The Parasocialism Era

The other day, I was messaging with the writer Mo_Diggs on the topic of pop music and the culture, and how so few of the current superstars can speak to the pro-Palestinian movement, which is larger than ever and has fully enraptured politically-engaged youth. Pop stars did not have this sort of trouble with Black Lives Matter, MeToo, or resisting Donald Trump. Even Taylor Swift, perpetually apolitical, backed a Democrat against a Trump Republican in a 2018 Senate race and endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. She might be pulled off the sidelines to endorse Biden again. What she won’t do, like most celebrities, is go anywhere near Israel and Gaza. Calls for ceasefire grow—Drake and Dua Lipa have done it—but the core demands of the anti-Zionists will not be echoed by a vast majority of major label artists and Hollywood. Swift, herself, has not called for a ceasefire. This hasn’t dented her popularity; if there were grumblings, before 2020, that she wasn’t doing enough to oppose Trump, few have chided her for staying silent on the enormous death toll in Gaza. In the latter half of the 1960s, many musicians felt pressure to speak out against the war in Vietnam and to lend their voices to the cause of civil rights. It was the moral thing to do, and it could be lucrative: those countercultural baby boomers bought plenty of records. Subversion, or the appearance of it, could pay. Still, not all artists were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, or any of the other artists hovering at the Monterey Pop vanguard. In fact, it was trumpeter and easy-listening maestro Herb Alpert who, in 1966, outsold every other rock band in the world. We just think much more today about Revolver and Pet Sounds than Whipped Cream & Other Delights.