Some Thoughts on Music: Personal Preference, Diversity, and Accountability
I first heard of Half Waif when I saw them live opening for Julien Baker in 2017. I’m not usually into electro pop but there was something about this band’s sound that really captivated me. Afterwards, I followed up by looking up their live performances on places like NPR Tiny Desk Concert and Audiotree Live, both of which I also really enjoyed. During this time, though, the band was on the periphery, as I was getting more and more obsessed with Mitski and Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. I saw Half Waif again last night at their headlining show in Los Angeles. This time, Nandi Rose Plunkett performed solo, yet somehow she still managed to fill the stage with her presence. I was so blown away that I bought her album.
This morning, as I was listening to the CD, I was idly scrolling through her Instagram when I spotted a photo of her in a Sari. Wait, what?! I did some Googling and, yup, she’s part-Indian. I had no idea! This revelation filled me with Asian pride. I’m already a huge fan of her music after seeing her live the second time and listening to her album, but that made me love her just that much more.
Then I got to thinking: Is it a bad thing that I like certain artists based on their gender, race, or sexuality? I started listening to Tegan and Sara in the first place because of the novelty of them being lesbian twin sisters; I found out about Thao Nguyen as I was searching for Asian American musical artists. But with Nandi, it was the other way around, I came across her music first, then found out about her cultural identity. I do believe that Thao’s and Tegan and Sara’s bodies of work stand on their own, that I would’ve fallen in love with their music regardless of who they were. But who they were made me fall in love with them, not just as artists, but as people. I think it’s fine to want diversity in the people whose art you consume. Whether explicitly or implicitly, their experiences inform their art. Once I’d found myself rather unwittingly distanced from the music of straight white men, I’d found it kind of refreshing. It’s okay to be drawn to artists who may have shared some of your experiences, as well as artists whose experiences don’t quite mirror your own.
I wrote the following a few months ago, after seeing Thao perform live. At the time, I was reluctant to publish it for some reason. Coincidentally, in the last week or so, some news has come to light regarding Ryan Adams. I’ve never listened to his music, and now I don’t think I ever will. I’m a huge fan of Phoebe Bridgers, so it really puts a face to the issue and brings it into perspective. In light of all this, and my newfound appreciation for Nandi, I thought I should share this now:
For many years, Brand New was one of my most favorite bands. Their albums Deja Entendu and The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me were life-changing for me. I was so drawn to how depressing and self-deprecating their lyrics often were, and how experimental and challenging their sound was. I learned how to play a lot of their songs on guitar. I went to see them once, and even got a t-shirt at their show, which I would wear proudly at school for years until the color faded. I looked up to frontman Jesse Lacey as a musician, both for his vocals and for his songwriting. I never met him, though, but I’d read random accounts online that he wasn’t always the nicest with fans. The ancient beef they once had with Taking Back Sunday, and the fact that they did minimal press and interviews, only added to their alluring mystique. When they announced that their most recent album would be their last, I was heartbroken.
That is, until Jesse Lacey was faced with allegations of sexual harassment.
The band’s silence, which I once thought was cool, now looked like cowardice. Lyrics which once seemed like a guilty fantasy started to sound like a confession. I found that I was no longer able to listen to their music. I took down any covers I had recorded of their songs. I even considered burning the shirt I had of theirs, which would’ve been kind of funny because the image is of a tree on fire. I reacted a similar way when news came out about Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, and Kevin Spacey. I’d finished Louie (the show) and Master of None, regarding them as some of the best half-hour shows I’d seen, and I was two seasons into House of Cards . Now, any time I see their names and their faces online, I am filled with disgust. I can hardly go through clips of Parks and Recreation anymore, and I loved that show so much. It’s a certain kind of betrayal when someone whose work you’ve looked up to for so long is accused of such horrible things. For a while, I actually believed that you shouldn’t have heroes, because they will fail you.
In my second year of college, I was taking a class on Asian American Fiction, and it opened my eyes to the amount of literature that I was missing out on from people who looked like me and shared my experiences. I figured, if there were so many Asian American authors out there I didn’t know about, surely there were also Asian American musicians I should look out for. And so, through research, I discovered Thao Nguyen. I tried getting into her music, listening to her first album, but was initially put off by her indie/folk sound, as it wasn’t really what I was into at the time. But still, I was thrilled that someone with my last name was making it in the music biz.
Flash forward a few years, and a Mitski song is covered on Adventure Time, one of my favorite shows. I looked into Mitski’s albums and was blown away. I immediately learned every song I could of hers, and I tried getting my friends to join me in recording covers. Through her, I then discovered a bunch of other artists, some of them Asian American, but all of them female. After a while, I figured, I should give Thao Nguyen another shot. So, I did the logical thing (haha) and skipped a few albums, going from her first album straight to her most recent one, and boy was I glad I did so. As obsessed as I am with Mitski, some days the only thing I want to listen to is that new Thao album. From there, I went backwards, listening to her third album, and then her second, and I found that, hey, I like these albums a lot, too. When she tweeted out that she was playing a free show in LA, I made plans right away to go see her.
For the past maybe year and a half, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to female artists, some of them Asian, some of them LGBTQ+. I would like to think that this is me being more open-minded towards the kinds of artists I am drawn to, but at around the same time this was happening, all the stuff with Brand New and Jesse Lacey went down, and for some reason, not only was I unable to listen to Brand New, I also had little interest in listening to new albums from bands I had listened to alongside Brand New, whom I associated with the same era in my life. I’d like to think this, and my current interest in female artists, is more correlation than causation. I don’t want to give him too much credit.
When Thao performed her song “Meticulous Bird” (and I honestly can’t say for sure if this was from a video or from when I saw her live), she dedicated the song to, as she put it, “survivors of all kinds,” and that meant a lot to me, not as someone who’s experienced sexual harassment, but someone who is a human being who knows other human beings who’ve posted the hashtag #metoo on social media. She performed her entire solo set with such passion and energy, it was so captivating to watch. I was very glad that I returned to her older albums, as I was able to recognize more than just songs from A Man Alive. Afterward, I saw that she was taking pictures with fans, so I decided to get in line. When I walked up to her, I told her that I am also Vietnamese American, and that it means so much to me and inspires me greatly that she’s out there making music the way she does. I asked for a picture, and then a hug, and she was so nice and said she really appreciated my comments. From then, I realized, the lesson to learn here isn’t that you shouldn’t have heroes, it’s that if your heroes betray you, find new ones. Find better ones. For every Jesse Lacey out there, there’s also a Thao Nguyen, and when you meet that new hero of yours, they’re going to be awesome.
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