'How do you cope when artists you love let you down?'

Music fans have been conflicted recently after some of their favourite artists took an anti-Government, anti-Covid vaccine stance on social media. Whilst some fans felt musicians who are anti-vaccine should be boycotted at festivals, others felt musicians should be entitled to their own opinion.

Which got us to thinking...What do you do when a musician you love does something – or takes a moral or political stance – that you disagree with? It’s something 5 Live’s Nihal Arthanayake and DJs Lliana Bird and Rickie Haywood-Williams got their teeth stuck into during the 5 Live Monthly Music Review.

Rickie (pictured below) said: “It’s really tough because music is so powerful. Artists and the music that they put out…has the power to emotionally almost make you override whatever is going on.

“But I think there is a barometer that most people have where they go ‘that’s crossed the line on my moral compass, I can no longer support that artist any more’."

Rickie recalled a time when he was DJing and he was distracted when someone spilled a drink on him. He ended up accidentally playing a song by an artist he had vowed not to play because of allegations made in a documentary.

“I was like: ‘What do I do? Do I either give the crowd dead air or do I play a song and try and just get them off as quickly as possible?’ And I played the song. If I’m honest no one really cared in the club! But I got it off as soon as I could. I was mortified, my DJing partner was mortified, and the promoter was mortified.”

Lliana said it’s a difficult question.

“For me, when there are real-life victims of people, that’s when it comes to the point where it’s really uncomfortable to just go ‘Oh well, I still love their music’,” she said.

“But at the same time, I think it depends how long ago it was. For example, if I went to a gallery and I saw a Caravaggio painting on the wall, I could appreciate it, it’s beautiful. He killed [someone], so perhaps at the time I might have felt uncomfortable, but enough time has passed now that it doesn’t seem to be problematic.”

The reviewers discussed whether Kanye West had harmed his reputation among certain people by allying himself to President Trump.

Rickie said: “Looking at Kanye’s journey throughout the years, he was very much a big supporter of issues that affected the black community. I think everyone will remember him going on TV with Hurricane Katrina and him being really outspoken about the president at the time, which was George W Bush.

“So, for him to then align himself with a president that some might say didn’t have the same core values… was really hard. Did it affect the way that I looked at him and his music? Again, it’s the barometer thing. I looked at it and I was like ‘you’re allowed to have different views, you’re allowed to have different opinions’."

Lliana (pictured below) said: “It is really difficult, but has he harmed people or is it just freedom of expression? And freedom of speech is really important to us all.

“I don't think you should be cancelling people simply for expressing themselves if they disagree with you. But the more shocking things people say these days, it seems to make them more popular!”

Nihal nodded: “It should be fine for your artist to have polar opposite political views to you.”

Liana said she was shocked when the pandemic first started that a lot of artists she respected came out with “this kind of anti-mask, anti-lockdown rhetoric”.

“Then I thought about it and I was like ‘actually they’ve always been anti-establishment, they’ve always had the anarchist spirit’. So, what do you do when the establishment is actually trying to protect the people? How does that balance out? Because [those artists] are going to be against the government, against the establishment.

“But for me what the establishment is doing is trying to protect us all, so it’s a really conflicting thing. When certain artists come out now and say this and that about the vaccine I can disagree with them vehemently but I think they should be allowed to express themselves. Otherwise we’re getting into dangerous territory where we’re trying to stop debate.”

Nihal (pictured below) asked Rickie how Radio 1 manages playing artists that have overtly political songs.

Rickie replied: “Radio 1 never bans anybody. But they might listen to public opinion and they might decide to take a step back from an artist for a little while. They might let that situation die down a little bit.

“And I think that’s the best way to go. Because public opinion can change, situations can evolve, and we can find out more information on certain things and it can change your whole perspective on a situation.”

The trio also discussed when clips were taken out of context.

Rickie said: “A lot of what Kanye has said, over the last couple of years, a lot of it does get taken out of context. Don’t get me wrong, he has said a lot of stuff that I 100% disagree with, and I do feel like he has alienated a lot of his core fan base as well... but if you hear an interview of his from start to finish you can see the method behind his thinking… it’s not like he’s just throwing these things out for the sake of it.”

Nihal said: “But that’s the problem for artists now, isn’t it? As Ricky has pointed out, you could do an hour long interview… and the age that we’re living in it’s clipped, it’s put down to thirty seconds, and you’re in trouble. So, where are the artists that are still willing to speak out?”

Liana said: “It’s not just that they’re clipped. People create clickbait and share stories now without even bothering to click on the articles to even read what the person really said. So, we are in an age where we really are losing context, and we’re also losing our own attention spans… We don’t have time to look into it and research it. We might if it’s our favourite artist…

“I think more and more artists are going to be taking more control of their interviews. So, they’re doing it on their own platforms… where they’re not going to get edited down and they can have more control over their own message. Rather than doing a print interview, for example, where a little clip can be taken and that’s it, it runs away and it’s a big headline story the next day.”

Nihal is on air Mondays to Thursdays 13:00 - 16:00 on BBC Radio 5 Live. Listen live on BBC Sounds.

The Monthly Music Review is at 15:00 on the last Thursday of the month. Nihal chats through the latest music news, recommendations for new releases and tracks you just need to hear.