I Don’t Owe You Anything, Or Do I?

Loyalty is a concept native to human nature, but its place in the music world is debated. To be concise, I aim to find out if loyalty should even have the smallest of presences within artworks. Should artists remain loyal and simply create what fans love, or should they be able to engage experimentally in their work? Similarly, should fans have to nurture artists and the work that they don’t like, or are we still entitled to our own opinions without jeopardizing our places in various fandoms? Here, through analyzing big artists, and their even bigger works, I seek to discover musical loyalty from both sides, and, generally, the way loyalty and music interact. 

Just as we are owed our own right to experiment with different mediums of self-expression, I’m sure we can say that the same right is owed to artists, but must that also address the impact their experiments would have on their followers? Do artists owe us the loyalty to stick to what we like, and where is this limit to ignoring external requests? Artists being experimental, trying out new sounds, and outgrowing their past creations is all well and good, but do we owe it to them to support their every endeavour as well? Even if we just don’t like it? The subsequent arguments following may be along the lines of “true fans will support the artist on their musical journey.” That doesn’t seem entirely fair, as what if the music just isn’t as good as before? We saw this divide on Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red (2020). So, does disliking your favourite artists place you in a new realm of fans? Either way, loyalty being involved within music production seems to produce a parasocial nature in artist and fan relationships. Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence. Artists don’t know us personally, in most cases, and we don’t know them. So why is it taboo to be honest about music and how it makes us feel, and what are these casualties we are trying to be spared from? 

Let’s talk about Lady Gaga and her trip down experimental lane. Her influence relied heavily on the early 2000s, but her transition on the 2013 album Artpop showcased her incline towards humbler and more fictitious sounds, met with dismay from countless dedicated fans. Clearly, there was a larger shift going on in Gaga’s career, as she started acting and tailoring her music for soundtracks and other media-filled pieces. Artpop seemed to be a piece of work that offered experimental values, ones that were more reflective of her own chromatic personality, rather than what the record label wished for. The album valued a now more nuanced and gay audience. In this situation, lack of loyalty to fans, and a lack of loyalty to Gaga, allowed for her fanbase to be more reflective of what she aims to put out, but at what cost? Loyalty caused more harm than honesty would’ve in this process of weeding out a fanbase.

It seems as if loyalty’s role in music is to reinforce hierarchies where hierarchies should not exist. To create a divide between fans, and thus, a disconnect from the artist as well.

Lorde has always had the same producer, Jack Antonoff, and a similar team throughout all three of her studio albums. For this reason, the experiments taken on her most recent album Solar Power (2021) were all her own wishes. Both her first albums were critically acclaimed. Pure Heroine (2013) was made when she was 15. Melodrama (2017) was made another 4 years later, making Solar Power well awaited. Needless to say to those who have listened, it was very out of the realm of classic Lorde that we were all comfortable with, big fans of, and waiting for. It seems as if loyalty’s role in music is to reinforce hierarchies where hierarchies should not exist. To create a divide between fans, and thus, a disconnect from the artist as well. Solar Power was met with a direct split, with half of the fanbase taking to social media to render the album a joke, claiming that Lorde had just found out about smoking weed, hence the happy-go-lucky-ness of the album. Others appreciated the growth that Solar Power represented, as Lorde wasn’t a sad teenager anymore. Dedicated Fans noted the allusions to growth in her previous albums:

“They’re gonna watch me disappear into the sun,” - Lorde, Liability (Melodrama)

No matter how deliberate, elaborate, or gorgeous her third album was perceived, it didn’t change the fact that many Lorde fans just didn’t like it and had a hard time admitting that to themselves. The Lorde fan base largely became messy after the fact, with some stating that you had to like the music to still have their opinions be considered relevant, or that you must ditch going to the tour entirely if you disliked the newest release. Loyalty, as it shows, does not mesh well with many aspects of music and performance. 

“How can you not like it, it’s about his trauma,” was a consistent line said and heard by many Kendrick Lamar fans as Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers came out. It got me thinking, why do I have to force myself to like this if it is about his trauma? Surely, I can appreciate lyricism and calling out generational and POC trauma, as well as the connection he holds with the words, but I did not enjoy listening to the album. It also raised the question of if it’s even my place to enjoy the work. Something about enjoying such intensive and true lyricism does not sit right with me. I came to the conclusion that we aren’t supposed to enjoy the album, but simply listen to it. Additionally, the question of loyalty was raised again, as to how a fan can be loyal to the music when it was not made for them. This was an album that rap freaks, and just general music listeners, were lined up, waiting, for five years for. Did Lamar owe us, as fans, something that resembled his other critically acclaimed albums, or did he, as an artist, owe loyalty to his own truth?

So where does it leave us then? Where should loyalty be exercised? To share my own opinions on this debate, it is that the culture of music, and its inherent value, lies in the satisfaction you get from listening to what you like. Subsequently, this satisfaction also comes from making what you want to. Of course, this is a perspective that doesn’t factor in the money and fame influencing many of our favourite artists. You don’t owe artists loyalty, and artists don’t owe you loyalty either, because that is anti-music. Music can’t keep people in their own brooding boxes, and the culture of “gatekeeping” and asserting dominance within an inclusive space has to be an act of disloyalty to music in itself. As artisans, we cannot stunt the growth of others alike, and expressing honesty and removing loyalty from the narrative is how to abolish toxic music identities. Loyalty is, inherently, a human concept, to which music is independent of. Music transcends the primal instincts of people and should be kept as such. After all, we owe it to music.

Illustration by Valerie Letts