Opinion: Dead Rock Stars Shouldn’t Tweet

It’s Election Day, and musicians on both sides of the political spectrum are busy posting on social media, encouraging their fans to vote.

That includes artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Ted Nugent, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty and Aretha Franklin. Which is great overall but a bit weird in the last two cases, seeing as how Petty died in 2017 and Franklin in 2018.

As a co-worker explained, it can easily get “weird and gross” when social media accounts that were once actually used by an artist remain active after their death without proper acknowledgment as to who is now actually writing the posts.

Things get particularly weird when the accounts post about other newly deceased rock stars. Take this recent example, where “Janis Joplin,” who died in 1970, pays tribute to Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who died just last month, 54 years later. There’s nothing in this post making it clear that it’s not Joplin saying this, and identifying who did actually write the tribute.

There’s a simple solution: Change the account names of deceased celebrities by adding “estate” or “team” or “management” or “family” or whatever is the most appropriate. And include a quick author credit at the end of each post for further clarity. (The Prince estate does this second part correctly already, as you can see in their tribute to Quincy Jones.)

If you can find a quote from Joplin about the person or subject in question, great, use that and let us know it’s her talking and when she said it. Inactive bands are a slightly different situation, but one that still requires clarity. The Doors‘ official Twitter / X account also posted a tribute to Lesh, without saying if it was one or both of surviving members Robby Krieger and John Densmore, or the estate who was paying tribute.

Admittedly, today of all days we as a nation have bigger fish to fry – deciding the future of the free world and all – but once that’s all settled let’s add this easy fix to the to-do list.