Our Pop Superstars Are Failing Us
Now more than ever, we should demand more from the performing artists we obsess over
Today I’d like to talk about pop music. But first I want to share some statistics.
Forty-two percent of high schoolers today experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
Suicide has become the second leading cause of death among people aged 10-24.
Ninety percent of Americans believe we are currently experiencing a mental health crisis.
I ask you to keep those figures in your mind as you read what follows.
If you search the name “Taylor Berrett” on Spotify, you’ll come across a photo of me when I was much younger, and an album I released in 2015 titled Great Falls.
At that time, I was signed to a recording and songwriting contract with Warner Bros. Records.
One of my more popular songs (relatively speaking) is called “The Village, the Wolf, and the Boy.” You should give it a listen. It’s not bad, for a pretty straightforward folk-pop track.
The song is about anxiety. I wrote it when I was experiencing frustration at myself for being given all of these incredible opportunities — living in and traveling to amazing cities, meeting fascinating new people — but was unable to fully enjoy them because of the deep anxiety those experiences brought me.
Here are the first few lines of the song:
I want to see the world,
And find out what the truth is,
Or chase after a girl,
But I can't bear the newness.It’s who I am.
The thematic climax and central metaphor of the song occurs in the bridge section: experiencing anxiety is like living the children’s story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” except that you are the boy, the wolf, and the villagers all wrapped up in one.
Here’s the lyric that ties it all together:
The boy says something's wrong,
But the people don't believe.
And the wolf comes in the night
While your mind is trying to sleep
And I make up ways to steal my joy,
'Cause when it's real I don't believe it
And I swear it's just like being
The village, the wolf and the boy
It’s one of the lyrics and songs I’m most proud of from my songwriting career. I felt that I successfully captured what I was trying to communicate in a creative and emotionally resonant way. Over the years, I’ve had multiple people tell me that the song has helped them verbalize how it feels to experience an anxiety disorder.
But the song is still a failure.
Because it didn’t go far enough.
Let’s take a brief detour and have a look at a list of this year’s Oscar nominated films in the category of Best Picture.
Barbie
Oppenheimer
The Holdovers
American Fiction
The Zone of Interest
Poor Things
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro I think it’s fair to say that this list is a roughly representative sample of the films that both critics and audiences responded to most in 2023. You have a few genuine blockbusters, some mainstream-yet-not-quite-tentpole movies, and then a few arty critical darlings like Poor Things and The Zone of Interest. Basically, the list of Best Picture nominees represents the year’s “hits” as defined by both commercial and critical success.
Now, let’s look at that list again, but adding a brief description of each movie’s core themes/messages according to the filmmakers themselves and/or critical analysis.
Barbie — Embracing fluid gender norms, self-acceptance, healthy emotional expression, large-scale societal change
Oppenheimer — How non-ethically-guided progress can be destructive, importance of humanity in science, reckoning with mankind’s power over the planet
The Holdovers — Male isolation and connection, healthy processing of grief, pay-to-play education systems
American Fiction — Acceptance amid personal and familial loss, grappling with racial identity and expectations in America
The Zone of Interest — Fighting complicity amid hatred and discrimination
Poor Things — Female agency and challenging society’s expectations of women
Past Lives — Identity, interconnection, and the meaning of romantic love
Anatomy of a Fall — The cyclical nature of the world, how we perceive and interpret truth
Killers of the Flower Moon — Reckoning with racial injustice and violence, addressing unequal power dynamics, the resilience of community
Maestro — Love and commitment amidst personal challenges
Every one of these films, while entertainment first and foremost, also deliberately deals with relevant social issues. And that doesn’t surprise us.
In the socially and politically informed world we live in, we expect films to have something to say about it all. Not only to point to it and yell this is wrong, but to share ideas on how we can respond to it — to suggest paths forward.
In Barbie, we’re shown a vision of how both men and women would benefit from a society that holds neither in a marginalized position.
In Oppenheimer, we’re shown the risks of a world that values progress and growth at the expense of humanity and global health — consider the parallels between the development of the nuclear bomb and fossil fuel consumption, or the breakneck pace of AI development.
Remember that neither of these films are art-house social justice pieces created by film students to be shown at obscure film festivals. They’re two of the biggest films of 2023 in pure financial terms. They’re blockbusters.
If they were a genre of music, we would call them pop.
In fact, most popular works in every mainstream art form, from visual arts to theater to reality TV, are all explicitly dealing with social issues. They’re basically required to at this point.
This is often written off as a new-age “woke” trend. “Surprise, surprise, my favorite medical drama just had to have an episode about [HOT SOCIAL TOPIC].”
