Shocking Update: Nail Polish Doesn’t Make You A Good Guy
Image via @Unsplash
Any other indie music fans currently having war flashbacks from the summer of 2020 after finding out Rex Orange County is yet another artist you have to remove from your carefully curated Spotify playlists? Because same.
For those of you who saved yourselves from the indie rock wave 2 years ago (back when doing so made you cool rather than just morally ambiguous) and were unaffected by the Burger Records Playlist Massacre of July 2020, here’s a quick recap of what you missed.
In the summer of 2020, multiple bands signed to the SoCal-based label Burger Records were exposed for rape, sexual assault, harassment, abuse, and grooming, riddling their generally carefree and easygoing fanbases with the worst trust issues ever. The Growlers, SWMRS, The Frights, The Buttertones, Acid Ghost, and Spendtime Palace were only a few that were dropped from listeners’ playlists like flies that summer, and Burger Records itself shut down completely on July 21.
Guess that’s what happens when you hire men who have never heard the word “no” in their pathetic little lives.
In short: we’re never trusting an indie/surf rock artist again without Googling “[band name] allegations” and scouring their associated Subreddits for at least an hour.
But for some reason, we were all still surprised and upset when English indie artist Alex O’Connor, known as Rex Orange County, was charged with six counts of sexual assault this past week. Why are we still so shocked when yet another indie rock artist disappoints us, and why are we still so incapable of identifying the signs?
The Burger Records controversy went down only two years ago, but we all seem to have conveniently forgotten one key lesson it taught us: violence doesn’t have a type. Just because a guy wears rings, nail polish, wire-rim glasses and beige grandpa sweaters does NOT mean he’s a good person. And yet, this is the facade that fools fans all time and time again.
Of course, it isn’t entirely our fault. These artists meticulously create images for themselves that are meant to convince us they’re ~different~. So many of these artists claim to advocate for women, but the second that fails to get them any pussy, they decide to take it for themselves, nonconsensually. SWMRS literally made it PART OF THEIR BRAND that their shows were “safe spaces” for women, and were then exposed for literal crimes against women. After that doozy, nothing should surprise us anymore. But somehow, it works every time.
That guy in your creative writing class who wears a beanie and Doc Martens every day? The one from your hometown who listens to Mac DeMarco religiously? The one
who makes sure that a guitar somehow materializes at every shindig he attends, and then takes it upon himself to grace the entire room with his mediocre-at-best rendition of “Wonderwall”? Try not to jump to conclusions about them.
From here on out, let’s make sure it takes a little more than painted nails and a guitar riff to convince us that the self-proclaimed “nice guys” in our lives are actually nice guys. We owe it to ourselves, the people who’ve been harassed or assaulted by the artists we SWEAR would never hurt a fly.
A big fuck you to Rex Orange County from all of us at Jerk. Believe survivors. Rock on.