in order to break up the homogenization of the content we see on our feeds, is to engage differently, or perhaps not even engage. While sharing that meme expressing your disdain for the “Mariah Carey Christmas song” may seem edgy and cool, it actually plays into the system that makes it more popular than ever when all you want for Christmas is different music.

“the monorail song” – the simpsons (1997)

On December 17^th, 1989, the very first episode of The Simpsons aired. It is hard to believe that after three whole decades, the show has continued to live on to entertain whole new generations of audiences.  Even before the debut of their own show, when the Simpson family appeared in a series of animated shorts during The Tracey Ullman Show from 1987 through 1989, it was hard to believe that these crudely drawn jaundice-looking caricatures of animated sitcom families from yesteryear would take the world by storm and dominate popular culture during the 1990s.  Though many would argue, especially the hardcore legion of fans, that the quality of the show had declined after its first decade, the influence they had on the zeitgeist and the legacy they secured is immeasurable. The Simpsons reflected so much of American society back at us and, in turn, went on to define it as well.

A Christmas special entitled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” the premiere of America’s favorite yellow family was a heartwarming tale about class struggle and the meaning of family during the holidays. In the episode, Homer dreams of treating his family to a great Christmas using a holiday bonus he expects to get from his job at the nuclear power plant.  When he doesn’t get his bonus, Homer feels depressed and inadequate at his inability to buy his family any presents. As a result, he lies to his family, telling them he did get it and that they will have the best Christmas ever.  Making things worse for Homer, their rainy-day funds have to be spent to remove an ill-advised tattoo Bart gets at the mall, which means no money at all for Christmas.  It is then that Homer takes a second job as a mall Santa.

As is tradition with Christmas season classics such as It’s A Wonderful Life, the premiere of The Simpsons sticks to the holiday trope of using tragedy to drive the narrative.  In this case, it is Homer, in his lowest of lows, finding out that his Santa job will not pay enough to make up for the lost bonus. In his desperation, Homer takes Bart to the dog track in the hopes a small gamble will reap big rewards for the holiday season. When the dog they bet on loses, Homer is dismayed by being broke and unable to fulfill the traditional gender role of being the provider, which hurts more deeply since it is Christmas.

Outside of the dog track, during Homer’s eleventh-hour desperation, the owner of the losing greyhound abandons him in the parking lot.  With nowhere else to go, Bart pleads with Home to adopt the dog.  Distracted by his own shame, Homer reluctantly agrees.  When they return to the Simpson home, Homer attempts to admit to his family that he lied to them about his bonus.  However, an excited Bart tells the family they got a new dog, and everyone is joyed by the arrival of the new addition to the Simpson family. In the end, the lesson is that Christmas is not about material things, but rather family coming together.

From the very beginning, with an episode like “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” one of the secrets to the series’ longevity is just how relatable the characters are.  Despite their off-putting hue and vaguely humanoid features, the situations and adventures the Simpson family have undergone over the years have allowed audiences to connect with the cartoon family.  Their stories feel real because they are an exaggerated animated reflection of our own personal stories.  We see moments of ourselves and our lives in them.  While the show can be absurdist at times, there’s a humanity present that has allowed it to endure because re recognize the Simpson family as our family and let them into our lives.

I was just a little over two years old when The Simpsons first aired.  I do not know how old I was when I watched my first episode, but I have vague memories of the show being there from the beginning of my consciousness. However, throughout the 1990s and into the millennium, The Simpsons was a very important part of my life.  It is easy to say that the show is my favorite show of all time, but it is difficult to measure just how much of an influence they had on me and how important the show has been in my life.  I don’t keep up with the show’s new episodes, choosing to instead to only stick with the show’s golden era that ended shortly after its first decade, but I could not imagine my life if the show had never existed.

I know it is weird to say that a television show was very important to me growing up.  Especially now that I am older and a bit more cynical and distrusting of entertainment media.  However, the show really did have an impact on me as a child and well into my formative years.  In the various stories, from the classic to obscure, they were opportunities to learn morals and lessons.  Also, the show is filled with an infinite number of pop culture references, and it encouraged me to explore the source of those thus expanding my larger cultural understanding.  And, finally, the show just made me really happy which is the most important thing of all.

Writing about the show’s influence and significance is a Sisyphean effort.  There are so many landmark moments from the show.  Various cultural critics debate on the show’s peaks and which moments were better than others, all of which supersede eachother endlessly depending on whatever metric that source is using for their “best of” list.  But this is a song blog, and with a show filled with so many great musical moments, I have to choose just one.

