Who Cares What Willie Nelson Had for Breakfast?

I keep coming back to a question I cannot shake. When did we stop listening to songs and start worshipping singers?

We have trained ourselves to care about everything an artist does except the art. What he thinks. What he says. His favorite color. Where he goes to church. What he had for breakfast. We can recite a singer’s opinions on a dozen subjects he knows no more about than we do, and we let those opinions decide if his music gets to live in our house.

The first example that comes to mind is Willie Nelson. Willie’s art is seminal, culture-changing, immeasurably influential, transcending genre. Yet Willie does what Willie does, so every time he makes a statement about politics or weed or religion, fans who see it different get angry, say they will not listen anymore, talk boycott, blah blah blah. Who cares? Who cares where Willie goes to church or who he wants you to vote for or if he wants bong rips for breakfast? “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” is still “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”

I do not enter this as Willie’s fellow sufferer. I enter as his opposite number. He is the giant on the mountain whose every remark gets audited by people holding his records hostage. Down here at the working level is a man who was offered the same little pulpit every stage hands a singer between songs, and who quietly declined it. Not from fear. Not from shame. From mission. I am a shelter for folks against all that, three hours at a time.

I just will not play culture war. I won’t. All the songs for all the people. Period.

You have criticized me for not taking a public stance. This is the stance. I vote my conscience and I shut up about it. I cannot muster the pretense it would take to think anyone should listen to my opinion on, well, anything really. The work is the work.

The song belongs to whoever needs it. I am just the fellow holding the guitar while it finds them. Who cares who I voted for, and who cares what Willie Nelson had for breakfast?