I Twist Reality. Cancel Culture Wants Everything Straight.

I don’t write songs to make everybody comfortable. I write songs to make people think.

I take the realities of life and twist them around until I find an angle nobody saw coming. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s cynical. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. And sometimes the listener might wonder if I’ve lost my mind.

That’s fine with me.

I’m not trying to tell people what to think. I’m trying to give them something they haven’t thought about before.

But we live in an age of cancel culture, where saying the wrong thing can sometimes become more important than what you were actually trying to say.

And that presents an interesting problem for songwriters.

Life Isn’t Black and White. Why Should Songs Be?

Most of life happens in the gray areas.

People lie for good reasons. People tell the truth for bad reasons. Good people do terrible things, and terrible people occasionally do something good.

A happily married man can write a song about divorce. A broke songwriter can write about being a millionaire. An atheist can write about heaven and hell without believing in either one.

That’s called imagination.

But somewhere along the way, people started confusing the person writing the song with the character telling the story.

If I write about a murderer, that doesn’t mean I’ve killed anybody. If I write about a cheating husband, that doesn’t mean I’m confessing to adultery.

And if I write about the devil, that doesn’t mean we’re business partners.

Although I might consider it if he offered a decent recording contract.

I Twist Reality Because Reality Is Already Strange

I don’t have to invent much. Human beings provide enough material to keep songwriters busy for another 10,000 years.

We preach honesty while lying to ourselves.

We talk about forgiveness while remembering every insult somebody delivered 40 years ago.

We demand freedom of expression until somebody expresses something we don’t like.

We judge other people’s mistakes while hiding our own.

That’s the material I look for.

Not the obvious story. The contradiction hiding underneath it.

A man standing in front of a judge might be the most honest person in the courtroom. The judge might have spent 40 years doing things he’d never admit in public.

Now there’s a song.

Not because I’m defending criminals or attacking judges. Because I’m interested in the contradictions of human behavior.

The world is full of people wearing halos they bought at a discount store.

Cancel Culture and the Fear of Offending Somebody

Cancel culture isn’t simply disagreeing with somebody. Disagreement is healthy. I disagree with people all the time. Sometimes I disagree with myself three times before breakfast.

The problem begins when disagreement turns into an effort to silence somebody.

You don’t like a song? Don’t listen to it.

You think the songwriter is wrong? Explain why.

But demanding that nobody else should hear it because you don’t approve of the message is something different.

There’s also a difference between criticizing an artist and holding someone accountable for genuinely harmful behavior. Not every consequence is cancel culture.

Still, I wonder how many songwriters are sitting around today asking themselves whether a lyric might offend somebody.

Will this line upset religious people?

Will that line upset atheists?

Will somebody misunderstand the joke?

Will somebody take the song literally?

Will somebody dig up something I said 20 years ago?

By the time you’ve eliminated everything that might offend somebody, you’ve got three chords, a weather report, and a chorus about how beautiful the sunshine is.

Congratulations. You’ve written a song nobody can disagree with.

Unfortunately, nobody remembers it either.

A Songwriter’s Job Isn’t to Win a Popularity Contest

I don’t chase rhymes. I chase fresh angles.

Anybody can write another song about a broken heart, a bottle of whiskey, or a pickup truck.

There’s nothing wrong with those subjects. But what haven’t we said about them?

What if the broken heart is relieved the relationship ended?

What if the man drinking whiskey isn’t trying to forget a woman but trying to remember why he married her?

What if the villain tells the truth and the hero spends the entire song lying?

That’s where songwriting gets interesting.

You turn the story upside down and see what falls out.

Sometimes what falls out is funny. Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes it’s something people recognize in themselves but would rather not admit.

And that’s often where the best material lives.

Being Offended Doesn’t Automatically Make Somebody Wrong

Here’s another twist.

Sometimes the person who gets offended has a legitimate point.

Songwriters aren’t automatically right because we’re artists. We can be careless, ignorant, unfair, or simply wrong.

I’ve changed my opinions plenty of times over the years. I might write something on September 1 and see the entire subject differently by October 1.

That’s life.

But changing your mind because you’ve learned something is different from changing your mind because you’re afraid somebody might disapprove.

I want the freedom to write something controversial.

And I want the listener to have the freedom to tell me I’m full of bullshit.

That’s a fair arrangement.

Maybe the disagreement will even give me another song.

The Best Songs Don’t Always Give You Answers

I don’t believe every song needs a moral lesson.

Sometimes I want to leave the listener with a question.

What if the person you thought was the villain turns out to be the victim?

What if the person preaching morality is the biggest hypocrite in the room?

What if the truth doesn’t set anybody free but makes everybody miserable?

Those are the gray areas.

That’s where I like to work.

I want listeners to reach the last verse and realize the story wasn’t going where they thought it was going.

A good twist can change the meaning of everything that came before it.

And a good song might make you reconsider an opinion you’ve held for 30 years.

Or it might just make you laugh at how ridiculous human beings can be.

Either outcome works for me.

My Final Thought: Reality Doesn’t Need Permission

I’m 74 years old. I’ve lived long enough to see opinions, fashions, politics, religions, and social rules change more times than I can count.

What was acceptable yesterday might be offensive tomorrow. What people condemn today might be celebrated 50 years from now.

Human beings keep changing the rules while pretending the current version is permanent.

That’s another contradiction worth writing about.

I’m not interested in deliberately hurting people. But I’m also not interested in removing every uncomfortable thought from my songwriting.

I twist reality because looking at life from the obvious angle gets boring.

I write about contradictions, hypocrisy, human weakness, bad decisions, and the strange ways people justify their behavior.

Sometimes I’m probably the hypocrite in the story.

That makes it even better.

Cancel culture may want everybody to be careful about what they say. Songwriting should encourage us to be thoughtful about what we mean. Those aren’t the same thing.

And if somebody wants to cancel me because they don’t like the way I see the world, they’re welcome to disagree.

Just explain what offended you.

I might be able to use it in the next verse.

— Elvis Nash

Independent Outlaw Country Artist | NashvilleCalifornia.com