After 50 years, the Residents are still on the road
Anonymity is key to the cult art-pop group’s success. But so is innovation
IN MAY 2020, shortly after the coronavirus struck, America’s weirdest rock band reissued one of its hits. The new video for “Die! Die! Die!”, a shrieking, nihilistic number re-recorded with the front man from the Pixies, featured tumbling viruses and a blond effigy of Donald Trump mouthing “I want you to die, die like a stranger…like a rat.” The caustic chanting and surreal graphics were a biting reminder that the cult phenomenon known as the Residents remains as subversive and strange as ever, half a century after the group was founded.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The eyeballs have it”
From the January 8th 2022 edition
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