Pretty Vacant? Politics in the Modern Music Industry

Stormzy calls out Theresa May over the Grenfell Tower fire during a performance at The Brits (Source: NME)

When even Donald Trump is calling you a “seriously troubled man”, you know you’ve truly lost the plot. This is what the former president had to say about rapper Ye, after a dinner meeting between the two, which also hosted white supremacist commentator Nick Fuentes and the far-right Milo Yiannopoulos.

Ye managed to arrive in such a situation after falling fully into the pit of online radicalisation, spouting a progressively scary trail of antisemitic comments over the past few months. This, from a man who once famously stated “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live television.

Since Ye’s legacy of hate began, he has seemingly sabotaged his whole career, losing all his major brand deals with companies such as Adidas and JP Morgan. Quite rightly, of course, but this whole episode brought to my attention a missing puzzle piece in the music industry, one that seems to have been absent throughout my lifetime. Where is the political power gone? And why is the biggest recent story relating to the intersection between music and politics one that so clearly stands on the wrong side of history?

Reflecting back on the 20th century, music always played a vital role in the upholding of progressive ideas, acting as a tool for political organisation and action. Led by the American counterculture era in the 60s and 70s, artists such as Bob Dylan and John Lennon held a heavy focus on themes like racial injustice and war. This anti-establishment sentiment was carried over into the 80s and 90s with the arrival of hip hop, with groups such as Public Enemy and N.W.A. speaking truth to power and challenging authority.

Back home in the UK, punk rock – led primarily by the Sex Pistols – helped produced a group identity that stood against capitalism, the patriarchy and racism. Glam rock created a safe space for true sexual expression at a time when gender identity held rigid boundaries in wider society. The list goes on…

Nowadays, things don’t look so radical. To try and locate a strong movement within music in the modern era, one finds no easy artist or group to point towards. That isn’t to say politics has become entirely absent from the music industry. 21st-century rappers such as Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy continue to lead the way for the genre’s defiant and outspoken sound, but an alternative style, focussed more on braggadocio seems to have oversaturated the market. Artists, of course, are free to write about whatever they please, and there should be no pressure to speak on certain matters, but nonetheless, it does seem strange that the prominence of this style has faded into the background.

Billie Eillish taking part in a Black Lives Matter protest (Source: Pop Crave)

“But wait!”, you say, “I see my favourite music artists discussing political matters all the time!”. One could look to climate activism, with artists like Billie Eilish attending protests and Lorde dedicating entire albums to the matter (Solar Power). Issues of race also hold a continued focus, especially surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, which sees almost unanimous support online within the music community.

Such work certainly does more good than harm, but it simply doesn’t seem to have the same gravitas that could be observed in previous decades. Instead, this new, mostly online political activism seems far more to model that of the corporate world.

Corporate activism, wherein big brand names such as Coca-Cola and Mcdonald's attempt to engage in social movements, has received its fair share of criticism. One of the most obvious examples of this is during Pride month, when brands will alter their logo to display the Pride flag and produce products themed around the LGBTQ+ community. The outward message of this is to say that they stand in solidarity alongside the LGBTQ+ community, but most see through this shallow façade.

Ultimately, this styling around any particular social cause holds the sole intention to produce more profit for the companies. For example, following Colin Kaepernick’s bold protests in taking the knee during the national anthem at NFL games, Nike collaborated with him to produce a series of anti-racist ads. Following the release of the ads, Nike reported a 10% increase in income, and a 7.2% increase in stock by the end of the ads’ release day.

There is no form of bravery in such a company’s decisions to ‘make a statement’, but rather, action is driven by a desire for profit. Where were these ads before Kaepernick took the knee? Before the death of George Floyd? Before #blacklivesmatter dominated Twitter discourse?

And so, in much the same way, artists around the world don their respective political opinions, online and at shows, safe in the knowledge that their bold statements run them no risk of being dropped by their label, or losing out on record and ticket sales. Quite the contrary – any given political solidarity acts to boost sales and hail such artists as morally virtuous.

Without even knowing it, the world’s biggest stars are reduced to the same corporate jargon that they may believe to oppose. Ultimately, though, this activism operates within the very mechanisms which own the music industry as a whole; a self-serving money machine in which any form of activism never truly veers from the status quo, never escapes to the fringes.

Again, as I’ve said, in the grand scheme of things, there is still more good than harm at play here. Maybe one little boy will defy his military father and decide that war is a bad thing when he hears Justin Bieber shout “there’s too much hate in the world” at one of his concerts. I joke, but that power, that energy, that so many groups and genres used to bring to the forefront of political discussions is just not what it once was. Sure, it can still be found (see: Childish Gambino, Idles, Kendrick Lamar, Dave, to name a few), but there is space to be reclaimed, and to give a voice to the people. Until then, in the words of Johnny Rotten, “we’re so pretty, oh so pretty, we’re vacant”.