Winston Marshall sounds off on punishment for artists who don't follow 'progressive orthodoxies'
Former Mumford & Sons musician blasts the media for demonizing artists like Alice Cooper and Oliver Anthony, who have strayed from progressive ideology.
EXCLUSIVE - Former Mumford & Sons musician Winston Marshall shared his frustrations about the apparent "professional punishment" for artists who dare to challenge progressive ideology in a new interview.
Marshall made headlines in 2021 after he left the folk rock band Mumford & Sons following the uproar after he tweeted his support for a book by conservative author Andy Ngo that explored the left-wing radicalism of Antifa, "Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy."
Knowing what it feels like to be "canceled," Marshall empathized with the likes of singers who have faced the music as of late.
Oliver Anthony, a country artist from Farmville, Virginia, released a single called "Rich Men North of Richmond" that resonated with struggling, every day Americans. But he was demonized in some corners by liberal media for having put out a so-called right-wing anthem. Rolling Stone Magazine published a piece about the popular single entitled, "Right Wing Influencers Just Found Their Favorite New Country Song." The piece noted that the lyrics may appeal to "right-wing influencers" in part because Anthony "rails against high taxes and the value of the dollar, but also wades into some Reagan-era talking points about welfare."
WINSTON MARSHALL HAS NO REGRETS LEAVING MUMFORD & SONS AFTER GETTING CANCELED: ‘I FEEL LIBERATED’
"Oliver Anthony, for example, working-class guy, has this song which resonates with millions upon millions - not just in America, but across the world, people - the left-behind working classes. And they just can't even process it," Marshall said of the media in an interview with Fox News Digital. "So they sort of embarrassed themselves."
Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons performs during BottleRock Napa Valley 2019 at Napa Valley Expo on May 26, 2019, in Napa, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Marshall singled out Rolling Stone's write-up of Anthony, who has since said he doesn't identify with either side of the political aisle and has won plaudits as untarnished by partisan politics.
"You're certainly seeing a massive gap between the media and the people," Marshall said. "And I wrote about this, particularly the response by Rolling Stone Magazine, if you could see that they attempted a takedown of Oliver Anthony… they're the magazine that used to be the voice of counterculture. Now they don't know counterculture when it slaps them in the face."
Marshall referenced two other artists who'd been targeted for their views, including Irish singer Róisín Murphy and rocker Alice Cooper. Murphy, the former lead singer for the band Moloko, caused an uproar after posting a private Facebook message saying that puberty blockers were harmful to kids. Murphy later apologized for her Facebook message, particularly to her LGBTQ fanbase, saying she realized her "comments have been directly hurtful to many of you." Cooper, meanwhile, lost a cosmetics deal after referring to transgenderism as a "fad."
"All of those things were true," Marshall said of Murphy's comments. "And you have it happened to Alice Cooper this summer. Vampyre Cosmetics… dropped him because he said... 'Just because you identify as a tree, doesn't mean you are one,' or something along those lines. There still remains professional punishment for saying things that are true but are not correct, according to progressive orthodoxies."
Christopher Anthony Lunsford, who goes by the stage name Oliver Anthony, warms up next to a loading dock behind the buildings lining Main Street before a surprise performance at the Rock the Block street festival on August 26, 2023, in Farmville, Virginia. (Getty Images)
Marshall now hosts "Marshall Matters," a podcast on The Spectator, where he explores taboo topics. He's been hoping to get comedian Shane Gillis to come on the program. Gillis, no stranger to controversy himself, was fired from "Saturday Night Live" after video surfaced of him using homophobic and racial slurs in a 2018 podcast.
"A lot of these artists, they ride a wave of a feeling and movement, and he's very in tune with what's going on, which is kind of like the antithesis to legacy media," Marshall said. "And it's exciting to me that artists and comedians and films are - 'I'm not getting held back by the gatekeepers.' That has happened over the last five, ten years. Now, it's still the case in music that a lot of artists are, and it's almost weekly now that artists are getting canceled."
But while cancel culture appears to still be a very real threat, Marshall said he's hopeful seeing more artists like Anthony being so bold in their lyrics and so open about their faith. Anthony recently appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast and shared how his walk with God changed his life, before reading from the book of Proverbs.
"On a more positive note, instead of sort of sh---ing on everyone, I'm very excited that there are artists who are now writing freely, singing freely about these things," Marshall said. "And I sense the tide now turning and the story of Oliver Anthony's, there's so many things that are incredible about Oliver Anthony, not just that he writes beautiful songs, he has an incredible voice, but this guy's reading Scripture in media."
"Ten years ago, 15 years ago, no one told - even Christians didn't really talk about being Christian publicly or very few did," Marshall continued. "Now the culture is really changing where it's cool to be Christian. And that is so exciting. And it's kind of the Christianity is the counterculture and there's a lot of Christianity in the ‘Sound of Freedom’ movie as well. And for me that's signaling a really big shift in the creative industries."
As for his current relationship with former Mumford & Sons bandmates and friends, Marshall simply said he wishes them the best.
"I've said before, I wish them all the best and that all their dreams come true," he said.
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