Now Father John Misty Is Trolling Taylor Swift (And Us) Over The Whole Nazi Thing
Trust FJM to insert himself into this.
Like anyone with two ears and a healthy dose of schadenfreude, Father John Misty has a well-documented interest in Taylor Swift’s career.
The folk-rock agitator famously took a “hero’s dose” of acid at one of her concerts in Melbourne, covered her album 1989 (though that was really more of a dig at Ryan Adams), namechecked her in his single ‘Total Entertainment Forever’ and, as he told Sydney’s FBi Radio this year, also happens to blame the election of Donald Trump on her feud with Katy Perry.
He’s now also taken to trolling Swift on Facebook. Overnight, FJM posted a long diatribe distancing himself from the “entirely unacceptable” scourge of music blogging (um, rude) — in just the kind of statement many think Swift should probably issue about her pesky white supremacist fanbase.
— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) November 7, 2017
“Unnecessary as this may be, it’s come to my attention that my music has been adopted by a certain online faction that has seen fit to interpret and present it via its own ideological prejudices,” he wrote in the since-deleted post.
“Though I am in no way affiliated with this group and have made numerous attempts to distance myself from its rhetoric and agenda I still feel the need to roundly denounce it, so with the help of my legal team and much prayer, here goes: music blogging is and always has been entirely unacceptable in a civic society — as is anyone who claims to be a music blogger or associates with music blogging.”
It’s a classic Father John Misty response to yesterday’s news that Taylor Swift sent a deeply petty cease and desist letter to a smalltime blogger who posted an article associating her with Nazi Germany imagery and the alt-right.
The letter might be Swift’s way of trying to let us all know she doesn’t sympathise with the alt-right without actually having to muster the guts to say it herself.
“Ms. Swift has no obligation to campaign for any particular political candidate or broadcast her political views, and the fact that her political views are not public enough for your taste does not give you the authority to presume what her political opinions may be,” the legal letter read. “Silence does not mean support.”
Listen to FJM cover Ryan Adams’ cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’ below.