Welcome to 2023, where in the music scene, any musician of (almost) any genre can collaborate with whoever they want, and whenever it’s actually possible to do so, as well. Even in the worlds of pop and rock/metal, where there always seems to be some sort of weird debate on whether they’re even “music” (yeah, this notion is silly), there exists endless possibilities for exciting collaboration ideas. We already saw what happened when Bring Me The Horizon hooked up with Ed Sheeran for a revamped version of “Bad Habits”, where it actually helped increase BMTH’s audience even further than was possibly imagined.
It’s with all of that being said that it’s still somehow *shocking* when a pop or other mainstream artist expresses some sort of interest in rock, metal, or even heavier subgenres of one or both. Meanwhile, when presented with this shocking revelation, it somehow throws many rock and metal fans into a frenzy, like somehow these apparently “outsiders” aren’t allowed to listen to or perform these kinds of music. And in this case, many of the comments simply do not pass the vibe check.
This is obviously the case with what happened to Demi Lovato recently, who expressed interest in collaborating with both Knocked Loose and Bad Omens. While some of the comments were excited about the possibility of a huge popular artist collaborating with a band they may have seen grow from the ground up, others were…less excited, to say the least. This is pretty silly on multiple levels, the biggest of which is the personal attacks made against Lovato despite overcoming addiction and even an eating disorder.
What’s just as bad is pretending that Demi Lovato isn’t “allowed” to venture outside the apparent boundaries a mainstream artist should. It would be silly to dismiss the kind of impact a collaboration with either band could bring as far as more attention, too. If you think Knocked Loose (1.161 million monthly listeners on Spotify) or Bad Omens (4.6 million of the same metric) wouldn’t benefit from a collaboration like this, you’re ignoring statistics completely. Plus, there’s the obvious benefit of much different audiences being exposed to different kinds of music.
While there’s no idea what a collaboration would actually sound like, it would likely only be a net positive for anyone involved. Sure, you’d still get a lot of the obvious trolls showing up in full force like their lives depended on everyone knowing their Demi Lovato-related negative opinion, but considering these same people are usually also complaining about rock and metal not being mainstream anymore, it’s all a bit ridiculous. Maybe they just need to let Lovato cook before making such broad generalizations.
