“Art is confrontation.”

– Rick Rubin,
The Creative Act

 

 

Living up to its name, Incubus’s politically-charged 2004 album A Crow Left of the Murder stands out, even today, as the odd one in their portfolio. (It was also my introduction to the band when I was in high school, with Sick Sad Little World being my first Incubus song.)

Stylistically and thematically, the album is the band at their most atypical, and is a far cry from the mainstream appeal of its predecessor, Morning View, their most commercially successful album to date. 

With tracks such as Megalomaniac, Sick Sad Little World, and Agoraphobia, the album is a reflection of the social traumas and unrest that prevailed in the recent aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and during the War on Terror.

Especially during the album’s release, it divided the band’s fanbase, as well as the general public.

In terms of the former, many of their fans were expecting another Morning View. And considering how Incubus had never written anything overtly political before, the album must have really caught them off-guard.

In terms of the latter, the album came out at such a sensitive and turbulent time for the nation, when any deviance from popular political opinion was considered potentially dangerous. With the ongoing war, people were generally expected to be blindly supportive of their President’s leadership.

Unsurprisingly, the band battled swathes of censorship and criticism. This was particularly the case with the song Megalomaniac, which is a thinly-veiled dig at the Bush administration. Its music video, depicting a society brainwashed by government propaganda, was banned from daytime-airing on MTV, because it was deemed “unpatriotic”. 

Despite all of the challenges that Incubus had to face in the wake of their album release, the album has garnered a strong cult-following over the decades. Plus, the album’s themes have only become increasingly relevant with time. 

Reflecting on the legacy of Megalomaniac in a 2019 interview with Loudwire, the band’s singer Brandon Boyd alluded to Donald Trump’s then-presidency. “Megalomaniac is weirdly prophetic,” he said. “We kind of wrapped back around and came back to an even worse, more dangerous megalomaniacal figure.”

There’s a saying that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

At least from the way I see it, the overall point of art is to inspire the audience into becoming better people. This doesn’t just mean helping the audience feel less alone and more courageous in going through their lives. It also means giving them tough love at times, and nudging them to think differently and swallow certain inconvenient truths about themselves and the world.

As the artist, this requires a bold decision on your part. Because, inevitably, you will divide and alienate your audience. People will think that you’ve lost your mind. But, there will also be people who resonate with your art and advocate it. 

And the thing is, this is your art. No one else can actually tell you what to do with it.

Know that no matter what you do, you will always have people who don’t like your art — or you, for that matter. You need to have a thick skin, and get used to the varying degrees in which this fact can present itself.

You’d might as well be the odd crow in the murder that flies in the opposite direction, that questions the status quo, sparks new discussions, and expresses important things that everyone, including yourself, is afraid to express.

To quote Rick Rubin from his book The Creative Act, “Art is confrontation. It widens the audience’s reality, allowing them to glimpse through a different window. One with the potential for a glorious new view.”

“The goal is not to fit in,” he adds. “If anything, it’s to amplify the differences, what doesn’t fit, the special characteristics unique to how you see the world.”

Take inspiration from Incubus, who refused to restrict themselves to the expectations of the public, and even their own fans, in order to create music that they truly believed in. As their guitarist Mike Einziger remarked on their creative process, “We try not to pay attention to anything but each other.”

And lastly, take comfort in knowing that great art survives. If its message is important enough, it will find its way through its countless hurdles — not least, censorship and criticism. A Crow Left of the Murder is solid proof of that.

If your art divides the audience, you know you’ve done something significant.