More Young Talent Thrown Away

Within the span of just a couple weeks, Philadelphia band Neverkept and Chicago band Sleep On It are both going down in flames amidst sexual assault allegations amongst many other distasteful things that have happened with various members of both bands. Both of these groups were promising pop punk bands beginning to make a name for themselves. Oftentimes they would talk about past relationships in their music, but it was nothing harmful, quite the opposite in fact. It gave listeners, including me admittedly, something to relate to, something to make you feel like you weren’t alone with what you were going through. With relatable lyrics and often cheerful and catchy melodies, I decided to do more research into the bands, only to find out that they weren’t exactly the people I figured they would be while listening to their music. Instead I found several articles regarding sexual assault allegations on Neverkept frontman Dorian Cooke, and similar accusations against Sleep On It’s lead singer Zech Pluister. To top it all off, the two bands knew each other and spent time on tour together.

Sexual assault and misconduct isn’t the end of their downfall, but the responses issued by members of both bands really cemented the end of their musical careers with these groups. When being accused of something so serious, it’s hard to picture that any response will make things better, but when your manager tries to use your music as an attestment to being “really good guys”, it really only shows a lack of accountability. No response at all would have been better than the responses that these guys gave out, and things could have been resolved internally behind the scenes, but instead they chose to dig themselves a deeper hole and eventually called it quits before anything was actually resolved. Maybe it is for the better that they called it quits so early, if you were sure of your innocence, I don’t think you would be ending a potentially successful musical career so easily, so I suppose they saved us the trouble and just ended things once and for all. Not only was their response bad, but it was also revealed that some of the band members knew what was going on, and actively worked to keep it out of the public eye, but clearly that didn’t end up working out for them and only exposed the other band members for being just as bad.

Music can be deceiving. It’s not uncommon for an artist or band to be a completely different person than they portray in their music, and this is an example of that. It’s truly unfortunate that some people are blessed with a talent that can do real good in the world and help others, but they still choose to make poor decisions and hurt the people closest to them. Hopefully those impacted by the actions of these two bands can heal properly, and hopefully the band members never repeat the actions they took ever again.