IT’S genuinely amazing what people will overlook if you can churn out decent songs. Why don’t more music fans care about these atrocities?
Joni Mitchell in blackface
Known for her introspective melancholia, Joni Mitchell has an astonishing history with blackface. She wore it on stage, applied it for an album cover shoot and even attended parties using it as a disguise. As late as 2015 she was referring to her ‘blackness’ in interviews. Knowing all this is so painful it manages to make Love Actually worse.
John Lennon beating his wife
By his own admission, Lennon was physically abusive towards women. Although he managed to to calm his temper in a sensible way with copious amounts of pot, LSD and, later, heroin. Beatles lyrics openly referenced beating up women and yet ‘goo goo g’joob’ is what people remember.
David Bowie doing a Nazi salute
Of Bowie’s many characters, ‘Off His Nut On Cocaine Fascist Man’ is probably not many people’s favourite. Openly declaring a love for totalitarianism and greeting crowds of adoring fans with dubious hand gestures was all in a day’s work for mid-seventies Bowie. Still, it was less offensive than that drum and bass rubbish he did later.
The Prodigy releasing Smack My Bitch Up
Considered one of the greatest dance acts of all time, fans overlooked some dodgy lyrics to experience an adrenaline rush of raw electronic punk. The band claimed it wasn’t supposed to be taken literally but it didn’t help that the video depicted drug-fuelled acts of sexual assault and violence. Luckily the twist at the end avoids any misogyny! Oh. No it doesn’t because that’s just the video and it’s still not okay.
Michael Jackson being an alleged paedophile
Everyone knows about Michael Jackson’s alleged paedophilia and yet society collectively shrugs and accepts that Billie Jean is a banger. Alleged paedophile Michael Jackson’s Thriller is still played at kids’ Halloween parties. There’s a bloody film celebrating alleged paedophile Michael Jackson containing precisely no alleged paedophilia. Thank God Jimmy Savile didn’t write Smooth Criminal or we’d be stuck with him too.
Eric Clapton’s racist rant
An astonishing racist tirade on stage in 1976 seems to have been largely brushed off as the consequence of substance abuse. How many people can say they deployed a volley of racist slurs and started chanting ‘Keep Britain White’ because they had a few too many ales? Hardly drunken snog territory. Tickets for Clapton’s autumn 2026 tour are selling well.
