Vol. 7: Artists Nobody Hates
Subscriber Note: I shared something extra in today’s email — a short reflection (and a couple photos) from a visit to Bob Marley’s childhood home in Jamaica, where he’s now buried. It’s hard to fully explain what that felt like, but I tried.
In a culture where everything gets debated, some artists seem to exist outside of it.
Not universally loved, exactly.
Just strangely hard to hate.
I found myself thinking about that recently with Bob Marley.
Not his best song. Not his most important album.
Just the idea that I’ve never really heard anyone say they don’t like his music.
Not once.
That feels unusual now.
Maybe even impossible.
Some artists are loved. Others are debated. A rare few seem to exist outside the argument altogether.
Because people argue about everything now.
Artists. Albums. Eras. Singles. Features. Comebacks. Declines.
There’s always a side to take.
And yet, somehow, Bob Marley seems to sit outside of all that.
You don’t have to love him.
But you don’t really see people push back on him either.
It made me wonder if there are other artists like that.
Not universally loved.
Just... rarely resisted.
Bob Marley and the rare absence of resistance
Marley feels like the clearest example because his appeal doesn’t really depend on genre.
- You don’t have to be a reggae fan to understand the pull of his music.
- You don’t need deep catalog knowledge to feel what songs like “One Love” are doing.
- His message is hard to argue with, even if his music isn’t part of your everyday rotation.
That matters.
Some artists become polarizing because their work demands a reaction. Marley’s music tends to do something else.
It settles into the room.
It brings people in without asking for much first.
That doesn’t mean everyone has him in heavy rotation.
It just means he rarely triggers resistance.
And that may be a different kind of greatness entirely.
Jimmy Buffett and music that stays in its lane
Jimmy Buffett is another artist who comes to mind, though for a completely different reason.
You won’t find many people arguing that he made the greatest music of all time.
But you also won’t find many people going out of their way to say they don’t like him.
His music exists in its own lane.
- It doesn’t demand your attention.
- It doesn’t try to convince you of anything.
- It doesn’t seem especially concerned with winning over skeptics.
It just is.
And somehow, that makes it easy to accept.
Buffett’s songs often feel less like statements than environments.
They create a mood, and people either step into it or let it pass.
But they don’t usually fight it.
AC/DC and the power of consistency
AC/DC might be another version of the same idea.
Not because nobody has ever criticized them.
But because nobody really argues about them either.
They found a sound early and stayed there.
- No dramatic pivots.
- No identity crisis.
- No obvious need to keep reintroducing themselves.
You know what an AC/DC song is going to feel like before it starts.
And somehow, people are still good with that.
In another band, that kind of consistency might get framed as limitation.
With AC/DC, it became part of the appeal.
They gave people something reliable, and never really broke the trust.
Usually, this isn’t how fame works
Because most of the time, the bigger the artist, the more resistance they create.
That’s almost part of the deal now.
The higher someone rises, the more likely people are to push back.
- Too overrated.
- Too overplayed.
- Too commercial.
- Too praised.
- Too protected by their fans.
It happens constantly.
For every massive artist with a loyal following, there’s usually an equally loud group of people waiting to explain why they don’t get the appeal.
That’s what makes artists like Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffett, and AC/DC feel so unusual.
They’re not small artists living on the margins.
They’re huge.
Recognizable. Canonized. Played everywhere.
And somehow, they seem to dodge the usual backlash that comes with that kind of scale.
Some of that, you could argue, comes down to timing.
Two of them are no longer with us.
And there’s a long history of artists becoming more widely embraced after they’re gone.
But that doesn’t fully explain it.
Because death can amplify appreciation, but it doesn’t erase division.
Plenty of artists remain debated, criticized, or polarizing long after they’ve been canonized.
That’s what makes this feel different.
Most artists get more divisive as they get bigger. Some rare ones seem to get bigger without becoming a target.
That doesn’t mean literally nobody dislikes them.
It just means they don’t seem to invite the kind of opposition that usually comes with fame at that level.
And that may be what makes them so interesting.
Why most artists don’t stay in this space
Most artists, eventually, give people something to divide over.
- A reinvention that loses part of the audience.
- An overexposed era.
- A public image that starts to overshadow the music.
- The simple fact of becoming so big that people start resisting the consensus.
That’s usually what happens at the top.
Success creates friction.
Visibility creates backlash.
And the longer an artist stays in the center of things, the harder it is to avoid becoming polarizing.
That’s why artists like these stand out.
Not because they’re obscure.
Because they’re not.
It’s because they reached a level where backlash normally becomes inevitable, and somehow never became defined by it.
Could an artist like this exist today?
It’s worth asking if this is even possible anymore.
Because the environment has changed.
Everyone has a voice now.
Every opinion has a place to live.
And every artist, no matter how big, gets pulled into that cycle.
- Debate becomes part of the experience.
- Backlash becomes part of the visibility.
- And silence is almost impossible to maintain.
But it goes a step further than that.
There’s an incentive now.
Strong reactions travel further than balanced ones.
Posts that divide tend to outperform posts that simply observe.
And over time, that shapes the way artists are talked about.
Not always intentionally.
But consistently.
In a system that rewards reaction, even neutral artists can become part of the argument.
Artists today aren’t just heard.
They’re constantly interpreted.
Every release, every appearance, every decision gets filtered through millions of perspectives in real time.
And the bigger they get, the harder it becomes to avoid resistance.
Which raises the question.
Who today feels like they exist outside of that?
Who is big enough to be everywhere, but somehow not divisive?
It’s harder to answer than it used to be.
You could make a case for a few names.
But even then, it doesn’t quite land the same way.
Because even the most widely liked artists today still seem to carry some level of pushback with them.
Maybe that’s just the tradeoff now.
Or maybe we’re just closer to the conversation than we used to be.
Either way, it makes artists like Marley, Buffett, and AC/DC feel less like a pattern...
and more like a moment that might be harder to repeat.
Maybe that’s the rarest outcome there is.
Not being loved by everyone.
Just not giving anyone much reason to turn away.
Companion Playlist
To go with this one, I put together a playlist built around songs that feel almost impossible to resist: Bob Marley’s “One Love,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n Roll,” 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?,” Boston’s “More Than a Feeling,” Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag,” and Beastie Boys’ “Rhymin & Stealin.”
Listen to the Vol. 7 playlist →
This piece is part of the ongoing Dad’s Music Muse archive.