Some students say they are able to separate artists from their art when their behavior is controversial.
Second-year business management student Michael Dang, for instance, still listens to alternative rap star Joji, despite his past as Filthy Frank, whose songs and actions have been characterized as everything from racist to homophobic to cruel.
“Oh, my goodness, ‘Die for You’ is a big one,” Dang said. “It gets me in my feelings, and I don’t cry ever unless I listen to that song.”
Music and TV fans on campus said it’s easy to forgive the behavior of their favorite artists because their art is so good.
Xuefa Gbaguidi, a first-year nursing student, still finds herself enjoying controversial artists like Kanye West when she listens to Spotify.
West has most recently been under fire for selling T-shirts with a swastika, which is associated with the Nazi Party, on them.
Julissa Mendoza Robles, a second-year creative writing student, agreed with Gbaguidi.
“There’s this reggaeton singer I listen to … called Nicky Jam,” she said. “He released an album that I really liked. And then, like, two weeks later, he was at a Trump rally. Oh, and damn, he’s Puerto Rican, and it’s very well known that Trump does not support Puerto Rico.”
Mendoza Robles said she was disappointed because the artist’s actions went against her own political views.
“But the thing is,” Mendoza Robles said, “I had kind of already fallen in love with the album, so I kept listening to the songs.”
The students said they put blinders on in order to enjoy their favorite artist’s music or TV shows.
First-year creative writing student Claudia McCandless is one of them.
“I view [drag queen RuPaul] with a grain of salt,” McCandless said, noting that the TV host hasn’t always been the most welcoming to trans women on his show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
On the reality TV competition, RuPaul searches for the next drag superstar.
“He was very hesitant to let trans women onto [the show],” McCandless said. “And he would make, like, controversial statements. There used to be a part of ‘Drag Race’ where he would say ‘she-male’ and just things like that.”
McCandless added that RuPaul was involved in a controversy in 2020 when he unapologetically admitted that fracking—drilling into the earth to release the gas inside—was taking place on his husband’s Wyoming ranch.
McCandless acknowledged that RuPaul has made the “Drag Race” community more inclusive by having trans women and trans men compete on the show.
“I’ve been watching [the show] since I was, like, 12, so I’ve seen it, like, grow and progress and become better,” McCandless said. “So I do, like, feel better about being a person that, like, watches the show, and I do buy merch sometimes.”
Mendoza Robles recalled a time in fifth grade when a friend told her not to listen to Lady Gaga because she smokes.
“Sometimes you just have to like the artist anyway, despite what others think,” she said. “People have different ideas of what is wrong as well.”
