The return of the Glastonbury Festival after a two-year absence during the pandemic has coincided with a growing return to politicized music.
The headliners of Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish’s performances at the festival in England were full of catchphrases, which is surely more exciting than listening to beige singer-songwriters of recent times like George Ezra, Ellie Goulding, Lewis Capaldi and Freya Ridings, who can’t form an opinion between them.
There’s only one problem: outside the echo chamber of a Glastonbury mob, who cares?
The music industry is the biggest bell there is. Statements about climate change and gender identity at Glastonbury preached to converts in the crowd, while sounding enough to many BBC viewers who had only listened to Paul McCartney and Noel Gallagher make the hits.
More broadly, if musicians speaking out really had an effect, then Hillary Clinton would have demolished Donald Trump in 2016. If a musical crowd’s adoration was any barometer, UK lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn (the UK’s version of Bernie Sanders) would have simply stood for a second term after his own parliamentary majority of 80 seats in the 2017 general election.
Historically, music and its followers have always leaned to the left, whereas since the 1980s any musician who is not a confirmed leftist has tended to be shunned. Electronics pioneer Gary Numan was an early victim of cancel culture when he said he voted Conservative under Margaret Thatcher’s UK government as his career quickly collapsed for such cultural heresy.
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Many pop stars of the time instead united under the name Red Wedge, a concert campaign created to help Neil Kinnock oust Thatcher in the 1987 election. However, students keen on political history might recall that , despite their efforts, Kinnock did not become Prime Minister. In fact, Red Wedge co-founder Paul Weller later admitted, “Red Wedge opened my eyes. It made me come full circle on how I feel about politics. is a game and I have very little interest in it now.”
Nerdy rapper Kid Rock and veteran rocker Ted Nugent were virtually the only musicians supporting Trump. They have been reviled ever since, while Clinton has been vehemently supported by superstars such as Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga.
These culture keepers seem to forget that being able to write punchy, concise lyrics isn’t the same as patiently persuading someone of your cause. In the UK, the #grime4corbyn movement of avant-garde grime musicians backing Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 was equally ineffective. Realizing soon Jezza [Corbyn] broke, his supporters, including AJ Tracey and Novelist, admitted less than two years later in the 2019 general election that they felt no affinity with Corbyn’s Labor party.
Obviously, musicians should protest against whoever is in power. They should try to raise awareness, not least because some of the resulting anthems are dancefloor bangers in their own right. Political change doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and Lamar’s spectacular show over the weekend was exactly the kind of theatrical, commanding performance Glastonbury fans deserve from a headliner.
If along the way he inspires a few young fans to vote, so much the better. Billie Eilish is turning London’s O2 arena vegan and hosting climate change events at her residence there which is shocking but it should be because I’m 49 and should be irritated by the behavior of 20-year-old pop stars.
But musicians shouldn’t expect their statements to be treated seriously as deep insight by the general public. By all means, have your say on Boris Johnson’s many failures, denigrate Donald Trump and speak out against the injustices you see around you. Just prepare for the fact that many would rather you play another hit than recite what you learned that morning on Twitter.
John Earls writes about music for national newspapers and magazines, including Record Collector, Classic Pop and NME. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
For another opinion, read: When celebrities talk about Roe v. Wade, people are listening
