Every major music journalism outlet has been following the story of Mark Kozelek's beef with the War on Drugs. The initial complaint—that TWOD drowned out Kozelek during a festival performance—turned into weeks of Kozelek enacting numerous public retaliations against the band, which eventually ended in music writers waiting with bated breath for Kozelek to release a promised single titled "War on Drugs: Suck My Cock".
The song, which premiered this past Monday, is an eight-minute explanation of the original event spiked with Kozelek's rationale as to why TWOD is, in his estimation, a terrible band, with critiques spanning the band's sound, influences—even their appearance.
The response to the track has been overwhelmingly positive, insofar as anything not explicitly negative or critical can be presumed neutral-leaning-positive. So far, it's been referred to as smart publicity, as being "just his sarcastic brand of wit," "admittedly goofy," and "the best (or at least most fun) dis track by a non-rapper since Taylor Swift's 'Dear John'." The Vulture, an offshoot of New York Magazine, called it one of the best songs of the week. The one vaguely negative response I've seen to Kozelek's recent behavior was written by a man who seems to be his biggest fan, a journalist who has interviewed him three times, and his major complaint is that Kozelek's behavior will lead to being remembered at year-end for this incident instead of his album Benji, released earlier this year to exceptional critical acclaim. Written before "War on Drugs: Suck My Cock" was released, the author states that he believes the song will be "beautiful and elegant and even funny," before explaining that he thinks the War on Drugs guys would do best to just ignore Kozelek entirely.
It seems this is most people's opinion of the one-sided beef: Kozelek, a notorious curmudgeon, isn't doing anything harmful by harassing these guys. In fact, he's just doing what he's always done—being a grumpy ass who doesn't seem to care what people think of him. These same people insist that ignoring him and letting him continue to do this kind of stuff is the best option moving forward. To speak up about this kind of behavior from artists and performers is to inevitably be met with, "Lighten up, not everything has to be political, it's just for entertainment."
When Mark Kozelek chose to start and carry on a completely one-sided and extremely public feud with a band who genuinely did nothing wrong, who chose not to retaliate and even stated their position as fans of his work, who seem hurt and confused by Kozelek's constant public attacks that persisted for weeks and how said attacks affected their year—that doesn't seem like entertainment. It's important to call it what it is: emotional abuse.
When communities band together to discuss integral elements of abuse, certain traits are highlighted as being indicative that a person is an abuser: "Male-pattern violence is often characterized by motivations of aggression, revenge, competition for dominance, [and] competition with other males." These are socially sanctioned behavior patterns that fit in well with "cultural prescriptions that are cherished in Western society—aggressiveness, male dominance and female subordination… [and] using physical force as a means to enforce that dominance."
Which is why, in all likelihood, Kozelek chose to say "suck my cock" instead of "I think your band is bad." "Suck my cock" is a command heard most often in two places: heterosexual porn, and schoolyard taunts between presumably straight boys. In no way does Mark Kozelek actually want his cock sucked by the members of the War on Drugs. What he wants is to make them feel violated, to make them feel submissive. "Suck my cock" is an order, not a request. "Suck my cock" is, when used by the wrong person, the language of physical force, the language of rape. He wants the world to know that he thinks TWOD sucks cock, implying that sucking cock is a bad thing. Who sucks cock? Not straight dudes like Mark Kozelek, but women and gay men. Which one of these groups is he using as an insult?
His behavior is indicative of a larger evil bred in the dark corners of the music industry, that of the middle-aged, straight white guy slowly fading into obscurity. He may be a musician or a music critic—could be both—who is obviously talented, but he isn't receiving as much attention as he used to. Maybe he sees other people getting the work or praise that he once received—younger people, women, people who don't agree with his worldview or go along with his way of doing things. With less to do now that he's slowly greying into obscurity, he spends his free time taking out his frustrations on soft targets: people who aren't likely to fight back, people who are already marginalized and without the platform or agency to speak out against someone with that amount of privilege and reputation. These men go off in interviews or on social media and take shots at anyone who doesn't fall in line with their worldview, and it gets personal quick. They're staring down the barrel of obsolescence, aimed at them by a culture where the most exciting music and art, as well as critical writing about that music and art, is being created by people they have nothing in common with. It becomes "you can't fire me, I quit" very quickly—they're no longer considered important voices, so they strike out against the people who are gaining traction.
This is why Kozelek's song is a seven-minute ode to how funny and smart he is for saying mean and sexually aggressive things about people he doesn't know: it's OK that you didn't invite him to your party, because he didn't want to fucking go to your stupid party anyway. If it wasn't obvious enough, in comparing the War On Drugs to Mellencamp and FleetwoodMac, he's actually taking shots at people closer to his own age, as if to insist that he's not like those other old people—that he's still relevant, still cool, that the War On Drugs crowd would be better off listening to his music, that he still in some way fits in with them. He's only imitating what his curmudgeonly peers are doing—fumbling to hold on to whatever relevance they have left in order to feel like they still belong.
These men are devotees of a dangerous patriarchal herd mentality, which they confuse for part of some imaginary intellectual elite. These men can't just be smart on their own; they have to be smart in a superior way that only exists in relation to the ways in which other people are dumb, generic, inauthentic. These are men who never learned that someone else's success doesn't mean their failure. It's sad in the same way that American Beauty is sad—to see these men holding on to their fragile egos and public identities for dear life. And their retaliation is, more often than not, aggressive and menacing.
It is imperative, when we see men exhibiting this manipulative behavior, for us to identify it and name it as abuse. This can be scary: some incidents, such as this one, are so public and obvious that it's easy to start an open dialog about why it's terrible. But when I sit with my friends and hear their stories about times they've been manipulated, intimidated, coerced or outright abused by older men in the music industry, I wonder how anyone ever feels brave enough to come forward.
This problem definitely doesn't get better when publications (including some that have, in the past, exhibited a modicum of moral and journalistic integrity) grant column space and attention to men who publicly engage in harassment and abuse. If we act like a sociopathic bent toward punishing complete strangers is newsworthy, if a song that refers to a female music writer as "some spoiled bitch" is by your estimation a "nice account" or "the diss track of the century," that blatantly reinforces that this sort of behavior is not only acceptable but worthy of praise and attention.
So don't write this off as the ranting of a cantankerous character, and definitely don't take the advice of so many enablers and ignore it. Instead, think critically about what this sort of behavior represents on a larger scale: human behavior doesn't come from nowhere, these traits are learned and reinforced by larger oppressive systems that also systematically disenfranchise people in many other ways. If we desire a more just world—and a better music scene for sure—we would be doing ourselves a favor to take the space we would normally dedicate to men like this and give it over to artists who represent a broader diversity of voices. This goes for music as well as art, literature, politics, any area where middle-aged white men have the most agency to make sure their voices are heard. The more of us there are, the more things will be like the show that pissed Kozelek off in the first place; no matter how cruel their banter gets, at the end of the day, we'll still be louder.
Meredith Graves is the singer in Perfect Pussy, whose album Say Yes to Love was released in 2014. She is on Twitter and Instagram as @gravesmeredith.