Get In Early So I Remember You When I'm Famous

In an oversaturated music market, many up-and-coming artists no longer promote their music. Instead, they promise a parasocial relationship with fans who wouldn’t otherwise be listening.

Billie Eilish doesn’t like to refer to her fans as fans. The American singer-songwriter, who’s been in the public eye since the age of thirteen, prefers to call her loyal followers – those who’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, on concert tickets and vinyl variants – as her friends. On other occasions, she’s also been quoted referring to her fans as “my family… basically all of my siblings”. Eilish, who’s made her name on incredibly diaristic, honest lyrics about topics like suicide, abuse and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, naturally feels a kinship with her fans who share many of her own anxieties and traumas. It also helps that many have grown up alongside her, with the development and maturation of her lyrical content matching the trajectory of many a young person’s life. (She opened her 2019 album with a voice-note where she slurped saliva from her Invisalign; her album last year opened with a ballad about body image and aging.)

For Eilish’s fans, too, there’s surely something comforting about having an idol – someone so rich and untouchable – feel like they understand you. I say this as someone who’s been one such fan of Eilish for years, and will see her in concert for the third time this summer: the relationship she’s cultivated with her fans, one where she makes her personal boundaries clear while maintaining her relatability and personability, is ingenious. With her music, she sells the promise of an intimate relationship with you, the fan, but even divorced from its parasocial context the music is still inventive, witty, great. In particular, her 2022 album Happier Than Ever largely reckoned with her newfound fame, and though it wasn’t always relatable, it still enthralled with empathetic, incisive lyrics and lush soundscapes; one song, ‘NDA’, narrates a tale of being stalked, yet one can still locate relatable comments about isolation and disillusionment within the track’s contents. Even if you were (and I’m stereotyping) a fifty-year-old dad who’d never been famous, never experienced abuse, never felt seismically furious at an ex, you could still get something out of Happier Than Ever and appreciate its lyrics.

Some artists could take notes from Eilish. Recently, there’s been a great uptick in social media posts from artists promising the same parasocial relationship with prospective fans – but, in contrast to Eilish, the art never seems to come first. Instead of, say, “you should listen to this song” (though there’s plenty of that elsewhere on social media; if I see one more “did I just make the song of the summer?” TikTok I’ll walk into traffic), these burgeoning artists promise the closeness they can afford as pre-famous figures. For instance, I’ll wager that, for every “put this song on your playlist this summer” post, there’s another artist promising that, though their fandom is small enough to fill a school bus, there’s an inherent benefit to becoming a fan now, to discovering them ‘before they blow up’. Secure your place as a day-one fan now, they seem to say, and you’ll thank them later.

An example of the ‘get in early’ mentality that many artists have used in recent years to promote their work. I’ve omitted this artist’s name since, ironically enough, the tactic did not work on this occasion.

It's important, and perhaps obvious, to note that these promises are vague at best. Despite what Doechii haters might have you believe, fame can’t be truly manufactured; instead, it happens randomly and often unfairly, with artists being propelled to stardom largely at the whim of social media algorithms. Right now, some people are writing the most profound lyrics of our generation, yet you won’t hear most of them; similarly, though I nor many people see any value in the music of Benson Boone, he’s undeniably well-loved by enough people to have sold out an arena tour. All this is to say that, while fame is an admirable ambition, it’s also an unfair vow to make to prospective fans. Fame is unpredictable, unpromisable, unstable; it doesn’t always come to those who deserve it. On one occasion, I saw an artist on social media say that everyone who wrote their name in the comments would be put on a ‘list’ (how ominous!) and would, when said artist played arenas and stadiums, get access to VIP tickets. A sweet and generous thought, but also an empty one. Again, when something like fame is so abstract and uncertain, it feels a little desperate to stake a career on it.

Besides, you should surely be doing it for the love of the artistry – not just building a fanbase. Then again, perhaps all this is a symptom of marketing in the digital age. Artists have spoken of the pressure of promoting one’s work via social media, so if even commercially successful artists like Charli xcx and Halsey must succumb to the will of TikTok programming, how are smaller artists expected to get their voices heard? In this way, there’s a more sympathetic angle to take when analysing this phenomenon: I don’t doubt that some of these artists genuinely want more people to hear the music they’ve poured intense care into. But the promise of good music doesn’t sell on social media these days.

