Recommendations of the Editorial team
There is a quote from the English writer Oscar Wilde with which he anticipates the dynamics of the digital present better than he could have ever imagined. “Every saint has a past,” Wilde wrote in the fully analogue age, “and every sinner has a future.”
In doing so, he hits on a zeitgeist phenomenon that is not only currently preoccupying pop culture, but is also posing real challenges. In times of a supposed cancel culture, how do you deal with the past of fallen musicians?
The fact that change is taking place here can be seen particularly clearly in the phenomenon of Kanye West. West is without question one of the most successful producers and rap artists of this century – hardly anyone has shaped the sound of the genre in all its cultural stylistic blossoms over the past twenty years as much as Kanye, who has now shortened his name to a minimalist Ye. Until his fall.
Last year he attracted attention for his public display of Nazi love and radically formulated anti-Semitism. He released a song called “Heil Hitler” and sold T-shirts in his online shop with swastikas and the model number “HH-01”.
As if last year simply didn’t happen
He recently apologized for the absences and released his new album “Bully” at the beginning of April – a flawless comeback album. In the USA it reached number 2 on the Billboard charts and in Germany it reached the top 10. More importantly: fans and the community celebrate it as a stroke of musical genius. There are concert cancellations and Kanye isn’t even allowed to enter the UK – but apart from these noises, things are going so well for West, as if last year simply hadn’t happened.
The same phenomenon can also be observed in Germany, where Xavier Naidoo played an almost sold-out stadium comeback tour at the beginning of the year. In recent years he had spread the most absurd conspiracy theories: He spoke about refugees as “raving wolves,” accused “world Jewry” of having declared war on Germany, and called the Holocaust a “successful historical fiction.” There were also theories from elites drinking children’s blood – now supplemented by food companies using embryo spice. The stadiums were still sold out. Yes, even every sinner – the deeply religious Naidoo will like this – still has a future in pop culture.
Kanye West and Xavier Naidoo are the spearhead of a new development that not only proves that the supposed cancel culture is long dead – if it ever existed – but also that in the 2020s the decoupling of work and author was finally and radically accomplished in the consciousness of a young generation.
In the modern media world, contradictions are the norm
Audiences have become accustomed to consuming problematic artists regardless – not out of ignorance, but out of a kind of pragmatic cynicism. The justification is that you listen to the music, not the people. Younger target groups in particular often make a very conscious distinction. They were socialized in a media world in which contradictions are the norm. They no longer experience art as a moral relationship with the artist, but as modular content. In this new world, the artist is no longer an authority but a data point in the stream of attention. You consume songs the way you share memes: fragmented, situational, decontextualized.
The fact that the bond with the artist dwindles is also due to the fact that the art itself loses value. A young generation hardly knows anything about the feel of a vinyl record, the depth of a designed booklet and the limited availability of cultural goods – due to monetary reasons. For them, music is a mass of data that is freely available anytime and anywhere and is played via playlists.
This has consequences that go beyond mere music consumption. If art is only perceived as freely circulating content, it loses its moral appeal. The scandal no longer clings to the work, but evaporates in the stream of the next publication. Outrage becomes a brief blip in the attention graph – then the algorithm returns to normality. Anyone who falls today no longer falls deeply, but only for a short time. The digital public no longer knows any lasting ostracism; what remains is the temporary irritation.
The listener no longer sees himself as a moral authority
This also shifts the role of the audience. It no longer sees itself as a moral authority that judges artists, but as a curating force that chooses what works in its own feed. One separates work and author not out of indulgence, but out of habit. The contradictions are not resolved, but hidden. In this logic, the comeback of Kanye West or Xavier Naidoo is no longer a miracle, but the rule: whoever remains relevant is heard – regardless of who they are.
Or to put it more bluntly: In a culture that makes everything available at the same time, everything becomes forgivable at the same time. Or, as Wilde put it: Every saint has his past – and every sinner his future.
