I feel like I have to comment. I can't speak to the others, but Lil Nas X is hardly political. He is just black and gay. And people don't like that, because it undermines cultural expectations of black people and gay people at the same time. He doesn't fit into an advertisement checkbox. This makes people with narrow viewpoints uncomfortable. And so his very existence becomes 'political'.

He does regularly troll on twitter, but it isn't like he is pushing an agenda other than trying to exist /how he exists/ and not for /how you would like him to exist/.

If Lil Nas X is political, then so is Kieth Urban. Both of them are just writing songs about what they know, but somehow only the less mainstream artist is considered 'political'.

That advice from the article is kind of silly. BTS is definitely political.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/world/asia/bts-un-perform...

But even though Asia has a lot of rappers, they’re not allowed to do anything interesting or illegal, and if you ever do drugs you’re instantly blacklisted and all your work is erased from stores forevermore.

I really don't think performing at the UN is a political gesture.

I’ve liked Azealia Banks for ages even through her politically incorrect meltdowns and her music just keeps getting better.

A zoomer I was at a party with recently said “yaaa she’s good but like sooo controversial” in a hushed and nervous way like we were in high school and about to go smoke a cigarette.

She's unhinged but nonetheless a treasure. And her music does bang.

Tbf the authors comment was don't take political action outside of your main mission. Political activism from all those artists are arguably part of their culture, the same culture that underscores the subversivesness of American pop culture in general, cemented in the 60s as very anti establishment. Different ball game in East Asia

Question: are those fandoms larger or smaller than without the politics?

I don’t know that I’ve seen good numbers on that.

Generally in the US it is assumed, I think, that if a public figure doesn't make an occasional comment about public events, then they are in favor of the status quo, which is itself a political statement. So, I'm not clear on what what a public figure "without politics" could look like.

I mean Taylor Swift managed to dodge the idea of politics for years (it was an explicit strategy because of what happened to the Dixie Chicks), but eventually people started directly asking questions, and saying "I don't want to comment on this thing my fans feel strongly about" is pretty bad for business I guess.

I don't know, is my confusion. It just strikes me as weird, rhetorically, to claim that avoiding politics is one of the key strategies to gain a fandom when equally fervent fandoms have been built on explicitly political pop stars. I don't understand how to put these two together.

Maybe those artists are willing to leave money/fans on the table in order to do what is right?