I Can Like Your Music and Still Be Disappointed in You: My Thoughts on the Bad Wolves and Skillet Drama

 I have a confession to make.

I like Skillet.

I also like Bad Wolves.

Well, technically, I should probably phrase that a little differently. I liked Bad Wolves, at least during the era of the band that I was familiar with. And when it comes to Skillet, I really like their older material. I haven't kept up with everything they've released in recent years, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I've heard every song they've put out lately.

But I know what I like.

And I know what I don't like.

And what I don't like is what has been happening surrounding these two bands.

If you haven't been following the latest rock and metal drama, Bad Wolves were supposed to be part of Skillet's upcoming fall tour, along with Escape the Fate. Then, seemingly almost as quickly as the tour announcement happened, Bad Wolves were gone.

The situation became particularly ugly because of Bad Wolves' new vocalist, Sara "KILLBOY" Skinner.

According to Skinner, after Bad Wolves were announced for the tour, some Skillet fans began digging into her personal life. She said that people began conducting what she described as a "transvestigation," with fans making claims about her being transgender and also focusing on her OnlyFans presence. She subsequently announced that Bad Wolves would no longer be joining the tour.

And honestly?

What the fuck are we doing?

I mean that sincerely.

What the fuck are we doing?

Because there is something deeply pathetic about a group of people seeing a woman they don't know, deciding they need to investigate her body, her identity, her personal life, her sexuality, her internet presence and whatever else they can dig up, and then deciding that this somehow gives them ownership over whether she deserves to share a concert stage with their favorite band.

That isn't fandom.

That's harassment.

And before anybody gets confused, let me establish something very clearly:

I am not writing this because I'm some lifelong Bad Wolves superfan.

I'm really not.

The main Bad Wolves song I knew was their cover of "Zombie."

That was the song that put them on my radar.

Back when Tommy Vext was the band's vocalist, I heard their version of "Zombie" and liked it. It was one of those covers that actually made sense to me. They weren't simply copying The Cranberries. They took a song that was already powerful and gave it a heavier interpretation.

That was Bad Wolves to me.

And that's pretty much where my familiarity with the band stayed.

The band has obviously gone through a lot of changes since then. Vext is no longer in the band, there have been other lineup changes, and now Bad Wolves have Sara Skinner as their new vocalist.

So no, I haven't spent the last several years obsessively following Bad Wolves.

But that doesn't mean I can't look at what is happening now and say, "This is bullshit."

Because it is.

And what's especially frustrating to me is that I also like Skillet.

I grew up listening to some of their older material. Songs from the era of albums like Collide and Comatose are the Skillet that I know best. Those songs were part of the soundscape of my life for a while.

I haven't really followed their newer material.

Maybe it's great.

Maybe it's not.

I don't know.

And I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But I don't need to have listened to every album Skillet has released in the last decade to have an opinion about this situation.

Because this isn't really about whether Skillet's latest album is good.

It's about how people behave.

And that's where I have become genuinely disappointed.

I'm disappointed in some Skillet fans.

And I'm disappointed in Skillet itself.

Let's start with the fans.

There is nothing wrong with being a fan of a Christian rock band.

There is nothing wrong with having religious beliefs.

There is nothing wrong with wanting the musicians you support to share certain values.

But there is a gigantic difference between saying, "I don't personally agree with this person's lifestyle," and deciding that you need to publicly humiliate them, investigate their gender, insult them, spread rumors about them, or pressure a band into removing them from a tour.

Those are not the same thing.

Not even remotely.

And some of the stuff being thrown at Skinner was absolutely disgusting.

She has described the reaction as people deciding she was a "trans OnlyFans" woman and attacking her based on those assumptions. She responded by basically saying that the accusations weren't even accurate in the way people thought they were.

But here's the thing.

Even if every accusation had been true, I still wouldn't understand why this is anybody else's fucking business.

Let's say she was transgender.

So what?

She's a musician.