If this essay could have a thesis statement, it would be this.

Not to sound like your uncle at your cousin’s wedding, but there was a time when all this was very different. Being a fan of something half a century ago – say, being a fan of the Beatles – meant you’d buy records, go to concerts, idolise the object of your fandom. Crucially, though, you weren’t given the illusion of intimate access. Being a Beatles fan didn’t automatically mean you were John Lennon’s friend, it just meant you paid his bills, and in return he gave you music. It was a more simple transaction; you paid for goods, and received them in the form of records, of concerts, of memories. The Beatlemania phenomenon, when it transformed into something that took over the band members’ lives, was seen as an outlier. Back then, we no longer had the expectation of accessibility from our favourite artists. They were there for the music and nothing more.

Fandom, though, is now as much about being a fan as it is about the illusion of being a friend. Again, at the risk of sounding geriatric, the dawn of social media has brought with it the prerequisite that the public figures who use it keep us updated on their every move. When actor Joe Alwyn was dating one of the world’s most famous pop stars, he noted that he was considered ‘private’ simply because he was an infrequent poster – as though a constant flow of content manufactured from one’s daily life was to be the norm, and keeping one’s life mostly offline was abnormal.

The expectation of accessibility wrought by social media has bled into art, too. More than ever, artists are making their most honest, their most authentic, their most truthful work that they ever have. Consumers value feeling close to the artists they listen to, even if this is sometimes at the expense of the music itself; last year, Halsey’s The Great Impersonator, an album dealing with intensely personal themes of mortality and illness, became the subject of online conversation when music review website Pitchfork gave it a negative appraisal. Not unfairly, the reviewer - Shaad D’Souza - described the record as ‘emotionally potent but unremarkable’, which encapsulates how I feel about the album as well as many other ‘authentic’ works we seem to be getting lately. He wasn’t invalidating the feelings Halsey was feeling in her personal life, simply criticising (as is his job) the music itself. The problem was that Halsey’s biography had become inextricable from the music. The album wasn’t an album; it was a diary. When this negative review was brought to her attention, I can only guess that Halsey took it as a personal attack, and clapped back with furiosity.

The expectation of accessibility (perhaps I should trademark this phrase) has made the actual transition into stardom increasingly difficult for the more recent pop stars to be thrust into pop’s A-list. Most notorious is Chappell Roan, who’s (very validly, I’ll say) made her personal boundaries crystal clear, and has berated certain invasive behaviour from a select group of fans – which included contacting her own family members. As a result of highlighting her desire for privacy, she was grilled online by an unforgiving court of fan opinion. Roan, in contrast to someone like Eilish, never necessarily cultivated a parasocial relationship with her fans; instead, she connected with people through her proudly queer pop tunes, then broke through to the mainstream organically on the actual strength and memorability of her hooks. Put more simply, Roan never asked (nor, it seemed, was prepared) for the extent to which her more crazed fans would demand accessibility from her.

@chappellroanDo not assume this is directed at someone or a specific encounter. This is just my side of the story and my feelings.

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It's an interesting contrast to someone like Gracie Abrams. Having transplanted much of her core fanbase from that of Taylor Swift (Abrams was an opening act on part of Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour), Abrams has – in the same vein as Swift – marketed herself as a girl-next-door type. Her fans, predominantly teenage girls, naturally relate to her tales of teenage angst, yet unlike Roan (and like Swift) Abrams takes great pains to remind her fans, through Instagram posts and speeches at her concerts, how much they mean to her. Until recently, Abrams was a smaller artist playing theatre-sized venues; she could just about back up her words about her fans with actions like meeting them outside her tour bus and accepting gifts from them.

