Accountability in Music • Page 955

the solution unfortunately then is to be less online

 

A couple of acquaintances who I expected to go went

My actual close friends either didn't go or hid it from me and I accept either thing as a good choice

 

it's going to be another one of those times where it'll be a great, albeit heartbreaking, litmus test whether people value their allyship over some fleeting, wiggly air.

 

"But where else will I find an emo band with Telecasters and Jazzmasters"

 

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the value proposition put forth by Brand New as a concept isn't an enticing one.
I am also not going to retroactively start claiming that there isn't some actual fucking musical genius in that band.

But I'm also not going to compromise my set of morals and deeply held beliefs to consume some fucking content.

 

Fucking. A. Right.

 

Well said!

 

I am going to be in the vast, vast minority here, but I thought the apology was fine. I think any apology offered would have been met with intense scrutiny and skepticism. It would have been incredibly easy to deny responsibility entirely, call the accusers liars, etc - I do think he acknowledged his wrongdoing - not at all to say it absolves him of what happened.

But this is the Accountability in Music thread and I think Brand New are the poster children for no accountability. I’ve wondered for 7 years what actual accountability might look like, or what I wanted to happen. I think with their return, it offers another chance for true accountability - maybe further statements will be made or actions taken, but I am not holding my breath. I am not rooting for their rehabilitation, but I would be open to seeing an attempt. I want to see that they care at all.

 

you will keep wondering

they will not take it

they do not, as evidenced by the past 7.5 years

 

i swear to god the people that still support brand new are living in an alternate reality

there has been zero accountability.

there was no direct apology to his victims

there was no public acknowledgement by any other band members - we did receive at least that from Kevin Devine even if they're surely still friends privately

and the part that sickens me the most is that people act like he was just a shitty husband, or sexually coercive, or whatever - all of which are bad!

he fucking groomed children. young girls. not young women. girls.

come the fuck on dude

 

Once again - the lead singer of Sorority Noise - a sonically similar band - was accused of sexual misconduct. He got a mediator to work with the alleged victim, clarified the situation, released a statement with the alleged victim’s approval, quit playing music and is doing other work. And Sorority Noise didn’t have a modicum of the success Brand New has. Members of Brand New can live off of the album and merch sales and never play a show again. They don’t have to do any of this.

 

Maybe I'm living in a vacuum, but I'm glad to see that this BN return has garnered hardly any reaction. None of the music publications I get my news from (BrooklynVegan, Consequence, Chorus) has really covered it, not a single one of my music loving friends has made mention of it, and at quick glance it doesnt even look like their Spotify numbers had a noticeable upswing with the news.

Again maybe I just live in my own bubble, but it does make me optimistic that only a fraction of their pre-2017 fanbase actually still gives a shit about them in 2025.

 

you gotta appreciate this intense cognitive dissonance from people that will regularly repost infographics asking how someone could vote for a rapist while buying tickets and booking flights to see another predator sing. it's impressively stupid and I will never stop pointing out the hypocrisy of it

 

The comparison to how SN handled things is a fair one - however I don't think any non-touring artists that aren't genuinely massive (I mean pop-star famous) are "living off" of streaming payments, album sales or merch in the year 2025.

 

I was hoping they'd say something about donating to charities, or talk about the importance of treating women right on stage, but the more I thought about it – what incentive do they even have to do anything other than perform? They can just shut up and play the hits and it'll sell out impressively sized venues across the world.

The only incentive I can think of is getting back on publications' good graces to get the press coverage that a critically acclaimed indie rock band like them would usually get – but even if they did do all the 'right' things, it's not like all the tastemaker websites would just let them back in like nothing happened.

 

They are not going to donate to charities or bring it up at all. That would be admitting their guilt and they're fucking cowards. And also just not dumb. Idk in what world you could hope or expect them to do that.

 

I know in Jesse's case, his wife is a successful celebrity stylist. But also, Brand New continues to sell tens of thousands of copies of their records and has consistently sold merch even through their cancellation. They are not wanting for money.

 

They did that to condemn Martin Shkreli after he was caught wearing their shirt in 2015, and the liner notes of Science Fiction contained donations to Whitman-Walker Health, the National Organization for Women and the Southern Poverty Law Center that were made pre-allegations. Everyone already knows Jesse is guilty. I think you win back more people than you would lose by doing that.

 

I’m in an emo music group on Facebook. Someone made a post saying they’re driving 13 hours to the show and all the commenters are jealous. Not good.

 

Yeah, I don't see anything them being active with any social causes, both out of both cowardice and fear that an organization would refuse a donation coming from them and give them more negative publicity. They're likely going to keep their heads down, tour, probably release new music and never give an interview or public statement again, outside of press releases. It's the Louis CK method and it's sadly proven to work for canceled losers.

 

there are many BN fans who either deny this or try to minimize the guilt (i.e. buying his narrative reframing the allegations as sex addiction). they're not gonna do anything that frames them as being in the wrong. there's a difference between a shitty person wearing your merch and being the shitty person(s) yourself/yourselves. if they cared about accountability/making a statement admitting guilt, they would've 8 years ago.

 

Expected, it's a shithole and it's rare to get anything productive or nuanced out of interacting on here. I get recommended ragebait posts about Ronnie Radke and other figures of the sort on Facebook and even though I keep clicking on "Do no recommend this page/posts like this", they start popping up again after a while. I hate it.

 

The more time I spent on Facebook the past year, the more ragebait I get. One click on a baseball article and it's a ton of "Bring Back Trevor Bauer" shit. One click on a Rachel Zegler article and it's a bunch of slop sites on why she's evil. It's no wonder so many brains of older adults are reduced to well-done ashes.

 

Out of morbid curiosity I went to watch a video of their first song. The first 30 seconds was a bunch of people acting like it was the second coming of Christ and screaming “welcome back.” I got like 5 seconds into the actual song and the guy filming is screaming in such a bizarre way. I quickly closed it out and removed it from my watch history.

Helped me realize I absolutely could not ever see them live again. That’s what I already felt, but this was such a solid confirmation. I have a couple friends who said they’d go to a show and I was conflicted. But, I can’t be apart of anything like that. As has been said already today, no accountability, no lesson learned.

Fuck Brand New.

 

So you want a man coming back into the scene to admit to grooming girls, something that is a fucking crime, by donating to charities because we all know he's guilty so it'll make him look better. I won't bother responding again because you clearly just want a reason to feel okay about going to see them again. He is not going to admit guilt to make you feel better. He's a piece of shit that wants to pretend like his crimes didn't happen. And the band is complicit because they ghosted the world and hid until now. It's really just that simple.