stan the man

    Since we’ve been reading Waiting for Godot, I thought it would be interesting to examine a different sort of wait, a wait for album releases. In music, there’s sort of a dichotomy on how artists tackle the wait between albums. Some artists work on music for more than three year. Others work on it in the background as they begin companies or other avenues of work. And finally, some artists manage to pump out of a new album every 1-2 years, working on it all throughout their tour. But in the era of streaming, where more music is worth more than good music, fans clamor for more and more music, begging artists to drop on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media apps. This mindset is extremely dangerous for the music industry, especially since we’ve been seeing more and more companies listening to the commotion, pushing artists to drop B-list tracks in an effort to momentarily appease the crowd. And while popular artists usually don’t feel the pressure to listen to this commotion, lesser known artists are able to build popular fan bases by dropping song after song as fans have nothing else to listen to in the musical drought. And similarly to Waiting for Godot, instead of being inspired by their favorite artists to make more music or do something else more productive with their lives, they simply sit there and wait, refreshing Spotify every Friday as they wait for a “surprise” release they’re sure is coming. 

    Die-hard stans consume all media relating to their stans, pedestalizing artists and dehumanizing them, looking upon them with no imperfections. Didi and Gogo do the same with Godot. They’re determined that day after day, night after night, Godot will finally meet them. It isn’t a matter of how, it’s a matter of when. They delude themselves and don’t act upon their needs. Instead of seeking out Godot themselves, they remain stagnant and don’t move forward in life, preferring for everything to be handed to them and done for them instead. Stans have this same mentality, where they’re constantly in a state of stagnation, waiting to act upon the things put out into the world rather than make the moves themselves.