Millions of excited fans show up to events with this person’s name on the bill, hoping to catch a peek at this legend-in-the-making while they’re still barely accessible. The voices of their haters roar even louder than the fans, as the passion for and against them grows by the day. And, let’s face it, they probably don’t really care what you think about them.

Think I’m building up to some, “It’s not Donald Trump” kicker? Come on, I’m not that predictable. Instead, I’m going to tell you why Donald Trump is the Lana Del Rey of politics — and Del Rey the Trump of music.

Del Rey is praised for her self-described “gangster Nancy Sinatra” style, defining her identity as a modern indie pop star while evoking a general aura of nostalgia.

Del Rey opponents will point out her manufactured image, citing that she changed her musical identity thrice — from Elizabeth Woolridge Grant to Lizzie Grant, Lana Del Ray and Lana Del Rey. Her millionaire father funded all the reinventions of her image, and her “unique” sound really isn’t that different from past women in popular music.

Trump has similar treatment in the popular sphere. His supporters love him for his image, distinct from Washington politicians and bureaucrats, while reminding them of a simpler time where America was once “great.”

Like Del Rey, opponents of Trump call the businessman falsely authentic with a message unlike anything heard from presidential candidates in modern history, manufactured and financed with family-inherited capital.

What critics of both ignore, however, is that neither of these controversial figures are too radically different from the people they’re supposedly a departure from.

Trump gets flack for his big campaign ideas like building a Mexican border or banning Muslims from entering United States, but other candidates share those beliefs too. Ben Carson has said he wants to build border walls along both Mexico and Canada, and Ted Cruz has even said he’ll recruit Trump to build the Mexican wall with him.

Few other candidates have openly expressed sympathy for a ban on Muslims, but as 37 percent of likely American voters and 65 percent of Republican ones support such an idea, don’t be surprised if more than a few of the candidates side with Trump on this in the long run.

And don’t even get started on the argument Trump has switched sides on major issues toward more traditional positions. Every candidate on either side of the political spectrum has changed positions on certain issues at some point.

The argument that Del Rey is inauthentic and dangerous to indie music as we know it is flawed for similar reasons.

Plenty of artists that call themselves “pop” and “indie” have reinvented their image. Pop artists like Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Billy Joel, as well as alternative and indie artists like Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos and the Beastie Boys have also fundamentally changed their musical identities. Lana Del Rey reinventing herself in accordance with a changing artistic vision should be celebrated, not attacked.

I hardly want to defend Donald Trump or Lana Del Rey here. I don’t plan on voting for Trump at any point, and I’ll continue to avoid listening to Del Rey’s music for the most part. But senseless attacks on either a candidate or musician for doing certain things one disagrees with can, too often, ignore the problems with either the campaign process or music industry as a whole.

Trump might promote certain ideologies that are deemed racist, but saying so ignores that many candidates believe a lot of the same things he does — they just don’t get as much attention for saying them. Lana Del Rey may have changed her sound several times and had a career funded by rich ancestors, but so have most of the big names in pop and indie music.

To quote an old, overused cliché: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at bweisers@syr.edu or on Twitter at @brettws.

Published on February 23, 2016 at 7:43 pm