This is the story of the strange death of rock. I witnessed it both first-hand, and on the peripheries—in the eye of the storm, and from further away. You’ll see what I mean. What matters is that I’ve lived long enough to have started playing music long before woke, and then through its technocratic takeover, which has destroyed not just a culture, but a spirit. Here is the story from my personal experience. But not only.
For almost 35 years, I have been playing in rock’n’roll bands. Sometimes even successfully, at least by the measure of the world of German underground rock/pop/electronic music. I have toured most European countries, the US, Japan. I have produced, mixed, sung on, written the songs to, and played on four albums, released on various big indie labels, including Rough Trade, and contributed (as songwriter, singer, or guitarist) to two or three dozen more. I don’t know the exact number—once I was pulled off the dancefloor at a techno club in a half-drunk state at 3 am, and into a recording studio to guest on a friend’s electronic album that still needed a guitar hook on one track. I was probably never given credit for it. I never checked.
This, and even the more tedious dealings with the record company people who are not rock’n’rollers, but earnest businessmen and -women, was all part of the deal. What wasn’t—or wasn’t necessarily—part of the deal was to be in a band with people who are just as hardcore individualist as yourself. But I was in such a band for 15 years. We rejected every possible business merger with the loathed “majors”; we scoffed at offers to earn large sums of money if we only put a “Volkswagen Foundation” banner up on stage. I told Elle magazine to bugger off when they asked to do a fashion shoot with me (ok, this one I regretted).
But individualism comes at a price. So we—the band—fought among ourselves. A lot. Considering that I was once viciously pelted with cutlery by my own drummer during an interview at a Leipzig hotel restaurant, and that our keyboardist/live programmer once jumped out of a moving car during a fight on the way to a gig, and I myself—not a saint— walked off stage during a live gig because my bandmates were driving me insane (hey, it was the crazy nineties), it is astonishing to think that we managed to stay together, with breaks, for such a long period of time, give interviews, tour, sit in a studio, eat, and sometimes even live, together. The truth is this: we believed in our music, wanted to be successful on our terms, and despite everything still shared a deep affection for one another. We respected each other’s insufferability, because, well, we just respected one another—the artistic integrity, the basic human intelligence.
Individualism comes at a price.
Then, in 1999, came the Kosovo war, or rather: NATO’s bombing of then-Yugoslavia in a 3-month relentless military action because of an alleged “genocide” against Albanian Kosovars by the Yugoslav People’s Army and aligned Serbian forces. At the time—aside from the fact that the term “genocide” wasn’t yet thrown around like it is today—the political front against the Serbs in Germany was unsettling, and most definitely included “cultural workers” among its foremost cheerleaders (artists have always been at the forefront of the most regressive cults, as shown here). Except for me, that is, my mother being Serbian. So I stepped into the ring as a prominent critic of NATO, of interventionism, of the “humanitarian” mission (and, needless to say, as a “feminist and Marxist”, as I announced myself to be in our first interview with influential music monthly, SPEX). This was reflected in my songs and the interviews that accompanied the release of our second—and most successful—album. The record companies were alarmed, but not so much that they wouldn’t pay for expensively produced videos in Norwegian fjords, complete with simulated dynamite fishing (including a motorboat), a team of technical experts, a makeup artist, and the stylist who put my bandmates into ridiculously expensive “dandyesque”, hand-tailored suits.
However, there were also early cancellations: but not in the spirit you’d imagine. A fashion designer who was supposed to put me in her clothes to promote her brand cancelled the contract after the SPEX interview, as she, according to my record label, “didn’t want to be associated with feminism” (hi there, 1998). At the time, my bandmates told me in confidence that it was “all a bit much with the politics”. But they would never have dreamed of leaving because their lead singer happened to be outspoken on some political matters. They would never have branded me an “extremist”. To be sure, I was a curious phenomenon even then, but nobody called me “controversial”. If anything, we were asked to play at Antifa benefit gigs. This was mostly a harrowing experience, even in the late 90s/early 2000s: you could think that Nazis were everywhere and just waiting for the next Ermächtigung, even though all around us were left-radical pubs with slogans saying “Deutschland verrecke!”
