#again to be fair i haven't listened to a ton. especially stuff from when he was a KID kid

[leapinarmadillo]

it's crazy how ... well idk. i'm not justified in having this opinion bc i haven't listened to that much yet, BUT. it feels like stevie wonder's music as an adult was way way WAYY better than any of the stuff he did as a kid or teenager. maybe that's obvious or to be expected, but ofc i'm comparing him with mj. who did songs at age 10 that, imo, absolutely stand up with his best work as an adult. maybe it just has to do with the motown writers. and stevie was the first child prodigy at motown, so the writers and producers had learned a lot by the time the jackson 5 showed up

[jesuisgourde]

Hello! Sorry for the long ask, but do you wonder if some of the things the Manics have said in the past crossed the line between shock-factor and simple bad taste. I've come across an interview in which they mentioned that they don't care about police brutality (I think it was in 94'?) and the interviewer mentioned how even though he loved their music, that discussion left a bad taste in his mouth. Again, still love them, but every now and then, the way they phrased things made me a bit...uncomfortable? Just wanted to ask your opinion and how do you balance their "shocking-ness"?

Sorry again for the long winded ask. :)

I'm not sure where the quote you're thinking of about police brutality is. It's not immediately familiar to me, so either I haven't read the interview, or I've forgotten that one. In terms of that apparent quote in particular, I would turn to a Richey interview from 94 where he says that people should listen to his lyrics because they're about how the world really is. Nicky and Richey would say all sorts of things in interviews to rile up journalists or get media attention, but when you look at their lyrics, which are more thought out manifestos of their beliefs or polemics against social or political issues, you get a better idea of what they truly thought. It's interesting that that's the quote you pulled, since ifwhiteamerica, Tennessee, Intense Humming, Baby Elian, Let Robeson Sing, Revol, among others, all deal with racism and/or fascism and critique/condemn it. Richey also mentioned in interviews either while they were in America or after they came back (I’ve forgotten) that police were the main problem in the racial tensions that were happening in 93. They were there essentially during the Rodney King riots and recognized in interviews the importance of those events.

Nicky has mentioned over the last few years that Richey did a ton of research before they ever broke into the scene and had a whole thing laid out about how to get noticed and how to get people to pay attention and iirc there was some mention of Richey using that interview shock factor just to get people to stick around and read an interview and/or listen to the music. I also do genuinely think that in the earliest of days they just really liked riling up journalists, which is fair because the journalists so rarely actually asked them about their lyrics and it was mostly about their clothes or onstage antics.

There are some things that are just straight tasteless with nothing at all to redeem them, and they mostly come from Nicky's drunken onstage vitriol. The most intense one being him saying that he wished “Michael Stipe would go the way of Freddie Mercury,” which he apologized for a few years later and has mentioned many times since as a big regret and the product of him being extremely drunk. The Glasto “build a bypass over this shithole” is another famous one but it mostly upset festival-goers and I think it’s not the worst thing, especially since the Manics have been notorious since the earliest days for playing festivals while slagging off festivals at every festival interview. (And also slagging off a festival and/or town while drunk really isn’t a big deal). Most of these can be recognised as Nicky being drunk and talking shite he doesn’t actually believe, because at least post-Richey he did tend to express regret about them after the fact.

In terms of Nicky saying stupid shit now (which I can’t think of anything off the top of my head) or at least post-Richey, idk. He has become more cautious and more sensible since he stopped drinking and stuff, and Richey was always the person who was willing to take a wild stance just to bother a journalist (see: 4Real). I think the big difference is the wild stuff they said in the early days is so obviously just them doing the soundbite thing, trying to rile people up or pull people in or get a reaction. Because they were big on situationism and such back then, on doing the sort of one-two punch of saying something wild or ridiculous to get people hooked in and then a few questions later actually talking about what they believed or thought or were writing about. I also think Richey, for all his intelligence and political critique, sometimes said things without nuance or without doing research. There’s a quote from an interview where he says RATM’s “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” from Killing In The Name is a vacuous lyric, which is hilarious to me considering the context of the song. But I think he’d just get stuck in his head that his lyrics were more critical because they were filled with more direct references or whatever, and he’d forget that things can have nuance (ie, non-white musicians singing about racist police violence).

I have to leave for work so I’m gonna stop here but I might add more to this response when I get back? I’m not sure. The biggest takeaway is that yes, I think some stuff was said purely without nuance or taste in mind and it’s shitty but if it came from Nicky he has likely expressed regret. And that a lot of stuff that they said in interviews they either contradicted with more nuance or more thought in lyrics, or they were likely saying to get a rise out of journalist.