Consistently ranked one of the best episodes from the series, “Marge vs. the Monorail” aired on January 14^th, 1993 during the show’s fourth season, a season which many consider to be the show’s peak. In the episode, nuclear power plant owner Mr. Burns is fined $3 million by the Environmental Protection Agency for dumping nuclear waste in a park. When the town debates on how to spend the money, a fast-talking salesman named Lyle Lanley, voiced by Phil Hartman, convinces them to spend the money on building a monorail in the city.  However, Lanley is a conman who built a structurally poor monorail in order to rob the town of city’s money. The monorail, with Homer as the conductor, experiences a malfunction which causes it to travel at dangerous speeds, threatening the lives everyone on board.  It is up to Marge, with the help of a scientist familiar with Lanley’s prior cons to help Homer stop the monorail.

How Lanley was able to convince the town to invest in his dangerous scheme was through song. In a parody of “Ya Got Trouble” from the 1962 musical film The Music Man, Lanley, appearing as the salesman Harold Hill from the film, sings “The Monorail Song” about all the great benefits of the monorail, with the citizens of Springfield joining him as they get swept up in the song’s fervor. The song is a clever indictment about the irresponsibility of misspending infrastructure funds that is delivered in a catchy and memorable way.  It is often considered to be one of the show’s best songs, and rightfully so.

Though “The Monorail Song” first appeared in the 1994 episode, it got an official release in 1997 appearing on Songs in The Key of Springfield (this blog only covers official releases after all).  A novelty album, Songs in The Key of Springfield compiled all the great musical moments from the show up until the album’s release.  This was the first compilation album released for the show following the commercially successfully The Simpsons Sing the Blues from 1990.

While Songs In The Key Of Springfield failed to match its predecessor’s success, largely because Simpsons Sing the Blues was full of original recordings and backed by the single “Do the Bartman,” the songs from the compilation are not meant to be enjoyed on a CD.  They are best enjoyed as originally intended, while watching the show.  The songs from Songs in The Key of Springfield are just pieces of what makes a show like The Simpsons truly great.  Who knows when The Simpsons will come to an end, but the legacy of its greatest moments will continue to endure.

“clampdown” – the clash (1979)

I’ve been keeping up with this blog on a weekly basis for almost five years.  Each week, I set aside an hour or two, no more, to just write something.  As with the nature of doing something with such frequency, the quality of each post varies.  Some I am very proud of, having insightful and thought-provoking observations.  A few feel like I am phoning them in. This is not my job.  It is a hobby, and I like the discipline of it.  Forcing myself to get something written is a way for me to express myself. Sometimes venting, other times sharing. It is the routine that I enjoy the most.

I’ve mentioned this before, on the “About+Archive” page and in some posts, but I apply one guideline to this blog. And that is once I feature an artist, I don’t feature that artist again.  It requires strategic thinking, not wanting to waste a post on artists that mean a lot to me or write a post one week only to see much later something more fitting come up. I’ve already covered artists that are very important to me; Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Police, the Beatles, Patti Smith, U2, Beastie Boys, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits.  At various times, a situation or thought will arise and I’ll wish I had waited for a time when a post about my passion, love, and admiration would be more fitting, more perfect, and more poignant.  It is why I have waited so long to write about the Clash.

The Clash were one of the very first groups that has a significant impact on my life. Being a thin white kid living in rural Kentucky, laughably one of those types with a Che Guevara poster on his wall throughout high school, the Clash spoke to me in a way that resonated with my outwardly rebellious adolescence then and still does with my subversively rebellious adult self now. The music had a driving energy that was cathartic and focused, not sloppy and violent like the other punk bands I listened to at the time.  Their fire and fury had a mission that was more refined, not so much as a reflection of elegance but rather as a clear, simple idea that that the collective was more important than the individual. In a genre filled with selfishness and self-absorption, the Clash gave punk more legitimacy as a force for change.  And for a teenager who was still developing ideas about the world, I enjoyed the challenge of having to think when I engaged with my music.

For the most part, I don’t really plan my posts.  I’ll wait until the week of, or have some thoughts over the weekend, and really think about the general idea or concept I’ll want to write about.  These thoughts could involve reflections on cultural or political events, something that happened in my life, or anything else that feels right at that time. And with a band like the Clash, so much is relevant about them that I could write a weekly song blog just about them.  It has been a struggle to know when the right moment was to check them off the list.