But with the encroachment—not of politics, but of political correctness, as it was then called—into every aspect of life, musicians, like other artists, were asked to take a stand. This began sometime in the early 2000s, with the anti-G7/WEF protests, and a more general anti-American/anti-capitalist sentiment in the underground music scene, and accelerated during the financial crisis, followed by the Occupy Wall Street protests (2009-2011) and then the refugee crisis (2014-2015), by which time I had already largely left playing in bands behind (I produced solo recordings instead). However, the cultural workers’ new missionary self-understanding reached new heights with #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. While some contract partners working with the music business in the 1990s didn’t “want to be associated with feminism”, feminism was now the sine qua non for “making it” in the glamour professions. Imagine my feelings of vindication. Except that now, I was on the other side. I certainly didn’t feel that the world’s greatest tragedy consisted in B-list actresses or aspiring members of bohemia having bad sex.
While some contract partners working with the music business in the 1990s didn’t “want to be associated with feminism”, feminism was now the sine qua non for “making it” in the glamour professions.
Roughly in the past two decades, rock’n’roll and pop music has become an HR-approved business. Rock now ticks the boxes of the current thing and no longer dares to live up to its name. The headache that I get from the vacuousness of everyone from Lady Gaga to Lana del Rey to Billie Eilish to Lorde, from Kate Tempest (urgh) to the sanitized, but mostly just aggressively asexual vibes of Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, and whatever Sabrina Carpenter is supposed to represent, the staleness of “new” R’n’B artists such as Kendrick Lamar, has been one of the reasons why I no longer seek out what had been my elixir for years (I have turned to 1970s dad rock instead: The Grateful Dead, CSNY, Sealevel, Little Feat).
But how did culture, and especially music, get so sanitized, well-adjusted, social justice cause-approved? Why did everyone in the music business become so predictable and boring?
Why did everyone in the music business become so predictable and boring?
In the beginning, rock’n’roll—take, for instance, Little Richard’s and Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano playing—had not been associated with any political leaning. But it had been a provocation to the status quo. In the 1960s, however, with Vietnam and the advent of the Summer of Love’s lasting impact on the US music scene (which still stylistically dominates the Billboard Charts), something changed. Rock music became associated with the Left. The short story is then that when the Left—its authoritarian variant that rose to power with Greta Thunberg, with the new racialist and identitarian university ideology (and university ideology more broadly), and then with Covid, and which today expresses itself in the language of PowerPoint presentations at Palestine Solidarity events—became the dominant political force, rock’n’roll was no longer interesting or challenging to the status quo, because it became the status quo. “The long march through the institutions” has finally come to an end in the universal applicability of HR Codes of Conduct to song lyrics. Keir Starmer would approve.
Gone is the freedom that rock once promised, gone are the provocations, whose last spasms I became a part of so many years ago. The wild child-hero or heroine has been put in the grave. Nothing could be more passé than the spirit that Richard Hell or Joan Jett, or even Lemmy, incorporated.
Trump’s win, and the rise of some of the cultural forces of the MAGA movement (though it seems culturally exhausted in podcasting), did suggest a counterbalance to that. But this has not spawned any interesting music. And how could it, when Winston Marshall of successful rock pop band Mumford and Sons got cancelled for a Tweet complementing Andy Ngo for a critical book on Antifa? How could it, when a cool indie band like Mild High Club had a promo photo with their main guy in a hygienic mask (now taken off their Spotify page)? One of my favorite bands, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, put a child in a mask on the cover of their last album. Meanwhile, Australian rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard put out whole albums about climate change.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard put out whole albums about climate change.
Leftist cultural dominance is not only completely unbroken but thriving. Artists against Israel, Artists against J.K. Rowling, and then also P.T. Anderson’s new movie seem to be a nostalgic look at the possibilities of a real revolutionary force which it is imagined that Black Lives Matter, of all things, could have spawned. Left-wing culture is the culture.
With the Left unchallenged, culturally, it has not been surprising to me that the death of the rock’n’roll spirit has spawned a new, unholy fear of freedom. I can see it in my current band formation. We have played together off and on for five years as a hobby rock band. Everyone has other jobs, two of them with universities. During Covid, when we started, I sometimes clashed with my drummer, who incredulously asked me if I was with the lockdown-skeptical “lunatics” and “extremists” and said it was “selfish” not to get the vaccine. Unlike my co-musicians from olden times, with whom the exchange of arguments was invigorated by unafraid and enthusiastic interjections (and sometimes ended in the aforementioned erratic behavior), there was a fear of having someone around with “extreme” positions. Still, for better or for worse, we continued to play, mostly for family and friends, until we got ourselves some proper live gigs recently.
