A Manifesto on Fandom After Thinking About 'Sky Blue Sky'

Essay by Blake Tedder

I think Wilco's new album Sky Blue Sky has come around to be a good listen for me. It's no Ghost is Born but the band changed every album and since A.M. and Uncle Tupelo before that. There have been people dissenting to their direction and then eventually accepting and even liking more their new stuff. I think there is a problem with wrapping a band up in an image and a packaging of what we think the band is and what it means to us. That is what propels popular music, and is essentially the aesthetic of any thing.


Let me start by looking at the band as a whole and asking, how do we reconcile the differences between A.M. and YHF? the dynamic of the songs is wildly different: concise chord/verse/bridge/solo in a folk country paradigm on A.M. to songs that lead you everywhere other than what you would expect from A.M. on YHF. A.M. is also filled with sing-songs and general pop steadies while YHF is filled with dissonance and production with lots of noise, halfnonsense and richly metaphorical and imagistic lyrics. The band has obviously changed, some say for the better--some not. Additionally, there is essentially a whole new cast of players, and you can tell Tweedy's style has evolved and is ...well ... just different. But the question for me from an anthropological/psychological standpoint is 'What has happened here with the listenership?'

Is it that Wilco fans like all kinds of music? The drastic change from A.M. to YHF was on a gradient propped on the backs of being there and summerteeth but the differences for the fan base certainly would be polarizing. Or is it that Wilco fans have just believed whatever it is that Wilco is doing is good--sort of follow the leader? Or is it that the individual listener has changed and just happened to progress from liking country based music to the wild panoramas of rock style independent of the band's similar progression? Or is it that there are no more A.M. fans around and that Wilco's worldwide popularity is from there new sense of style. There are other questions along these lines. I don't know the answers to these but what I do notice in the nature of fandom i think is interesting that undoubtedly at nearly every step the average listener shrugs at the new material and eventually accepts it and likes it [ i know this is not always the case].

The only reason we have trouble talking about why Sky Blue Sky not being as good as the other albums is because we are attached to the idea of Wilco, the image. We are scared of any sort of corruption of the image, because it is a corruption of ourselves and our ideas, associations and identity that are wrapped up in being a 'fan.' Wilco is wilco regardless of how and how long you are and will be a fan. (note: I could just as easily be talking about Phish or Paul McCartney or Clapton, or anyone who seemingly lost it). The artist must evolve and live a life independent of his art, lest he become completely entrenched in that art. What he or she produces will be a reflection of his life. This is the nature of creativity and how experience fills the subconscious and the subconscious reveals itself in conscious intention or art.

For the 'non-artist' the nature of creativity or this experience that fills the subconscious and reveals itself has less intention, and thus is not art in the conventional sense; however, it may have just as much fervor to reveal itself in another way. This is way can be fandom. Fans identify themselves with the emotions they produce while listening or watching someone else present their own emotions. Among these emotions are the way a song makes you feel; the energy you receive from a band rocking out; the wish to be them, etc. We as fans want to sustain these emotions--this happiness and individuality and connectedness--so we build an image with a sturdy outer shell and protect it from any threats (e.g. this is x band and i am a fan of x band because they do x-characteristic things and make me feel x-emotions; and i am not a fan of y band because they do y-characteristic things and make me feel y-emotions. well what if x band produces something that sounds like y band, where the hell do you stand? there is a problem in fandom, you see).

Fans must adapt and not be bent out of shape when an artist does something. An artist owes the fan nothing. It is the fan's choice to be caught up in a frenzy of misplaced identities and a weird posiive feedback system of stardom/fandom. I mean think of Phish fans. Here we have one of the nations biggest bands ending sourly and abruptly and the fans were not only outraged, many didn't know what to do. Not only did they wrap there identities in the band, they wrapped there life, finances, happy times, sad times, sometimes lot-birthing a child in the context of the band and not the greater world--it's mental fucking illness man

Sky Blue Sky has the dynamic range of A.M., the quirks of YHF, a hint of Ghost, rarely, and is most akin to Being There/Summerteeth... sort of on the other side of the evolutionary curve, but certainly IMO not devolving. In fact, there is no such thing as deevolution, because it's like an absolute value, you can only evolve--it doesn't mean better or worse. It being better or worse is a characteristic of the fan and not the artist, because if the artist is true to himself, he is only producing from himself and not for the fans. I think the album is a good listen and it's pleasing to hear them in a live studio recording, after the heavy production of Ghost and YHF, which are awesome but also offensively enveloping at times. And I also think if we can possibly drop the conception of Wilco or any band as an 'image' and us with the identity of 'fans' just for a moment every now and again, it's a refreshing way to hear all music for the first time, everytime.

I like Sky Blue Sky the way I like Round Room. If Wilco broke up or went on an indeterminate hiatus, I bet you'd learn to love it too.