A few posts I do plan, mainly because of a significant anniversary.  I knew for the past year that the 40^th anniversary of London Calling was coming up this Saturday and this intimidated me. London Calling was the first studio album I ever truly loved, having previously only explored admired artists through compilations just to get a general overview and then explore various career phases based on my interest or will. I have spent the entire year thinking about what I could say about such a monumental album, both culturally and personally, that would do it justice while being something I could be proud of.

I struggled with this all year and, as I am writing this, I am struggling with it now.  London Calling appeals to me on so many levels that it is hard to find a singular focus for a weekly blog where I will not cover the band again.  It is massive in multiple ways.  The sound is charged and eclectic, dynamically jumping from one genre to another while changing tempos and tones. It spans two LPs, certainly not the first to do so but notable because of the band’s demand to sell the double album at a single album price.  And the message, musings about nuclear devastation and class warfare and oppressive politicians and calls for revolutions, songs with topics that are just as relevant now as they were when they were first press onto wax in 1979.

Despite all my planning and fretting about what I could say about the Clash, I have come to realize how futile such feelings are.  The reason being is that there will never be enough to say about the Clash or London Calling. So much has been said about it over the last four decades, a lot can be said about it now, and much more will be said about it as the years march on.  This album has, is, and will always be relevant, a timeless cultural document that appeals to the basic need of all human beings to demand and fight for the right to live on their own terms.  All that makes me realize, having loved this record for almost two decades, that it still has more to teach me. Specifically, to live more in the moment.  In the now.  I have heard that wasted time is not time wasted.  Well, in my case for this blog, a wasted post is not a post wasted. Certainly not if I was sincere when writing it.

Released on December 14^th, 1979, and a few weeks later into 1980 in the United States, London Calling was the Clash’s third studio album.  Three singles were released to support the album, most notably “London Calling,” one of the band’s most signature tracks that was released one week prior to the album.

The second single, released in 1980 in Australia only, was “Clampdown” which is one of my favorite songs on the album.  Joe Strummer wrote that song as a commentary of the failures of a society driven by unfettered capitalism.  Born in 1987, I came of age during a tumultuous time in the United States.  I started becoming aware of politics in general after the September 11^th attacks and have since developed an acute understanding of the state of American and global politics in the age of Trump.  However, during that whole time, the economy has always been central point in any discussion.  Whether it is the impact terrorist attacks will have on stock markets, government bailouts, recessions, the housing crisis, the wealth gap, or whatever else is remotely connected with the economy, capitalism has been a consistent theme.  People are angry now with the mess that unrestrained capitalism has gotten them into just as Joe Strummer was angry with it when he penned “Clampdown.”  One of my favorites then and now, I cannot think of a timelier song from timeless album.

“blaxploitation” – noname (2018)

Noname, Chicago’s hometown rapper and poet, made music publication headlines after expressing her frustration with the predominantly white crowds that come to see her perform in concert.  On Thanksgiving, Noname tweeted a picture of a woman donned in clown make-up with the caption “Me consistently creating content that is primarily consumed by a white audience who would rather shit on me than challenge their liberalism because somehow liking Lizzos music absolves them of racist tendencies.”

Following her initial tweet, Noname further elaborated saying “My black fans in my mentions talkin bout ‘what your mean primarily white? We support the fuck outta u’ clearly proving they never been to a show.”  Disappointed by the lack of black representation at her shows, Noname said that she doesn’t want to “dance on a stage for white people.”

I’m sure there are other examples that I am currently unaware of, but this is the first that I have seen an artist personally express their disdain for the racial makeup of their concert audience. Frankly, I experienced a range of immediate thoughts and reactions to the story.  Taking such a bold stand surely presents commercial risk, and I applaud Noname for upholding her own creative integrity.  On the other side, I felt it odd to alienate a portion of your audience.  Reading through everything, it became clear that there is more complexity to Noname’s stand than at first glance.

Audience representation and access is incredibly important.  Marginalized groups and communities do need their own spaces where they are not subject to the whims and gaze of the majority, in this case the white majority. However, there is a misalignment between music sales and music space accessibility. Marcus K. Dowling, in his editorial Noname Might Quit Rap, I Applaud Her, breaks down the music industry’s revenue, $19.1 billion in 2018, and citing that 50% of the Billboard’s year-end list Hot 100 charts featured a rap artist. The data points Dowling presents suggests that rap is the most popular music form today, and is restructuring the music industry to recede hegemony, but it is also “the worst time to experience the best access to the most creatives possible.”

