On March 4, indie pop artist Clairo announced that she would be rescheduling five concerts originally scheduled to take place this week due to a sinus infection, additionally stating in her Instagram story that she “just [needed] to take a step back from performing.” Considering the way that she and other artists—most prominently fellow indie pop star Mitski—have been treated on tour and online in the past few months, I’m not surprised that she needed a break.
In a video posted on Twitter during Clairo’s show on March 4, a fan screamed “You’re so hot!” immediately after Clairo finished singing “Blouse,” a song explicitly—and ironically—about sexual harrassment in the workplace, and she looked visibly uncomfortable afterward. While that was the most egregious example of blatant disrespect, it was far from the only one: The tour has been marked by stories of fans throwing bras onstage mid-song, yelling comments between songs that are annoying at best and degrading at worst, and screaming or having loud conversations with friends during songs like “Just Like Today,” which details Clairo’s struggles with anxiety and depression. All of these happened at the show I attended in Boston on Feb. 28, and they tainted otherwise incredible performances from Clairo and her opener, Arlo Parks.
Similar horror stories about Mitski’s “Laurel Hell” tour have cropped up all over the Internet in the past few weeks, mostly fans making sexual comments or calling her “mommy” while she was performing. This is even more disturbing in the wake of her now-deleted Twitter thread from a few weeks ago in which she expressed discomfort about being treated like a commodity at concerts, only to be met with comments like “I paid for this show so I can do what I want” and “You can’t tell your fans what to do.”
I understand that for many people in the crowd, certainly more than usual, these shows are either their first concert in a long time or their first concert, period. Even if we weren’t coming out of nearly two years without live music, both Clairo and Mitski’s audiences skew younger: Every other person around me at my show had X’s drawn on their hands, and most of the people near me in line used high school IDs to get in. But that doesn’t excuse the kind of behavior these tours have been plagued with.
While I don’t want to be one of those people who blames social media for all of society’s ills, its utter dominance over our lives during the pandemic didn’t help, either. Even though social media allows artists to connect more directly with their audience, the parasocial relationships that form as a result make it all the easier for fans to break artists’ boundaries and forget that they don’t know artists personally. After all, there’s a reason Mitski’s social media is entirely run by her management team. Additionally, the proliferation of memes like the hugely viral “Excuse me, mommy? Sorry. Mommy? Sorry.” sound bite on TikTok has resulted in a massive wave of sexual harrassment in comments on the platform, both towards public figures and ordinary people, that people don’t take seriously because it’s “just a TikTok meme.”
Another alarming trend that has emerged during these tours is that most of the people making inappropriate comments toward these artists are also young women. Both Clairo and Mitski have amassed large queer fanbases, myself included, and I appreciate the community these artists have created. But the women making these comments need to understand that harassment is harassment regardless of the gender of the harasser or the target (yes, calling male artists “daddy” on stage is also extremely disrespectful) and hearing comments like this from another woman doesn’t make them any less uncomfortable to hear. As much as you think you know an artist because you relate to their songs, you don’t really know them and vice versa, and there is no situation when yelling “Spit in my mouth” or “Step on me, mommy” at a stranger is at all appropriate.
In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you paid to go to a concert. Everyone else around you paid for tickets, too, and the artist deserves, at the bare minimum, to be treated like a human being. There’s a clear difference between singing along to a song or cheering when your favorite song starts playing and outright sexual harassment, and it’s disappointing that so many people at these concerts can’t see that. Basic human decency should not be this difficult.
