Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters insists he is musically more important than Drake and The Weeknd.
For those in touch with modern pop culture, Drake and The Weeknd are two profoundly magnetic artists that have dominated chart after chart. Roger Waters on the other hand, an unfamiliar name.
With both artists’ homes housing an immense and endless collection of silverware. The Weeknd is one of the only artists in recent history to have his own full Superbowl halftime spot, and well Drake needs no introduction.
So who exactly is Roger Waters, and what’s all the bloody fuss about?
With the way society and pop culture are at the moment, your fame is a blazing pocket of time, constantly under watch, from cancel culture, profiteer-driven record labels, and well, everyone else. Those who came before the modern age seem like distant relics. Should this come as any surprise? Not really, especially considering that Billie Eilish didn’t have a clue who Van Halen was. Probably thinking it was a brand of car.
Roger Waters, on the other hand, was a prominent music pioneer with his participation as a bassist and singer in the LSD anti-fa rock band Pink Floyd. I mean, their music did touch on themes of rebelling against the 9-5 way of life and just getting stoned out of your mind.
It’s as alternatively, anti-fa as you can get. But don’t let that take away from their musical excellence. Like any classic rock band, Egos got the better with the band eventually facing disagreement after disagreement, ultimately disbanding and fading in the headlights. While we may not hear from any of the remaining members of Pink Floyd, Waters still remains egocentric and unsurprisingly controversially opinionated.
So basically, in modern pop culture, when a big name like The Weeknd, Drake or even Lady Gaga do tours and arena shows, music journalists flock to the scene to write exclusive reviews. The reviews often become a small promotional element that helps drive interest and sales for the artist.
Roger Waters seemed to be a bit miffed that during his recent run of shows across North America, no journalists turned up.
In discontent, Waters wrote to many major newspaper outlets in Canada, asking why nobody bothered to make an appearance with The Globe and Mail explaining they had instead scheduled coverage for The Weeknd. Can you blame them?
With The Weeknd and Drake’s target demographics falling between the average age range of 13 to 18, this would mean the majority of their fan bases were born in 2004. Pink Floyd’s original line-up severed ties in 1985, disbanding in 1994.
Meaning most modern pop listeners wouldn’t know anything about the band. Seeing as they were born only 18 years ago. Following the disbandment in 1985, Roger Waters would later go on to sue his former bandmates for continuing to release content under the Pink Floyd name.
Drake’s seventh studio release, Honestly Nevermind, which is also probably his most anticlimactic, sold over 204,000 units in its opening release. Proving that even when putting out lackluster produced tracks, Drake still triumphs.
The Weeknd on the other hand holds a record for one of the longest ever number 1 track in America with his track Blinding Lights.
Yet Waters still believes he’s more important.
‘I have no idea what or who The Weeknd is, because I don’t listen to much music. With all due respect to the Weeknd or Drake or any of them. I am far, far, far, more important than any of them will ever be, however many billions of streams they’ve got. There is stuff going on here that is fundamentally important to all of our lives”
Roger Waters told Variety.
While he does have an argument, being part of the eighties counter-cultural movement and giving a voice to the silenced generations. He needs to stop comparing apples with oranges. Pink Floyd were cult icons, when they broke into the charts, it was with their more reserved and less psychedelically driven tracks.
In a way, they sold out from time to time. The Weeknd and Drake on the other hand, aren’t cult icons and never have been. They’ve always been progressive pop and rap icons. Not trying to counter anything, but rather be themselves.
Waters, on the other hand, has always tried to be a man of controversial views and radical politics, in fact, during one of Waters North American dates, it had been reported by the Brooklyn Vegan, that the singer printed a pre-show warning on stage which read “If you’re one of those ‘I Love Pink Floyd but I can’t stand Roger’s politics people,’ you might do well and fuck off to the bar right now.”
A word to the wise, maybe Roger Waters is better suited to the bar, either that or trying to educate himself on modern-day pop culture.