She's performing on a stage.

She's singing songs.

Did she suddenly become incapable of singing because of her gender identity?

Does a guitar riff somehow sound different because the vocalist is trans?

Does a drumbeat become less musical?

Does a concert ticket become invalid?

Of course not.

And if she has an OnlyFans account?

Again:

So what?

You don't have to like it.

You don't have to subscribe to it.

You don't have to consume her content.

You don't even have to agree with it.

But you don't get to treat another adult's private life like a public referendum simply because you bought a ticket to see their band.

That's where I think a lot of people have completely lost the plot.

Being a fan doesn't make you the owner of the artist.

And loving a band doesn't give you the right to dictate who they are allowed to work with.

That's not how this should work.

And this is where Skillet itself enters the conversation.

Because according to Skinner, Bad Wolves were removed from the tour following this backlash.

Now, I want to be fair here.

Skillet has apparently not publicly explained the situation in detail. There is no public statement from the band that I have seen that lays everything out and says, "This is exactly why we removed Bad Wolves."

So I'm not going to claim something as an established fact when it hasn't been officially explained by Skillet.

But that's actually part of the problem.

Silence.

Because if your fanbase is going after another musician, and that musician is publicly telling the world that your fans harassed her and that this harassment apparently played a role in her band being removed from your tour, then you have a responsibility to say something.

Especially if you're a major band.

Especially if you're a band that has spent decades building a Christian identity.

Especially if you're a band whose audience includes people who presumably believe that compassion, forgiveness, humility and treating other people with dignity are important.

Silence isn't a great look.

And I'm sorry, but I expect better.

I don't expect Skillet to suddenly become a band that agrees with everything I believe.

That's not realistic.

I don't expect John Cooper to adopt my politics.

I don't expect Skillet's entire fanbase to agree with me.

I don't even expect them to like Bad Wolves.

What I expect is basic fucking decency.

That's it.

Basic decency.

If someone is being bullied by your fans, tell your fans to knock it off.

If someone is being harassed based on rumors about their gender, tell your fans that isn't acceptable.

If your organization made a decision because of legitimate contractual or business reasons, explain that.

If there is another side to the story, give it.

But don't just let the whole thing sit there while everyone else tries to figure out what the hell happened.

Because silence creates a vacuum.

And the internet will fill that vacuum with whatever narrative it wants.

That's exactly what we're seeing.

And honestly, I think there's an important lesson here for music fans in general.

We have become way too comfortable treating musicians like characters in our personal entertainment universes.

We forget that they're people.

We forget that they have families.

We forget that they have feelings.

We forget that they have lives outside of the songs we listen to.

We forget that a woman standing on a stage is not suddenly public property.

And we especially need to stop with this bizarre obsession with "investigating" people's identities.

The whole idea of "transvestigation" is fucking creepy.

I'm sorry.

It is.

Imagine looking at somebody and thinking, "I need to determine what gender this person really is."

Why?

Why do you care?

Why are you zooming in on photographs?

Why are you comparing facial structures?

Why are you analyzing someone's voice?

Why are you examining their body?

Why are you doing any of this?

Just listen to the fucking music.

If you don't like the singer, don't listen to the band.

That's it.

You are allowed to walk away.

You are allowed to say, "This isn't for me."

You are allowed to spend your money somewhere else.

You are allowed to criticize the music.

You are allowed to criticize a band's business decisions.

You are allowed to criticize their politics.

You are allowed to criticize their lyrics.

You are even allowed to say you don't like the singer's voice.

That's part of being an artist.

But there is a line between criticism and cruelty.

And some people crossed that line a long time ago.

And here's the funny part for me personally.

I don't even have a huge emotional attachment to Bad Wolves.

I could have ignored this entire story.

I could have said, "Oh, that's unfortunate," and moved on.

But I can't.

Because principles matter more to me than fandom.

And this is one of those situations where I don't care whether I agree with someone.

I don't care whether I like their music.

