Being famous as a musical artist and having a status within youth and pop culture is not the same as it was 30 or 40 years ago. Today's audiences expect artists to be active on social media platforms, clued up on memes and popular culture, open about their personal lives, politically aware, and always personable. None of these expectations are inherently unreasonable; artists have always used their platform and influence to discuss these issues. However, it does remove music as the artist's main job and turns it into a secondary issue. Fans no longer want an artist to be an artist and just that. They want sound bites, they want to make edits, they want to create parasocial relationships and, apparently, they want the wedding guest list too. Somewhere along the way, this fandom culture – this connection with an artist – begins to turn into entitlement.
If Taylor Swift was not so widely recognised, her wedding would not have been publicised with a star-studded guest list whilst the rest of New York City watches on, but it happens - why? Because fans want to know it all. That blurs the line between an artist connecting with their fans on a deeper level, and turns it into consumption of their private life.
The argument surrounding artists now – such as Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter – can only be made stronger when looking to the past. Celebrity culture has always thrived off fan curiosity. Long before social media, fans wrote letters, joined fan clubs, and read everything coming out of Melody Maker and NME. The difference was that mystery still had room to exist. Artists such as Kate Bush, Prince, and even David Bowie, who, despite reinventing himself numerous times, rarely explained the person behind the personas. While these artists may have had more privilege in remaining mysterious, the fact of the matter is that they were not altogether invisible. It’s that partial absence that creates intrigue. Fans thus filled the gaps with imagination rather than endless dopamine hits of information.
This doesn’t mean that mystery has disappeared entirely. Frank Ocean, Adele and Lorde, to name a few, are artists who have, even in this current climate, managed to maintain a sense of privacy. They appear when work requires it and then retreat back into their personal lives. Many others, of course, take the opposite route and offer complete transparency. Neither way is inherently better; there are pros and cons to both. One risks limiting a deeper relationship with fans; the other risks living your life for someone else entirely.
So what can be gathered from all of this? Perhaps the idea of a mysterious artist hasn’t died at all. Perhaps we’ve forgotten how to let them exist.
Absence invites speculation. Every absence becomes a big conspiracy. Every public appearance is treated as some revelation. The internet promises access to the people behind the music, but somewhere along the line, access got mistaken for entitlement. So maybe the question isn't whether artists still can be mysterious, but whether audiences can live without everything being explained.
Mia Samson
Image: 'The Subway’ Official Single Cover
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