HOT: No ‘Young Republicans’ on the Air?
Trump bashing generally seems to be almost expected from musicians these days, but apparently there are limits to what some music biz professionals will tolerate in terms of political speech. AltPop act Lower Dens recently tested those limits with their single “Young Republicans,” which includes lines like “We never asked to be this way/Born without souls or blood or skin/We’re young Republicans.” The band’s label, Ribbon Music, released a statement claiming that some radio programmers refused to play the song because they considered it “too controversial.” Ribbon said that the programmers didn’t give the song a chance and blacklisted it “based solely on its subject matter and title.”
WARM: Animosity in the UK
Meanwhile, over in the UK, another band lost a big career opportunity for expressing anger over conservative politics in their music. After a newspaper columnist called out politically-charged “Rave Punk” duo Killdren for their 2018 song “Kill Tory Scum (Before They Kill You),” the act had their appearance at the huge Glastonbury music festival canceled because the festival “in no way condone(s) violence.” The Killdren controversy spawned numerous thought pieces in the UK, with some seeing their words as incitement and inappropriate. The musicians themselves said the lyrics were meant to be “cartoonish” and had been intentionally stripped of the context of the “over-the-top nature of everything we do.” Unsurprisingly, the uproar has made the once-obscure act not so obscure anymore.
COLD: Safe and Sounds
A recent study by Auto Express magazine and road safety group IAM Roadsmart found that Heavy Metal and Classical music can cause dangerous driving, though in very different ways. The study purported that when the test driver listened to Metal, his driving was more erratic, while Classical music made him drive dangerously slow. Pop and Hip Hop were determined to be much safer listening choices, but loud volume was deemed to cause greater distraction regardless of genre. The scientific validity of the study is sketchy, though — the “test” involved just one driver doing a couple of laps around a racetrack for each style of music.
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