I don't care whether I like their politics.

I don't care whether I like their personal choices.

If somebody is being treated unfairly, I'm going to say that they're being treated unfairly.

That's just where I stand.

I would defend an artist I despise if I thought they were being treated unjustly.

And I would criticize an artist I love if I thought they were doing something wrong.

That's what having principles is supposed to mean.

Otherwise they're not principles.

They're just preferences.

And I think that's something that gets lost constantly in modern fandom.

People will defend absolutely anything their favorite celebrity does while condemning the exact same behavior from somebody they dislike.

If their favorite musician does something questionable, suddenly there's context.

Suddenly there's nuance.

Suddenly we need to wait for more information.

But when somebody they don't like does it?

"Fuck that person."

No.

That's not consistency.

And I'm tired of it.

You don't have to abandon Skillet because of this.

You don't have to stop listening to their old music.

You don't have to suddenly decide that every song they've ever made is garbage.

I certainly won't be pretending that I never enjoyed their older material.

I did.

I still do.

A song doesn't magically become bad because the people who made it disappointed me.

Music is complicated like that.

Sometimes a song can mean something to you even when the artist behind it becomes somebody you don't particularly want to support anymore.

That's part of the strange relationship we have with art.

But I can listen to an old Skillet song and still say:

"Skillet, you could have handled this better."

Those statements aren't contradictory.

I can like "Comatose."

I can remember enjoying Skillet's older work.

And I can simultaneously think that the way this situation has played out is fucking disappointing.

Likewise, I can remember Bad Wolves primarily because of "Zombie" and not suddenly become their biggest fan because of this controversy.

I don't have to.

I don't need to.

This isn't about picking a favorite band.

It's about picking a standard.

And my standard is simple:

Don't be an asshole.

Don't harass people.

Don't obsess over strangers' identities.

Don't spread rumors.

Don't treat someone's personal life like your entertainment.

And if your fans are doing something reprehensible, don't sit quietly and pretend you can't see it.

Say something.

That's the part that bothers me most about Skillet.

Not even necessarily the tour decision itself, because I don't know everything that happened behind the scenes.

It's the apparent silence.

Maybe there is information we don't have.

Maybe there are contractual details.

Maybe there are conversations happening privately.

Maybe there is another explanation.

Fine.

Then say that.

You don't have to give us every private detail.

But acknowledge the situation.

Because when one side is publicly saying, "Your fans harassed me and this affected our place on your tour," and the other side says absolutely nothing, people are naturally going to draw conclusions.

And those conclusions aren't necessarily going to be flattering.

I think Skillet owes their audience more than silence.

And I think their fans owe other human beings more than whatever the hell happened here.

Because at the end of the day, this is supposed to be music.

Music.

That's the part I keep coming back to.

We're talking about fucking rock music.

People screaming into microphones.

Guitars.

Drums.

Bass.

Lights.

A stage.

A bunch of people standing in a crowd screaming lyrics back at somebody.

That's what this is.

It should be fun.

It should be cathartic.

It should bring people together.

And instead we're sitting here arguing about whether a singer is "really" a woman, whether she has an OnlyFans account, whether her existence is acceptable to a particular religious fanbase, and whether a band should be allowed to perform because some people on the internet got angry.

What happened to just listening to the fucking music?

If you don't like Sara Skinner, don't listen to Bad Wolves.

If you don't like Skillet, don't listen to Skillet.

If you don't like Christian rock, don't listen to Christian rock.

If you don't like metal, don't listen to metal.

There are literally millions of songs in the world.

Go find something you enjoy.

You don't need to destroy somebody else to prove that your favorite band is good.

And you definitely don't need to humiliate another human being to prove that your religion is correct.

That's not strength.

That's insecurity.

So yeah.

I'm disappointed.

I'm disappointed in the people who decided to harass Sara Skinner.

I'm disappointed in the people who thought investigating a stranger's gender was an appropriate use of their time.

