Mitski Is Not Your Mother
Music is one of the biggest staples of entertainment in our modern time. Whether you listen through the radio, Spotify, or Apple Music, music has been a source of entertainment that everyone can enjoy and can give somebody the opportunity to make a name for themselves in what they enjoy. These artists all come from their own humble beginnings and grow such a fanbase that they are able to tour around the US, showcasing the best of their best. Or at least, that’s how it was.
Recently, Mitski has been going on tour after a brief hiatus; everything was going well. That was, until the crowd started yelling “mother is mothering” repeatedly in the middle of her performance, alongside numerous people in the audience who were meowing loudly in the crowd at random points during the show. This led the singer to cancel the rest of her show due to how upset she felt about the yelling while she was trying to sing. The incident caused a widespread number of videos on TikTok about the callout, mostly in disgust and disappointment at what the fans were doing.
However, Mitski is not the sole singer who has dealt with this type of audience; if anything, what she experienced was the least an audience has done. Not pushing aside the horrible actions of the Mitski crowd, but there have been many multiple cases of artists who had items tossed at them. This includes Cardi B’s viral response to a drink being thrown at her in the middle of a song, yet she received backlash for responding in anger even after being a victim of assault.
Concert etiquette is quite simple; it is the social and standard behavior agreement between three parties: you, the artist, and the people around you. Often the silent agreement is this: you arrive at the performance, you sit down, you watch the opener, you watch the singer perform numerous songs as you clap and cheer after every one, and you’re done. There’s nowhere in that silent agreement that you scream at the artist that they’re your “mommy” or scream at openers to hurry up.
I love music as much as the next person, but when it comes to the opportunity to meet my favorite artists in person, I never once thought to do something to interrupt an experience for others. So why do audiences still do this? Why are audiences not aware of proper concert etiquette?
The most popular reasoning for the audience’s decline in mannerisms is the lack of social boundaries. Significantly now that we are able to roam around freely, we can attend concerts after nearly two years, but it was always there. Especially in terms of lingerie and bras being thrown at artists, especially male ones. Stemming all the way from the 1970s with Tom Jones and Elvis, fans would be tossing their underwear and hotel keys at the artists, and it has been a tradition since then, though due to the pandemic the tradition seemed to have died down. But then it returned significantly with fans throwing bras at Drake. Say what you will about him, but you can’t deny that the news circulating about his fans tossing bras during his shows and how the sizes kept increasing wasn’t a bit concerning. He is not the only one, even female artists like Billie Eilish get lingerie thrown at her!
Just because we were out of touch with the outside world for a year and a half doesn’t excuse the continuous lack of respect for the performers and their boundaries, especially with something as inappropriate as that. How would you react if a random stranger you had never met before suddenly threw a bra at you?
The other reason could be that fans are, to put it simply, delusional. Especially when the pandemic hit, many fans thought that they knew their favorite artists inside and out just because they posted about their lives publicly. Social media was on a huge rise during the 2020s and still is today, but a celebrity showing their restaurant on Instagram doesn’t mean that you are best friends. These musicians are human beings, not play dolls. So once musicians were opening up about their lives, fans jumped to conclusions about the status of the power dynamic, saying that once they got information, they could treat the artist like one of their friends. Newsflash: That’s not the case, they are just being nice!
What happened to Mitski was not deserved in the slightest and now her fans will have to suffer the consequences of actions they never contributed to. Whether that means she will stop touring certain towns or not is up to her in the future. So the next time there’s a concert, be aware of who’s presence you’re in.
Photo courtesy of Julia Drummond / New Yorker
