Can We Ethically Love Bad People’s Good Art?

I admire bad people and I’m not going to sit here and talk you into believing that that is any good. In my recent post talking about my current CD collection, I showed off CDs from morally very questionable people and expressed interest in buying CDs of other morally corrupt acts, like for instance Grimes.

Her music is genuinely good and I’ve been obsessed with her for a year. Miss Anthropocene was very obviously written about Elon Musk and I can’t unhear that. But the project is objectively good. I love the production, the vocals, the people featured on it, – heck – even the theme of being some alien nymph who becomes this techno-fascist monarch ruling over humanity. It’s absurd, dystopian, and abhorrent. I like crazy and outrageous stuff, though.

So I was hoping that in buying the CDs and listening to those instead of streaming the music, I wouldn’t feel as morally corrupt listening to her in a few years time. While one listen through may not be much, I listen to this album a lot and it comes in surges. I don’t know what to do about this, though. I feel bad even typing this out, but like why does a musical genius like her have to be so fucked up? And no, she was fucked up before Elon; his sphere of influence did turn her from “bad” to “worse,” but as I said, she was a person with questionable takes and attitudes even before becoming a Nazi apologist.

The same goes for Lana Del Rey, although I didn’t dislike her personally as much back when I bought the CDs. And Beyoncé is a billionaire, yet I still bought RENAISSANCE. Why do bad people make good, enjoyable, and culturally enriching things?

Does not knowing about their evil deeds make it okay to support them in any way? Because, certainly, people like Grimes have always existed and made valuable contributions to the culture while hurting communities at large very gravely. However, in many cases, one could claim that their fans didn’t know and thus be sort of forgiven. But what do we do now? Do we – I – have an obligation to act differently because of the abundance of information we have about who she is?

I got into her at a time when I had pretty much no idea of who she was besides thinking she might very well be an alien sent down from an insect cocoon orbiting Earth and that she had children with Elon Musk who they called these keyboard smash names. So I listened to her a lot – and quite obsessively at that – for like two months straight before starting to dig into her personal life and seeing what kind of awful person she really is, who she chooses to associate herself with (white nationalists, eugenicists, and other Nazi varieties), and who the subject of her music was.

That’s why I can still listen to Miss Anthropocene and think “wow, genius,” even with Elon in the back of my mind, now that I got the timelines straight. This post is brought to you by The Complex Tragedy of Grimes. I think she is a complex person that is deeply fucked up from her own doing and also as a victim of abuse. This podcast made me aware of how irrational her backing of him is which speaks to the abuse she must be enduring at his hands.

But at the same time, that doesn’t undo the harm she is inflicting on vulnerable groups here. She is backing a white nationalist neo-Nazi who wants to free the lands from “undesirables” and manifest his anarcho-capitalist dream of ultimate corporate rule.

I guess, what I’m doing here is also irrational: I’m trying to find a loop hole in my moral system to justify buying her music instead of streaming it when the choice should be between listening to her or just admitting that she is at the point of no return – irredeemable at that – and thus not the subject of my admiration.

And I think the podcast is arguing about something different than what I’m trying to get at here, which is like how do I mentally deal with finding her music good and wanting to buy it?

And I realize most of this piece seems to be unintentionally dedicated to me buying Miss Anthropocene and not, say, Art Angels – another album by Grimes that I love and hold dearly to my heart. In fact, I’m listening to it right now while typing this out.

The reason why I’m not experiencing the same dilemma with her fourth studio album is because it was made in the Grimes-beforetimes. Would Grimes from 2025 be the same without Grimes from a decade earlier, though? My guess is that since separating her actions from her art is so hard for me, separating her past self from her current self would be even harder, and wouldn’t make justifying investing in her human expression any easier.

Ugh, I don’t know what to do! I’ll just hold out from making any decisions on that for the time being. This post turned out to be more about justifying buying the CDs than merely the ethics of just listening to it or finding it worthwhile. I’m sorry for the click-baity question without an answer; because I don’t have one. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

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