I'm disappointed that Bad Wolves ended up caught in the middle of this.

And I'm disappointed in Skillet for apparently allowing the situation to happen without publicly addressing it.

Maybe I'll listen to some old Skillet today.

Maybe I'll put on "Zombie."

Maybe I'll listen to both and remember why I liked them in the first place.

Because I don't want my enjoyment of music to depend on whether every musician I like is perfect.

Nobody is perfect.

But I do want the people I support to be held to the same basic standard I hold everyone else to.

Treat people like human beings.

Don't be cruel.

Don't harass people.

Don't judge someone based on rumors.

And when your own community starts acting like assholes, have the courage to tell them to stop.

That's not politics.

That's not left versus right.

That's not Christian versus atheist.

That's not trans versus cis.

That's not Bad Wolves versus Skillet.

That's basic fucking humanity.

And honestly?

I don't think that's too much to ask.

And honestly, I never thought I would see this kind of shit surrounding Skillet.

I mean, I knew it was possible. Given the current climate, the way online fandoms behave, and how fucking obsessed some people have become with policing other people's identities, I knew something like this could happen.

But I still didn't think I would actually see it happen with a band like Skillet.

Maybe that's part of why this has bothered me so much.

Because Skillet was never a band I associated with this kind of drama. They were just a band whose older music I liked. They were part of that rock and metal landscape I grew up listening to. I wasn't sitting around thinking about their fanbase or their internal politics or whatever.

So seeing this whole situation unfold has been one of those moments where I'm just sitting here thinking, "Really? We're doing this now?"

I knew the possibility existed.

I just never expected to actually see it.

And look, I wasn't completely oblivious to the politics surrounding Skillet either.

I knew that John Cooper, at least, had become pretty openly MAGA and had said and done things politically that I absolutely don't agree with. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I've seen enough of his public commentary to know that we're probably not going to agree on a whole hell of a lot.

And yet, I still liked Skillet's older music.

Because I can separate the music from the person making it.

That's something I've always tried to do. I don't need an artist to share all of my political beliefs for me to appreciate something they created. Sometimes you can take the art for what it is while recognizing that the person behind it is someone you wouldn't necessarily want to have a political conversation with.

So even knowing that John Cooper had gone down the MAGA-chud political rabbit hole, I still didn't think that meant there was going to be some insane fucking drama surrounding the band like this.

That's the part that caught me off guard.

I knew there were political differences.

I knew there were things about Cooper that I didn't like.

I knew that Skillet had a fanbase that could be pretty politically and religiously intense.

But I didn't expect to wake up one day and be reading about Bad Wolves getting kicked off a tour amid controversy over their new female vocalist and fans allegedly digging into her identity and personal life.

There's a difference between thinking, "Yeah, this musician and I probably disagree on a lot of shit," and thinking, "Holy shit, what the fuck is happening with this band and its fanbase?"

And that's where I am right now.

I can acknowledge the political and cultural baggage surrounding Skillet while still admitting that their older music meant something to me.

Those two things can coexist.

I don't have to rewrite my own musical history just because I now find myself disappointed in the people and the culture surrounding a band I used to enjoy.

Why This One Hits a Little Differently for Me

And maybe this is the part I haven't really talked about yet: my own personal connection to Skillet.

I first discovered Skillet when I was in high school.

And honestly, the timing is kind of funny when I think about it now.

Because around that same period of my life, I was becoming less religious.

My relationship with religion was changing. I was questioning things. I was moving away from the beliefs I had grown up with. Eventually, I would become an atheist, but even before I got to that point, I was already starting to drift away from Christianity.

And yet here I was, listening to Skillet.

And I liked them.

Not because I was sitting there thinking, "Wow, these lyrics perfectly represent my religious beliefs."

They didn't.

I wasn't listening to Skillet because I was looking for Christian music.

I was listening to them because I liked the fucking music.

I liked the sound.

I liked the heaviness.