Buoyed by the success of her single ‘That’s So True’, though, Abrams has, in the past year or so, become an arena-sized artist; that, in addition to her long-rumoured romance with actor Paul Mescal being ripe for tabloid dissection, has meant that she’s gone from ‘our little secret’, as fans sometimes nostalgically refer to her, to someone your parents could hear on the radio. As Abrams’ star profile has risen, though, her parasocial relationship with fans has not subsided. Earlier this year, fans started a petition to replace Dora Jar as the opening act of Abrams’ European tour because – and I’m not making this up – “we are perplexed as we do not recognize her”. (There’s a whole other GAY POP essay in here about how the meaning of an opening act has changed in recent years, but I’ll save it for another time.) The whole thing smacks of an entitlement that’s part and parcel of these parasocial relationships; these fans seem to feel as though they’re Abrams’ friend, and like any good friend they feel entitled to give advice.

In fact, fandoms have never had such sway as they do now in terms of the moves their idols make; after a negative response to Lana Del Rey’s feature (or lack thereof) on Taylor Swift’s song ‘Snow on the Beach’, a new version was released with more Lana Del Rey to satisfy fan qualms. Sure, it’s nice in principle that fans can now more readily get what they want, but it also sets a potentially dangerous precedent wherein artistic output is shaped, and possibly hindered, by the whims of fans – sorry, friends – who think they know better.

Gracie Abrams at her tour in support of The Secret of Us, in Adelaide

Back to Abrams: she recently came under fire online when it was found she’d left gifts from fans at an arena to be thrown away. For an arena-sized artist like Abrams, it’s of course unreasonable to expect her to pore over (let alone keep) all the gifts she receives night after night. (Plus, owing to her new status as a household name, these gifts would likely have to be screened in the interest of safety.) Some users have proposed that Abrams request that her fans not leave these gifts in the first place, but I’m curious as to if she’d get a similar response to Roan’s boundary-setting. If you remove the chance of your favourite artist knowing your name, how much appeal does that artist still have for you? If you remove the parasocial aspect of the relationship, how much of the relationship is still there?

This circles back to the crux of this whole thing: for Abrams and other rising artists, the interactions and the friendship aspect of being a fan threatens to overshadow simply being a fan of the music. It’s part of the reason why phones are so prevalent at concerts nowadays; you wouldn’t dare miss filming your favourite artist looking at you for a second, or reading your sign, or mouthing ‘I love you’ – especially if it could be mined as a piece of content to garner some likes. This trend in fan culture – the insistence that the artist is, in fact, your friend – is impacting the aforementioned rising artists, too, and it’s presumably why they place such an emphasis on staking your claim as a ‘day one’ fan, as though there’s a hidden mission to correct the wrongs of people like Abrams who, when they get famous, forget about their core fans.

The mass claim to fame of being a ‘day one’ fan, though, is also happening within fandoms of artists who haven’t even asked for it. Songwriter Audrey Hobert recently released her debut single ‘Sue me’; many pieces introducing her, including this one from Cosmopolitan, refer to her as ‘Gracie Abrams’ best friend’ (not fan) or the sister of fellow singer Malcolm Todd - not, interestingly, as a singer-songwriter in her own right. As a result, fans of Abrams and Todd have flocked to Hobert’s single in droves, despite its spunky pop stylings being sonically exotic to Abrams’ folky fare and Todd’s indie-rock sensibilities. Many a TikTok have proudly proclaimed how they were a ‘day one’ fan of Hobert, but it raises interesting questions about the interest and dedication of the fanbase. Chief among them: how important will the status of being a ‘day one’ Hobert fan be if all you’re proving is your commitment to Abrams? (This isn’t to downplay the quality of the song itself; to my ear, it’s a decent, if unremarkable, debut single.)

An example of the ‘get in early’ mentality playing out within a fandom. This TikTok intrigues me - do you want a medal for having this screenshot? Did you even listen to the song before you got the screenshot? What now?

I’m also interested in the career trajectories of someone like Alessi Rose, who’s exploded in popularity in the last few months. She’s currently on tour with Dua Lipa; later this year, she’ll open for Tate McRae in the States. Rose’s music positions her as a British Olivia Rodrigo with a sultry edge – essentially, the epitome of ‘sad girl’ indie-folk (not my words, Spotify’s) that’s hyper-confessional and beloved only by those who relate to it. Well, those who relate to it and those who’re fixated on finding the ‘next big thing’.