With the Left being unchallenged, culturally, it has not been surprising to me that the death of the rock’n’roll spirit has spawned a new, unholy fear of freedom.
I was looking forward to that day of a first live gig in a while, to take place in a small countryside bar/club: our live set was strong; I hadn’t caught a cold, as I feared; the equipment and PA had been set up. I considered my outfit and decided to wear a replica of the T-shirt that Charlie Kirk wore when he was murdered, the one that says “Freedom”, and which I had ordered online a few weeks before. We agreed to wear white shirts, and this one’s white, so it qualified. I did not waste one thought on it. In fact, I thought it would be a nice personal tribute, with (almost) no one knowing what it meant.
Then the gig came and was fun. Because we’re not famous, there were just a handful of people, but they cheered us on, and the venue was supportive and had even cooked dinner for everyone. During the latter part of the gig, I wore the shirt visibly, as I had taken my jacket off—and I wore it for the rest of the evening, when we were chatting with the guests, our families and friends. Someone came up to me, pointed at the shirt and said, “Hey, where’d you get that from? I want one too”. Nobody in the band had said anything.
I didn’t think about the T-shirt when I sent around the onstage videos in the Telegram band chat. Then came a message from the drummer:
“I don’t want these videos to be public. Elena, you should have asked us before if we are ok with you wearing a Charly [sic] Kirk Shirt. This is a political statement and we never agreed on this”.
I felt like I was being reprimanded by the HR office. Did this really just happen—were these words just formed in the mind of a rock’n’roll drummer? They were. And it showed a lot about the attitude I’m discussing here, the fear of being recognized as someone who isn’t palatable to the conformist clientele.
Admittedly, we had never agreed to political statements, but we also had never agreed to not have political statements. And then there is this: what harm is done? Had there been 2,000, or even 200 people, bad publicity might have been a factor. But even then: who cares?
My band did, or at least half of it. The guitarist added his two cents by saying it’s “not cool” to be associated with Charlie Kirk, as though that was the “cool” thing to say. The nice thing to do—something that wouldn’t have destroyed the evening for all of us—would have been the playful attitude, the tolerance of digression, the “hey ya, maybe not next time”, which I would have understood. But the “I don’t want these videos to be public”, as though Universal Music’s HR office had called, was a bit, perhaps, exaggerated.
The “I don’t want these videos to be public”, as though Universal Music’s HR office had called, was a bit, perhaps, exaggerated.
What this incident taught me is that the band’s reaction to a T-shirt also worn by an alleged “fascist”, who was strangely killed while defending freedom of speech, is precisely what made the wearing of the T-shirt necessary. Most people have forgotten what freedom is: the freedom of other opinions, of other ways to see the world. Yet rock’n’roll especially used to always have a place for that. Individual, artistic freedom, the performative act of freedom itself, was what made Bowie, Bolan, Lou Reed, Morrissey, and many others great. They used transgression as a way to dissipate the stifling boredom of our lives, defying stasis, the death of thought, ideas, and pleasures. “Good vibrations” is not just a catchy term. It was a song to defy death itself. It was meant to crush the nihilism of stasis. It meant to fight a “death within life”—the boredom of consumption, reaction, and repetition. Nothing has since changed so as to make that fight redundant. Fear, stasis, and conformity are still the death of the spirit.
In the woke era that we still inhabit, artists, whether big or small, have assumed a thoroughly technocratic understanding of art. Today you are getting cancelled not because the HR officers of art believe in something else than you. One gets cancelled for believing in something at all. Art has become the foremost expression of nihilism. Believe in freedom only if you can afford it. And they know you can’t. So you better believe in nothing at all. And this is why most people I encounter in the art and cultural scenes are crashing bores. Everything that could give you pleasure about meeting another person has been drained from them.
In the woke era that we still inhabit, artists, whether big or small, have assumed a thoroughly technocratic understanding of art.
It was just a T-shirt. And Charlie Kirk was just a boy. In the universe, these things do not matter: it will continue to exist. Would it not be good to sometimes remember that, as humans, we are more than only moments of natural causality, more than rocks and stones, and ash? Because as soon as we realize this, we cannot escape the reality of freedom. And how lucky we should be to partake as beings in that innate, immutable fact.
