Idolise the Idle

Thoughts on those we hold in high regard

As music fans, we often throw around the word “idol” a bit too easily. The false gods that we look up to for whatever reason.

Sometimes it is a word used with good reason, but for the ones where it doesn’t truly apply? Surely it should be broken down as to what qualifies them as an idol.

I’m guilty of it, I idolise a handful of musicians, and in my own way and by my own definitions I feel they deserve this lofty status. At the same time however, artists I have idolised have fallen from grace in my eyes and are now treated more with resentment than reverence. Usually because of an act that I deem truly disgusting, some cases may be something as simple as they will churn out anything because “the fans will buy it anyway” thus throwing away all integrity. Yet, in other examples, I separate the art from the artist because in the cases of some of music’s biggest names, we would be left with a huge deficit of music that we all hold dear, proving that by my own criteria I am guilty of double standards.

Some artists however are so defining, idol worthy and iconic that they are now borderline gods in the eyes of the majority, they are beyond the realms of being brought down from the pedestal they’ve been put on and may as well be that they live on mount olympus and are only seen when we attend the temples to them that is their live concerts.

Are they all deserving of this though? What about the artists who do little more than perform their songs and do no writing? What about the actual song writers who create the artistic basis that is then manipulated into becoming the next chart topping hit?

Do we idolise the wrong people in some cases? Is it the idle we idolise?