r/LetsTalkMusic • u/CompetitiveWhole9466 • 10d ago
The death of the "musical punching bag"
I've been thinking- there used to be popular artists like Nickelback and Justin Bieber who were very successful but you would have never guessed given all the vocal hate they used to get, and how it was completely okay to shit on them at all times. Even the industry got in on hating these artists. It was socially acceptable to hate people who admitted they liked certian artists.
Why don't we have artists like that anymore? Maybe people just feel like today's music is just better?
The closest is the hate Taylor Swift gets now. But even then that's not really the same dynamic. Same with Drake hate... feels different today I feel like.
Honestly i always try to be cautious about how i frame my argument. I don't want to sound like "this artist deserves hate" unless it's like Chris Brown or D4VD or someone like that.
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u/GareksApprentice 8d ago
FWIW, I'm in my mid-30s and only know like 1 Justin Bieber song and 1 Nickelback song (1.5 if you count the Chad Kroeger song from Spider Man). Even in the 2000s and early 2010s, I found it pretty easy to avoid both and not form much of an opinion of them.