At last week's Brit Awards, it was announced that Charli XCX would be receiving the Songwriter of the Year award.
This led to a flurry of responses that left me wondering—have 'stans' ruined being a fan of pop music?
Taking their name from the Eminem song, 'stans' are not mere fans; they are obsessive devotees whose entire personality is built around not just supporting but defending their favorite pop star.
Defending from whom, you might ask? Other stans, of course—those who see themselves as locked in a battle with rival fandoms over which pop star reigns supreme. And it's really beginning to drain the fun out of being a pop music fan.
When it comes to 'standom,' I think there are two main issues. Firstly, stans tend to have no sense of humor—there is no room for jokes (or even mild criticism) when it comes to the artist they've pledged allegiance to. It makes for incredibly dull discussions about pop music when I can’t go online and reasonably critique a Taylor Swift album without being called a slur. But that’s just the norm these days.
the kindness they show at her concerts to their online interactions.'
Following Charli’s win at the Brits, stans flooded Twitter with hateful messages about her and her album. Why? Because her response to the win—tweeting out her own lyrics—was deemed a slight against Taylor Swift. There’s no real logic in how stans construct these arguments, so it’s best not to examine them too closely—you kinda just have to go with it.
Now, if you want to go online and debate the merits of an artist’s songwriting for days, I’m all for it. However, within a few hours, I saw one Taylor stan account label Charli fans as "jealous… green-ass infected HIV-polluted trash." Excuse me? We’re talking about an awards show here. Have we entirely lost the run of ourselves? And it’s not just one fanbase or one awards show—it feels like every album launch and music video drop these days unleashes a trove of online obsessives ready to call you the worst things imaginable for simply liking a song they disapprove of.
All of this is to say that, as a massive pop music fan, the fun has really been taken out of it.
I don’t take online opinions too seriously, but I do think there's another issue: these stans increasingly dominate online discourse. Their abrasive nature and single-minded devotion to one artist are making them culturally ignorant. They’ve become so obsessed with proving that their favorite is the best that they’ve lost sight of what makes anything and anyone else worth a listen.
The Charli controversy highlights an ongoing inability to see songwriting as more than just lyricism, and stans are uninterested in how songwriting works across different genres.
Beyoncé’s recent Grammy win for Album of the Year with Cowboy Carter also reignited stan wars. Furious fans took to Twitter and TikTok to claim the album was undeserving—"it had too many songwriters" (many of whom were credited country artists whose work had been sampled), "she paid for the win" (a conspiracy theory), and my personal favorite: "no one even listened." This, I think, is the crux of the issue. Stans fight not in terms of quality but quantity. What matters is record sales, weeks at number one, and follower counts. There is often little to no discussion of artistic merit because quality invites critique, and to them, no valid critique of their favorite exists.
Now, the idea that no one has listened to a Beyoncé album is ludicrous, but even if that were the case, shouldn’t you be excited by something new? Or is your allegiance to one artist preventing you from enjoying anything else? Shouldn’t you want to listen at least once rather than immediately rushing to TikTok to declare everything that isn’t your favorite unworthy?
All of this is to say that, as a massive pop music fan, the fun has really been taken out of it. There is nowhere left for reasonable debate and discussion—not even among music journalists. Numerous reports have emerged of journalists having their personal information posted online and receiving death threats simply for writing less-than-favorable reviews.
During The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift asked her fans to extend the kindness they show at her concerts to their online interactions. One would hope that both she and her peers would take a firmer stance because a vocal minority of obsessively devoted fans are making pop music fandom toxic and, frankly, boring for the rest of us.
Anyway, I’m off to stream the new Lady Gaga album on repeat for weeks on end…
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
