Let’s be honest, Arcade Fire’s “fake news” rollout for their most recent album Everything Now was, at times, pretty hard to take. The fidget spinners, the Russian bots, fake album reviews; it was all a bit much. As it turns out however, that’s exactly how front man Win Butler wanted it. In fact, as he told Vulture in a recent lengthy interview, it helped him better understand the dynamics of Donald Trump.
“Negativity is what travels,” he said. “I feel like I now understand on a much deeper level why Trump got elected…That idea plays into what we were doing as well: We were providing the ammunition for people who wanted to write negative things about the band: Here you go! Here’s something to be outraged about!”
He cited their use of putting the Everything Now logo over Kylie Jenner’s face on a t-shirt as a specific example.
“We learned more about how the internet functions, and how it’s an insane feedback loop. It’s like, we just played a show in London that was one of the best shows we’ve ever played there. It was honestly so fucking exciting. And at the show we sold a T-shirt where we put an ironic Everything Now logo on top of Kylie Jenner’s face. It was visually punk as hell. We knew doing that would get a lot of press pickup but every single news outlet in the world covered it. Somehow there’s a story in that, but there’s not really a story in Band Is Really Amazing at Music and Plays a Live Show and People Cry Because It’s So Beautiful. So it was really interesting to us to see what got picked up about Arcade Fire.”
All that being said, Butler looks ready to put the entire endeavor behind him now. “Time will tell if Everything Now holds up,” he said. “If ultimately the biggest regret of my career is that some people think maybe we made a misstep with an album rollout, I can certainly live with that.”
