Je suis Jelly Roll. Who among us can say we’ve never made a commitment we couldn’t possibly uphold when backed into a corner? Maybe we ran into an old acquaintance at the supermarket and said “Let’s catch up sometime” or told our friends we would “check out” the boring-sounding show they spent the past five minutes recommending? That’s what country-music superstar Jelly Roll appeared to do after the Grammys last week when, in response to a question about the state of the country, he said he had “a lot to say” and planned to say it “in the most loud and clear way I’ve ever spoken in my life” within the next week. Unfortunately for him, he made the rookie mistake of undermining his bluff with a clear timeline. It’s the difference between saying to your old acquaintance “Let’s catch up sometime” and “Let’s catch up next Tuesday.” A week has come and gone, and the public remains none the wiser about Jelly Roll’s political opinions. What happened?
At the Grammys, Jelly Roll said the reason he didn’t want to speak on politics in that moment was that he was uninformed. “People shouldn’t care to hear my opinion, man,” he said. “I’m a dumb redneck. I haven’t watched enough. I didn’t have a phone for 18 months. I’ve had one for four months and don’t have social media.” He also said that, growing up, he wasn’t concerned about politics because he was focused on trying to survive in a “drug-addict household” and “didn’t even know politics were fucking real until I was in my mid-20s in jail.” It’s a fair enough argument, though by saying he was going to pull a 180 “in the next week,” he raised questions about what he planned to do in the ensuing seven days to change this. It summoned images of Jelly Roll obsessively poring over academic textbooks and journals in a desperate bid to cram everything he could about American politics so he could venture his informed take. Perhaps Jelly Roll hasn’t spoken yet because he got caught up trying to untangle the complicated web of American foreign policy!
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Realistically, though, there’s no benefit to Jelly Roll weighing in. Even if he has been vocally apolitical in the past, he has courted a MAGA fan base through his music (not to mention by chumming it up with Donald Trump and others in his camp), and anything oppositional he says could turn those people against him. Meanwhile, if he were to come out in full support of ICE or other conservative policies, it would open him up to backlash from the left and risk his status as an omnipresent cultural presence. Staying silent — particularly when he has made such a firm commitment to speaking “loud and clear” — underscores this instinct for self-preservation. But I say we keep our feet on the gas and hold Jelly Roll accountable until he breaks his silence. How else can we decide who to vote for in the next election?
