Tom Dunne: I wish some of my music heroes would stay off Twitter
Clockwise: Lloyd Cole, David Byrne, Susanna Hoffs
Twitter celebrated its 17th birthday on Wednesday. It has changed the landscape of how we get our news. For musicians it has become an unavoidable tool for self-promotion but 17 years in, is it being well used?
The problem is mundanity. Many musicians seem to have taken to Twitter to let us all know that their lives can be quite mundane too. They don’t need to tell us that. We kind of already knew that. We did not come to them for more mundanity. We are good for mundanity.
It is mystique we seek. I come to my musician friends for a little bit of magic: a haunting vocal, a video, a harmony, a bit of imagination. A little timely reminder that there are things they can do that I can’t, sparkly things, bright things.
I personally like to believe that Bowie was really an alien, Robert Plant a man who can walk on water, and the Rev Al Green someone who communes with the spirits. David Byrne once declared himself to be “a white light from God.” I’m in the market for white lights.
There is an element of delusion here, but what can I say: Lads, use your delusion.
Take, for instance, Lloyd Cole (42K followers). He came into our world as a man who advised us to “read Norman Mailer” and “get a new tailor.” He wore Armani suits, read books, was foppishly handsome. You imagined you’d befriend him and travel together to Tangier to read Paul Bowles.
But these days Twitter reveals Lloyd to be a man who can’t decide whether he is more proud of his dog or his Wordle score. When he isn’t retweeting anti-Trump memes, he is commenting on football games. He is not unlike my uncle John, but John didn’t write Rattlesnakes.
Ron Sexsmith (58K followers) posts dad jokes and funny poetry. But he interweaves these with lovely stories on the recording of his 17 albums, and tour dates and reviews. His normality, his “poet amongst us” quality endears him and heightens the impact of his observations.
David Byrne (92K followers) continues to be a white light. His feed has a promo video for the return of Stop Making Sense and brilliant clips of interviews and upcoming events. He obviously doesn’t post himself, which is as it should be.
John Lydon’s (65K followers) is witty and bright. Again, you can tell he is not posting himself, but the posts are great. Currently he is plugging autographed printed photos which he is selling shamelessly, which is also as it should be.
Susanna Hoffs (193K followers) is as you’d expect from the ex-Bangle, just beautiful. She is about to launch her first novel, This Bird Has Flown, which has been described as “Bridget Jones Diary with guitars”. It has already been optioned for filming.
She also posts videos of herself singing into a tin can suspended from a string in her hall. You feel you are being allowed glimpse behind the curtain. Hers is a rarefied atmosphere, with fame and mystique dripping from every surface.
Jeff Tweedy (67K followers) of Wilco fame wins “most improved”. His early Covid posts comprised home videos of him in his pyjamas. Not it’s all professional plugs for his book How to Write One Song and an Audible release called Please Tell My Brothers. The relief is palpable.
Elsewhere we discover that The Violent Femmes (13K followers) are “nap enthusiasts” and Stephen Malkmus (52K followers) of Pavement was recently in a lift with Charlie XCX and she said, “good night” to him. Robert Smith (225K followers) of The Cure is lovingly booking dates and decrying Ticketmaster.
There is thankfully an obvious move away from mundane self-exposure to professional self-promotion. I think this is good. Yes, it means a little loss of charm, but also less opportunity for the trolls and the haters to get stuck in.
It reminds me too of advice an actor friend gave me once. “Never piss on your chips,” he said. What he meant was never do or say anything on stage that lessens the power of the make-believe. Onstage you have stage gear, lights and a PA. You use it to project something.
Social media is the same. It’s the same disparate audience. Maybe keep the Wordle scores, and your dental hygiene regime for a very small WhatsApp group of similarly-minded Wordle fans with clean teeth.
