Separate Artist from Song

This is one of those arguments that requires steel-toed shoes, a helmet, and the emotional maturity to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. It involves navigating the very messy intersection of musical appreciation and moral judgment, where you are forced to look at brand contamination around the song. Before we engage in this dialogue one must acknowledge that while an artist's actions may be egregiously reprehensible, the art they produce can simultaneously occupy a sacred space in the listener's personal history.

So let us be very clear before the moral police kick in the door and start confiscating playlists: separating the musician from the music is not the same thing as excusing the musician. It is not pretending bad things did not happen. It is not saying consequences are unnecessary and it's definitely not saying, "Well, the chorus slaps, so everyone gets a pass." Absolutely not. This is not a defense of the artist, rather it is a defense of the song, and sometimes the song has a life the artist no longer deserves to control.

Music is weird that way. It leaves the person who made it. It escapes > it gets into cars > kitchens > weddings > bars > proms > breakup playlists > gym rotations > family cookouts > mall speakers > and one suspiciously emotional CVS aisle at 9:37 p.m. It stops being just a product of the musician and becomes part of the listener's memory.

That is the part people forget. A song is not just who made it. A song is where you heard it. Who you were with. What year it was. What terrible haircut you had. What car you were driving. What version of yourself needed that beat, that hook, that dramatic key change, that ridiculous bridge, that one lyric you absolutely screamed like it was carved into your soul. The musician may have written it but you lived with it and that is what really matters.

I do not like Jake Paul. I do not need to like Jake Paul. I do not need to endorse the Jake Paul Industrial Complex, buy a branded energy drink, join a boxing undercard, or pretend the internet was improved by his arrival. But if "It's Everyday Bro" comes on and my brain decides, against all better judgment, that we are bopping now, who am I to deny the machinery?

Some songs are not good in the traditional sense but they are good in the "why is this still in my head seven years later?" sense. They are good because they bypass taste and go straight to the lizard brain. They do not ask permission, they just kick the door open wearing sunglasses indoors.

Taste does not require total personal approval and art does not require friendship. A song does not need to pass a full background check every time it comes through the speakers. Now, there are limits. Of course there are limits. Everyone gets to draw their own line. If an artist's actions ruin the music for you, that is valid. If you cannot hear the song without hearing the harm, you are not wrong. Nobody should be forced to separate anything they cannot separate.

But the opposite should also be true. If you can separate the work from the worker, that does not automatically make you morally defective. It may just mean the song attached itself to a part of your life the artist never owned in the first place.

This is where people get sloppy and they treat listening like worship. They treat enjoying a song like signing an affidavit and they act like every beat you nod along to is a public endorsement of the artist's entire life.

That is nonsense, utter nonsense. Not every listen is a tribute. Sometimes it is memory. Sometimes it is nostalgia. Sometimes it is a guilty pleasure. Sometimes it is a perfect little three-minute machine built by deeply imperfect people. And sometimes, yes, it is complicated. That complication does not need to be flattened into one approved answer.

We live in a world that wants everything sorted into clean folders: good person, bad person, good art, bad art, allowed, forbidden, pure, contaminated. But, as with art and performance, music has never worked that cleanly.

But, the listener has some agency here. That word, agency, matters the most in that sentence. Agency means you are allowed to decide what a song means inside your own life. You can stop listening. You can keep listening. You can separate the work from the artist. You can refuse to. You can change your mind. You can retire a song for ten years and then hear it in a diner and suddenly remember who you were before everything got so damn complicated.

That is not hypocrisy. That is being human. Because here is the truth: if we required every piece of art to be made by someone uncomplicated, we would be sitting in silence pretty quickly. Maybe not total silence. But a weird, anxious, highly curated silence where everyone is afraid to admit they still like the hook.

And I reject that, forcefully. I reject the idea that every song I enjoy has to become a courtroom. I reject the idea that music can only be loved if the person who made it remains permanently convenient. And I strongly reject the idea that my memories belong to the worst thing an artist ever did. Accountability belongs to the artist but the song may belong to everyone who survived something with it playing in the background.

So yes, separate the musician from the music when you can. Do it carefully, honestly and do it without pretending harm does not matter. But do not let your feelings about artists retroactively evict you from your own joy. Yes, I very much do see something wrong with R. Kelly’s actions, but I do not see anything wrong with a little “Bump N’ Grind.”

Not every bop needs a character witness.