Maybe radio just isn't that important.
That has been the mantra of the major labels forever, especially in the country sphere, radio is everything and you move tonnage without it. But Morgan Wallen's been off the airwaves for weeks and not only has his business held steady, it's increased! One week's consumption could be an anomaly, but not two weeks in a row.
It turns out that Morgan Wallen is perceived as talented and he released the best country album of the year. And that's how music is sold, via word of mouth. Top down has been dying for twenty years, ever since Napster, now it's all bottom up. The purveyors don't dictate, the public does!
But Bob you say, Morgan's fans are all racist rednecks!
That could be true, well, not completely, but they're also people sick of the politically correct police. The worst thing that happened in Democratic circles this year was the decision to rename high schools in San Francisco. Is there ANYBODY who thinks Abraham Lincoln's name should be stripped from a public school? Well, I guess there are a few, living in a bubble in San Francisco itself, but the rest of the nation is laughing, it's utterly ridiculous. While we're at it, why don't we take down the plaque of Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium, he was a womanizer who liked to imbibe. Nobody's perfect. That does not mean we can't change, it's just that if standards are too strict, like three strikes and you're out laws, or zero tolerance policies in educational institutions, people end up rebelling, because they're unfair, every situation is different and...
I hate Betsy DeVos, but she was right about rape in college. It should be investigated by the police, not the administration, the same administration that is beholden to the inanities of special interests. Where is George Carlin when we need him? IT'S A BOOK! Trigger warnings? Maybe if there's a real trigger on a gun, but words? Aren't educational institutions supposed to be hotbeds of debate, of different ideas? Of course rape on campus is a problem, but such a thorny issue needs to be investigated without bias. Rapists should pay the price, but those who are innocent should not. Just like the death penalty, we kill innocent people on a regular basis, is this just the cost of law enforcement, of punishing those who deserve it, by death which has proven not to be a deterrent? Furthermore, police and prosecutors are not innocent. Which the accused might be. Let me see... Do you want to do eighteen months in prison or take a risk you'll be locked up for life? What would you choose with those odds?
So there's a whole set of people who don't care about speech transgressions. Are some of them racist? Of course! But we penalize someone to improve society at large. And the goal is to rehabilitate the offender, not put them in the ground forever, certainly not for speech. Believe me, you're just one slip from being canceled yourself, happens all the time, especially in a world where words go from all right to taboo on a regular basis.
And the world moves much too fast for anything to stick anyway. Morgan Wallen's offense was weeks ago, since then we've had impeachment, the Texas disaster, so much more. No one can keep up with all the news even if they're trying!
And for years lefties have been saying hate the person, but don't hate the work. Fran Lebowitz just said this on Netflix. So, could this same paradigm be applied to Morgan Wallen?
Or does it just come down to the simple fact that "Dangerous" is good, and you cannot deny good, especially in a world pandering wankers, where mediocre permeates the landscape and is sold as great when it is not.
They let Amy Cooper off:
"Charge against Amy Cooper dropped after completing racial bias education program": cnn.it/2NFq85C
The Black birder she called 911 about refused to cooperate with the prosecution, he didn't want to ruin Amy Cooper's life. She made a mistake, should she lose everything because of it? Funny how a Black man is more open than so many white people.
Then again, the test for being anti-racist is not what you say, what you believe in, but whether your actions end up improving the plight of minorities. If you live behind gates and refuse to allow highways and low income housing to be built anywhere near you, you're part of the problem, not the solution, don't ever think otherwise.
So if the goal of the left is to punish Morgan Wallen to the point where he has no career, is wiped from the map, it is not working. If anything, his fan base is growing. Another strategy must be employed to eviscerate hate speech.
Then again, Wallen posted an apology to Instagram, where America really lives, not on country radio:
www.instagram.com/p/CLIlsHGAp2k/
Want to reach the public? Do it online, radio and network television reach a smaller fraction of the public than ever before.
And speaking of online, the fiction that country music fans are backward and have not embraced the internet has been proven completely untrue. Morgan Wallen dominated Spotify when "Dangerous" was released. Country fans put up the listens, not hip-hop fans and certainly not rockers, who still believe Spotify is the devil and must be avoided at all costs as the format's footprint and influence wanes. I mean if the format is spearheaded by the Foo Fighters, you know you're in trouble. And some might say that's a cheap shot, but more than a month after its release, "Dangerous" is still #1, five weeks in a row in fact. Meanwhile, Foo Fighters' new album debuted at #3. Yes, country is bigger than rock these days, never forget it. Because country is more listenable, it may be the rock of the seventies, but today's rock is so derivative as to be unlistenable.
The times they are a-changin'. Morgan Wallen never should have said what he did. He should pay a price for his words. But the point is to get the message to not only him, but those who listen to him. And I'm not sure that is happening in this case.
Or maybe it's a matter of the one-eyed man being king in the land of the blind. The blind in this case being so much of the hit parade.
But one thing we've learned for sure, the institutions we thought were all powerful are no longer so. Radio couldn't kill Morgan Wallen's career, his fans like his music too damn much.
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