But before art became industry, art was a means for communities to tell each other what was important. In Indigenous cultures, song was a navigational tool. It showed the path forward.
Today, in a world that is by many definitions in crisis, every major art form is beginning to recognize this role once again. It’s a wonderful thing.
Well, every major art form, that is, except for one.
Pop music.
Why do we give our pop idols a pass?
Not only are they almost universally ignoring social issues in their art (hip-hop excepted, though it’s got its own problems), they’re totally comfortable embracing some of the narratives that are most damaging.
Suicidal ideation, depression, hopelessness, pessimism, disenfranchisement, self-harm, violence, and more of the very issues devastating young people are being glamorized by the coolest, hottest, most famous people those young people have ever seen, and we’re all just okay with it.
The argument that these artists are connecting with disenfranchised groups, making them feel less alone, simply doesn’t hold sway anymore.
Why?
Because a large part of the reason those damaging mindsets are becoming so widespread is because of the perceived social value of those ideas. Pessimism and misery have become a social binding agent, one by which we’ve begun to define ourselves and our social groups.
Pop artists aren’t saying “You’re hopeless, and I see you, and I understand you, and you’re not alone, but there are reasons for hope.”
They’re saying: “I’m hopeless like you, because hopeless is what we should be.”
And when they’re not actively embracing the ideas that are making the rising generation miserable, they’re simply completely ignoring them with song after song after song after song about love, heartache, and sex.
Do you remember the late 90s/early 2000s when every damn movie was a paint-by-numbers romcom?
That’s the pop music landscape today, and no individual exceptions like one Billie Eilish song from the Barbie soundtrack or a Taylor Swift track about how internet commenters shouldn’t be mean to gay people has changed that theme.
Now, I know what some of you might say.
“But [my favorite pop artist] put out a song in 2019 about [certain social justice issue].”
That’s great!
But notice how the social issues that are addressed in pop music are only the ones that reach a cultural tipping point of OK-ness. Feminism, equality, and kindness. In hip-hop, racial justice. All vital causes, and it’s great that someone’s talking about them.
But that’s a short list. And they’re almost always presented in a protest context. All “this is wrong” and very little “here’s what we should all do about it.”
Where are the pop bangers about environmental responsibility? Decreasing personal isolation through in-person social interactions? Finding purpose and moving beyond pessimism and hopelessness? Where’s the Top-40 hit about not killing yourself?
Is it easy to write a catchy pop hit that’s socially informed and provides genuine insights for young listeners and is optimistic and doesn’t come across as preachy and fits into an artist’s existing brand?
No. It’s incredibly hard. I’ve never done it. I’m not sure I could.
My song from earlier? Its message was simply: “I have anxiety, and this is what it feels like.”
The more challenging version would be: “We have anxiety. And here’s what we can do about it.”
Introspection is easy. Extrospection is hard. It’s hard to create a resonant pop song that looks outward, that suggests paths forward. That has ideas about the world, rather than just feelings about love.
But that’s what we should expect from our idols. They’re meant to be superhuman. That’s the cost of being called a genius. It’s hard to walk a tightrope, and that’s why walking a tightrope attracts a crowd.
Our superstars are meant to be special. Different. They’re meant to be capable of artistic and social feats of strength. They’re meant to do the impossible.
And so I can’t move on from this question: In a post-literate world where rising generations do much of their learning and identity formation through the entertainers they idolize, why don’t our pop superstars make better use of their art?
And if the answer is, “Because audiences don’t want that,” I don’t buy it either. Our cultural geniuses determine our desires. No one wants a patriarchy-bashing movie about an outdated kids’ doll until Greta Gerwig makes it. No one wants a talky three-hour historical drama about scientists in chairs grappling with ethics until Chris Nolan makes it.
No one wants a pop song about improving teen mental health until one of our superstars does it, and does it well.
I love popular music more than any other art form. I have since I was an isolated little preteen recording demos in my bedroom.
But popular music is letting us down.
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Interesting point about current movies vs pop. Do you think there was an era when pop music played a different role--served the sort of function you’d like it to serve?
YES! So many great ideas here. Village, the Wolf and the Boy has always been one of my favorites of yours and that bridge lyric hits me so hard every time I hear it. This is actually part of why I left music for the TV/Movie biz - among other things I felt like songs didn't provide enough words or context to say what I wanted to say, and I was always worried my songs would come off as preachy if I did try to imbue them with this sort of socially conscious messaging. I'm finding that it's much easier to hide these ideas in subtext when you have 30 minutes as opposed to three - let alone a two hour movie. Hoping today's songwriters can find a way to make this happen!