In November 2019, Coldplay released their eighth album, “Everyday Life.” In twenty years of professional music, it was the first time that any of Coldplay’s records came with the famous “Parental Advisory” sticker. A squeaky-clean lyrical history was interrupted, but not in a spectacular way. The whole of the album’s profanity came from three seemingly random “f-bombs:” one which is almost indecipherable given the ambient noise around it, another in a throwaway line on a song about gun control, and another which is a recording of a police encounter with a poor black man.
Not only had Coldplay never had an explicit content warning on any album before. They had never even featured a single profanity on any of their full-length LPs before “Everyday Life.”
Less than a year later, Taylor Swift released “Folklore.” The same exact thing happened. Despite a 15+ year history of recording that featured zero strong profanity, “Folklore” earned the black and white sticker for featuring multiple uses of the f-word. This started a trend for Swift: Every album released since has the same profanity and the same explicit content warning (as is common in the industry, the albums each have a “clean” version that edits out the harshest words).
It’s one thing for edgy rockers and rappers who have a history of swearing to release an album of explicit content. But both Coldplay and Taylor Swift have historically appealed to a younger, more sensitive demographic. They have a long and successful history of selling their music without profanity.
It’s hard to take both of these artists’ new blue vocabulary very seriously. Swift’s song “Snow on the Beach” features one of the most hilariously unnecessary uses of the f-word I’ve ever heard; it actually comes close to messing up the meter of the song (this becomes obvious if you listen to the “clean” version, which sounds a lot like it was written first). Coldplay meanwhile tried to sneak their profanity in. The songs that feature it are not angry, angsty anthems; the whole thing feels like a 13-year-old trying something out for the shock value for the first time.
I thought of this while considering
’s recent work on vice, which Brad Littlejohn has expanded on over at World magazine. One thing that occurs to me is that neither Coldplay nor Taylor Swift really sound like they mean those words, nor do they sound natural coming from them. What seems to be the case is that in the era of streaming, the parental advisory sticker has lost its commercial disadvantage, and instead has become something else: a trophy, a token, a symbol to listeners that this is “real” music as opposed to something phony.I have my issues with Aaron Renn’s “negative world” thesis, but this might be a good example of where he’s got his finger on something. In the current cultural milieu, it’s often implied that vice—whether profanity, pornography, gambling, etc.— is “authentic” in a way that virtue is not. Consider the way that FanDuel and other sports betting houses advertise their services. They say things like, “Make every moment more,” implying that if you want your sports enjoyment to mean something, you need to bet money on it. Alternatively, most people who defend the merits of simulated sex and nudity in film will argue something like, “Sex is a part of life; to not show it is dishonest.”
These ideas have been around for a long time, but it’s relatively recently that they’ve had the power of market forces behind them. The bookie will always commend your adventurous gambling, but only lately is he allowed to film a commercial that your children see in the middle of the day. Profanity is how “real people” talk, but until recently it’s also been an impediment to selling your product. Historically, people who swear a lot and wanted a really big mainstream audience had to filter what they said. Now, Taylor Swift and Coldplay seem to demonstrate the opposite effect: People who want an even broader audience need to show less restraint on what they say, not more.
Part of the cycle that modern American culture finds itself in is that the more vice becomes mainstreamed by institutions and tastemakers, the more it influences how regular people talk and act and think; conversely, the more people become used to and accepting of vice in public, the more “authentic” vice becomes, which is a signal to those in pop culture and education to keep pumping out more vice. Question: Is the drive for “porn literacy” in public schools a consequence of many children being exposed to pornography at young ages, or is it a cause? How can it not be both?
Profanity is a good example of the symbiotic relationship between popular habits and cultural gatekeepers. It was very recently that no serious intellectual magazine would print the unobfuscated “f-word.” Now, they do. This means that the same outlets that are considered important and authoritative sources on everything from politics to books are, in effect, commending the use of profanity to their readers. Yet it’s also the case that a young editor for one of those magazines is likely to have been influenced by the growing public profanity in music, film, TV, and literature. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’m not saying there’s absolutely zero space in pop culture for rough language. What I am saying is the barriers that used to existence between mainstream access and public vulgarity made it more likely that people would see profanity as something real, but not necessarily normal. There’s a reason the expression “excuse my language” was once common but has now fallen out of parlance. There’s no longer a sense that such language is something that needs to be excused.
But my point in bringing up Coldplay and Taylor Swift is this: We live in an era where the combination of authenticity and vice means that we are seeing some examples of performative offense. Performative offense is what happens when people indulge in vice less out of a sincere desire to indulge it, and more out of a desire to sell their image in the public square. It’s because many modern Americans now associate vice with authentic lives that leaders and those who aspire to leadership may flaunt vulgar or antisocial behavior on the grounds that such things make them “real” to the masses.
This is where conservatives must beware. Especially in nontraditional conservative spaces, there is a temptation for giving performative offense: For using profanity, vulgar imagery, hateful speech, and other things for the stated purpose of shocking an audience into attention or submission. The problem with this strategy is that it misunderstands the relationship between shock and virtue. Accommodating an audience to vice does not make them sick of it; it makes them used to it. And vice is not a tool conservatives can use, because vice will always serve the values of secularism rather than of transcendent truth.
Performative offense is also weak. A skilled thinker or artist can captivate his audience without it. A person with limited knowledge and abilities is the kind that has to rely on selling himself as edgy in order to gain a foothold. Such a reputation won’t be effective in the long run, becuase there will always be someone willing to do what you won’t.
In an age of vice, virtue feels weak. But virtue—the habits of temperance, self-control, truth-telling, and compassion—is what actually builds up people and institutions. The age of vice is exhausting. There’s only so much you can do to your body, only so many words you can come up with, only so much money to bet. In the end, vice is actually the less authentic option.
Vice may appear more authentic in today's time, it's also considered less boring. My guess is that most people who don't swear, don't experiment with drugs - the liest goes on - and just live an ordinary faithful life are just boring to most people. This dynamic also comes into play when picking a partner. Not few feel attracted to the “bad guy” or the “bad girl” while the “nice guy“ seems dull and uninspiring.
While we can bemoan this, a constructive thing we can do is being both virtuous and adventurous at the same time. In a way, Christians can indeed be a bit “soulless” if they just work, go to church and are polite. We should invite people over & feast together, love people outside our family actively, be active in sports, music etc., be witty and quick to laugh, learn to tell exciting stories, travel, get involved in important causes, etc. If all we have to offer is a Flanders-style Christianity, people won't be curious about Christianity.
I can't understand why Taylor Swift would feel the need to do *anything* to sell more records or gain a larger audience. I mean, how much bigger or more successful can she get?