The Narcissistic Rise of Look-at-Me-ism in the Alternative Circles of the Music Industry

There’s always been a performative side to music. Artists have long been as concerned with how they look as how they sound, but what we’re seeing now feels like the natural conclusion of decades of hollow spectacle. The mainstream has been guilty of it forever, but what cuts deeper is how alternative spaces, once resistant to plasticity and surface-level artifice, are now just as consumed by look-at-me-ism. Style over substance is no longer a trope – it’s the default mode of operation. And the worst part? Some fans feed the machine because it’s easier to lust after an image than confront the lack of creativity behind it. The Cult of the Visual Before the Sound It has become SO apparent that some artists, mentioning no names, have decided to portray themselves as musicians just so they can be looked at through a different lens – especially in the alternative scenes where they’ll step on stage in an outfit that would have put them on the front cover of Bizarre magazine back in the day before it went out of print, or they dress up like the 80s rock/metal fan’s WETTEST dream and churn out half-baked music that screams, “I’m more […] The post The Narcissistic Rise of Look-at-Me-ism in the Alternative Circles of the Music Industry appeared first on A&R Factory.

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There’s always been a performative side to music. Artists have long been as concerned with how they look as how they sound, but what we’re seeing now feels like the natural conclusion of decades of hollow spectacle. The mainstream has been guilty of it forever, but what cuts deeper is how alternative spaces, once resistant to plasticity and surface-level artifice, are now just as consumed by look-at-me-ism. Style over substance is no longer a trope – it’s the default mode of operation. And the worst part? Some fans feed the machine because it’s easier to lust after an image than confront the lack of creativity behind it. The Cult of the Visual Before the Sound It has become SO apparent that some artists, mentioning no names, have decided to portray themselves as musicians just so they can be looked at through a different lens – especially in the alternative scenes where they’ll step on stage in an outfit that would have put them on the front cover of Bizarre magazine back in the day before it went out of print, or they dress up like the 80s rock/metal fan’s WETTEST dream and churn out half-baked music that screams, “I’m more […]

The post The Narcissistic Rise of Look-at-Me-ism in the Alternative Circles of the Music Industry appeared first on A&R Factory.