Tvad is right we know what they believe, so the choice is ours. I don't agree with a lot of musicians religious or political views. But if I like the way they tell it and the the way the band helps them say it, I am buying the CD or LP. The beauty of the music is we choose who we want to listen to. It keeps the mind open and at the same time you get nice bass lines, or great guitar riffs, etc. Let 'em speak, at the end of the day, no one changed my point of view. Maybe they gave me food for thought and some tunes to enjoy. And I get to decide who's music, that sometimes conflicts with my point of view tolerable. In reality, when two people think exactly a like, one of them isn't needed.
Music and politics
A post yesterday about U2 prompted me to listen to them today. And one comment from yesterday got me to thinking. The author wrote dismissively that they should "keep their politics to themselves." (Those may or may not have been the exact words, but that gets to the point.) As I've been listening this afternoon, I've thought: I'm neither a born-again Christian nor a political leftie, but I do love this band. And then I thought further: If I listened only to bands or singer-songwriters whose politics were like mine, I surely wouldn't spin a whole lot of recordings. (For the record, I consider myself a radically pragmatic centrist with occasional libertarian leanings. Got any bands who'd fill that bill?) I care about the music, and not about what the people making that music happen to believe. Am I alone in this? Do others dismiss certain artists because of their politics -- or religion or the kind of car they drive or whatever else?