Melbourne songwriter Courtney Barnett has been criticised for covering Kanye West’s song, ‘Black Skinhead’. Image: showburner via Flickr
OPINION
The backlash that’s been hurled at Melbourne indie artist Courtney Barnett for her cover of Kanye West’s Black Skinhead is foolish and misguided.
In case you’ve missed the furore, here’s an explanation: ‘Black Skinhead’ is a song from rapper Kanye West’s most-recent record, Yeezus. The lyrics look at the difficulties of being a black man in America, an admirable topic for a mainstream artist to tackle. Barnett covered the song for Triple J’s Like A Version, and for some reason, the Internet decided that was not OK.
In reworking the song, Barnett changed some of the lyrics because she deemed them to be “rude”. Words like the N-word and lines such as “stop all that coon shit” were changed to “people” and “stop all that coon cheese” respectively.
For that she’s been called “ignorant”, a “racist” and had vile and vulgar insults thrown at her from an army of keyboard warriors from all over the internet world. (Check out some of the comments on the YouTube video above.)
Explaining the cover in response to the backlash, Barnett said: “I chose this song because I wanted to challenge myself as a musician, that was my only intention. I respect and admire the original song and artist. My misjudgement was tackling the arrangement of this song without considering the wider context of the lyrics.”
This cover was a musical and artistic experiment – Barnett was moving out of her stylistic comfort zone. And reading between the lines, she obviously changed words such as the N-word so she wasn’t labelled a racist. “What right does she have to use words like that?” the Internet would’ve otherwise asked.
But somehow, one of this country’s most promising artists has found herself at the centre of such a discussion anyway.
Daily Life columnist Clem Bastow wrote: “Though it might seem like a harmless bit of fun, in my book, this is nearly as embarrassing for Australia in a global context as the Hey Hey blackface debacle – and people will see and hear it that way.”
Really? Taking a racist construct from America’s past and thrusting it in the face of viewers is the same as performing a pop song and taking the utmost care not to offend anyone?
Bastow, and the sphere of internet critics who have skewered Barnett for her cover claim, “this is not to say that no one can cover a rap song ever.” But their arguments seem to suggest almost exactly that. Or at least that white artists can only cover rap and hip-hop songs that don’t discuss issues of race.
That is a completely unfair proposition. The power of music is not just in its lyrical message. Usually it’s sonic appeal – melodies and instrumentation – that have the most immediate effect on listeners. Essentially, if the music’s not good, who’s going to take the time to listen the lyrics?
Kanye West’s song ‘Black Skinhead’, from his latest album Yeezus, details the difficulties of being a black man in America.
Let’s consider it this way: There’s a lot of white Kanye West fans out there and most of them won’t have had the horrible experiences with racism that West has. Is it ignorant or racist when they sing along to his songs at a concert?
Or are they simply expressing their delight at the incredible music that West makes? The latter it would seem. The same goes for Barnett.
Her reworking is not a parody of ‘Black Skinhead’, it’s an exercise in musical experimentation. At no point did she seek to trivialise the sentiment behind the song, rather, she simply wanted to try her hand at something new.
As one of Australia’s best emerging artists – and fantastic lyricist herself – she has more than the right to do so.
