The Beat

Welcome to The Beat, Decential’s weekly exploration of music, culture and the new Internet – featuring all the friends we’ve met along the way.

On the culture-tech byway, things move at breakneck speeds. From web3 to AI, copyright to collective ownership, art to psychedelics, The Beat is an exercise in association. We all contain multitudes, and within them, vast differences. But there is some connective, fundamental essence to be found.

The Beat is dedicated to that essence; the rest, as Alex Ross wrote, is noise.

Should we separate the artist from the art?

I was at a party on Friday, dancing around a kitchen, talking about Nick Cave with a new friend. 

Present in our conversation, too, was the digital void of fan-artist connection. We discussed the ‘Platform Capitalism Complex,’ in whose vested interests we’re trapped, where contextual and connective features get abstracted every time fiduciary duty declares them nonessential to the bottom line.

Perhaps The Red Hand Files – Cave’s “place where [he] answers questions from [his] fans” – is part of a different blueprint, my fellow dancer suggested. A simple open call for fan mail, Cave’s Files are a return to roots. And since 2018, those roots, left to grow, have evolved into “a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency.” Call ‘em Good Seeds.

On a near weekly basis, Cave responds to one query, posting his reply on his website. In time, after one gets through a dozen or so Files, a figure emerges: Nick Cave. And not just the gilded contours of Nick Cave the artist, but Nick Cave the person, now with more depth and color than you’ll get in a press release or a music mag; a thoughtful guy with thoughtful answers.

There’s one particular File I return to again and again, where Cave is prompted by the question you see atop this section:

In my bag of quotes, it’s at the top. I’m a bit bristled by his facile use of “bad” and “good,” but its essence rings through. It annuls the notion “never meet your heroes,” because in these words, we’re empowered to look our champs square in the eye, without fear that their fuller forms will fall short of the idols we’ve built in our minds. Even if you appear less than, we say, we can still honor the redeemed aspects of your shortcoming.

But is that a cop out? So we can enjoy the music of Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and Diddy guilt-free? Is it just comfortable absolution?

Media Beefs

In another Red Hand File, Cave responded to a similar question about disentangling art and artist – this time in regard to Morrissey, writing:

In 2019, the contents of that letter was covered by Spin, Pitchfork, NME, Stereogum and dozens of other music mags. Why? It’s just a simple, thoughtful letter from Cave to a fan, after all.

Then again, here’s a rare opportunity to see what one soul who makes “works of beauty beyond anything most of us can barely imagine” thinks of another, to confirm or deny – or at least inform – our own held perceptions.

And, of course, conflict sells. It’s Cave versus Morrissey. What say you, dear reader – is Morrissey a lost cause? Is Cave’s suggestion to “let Morrissey have his views” too laissez-faire? Choose a side.

The media can use these moments to fan the flames, kindling full-blown beefs. Take Kendrick – whose surprise new album is already garnering album of the year buzz – and Drake. Years of subtle jabs and diss tracks have snowballed into headlines like “Rap Beef For Dummies: The Beginners Guide to Drake and Kendrick,” and BBC’s “Who won the Kendrick Lamar v Drake beef?” (There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the rivalry, which as of this writing, has 187 references.)

And more recently, via Billboard, there’s: “Drake Accuses UMG & Spotify of Scheme to ‘Artificially Inflate’ Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us.’”

That’s right, Drake is accusing Universal Music Group – his own label, and the parent company of Interscope, Kendrick’s label – of organizing an illicit “scheme” using bots, payola and other shady dealings to boost “Not Like Us,” Kendrick’s summer anthem that some declared the feud’s “knockout blow.”

It’s another escalation, from beef to real-life theater – rich artists suing rich labels/platforms at the expense of other rich artists. And we’re here for it, throwing ourselves into the fire.

Are you Team Drake or Team Kendrick? There’s cultural cache in having an opinion – in being on a team and knowing why. And inevitably, we default to tribalism, interpreting the artists’ worlds through our own lived experiences. 