This is also reflected in Taylor Crumpton’s 2018 Paper op-ed, “Have White People Stolen Rap Concerts, Too?” where, at a Kendrick Lamar concert, notes that she had never seen so many white people in one place and comments of “the fetishization of the black experience by white people is reminiscent of the larger social and power dynamics in this nation.” Crumpton summarizes her piece saying, “the white experience in America is one of acquisition of property, and the latest commodity is hip-hop.”

Dowling’s and Crumpton’s thoughts reinforce the frustration that Noname feels. She is, after all, a black woman with black experiences that other members of the black community can relate to.  Every artist has an inherent need to have their experiences understood by those with a shared identity whether they be racial, geographic, or ideological. Considering that, it is easy to see why Noname, as expressed in one of her tweets, is tired of “thousands of white people [screaming] the word nigga at me.”

Noname’s decision to temporarily withdraw from music reminds me of when Dave Chappelle left his critically and commercially successful Comedy Central show in 2004, forgoing a $50 million paycheck in order to step away from the limelight and find personal peace.  His exit was subject to more speculation than Noname’s direct declaration, but he had returned years later citing not so dissimilar reasons, mainly that white audiences were misunderstanding the subtext of his humor.

From that perspective, it is easy to see how Noname feels as a slave to her music. Racially motivated systemic issues are inherent throughout our society that adversely affect black empowerment in music such as consumer trends, the music industry itself, the pervasiveness of media, all working together to prevent marginalized groups from securing their own space in the media landscape without it being subject to the demands of a white capitalist culture. However, there is one thing I have been considering that I have not seen being covered in these editorials.

I took a lot of film studies classes in college and, since then, read a lot of critical analyses of various art forms.  And one consistent thread inherent in many of these critiques is the difference between artistic intent and audience interpretation.  Primarily, these types of discussions usually revolved around the disassociation between a filmmaker’s purpose and its reception (think Tommy Wiseau’s The Room and how earnest he was versus the popular conception of the film). However, you can translate the basic principle to Noname’s situation.

Noname creates her music and puts it out through various channels to audiences to consume. She cannot control who has access to her music.  So, as a result, it is possible that the intended audience may not be the actual audience. Now, all of those are indicative of the systemic issues discussed earlier, so some sense of social awareness must be applied when on part of the consumer. Awareness such as not chanting racial epithets at a concert or impeding a person of color from enjoying their space at a show (like the “girls to the front” mentality of the riot grrrl movement).

Within this discussion, between intent and interpretation, comes the idea that once an artist makes something, it no longer belongs to them.  That while an artist can reap the rewards or bear the brunt of failure, it is ultimately up to audience to determine the role said art plays in their lives or in society at large. It is a notion that once a piece of art has emotional significance to an audience, the feelings they project on it override the artist’s own personal connection and intent.  At this point, the audience feels directly responsible for the success of the artist and wants some form of acknowledgment of the role they play in the process, as if they are the ones in control.

Now, all of that is subjective and worthy of discussion whenever any artist declares dissatisfaction with their audience.  And certainly, Noname is no exception to this. She is just one of many in a long line of musicians to become disillusioned by how their music is received and she has every right to be vocal about it.  However, there is a lot to unpack in her statements.  Music accessibility has to be improved and cultural spaces have to reflect the changing demographics of music consumerism as opposed to just catering to a white majority.  But Noname has to recognize that her disdain with her concert audience is better directed at the industry at large as opposed to the makeup of the people who pay money to go to her shows.

Rap music is an incredibly wonderful and innovative artform, having a significant impact on the relationship between the artist and the audience and influencing how other musical forms traverse the changing musical landscape.  Though a bold and impressive stand, it can be easy to get lost in the mire of identity politics and have your actions underserve your intentions and not result in the change you want to see.  I’m sure Noname doesn’t want any white people at her show.  She is just advocating that they take a smaller role in the development of her career and the impact her music has.  And that is incredibly important.  The key is to change the system.

The issue of race is a consistent theme in Noname’s music, and no song is more indicative of this than “Blaxploitation.”  The second track from her 2018 debut studio album Room 25, “Blaxploitation” garnered attention for its poetic lyrics as well as being the vehicle for Noname’s first music video.

Instead of featuring herself in her debut video, Noname instead showcases the extremes young black kids face living in the city.  Juxtaposing between images of innocence and criminality, we see the struggle these kids face when navigating their own environment while be subjected to white hysteria.  A powerful song set against the backdrop of a poignant video, Noname’s integrity has never waivered in her demand for a stronger cultural and racial identity.