Recently, I saw a TikTok – not the first one of its kind – recommending small artists to listen to “as someone who loved Olivia Rodrigo […] before [she] blew up”. (For context, Rodrigo’s first single spent eight weeks at number-one in the US, making it near-impossible to have been a fan before she got famous.) The TikTok, like these aforementioned artists touting benefits of being a ‘day one’ fan, seems to promise a flex of sorts, as though suggesting that you listen to this artist that’s Olivia Rodrigo but not, and when said artist is playing arenas you’ll have bragging rights about how you were early to the fandom. But it begs the question: how important are those bragging rights? I first discovered Chappell Roan in 2022, but that doesn’t make me any more or less of a fan than someone who first found her at Lollapalooza two years later. The only benefits of being an early fan I can think of are cheaper merch and more intimate concert venues. If you’re just in it for the flex of being earlier than everyone else, aren’t you just being annoying?

From what I can observe, as someone who’s listened to some of Alessi Rose’s songs but isn’t properly invested as a fan, much of her audience seems caught between supporting her rise to fame and mourning the loss of her days of being an unknown. A fair amount of the Rose content that spills onto my TikTok feed is bittersweet, for instance celebrating her recent tour announcement (which includes some of her biggest headlining venues to date) whilst simultaneously lamenting the fact that this artist is now becoming further from intimate, parasocial reach. ‘She’s no longer our little secret’, I saw many a TikTok elegise. Funnily enough, Rose’s fans share a kinship with those of Charli xcx, who – after years of operating at pop’s experimental edges – got propelled into the mainstream last year. As an xcx fan myself, I too was caught between feeling happy that she was rightfully getting her flowers (long overdue, she received her first Grammy earlier this year) and lamenting the artist who felt like, well, ‘my little secret’, now being public knowledge. As I wrote last month, the mainstream exposure of xcx has allowed me to appreciate her work in new ways, and it also doesn’t diminish the inherent quality of the work – nor the existing memories I already had with it. Just because something becomes popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.

Audrey Hobert’s fans – in a similar way to Swift’s – are also preoccupied with ‘lore’ and inside jokes. There’s one about sushi that I’ve seen mentioned numerous times (and that I frankly don’t have the brain cells to try and research), but often in the context of, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘future fans will be so confused when we bring the sushi joke up’. These inside jokes feel less like light fun and more like part of a larger effort to gatekeep, replacing the humour and connection that are a product of these inside jokes with a passive elitism. Even Swift, with her extensive catalogue of Easter eggs, has fans more than willing to explain the lore to newcomers. (I became a Swift fan not long after the ‘five holes in the fence’ saga, but the collective trauma it inflicted on the fanbase makes me feel like I lived through the episode myself.) Swift’s official fan page, Taylor Nation, openly celebrates this lore too; Hobert’s ‘sushi’ joke, by contrast, is being gatekept by ‘day one’ fans.

It brings me back, once again, to the point of this essay. For me – and, I’d like to think, most others – the main reason I’m a fan of the artists I’m a fan of is because I enjoy their music. By contrast, fans of Hobert, as well as the artists promoting their work via this ‘get in early’ mentality, place the fanaticism of fandom above appreciation. For these people, being a fan seems to be not about being a fan, but about paying attention.

If your core fanbase is comprised of people who only care about being close to you, how can you expect to have your art fully appreciated? (It’s a philosophy that applies to all branches of art necessitating interaction with an audience; here on Substack, for example, I’d rather have ten subscribers that properly engage with & care about my writing, than ten thousand subscribers who don’t give a toss.) Worse still, how can you keep those fans around long-term if – and it’s a big if – the fanbase grows, and you no longer have as much time to spend with those core fans, to write them letters, to give them hugs outside venues? How can your career be sustainable if you follow this model?

In these instances, fandom no longer feels organic, but performative; a means to an end where one becomes more socially desirable or is seen to have sharp taste simply because they’ve been early to a trend. Intimacy and the illusion of friendship is – more than it has been with Swift or Abrams or anyone else previously mentioned – a marketing tool, a way to get bums in seats before prospective fans have even had a chance to get invested. Proximity has become the new product; the art’s being held hostage.