When I’m working I have various playlists for various moods and there are some songs that stick in my head as ‘earworms’. Some of these earworm tunes I can quite happily listen to on repeat. I’ve decided that I’m going to have an occasional feature where I inflict my various earworm tunes. This week my earworms have been…….
Gretchen Wilson’s Red Neck Woman
Hawkwind’s ‘Urban Guerilla’
Yidcore’s ‘They tried to kill us, they failed, so let’s eat’
The Clash ‘Rock the Casbah’
Billy Bragg’s ‘A13 Trunk Road to the Sea’ (normally I’d file BB under ‘twat’ but this is a cracking tune and I’ve probably visited or passed through all the towns and areas mentioned in the song)
Elvis Costello’s ‘Olivers Army’
Amy Winehouse ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
“…normally I’d file BB under ‘twat’ …”
Me too, but I make an exception too – never found it hard to divorce my dislike for the artist and my appreciation for his creations…
If you didn’t to a certain extent divorce the artist from the art then the number of paintings, buildings, novels, music etc that you viewed would drop tremendously. Would you never look at a Caravaggio painting because the artist was an unpleasant brawler for example?
Eric Gill was another brilliant artist and sculptor who had a deeply odd personal life and there are loons out there who want the BBC to remove Gill’s sculptures from Broadcasting House on the grounds that Gill was alleged to be a bit of a nonce and a zoophilliac. Personally I disagree with that as unpleasant and nasty people can sometimes produce great art. The persons alleged crimes may not have any relation to the art they produce.
In a similar way although I greatly admire the anti-Nazi photomontages of John Heartfield and can see how it has influenced the political photoshoppers of today, that doesn’t mean I automatically have to admire his later lauding of the German Democratic Republic. I have a similar view of Leni Riefenstahl which is that I can admire the talent, admire her use of camera angles and lighting and editing but deplore totally the use to which she allowed her talent to be put.
It would be a very bland world if we only looked at, read or listened to the work of artists whose lives were squeaky clean.