what they call love is a risk cause you will always get hit
It's 2021 and the title of today's newsletter features lyrics from a song that I haven't thought about in four years, by a band that I once loved. The band in question? Brand New. Their image is forever tarnished for me because of the sexual assault allegations brought up against its frontman, Jesse Lacey. (more on this in a bit)
And it sucks, because up until today, I'd gone almost four blissful years without thinking about that band or any of their songs.
Until I heard "Jesus Christ" on a college radio station this morning.
Which, brought up this question again: What do you do when a band you absolutely loved turns out to have a terrible person who sang the songs and penned a lot of the lyrics? Is it possible to separate the art from the artist?
Out of respect for the victims, in this case, it's absolutely not possible because the lyrics stem back to when the band was starting to gain traction back in the early 00s and looking back on them in the light of all the allegations just seems...icky.
But Meghin, why would you use lyrics from a song by a band that's been forever cancelled in this post?
Easy. In this case, it's the truth. Love is risky because you'll always get hit, and when the news first broke about this band, I felt like I had been hit hard in the heart. Funnily enough, the lyrics come from a song called "Play Crack The Sky," which 2013 me was very sad she didn't get to see live, even though it was on the setlist for the first (and only) Brand New concert I've ever been to.
Here is a photo of me crowdsurfing during their set at Penn State in 2013, during the Movin' On festival. I was absolutely elated that I was finally going to see one of my favorite bands and I thought it was cool that a friend had captured this without realizing it was me.
When the news broke, my heart cracked in two.
In 2015, I wrote my own sort of ode to one of their albums, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, which, up until 2017, was one of my "perfect Fall albums." Here's a little excerpt on why I wrote about it:
When I wrote that, I was 24, going on 25, and had a lot thrown at me that year. Had I known back then what I know now? I probably would've written an ode to a different album by a different band.
Like many fans, I used Brand New's music as a crutch to get me through some pretty rough spots in life, especially as an angst-filled "emo" teen who grew up as part of the "MySpace generation." Naturally, it didn't help that a lot of music I listened to in that era was wrought with sexism and misogyny, which unfortunately is still a huge part of the pop-punk scene (as well as a few other heavily male-dominated scenes) today.
I always think back to Jessica Hopper's "Where the Girls Aren't" because in those predominately male-dominated scenes, it was hard to be a teenage girl, or even a grown woman because of how toxic things could get. I didn't realize it at the time, but growing up, I didn't notice the toxicity the way I do now. It's funny what growing up will do to you.
It was also in the early 00s that allegations first started to creep up about Jesse Lacey, and his conduct with underage women. At the time, there wasn't a #MeToo movement or any sort of movement to believe women when they approached the world with scathing accusations. Instead, those rumors were just message board fodder, and things that would show up from time to time in MySpace comments. At that time, I was young and naive and discredited those allegations, solely because "not everything you read online is true."
As I got older, I started to hear of more bands in the scene get accused of sexual misconduct, ranging from sexual harassment to sexual assault, well before the #MeToo movement really took off. Some people dismissed it as one of those "boys will be boys" things, while others began to look into the problem to try and make the scene safer for fans, especially underage girls.
And of course, each time something new comes out about yet another band in the scene, the question of "but can we separate art from the artist?" comes up. Once again, in today's day and age, it is absolutely not possible to do so. I've got a long roster of bands I refuse to stream or listen to anymore, because I don't want to give them the meager royalties.
But every once in a while, this thought pops into my head: "What if you played their records on your record player? You won't give them any royalties and nobody has to know you're listening to them!" It's a guilt thing, really, as to why I absolutely cannot do that. At the same time, you might be wondering why I haven't sold off those records yet.
I was betrayed by a band that I loved dearly, that had an absolutely tremendous impact on my formative years. By a band that seemed to grow up as I aged, with their music becoming deeper; maturing away from a more juvenile pop-punk sort of stance.
This quote from a Vice article, written by Nina Corcoran, "Moving on After Brand New," absolutely sums up my feelings, even in 2021.
"What becomes of the artist and his legacy doesn't matter. What's more important is the personal confusion that fans feel now that the art they had built their personalities around is fractured. Watching a pillar in your support system crumble before you is scary. It can feel like you’ve lost a therapist, a supportive friend, or the sense that over time you, too, will heal. Looking back, transparent moments that felt relatable—like a 2015 speech where Lacey cries—are tainted by his alleged actions. It’s hard for lyrics in the opening of "You Won't Know" or the entirety of "Sic Transit Gloria…Glory Fades" not to take on new meaning in light of allegations. But just because you sought comfort in those words years ago doesn’t mean the lessons you took away are not valuable now."
I'm a different person now than I was when I first started getting into Brand New back in the early 2000s. I'm a different person now than when I wrote my ode to TDAGARIM. Over the years, I've learned a lot of lessons, ranging from easy lessons, to the really hard ones that left unseen scars. Losing Brand New hurt a lot of their fanbase, including me, deeply and it did feel like a huge blow.
But it's been almost four years since the scandal broke, and my life has actually become better without listening to them. It's why I was stunned when I heard one of their songs on a college radio station, and was too stunned to change it because that muscle memory of how comforting their music was to me is still in me. I don't think I'll ever shake that muscle memory because of how much their music meant to me growing up.
Of course, there's still a few questions left unanswered this year: How do we keep holding accused individuals and their peers accountable for their actions? How do we keep the music scene safe for young fans who didn't grow up in the toxic world that many of us whose "coming of age" was in the early 00s? How do we keep people from making the same mistakes we did in that era?
Most importantly, how do we make sure that nothing like this happens again?