Kulturkampf

[benji]

But perhaps the question shouldn’t be how someone like Lizzo could ever engage in this sort of behavior. The better question is, why were we so convinced she was a politically progressive artist in the first place?

So how did we become so easily convinced that Lizzo is a progressive artist? Why do we feel so let down by her right now? It may be in part due to the context in which she arrived into the mainstream.

Modern political catastrophes have coincided with an apparent growing need for fans to feel like they have close and personal relationships with their celebrities. As such, there’s an unprecedented pressure on today’s superstars to create music that “makes a statement”—particularly one that lines up with the progressive values of young listeners while still being broad enough for repeat listens and sold-out stadiums. It’s these conditions that have given birth to artists like Lizzo, who capitalize on the trendiness of progressivism without getting too bogged down by its actual politics.

Today, there is no shortage of artists whose quasi-progressive signaling has been received as radical: Taylor Swift included the Queer Eye guys in a music video and then received a GLAAD Vanguard award; Harry Styles wore a dress and became the face of gender fluidity in music; Lizzo sang phrases like “thick-thirty” and was given the PCA’s 2022 People’s Champion Award for her commitment to size diversity.

Meanwhile, pop stars who are finding more detailed and thoughtful ways of championing progressive ideology are constantly facing accusations of hypocrisy. Beyoncé’s most recent album, Renaissance, was critically acclaimed for its studied and well-executed take on Black queer music, yet she was scrutinized by people who questioned whether a heterosexual star has any right to make an album appropriating queer culture. Then there’s Kendrick Lamar, who has long been heralded the torchbearer for all things “conscious” in rap music; his 2015 song “Alright,” which preaches equanimity in the face of profound injustice, is the closest thing we have to a contemporary and canonical protest anthem. But last year, Lamar was scolded for his song “Auntie Diaries,” in which he deadnames his trans relatives and repeatedly uses a gay slur. The discourse around the song punctured a hole in the rapper’s image as an icon of leftist politics, despite his attempt to shed light on the struggles of the Black trans community: something no mainstream rapper had done before.

The difference between Lizzo’s music and “Auntie Diaries” is that the latter fails not by skimming the surface of sociopolitical issues, but by clumsily ramming into them head-on. Songs like these have no room in our current culture because progressives have a hard time cosigning a political statement that isn’t executed with painstaking precision and consideration. It’s much easier to settle for progressive-core artists like Lizzo, whose messaging is so broad and empty, we can project whatever ideology we want onto it.

This isn’t inherently a problem; the job of a mainstream pop artist is often to create a picture of themselves that is just vast and blurry enough that, if we squint real hard, we can see ourselves in it. We just need to be prepared for the possibility that, should that portrait ever come into focus, we might not like what we see.

Not me, I always knew she was fash-adjacent and so don't even know what her music sounds like.