I liked the energy.

I liked the way the songs felt.

That's something I think people sometimes misunderstand about music. You don't necessarily connect with a song because you agree with every single word coming out of the singer's mouth. Sometimes you connect with the sound, the emotion, the instrumentation, the memories attached to it, or simply the fact that something about it hits you in a way you can't completely explain.

That's what Skillet was for me.

They became part of my high school soundtrack during a period when I was changing as a person.

And that's why I don't want to sit here and pretend that the music suddenly means nothing to me because I've become disappointed in the band or parts of its fanbase.

It still means something.

Those songs are attached to a version of me that existed years ago.

And even though I've changed dramatically since then, that version of me was still me.

I can look back at my high school years and think about the person I was becoming, the questions I was asking, the things I believed, the things I stopped believing, and the music I was listening to while all of that was happening.

Skillet was part of that.

That's why this whole situation feels weird.

Because when you have a personal history with a band, you don't necessarily want to see them become involved in something like this.

You don't want to look at a band whose music you enjoyed when you were younger and think, "Seriously?"

And again, I'm not saying Skillet is some band that I've followed religiously throughout my entire life.

I haven't.

I haven't kept up with all of their newer music.

I'm much more familiar with their older material.

But that's almost beside the point.

I don't have to be a hardcore fan to have memories attached to their music.

I don't have to agree with John Cooper politically.

I don't have to agree with his MAGA politics.

I don't have to agree with his religious beliefs.

And I certainly don't have to agree with everything that happens within the Skillet fanbase.

I can still say, "Yeah, I used to fucking love some of these songs."

And that's okay.

That's the weird thing about growing up.

You don't necessarily stop being the person you used to be. You become someone new while carrying pieces of all the people you've been along the way.

The music you listened to when you were sixteen doesn't disappear because you're thirty.

The memories don't disappear.

The songs don't disappear.

And the fact that you no longer hold the same beliefs you did back then doesn't mean you have to hate everything associated with that period of your life.

Sometimes you can simply say:

"I've changed."

And:

"I still like this."

Both can be true.

That's how I feel about Skillet.

And that's also why I'm disappointed now.

Because when you have a personal connection to something, even a relatively small one, you want to believe that the people behind it are going to conduct themselves in a way that you can at least respect.

I don't need perfection.

I don't need agreement.

I don't need Skillet to suddenly become progressive.

I don't need John Cooper to start agreeing with my worldview.

I'm not asking for that.

I'm asking for basic human decency.

If the allegations surrounding this situation are accurate, then I think the harassment directed toward Sara Skinner was completely unacceptable.

And if Skillet's fans were responsible for creating that environment, then those fans should be called out.

And if Skillet really did remove Bad Wolves from the tour because of that backlash, then I think Skillet should explain why.

That's all.

Give people some clarity.

Say something.

Don't leave everyone else to speculate.

Because silence doesn't make controversy disappear.

It just makes people wonder what you're not saying.

And maybe there is more to this story than I know.

Maybe there are things happening behind the scenes.

Maybe there are contractual reasons.

Maybe there's another side of this that hasn't been made public.

Fine.

I'm willing to acknowledge that.

But until Skillet actually says something publicly, I'm left looking at what has happened and thinking that this is fucking disappointing.

And perhaps that's the biggest takeaway I have from all of this.

I don't want fandom to become an excuse for abandoning our principles.

I don't want to become the kind of person who says, "Well, that's my favorite band, so whatever they did is automatically okay."

No.

If I like you, I can still criticize you.

If I listen to your music, I can still disagree with you.

If your songs were important to me when I was younger, I can still tell you when I think you've fucked up.

That's what being honest means.

And honestly, I think we need more of that.

Less blind loyalty.

Less treating musicians like they're untouchable.

Less treating other fans like enemies.

Less digging through people's personal lives.

Less obsessing over someone's gender.

Less harassment.

Less cruelty.

More fucking humanity.