Maybe you have this indelible image of Lady Gaga crowd surfing at a young Kendrick’s afternoon show at Pitchfork Music Festival, just after he dropped Section.80. And now that “this guy’s gonna be big” memory is ensconced in truth. But maybe you also grew up watching Drake on Degrassi in the basement of the home of the first girl you ever kissed.

We all have our origin stories. Is beef the only lens through which we should know our artists beyond their art? Surely, these are not those transformed and redeemed aspects…

And then there’s Thom Yorke and Roger Waters. In 2017, Waters and other artists signed an open letter, urging Radiohead to cancel an upcoming show in Israel: “where, UN rapporteurs say, ‘a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people,’” the letter reads.

What came from that was a Rolling Stone op ed titled: “Thom Yorke Breaks Silence on Israel Controversy.” Seven years later, that same controversy is back in full force. Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is married to Israeli artist, Sharona Katan, and he’s continued to perform in Israel during this past year – an act that’s been called “artwashing genocide” by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. 

Then, in October, a viral video clip surfaced of Yorke calling a pro-Palestinian fan a coward during a show in Melbourne. The fan was yelling toward the singer (what they say is unclear, but they seem to mention the rising death toll in Gaza) and Yorke confusingly demanded that this person come on-stage to say what they were saying – without making that opportunity available to them. Yorke promptly stormed off, returning several minutes later to play “Karma Police.”

A couple weeks ago, Waters made some inflammatory comments about Yorke on a niche YouTube channel called “Empire Files,” and music mags – now armed with new material – wrote pieces with headlines like, “Roger Waters Blasts Radiohead’s Thom Yorke And Jonny Greenwood Over BDS In New Interview.”

We’re practically goaded to pick a side. And amidst that compulsion, memories come rushing. Maybe you saw Radiohead play MSG and it felt like an apotheosis of life, prompting you to later visit the hallowed ground of Oxford’s Jericho Tavern, where the band (then called On a Friday) played their first gig. But maybe you also had a transcendent experience at Newport Folk Festival, watching Roger Waters perform “Wish You Were Here” just as a thin summer rain began to fall.

And maybe you’ve been to Palestine, and talked to people who literally cannot leave, where even traveling into Israel, past a wall considered illegal by the United Nations, is akin to entering and exiting a prison. And you fully believe that, while the history is complicated, this genocide isn’t.

But then again, maybe you haven’t been to Palestine, and all you have is a lens of conflict through which to parse your truth.

Coda

I have to admit, it’s hard for me to enjoy Radiohead right now. And it’s times like these that I wonder if Cave’s words are simply comfortable absolution.

Perhaps assertive divestment from someone’s art can inspire change. At the same time, cherry-picked quotes and viral videos veil the nuance needed to at least consider other lived experiences. And the echo chambers in that ‘Platform Capitalism Complex’ do a great job keeping us from that nuance, too.

All the while, the media mediates, culling the clickable bits to create conversations between us and the idols we can never know – “those among us that create works of beauty beyond anything most of us can barely imagine.” What they say becomes our relationship.

But what truly makes these relationships confusing is that we’re all convinced we do know these ‘beauty beyond imagining’ makers. And despite never meeting them, we do, in our own way, because we’ve found our stories in their art.

“[Sometimes] I feel, beyond all rationality, that the song has been written with me in mind and, as it weaves itself into the fabric of my life, I become its steward, understanding it better than anybody else ever could,” Cave wrote in a Red Hand File. “I think we all can relate to this feeling of owning a song.”

Indeed, and perhaps it’s at that point that the art stops belonging to the artist – when it enters our hearts and exits with such profound meaning that we couldn’t express it if we tried. What the art does is help us to better understand ourselves, to marvel at this miraculous journey, and if we consider it as such, then why should its previous owner’s flaws get to interfere with that.

In the words of Nick Cave, written in his red hand to a curious fan:

Now go outside and listen to music – it’s a beautiful day.

My name is MacEagon Voyce. For more music and less noise, consider subscribing to The Beat. And if you already do, consider sharing with a friend. Thanks for being here.