I’m a huge fan of Neil Young’s music, whether CSNY or solo. There are lyrics that pop into my head. The melodies can move me. More than anything else, the songs bring me back to happy, simpler times. And there was a lot about his protest music that rang true to me, at least at the time.
I’ve never seen the Joe Rogan Experience, and don’t quite understand why a comedian and former host of a show where people ate bugs is qualified to offer much by way of insightful commentary. A lot of other people, apparently, like the show.
Young did something a person is entirely right to do: He decided that he would no longer have his music played on Spotify if it continued to host Rogan. He made his position clear: “they can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” This is how you put your money where your mouth is. Spotify said bye.
This wasn’t the only way Young could challenge what he fairly believes to be dangerous misinformation. He could speak out, which is like anyone else but with a Neil Young-sized megaphone. He could write a spectacular song, which everyone could hum and might win him a Grammy. Instead, he chose to tell a third party, a platform, a source of income of his own, to choose. So it did.
It may be that Spotify chose its money maker, as Rogan brings in a lot more people than Neil Young. Or it may be that Spotify realized that Young’s demand put it in the position of acquiescing to the Heckler’s Veto. If Spotify gave in to the veto, it would then be captive to any songster of note making demands on who should be allowed on its platform, what information was deemed acceptable. It’s a type of extortion, do what I say or else.
Of course, if Spotify decided to go with its bigger money-maker, and would have happily kicked Rogan’s butt out the door if Young was a better revenue producer, it still would have been within the parameters of its business duties, but it would be substantially less admirable. Greed has its place in business, but it’s not a lofty principle.
But what if, hearing Young’s call to arms, a dozen, a hundred other musicians (or the owners of their rights) signed on? Can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day, telling Spotify it’s Rogan or them? And friends, they may think it’s a movement.
Sonny Bunch argues that, in many ways, this is the system working as it should, a celebration of freedom of association, which inherently includes freedom of disassociation.
First, those who celebrate freedom of association should welcome the move: Freedom of association means freedom of disassociation as well. If your neighbors annoy you, you should always be free to move somewhere the neighbors are less annoying.
Similarly, Spotify should be allowed to decide whom to do business with. If keeping Joe Rogan is more profitable than keeping Neil Young — and it almost certainly is, given Rogan’s massive audience and his exclusivity to the platform — then Spotify should be able to pick Rogan over Young. And if that decision in turn sparks a wave of cancellations, with #SpotifyDeleted trending on Twitter, so be it.
This is all well and good. Content creators and content consumers alike choose their preferred associations, and we all go about our day.
So this is all good news, an exercise of rights on both sides, with Young choosing to lose whatever income he gains from Spotify and Spotify choosing to loose whatever revenue it will lose by those who cancel. This is the way it’s supposed to work. Or is it?
But I do worry about the continued fragmentation of society that attends the idea that everyone sharing a cultural space must align ideologically to coexist. Most would think it unreasonable for Young to demand to be removed from a radio station’s playlist because that station also plays Trump fans Ted Nugent or Kid Rock — or even if it played Eric Clapton’s silly vaccine protest song.
I’m even more of a fan of Clapton in any of his permutations, even though he’s said some pretty stupid and bad things. After all, he is a watch guy and he plays guitar pretty well.
There’s also a queasiness to Young’s attempt to convince other musicians to strong-arm Spotify by removing their wares, too. I’m wary of boycotts generally, as there are few limiting principles once you decide you cannot tolerate someone’s thinking.
By my definition, what distinguishes cancel culture from ordinary criticism is that it doesn’t end with direct condemnation, but with demands to third parties to act upon the criticism. In labor law, this would be an unlawful secondary boycott. Based on the same rationale, it’s wrong here as well.
Setting that aside, what concerns me most about all this is the siloing of society into warring tribes. It’s not enough to signal disagreement with someone when they do or say something boneheaded; the only response is full separation, an immediate partition. There’s something deeply corrosive about attempting to live in a way that demands everyone agree with you, even on a fundamental issue such as vaccination.
Did Sonny just discover polarization, the extreme fringes of the unduly passionate for whom every issue is life and death, thus justifying crushing the enemy no matter what it takes? Is this what he deems problematic?
Sometimes mass movements are the only way to solve mass problems, such as state-sanctioned bigotry. Trying to silence a rambling fool feels like small potatoes in comparison.
While there’s no doubt that many have fallen into the trap of making every ill, real or imagined, a life or death catastrophe, each of us gets to pick which hill we’re willing to die on. What’s “small potatoes” to Bunch was big enough potatoes for Neil Young to risk his music being pulled off Spotify. That’s his choice.
Whether he regrets it is unknown, but he’s entitled to take a stand he believes is worth the risk and suffer the consequences. Perhaps the only consideration that should not be forgotten is that, in another time, he could have been Skynyrd as the heretic. I like music. A lot. But I no more turn to Neil Young for my politics than Joe Rogan for my medical advice or Spotify for my listening pleasure.