I started listening to Skillet when I was a kid who was already beginning to question his religious beliefs.

I listened to them because I liked their music.

Years later, I'm a very different person.

My beliefs are different.

My politics are different.

My worldview is different.

My life is different.

But I can still remember what those songs meant to me.

And I can still appreciate the music while saying that I'm disappointed in what I'm seeing now.

That's not hypocrisy.

That's growth.

I don't know where things go from here with Skillet, Bad Wolves, Sara Skinner, or any of the people involved in this mess.

Maybe more information will come out.

Maybe Skillet will eventually address it.

Maybe this will blow over and everyone will move on to the next internet controversy.

But I hope something actually gets learned from it.

I hope Skillet fans learn that being a fan doesn't give you permission to harass people.

I hope musicians understand that sometimes they need to stand up and tell their own communities when they've crossed a line.

And I hope the rest of us remember that we can disagree with people without dehumanizing them.

Because at the end of the day, I don't really care who wins some stupid internet beef.

I care about how people treat each other.

And that's why I'm writing about this.

Not because I'm some die-hard Bad Wolves fan.

Not because I'm some current Skillet superfan.

Not because I agree with everyone involved.

I'm writing about it because I remember being a teenager listening to Skillet while my own beliefs were changing.

I remember liking that music.

And I never thought I'd be sitting here years later writing about Skillet being surrounded by this kind of fucking drama.

I knew it was possible.

Given the current climate, I knew it was possible.

But I still didn't think I'd actually see it.

And maybe that's why I'm so disappointed.

I expected better.

And sometimes that's the most frustrating thing of all.

You can criticize something because you hate it.

But sometimes the strongest criticism comes from the fact that you used to like it.

I still like those old Skillet songs.

I'm not going to lie about that.

But liking the music doesn't mean I have to shut up when I think something is wrong.

And I'm not going to shut up.

And there's another reason Skillet's older music stuck with me: it helped me through periods of uncertainty.

There were times when I didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life. Times when I was questioning what I believed, where I was going, what kind of person I wanted to become, and what the future was even going to look like.

And during those periods, I had music.

Skillet's older songs were part of that.

Even as I was becoming less religious, their music could still speak to something in me. I could take the emotional weight of those songs and apply it to whatever I was going through at the time.

That's another thing people sometimes don't understand about music.

A song doesn't have to perfectly match your beliefs for it to help you.

Sometimes you aren't even thinking about the literal meaning of the lyrics. You're just feeling something. The guitars hit. The drums hit. The vocals hit. The emotion hits. And suddenly you're able to sit with something that you couldn't quite put into words yourself.

That's what some of Skillet's older music did for me.

It was there during uncertainty.

It was there during periods where I was trying to figure myself out.

And even though my relationship with religion eventually changed completely, the emotional connection I had with some of those songs didn't simply disappear.

That's why I can look at Skillet now and feel conflicted.

Because I'm not just looking at some random band I heard once.

I'm looking at a band whose music was part of my life during a time when I was still figuring out who I was.

And I think that's worth acknowledging.

You can outgrow someone's worldview without necessarily outgrowing every piece of art that helped you survive a particular chapter of your life.

Sometimes the meaning of a song changes as you change.

Sometimes you hear the same song years later and realize that it means something completely different to you now.

And sometimes you simply remember, "Yeah. I listened to this when shit was uncertain, and somehow it helped."

That's what Skillet's older music is for me.

And that's why this whole situation hits a little harder than it otherwise might.

Because when a band has been part of your life, even if you haven't followed them closely for years, you don't necessarily want to see them surrounded by controversy like this.

I don't want to rewrite my memories.

I don't want to pretend the music never mattered.

It did.

It helped me through some uncertain periods of my life.

And I can appreciate that while still saying that I'm disappointed in what I'm seeing now.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

The music helped me.

I still appreciate the music.

And I can still criticize the people and circumstances surrounding that music.

That's the honest answer.