“Perhaps Rock Music Isn’t Worth Saving”: Nick Cave Addresses Cancel Culture

Nick Cave has addressed the current state of rock’n’roll in a lengthy and poetic statement about cancel culture.

A fan posted to Cave’s website, The Red Hand Files, asking how he feels about the “the current trend of connecting the shortcomings of an artist’s personal conduct and the art they create”, and what it means for the future of art.

“Go to your record collection and mind-erase those who have led questionable lives and see how much of it remains,” Cave said.

“It is the artist who steps beyond the accepted social boundaries who will bring back ideas that shed new light on what it means to be alive.

“This is, in fact, the artist’s duty – and sometimes this journey is accompanied by a certain dissolute behaviour, especially in rock‘n’roll. In fact, the nature of rock‘n’roll is dissolute.

“Sometimes an individual’s behaviour is purely malevolent, and this surely needs to be exposed for what it is – and we must make a personal choice as to whether or not we engage with their work.”

Cave said that “not so long ago the big idea in the world was freedom of expression” and that “it looks like the new big idea is moralism”, something which he was unsure whether or not rock music would survive.

“My feeling is that modern rock music, as we know it, has anyway been ailing for some time now,” he said.

“It has become afflicted with a kind of tiredness and confusion and faint-heartedness, and no longer has the stamina to fight the great battles that rock music has always fought. It seems to me there is little new or authentic, as it becomes safer, more nostalgic, more cautious and more corporate.”

He stated the shift in ideals around the world could be “exactly what rock‘n’roll needs at this moment in time”.

“Contemporary rock music no longer seems to have the fortitude to contend with these enemies of the imagination, these enemies of art – and in this present form perhaps rock music isn’t worth saving.”

Cave also said that “perhaps rock music needs to die for a while, so that something powerful and subversive and truly monumental can rise up out of it.”

You can read the full response here.