You Are Not The Target Audience: Kendrick Lamar and the Superbowl

Many words have been written about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance, and my TikTok feed has been filled with videos explaining the depth and layers of the performance, while other platforms have been filled with complaints (just like every year!) about the Super Bowl halftime choice. 

There is one message I have yet to see, and it is as important as it is simple:  You Are Not The Target Audience. 

The Super Bowl is a great time to realize You Are Not The Target Audience, as it is a cultural event that is pervasive through all of America; no matter if you like sports or not, chances are you will be seeing the Super Bowl, and if you don’t, you will definitely hear about the half time show.  This universally American experience means that many people isolated within their own narrow subcultures for much of their life are suddenly exposed to a different part of American culture than they are used to. 

Much ink has been spilled specifically about the political cross-pollination; a very black performance exposed to many white and conservative audiences.  It is important to understand that this lesson applies to more than politics, race or age; this is a lesson in self-awareness that can apply to anyone.  For example, a common response among my own friend group goes along the lines of “why doesn’t the Super Bowl have Metallica or Slayer?”  Why?  Because You Are Not The Target Audience. 

How To Tell If You Are Not The Target Audience

Any time you are in an environment where an artist is performing and people are enjoying the event, but you are confused, dismayed, offended, or otherwise unable to connect, you must accept that You Are Not The Target Audience.  This is a difficult realization, but once you move past the discomfort of realizing You Are Not The Target Audience, you open yourself to understanding why You Are Not The Target Audience, and then to Who The Target Audience is and Why They Are The Target Audience.  If you are an artist, this will have even greater significance which I will explain later.

First, we must come to grips with Not Being The Target Audience.  Maybe you are older and white, and this is challenging because sometime years ago, You Were The Target Audience.  You once were among ages 18 to 34 that used to be talked about as being “the target demographic” for advertisers, because people this age had the most disposable income.  Secondarily, you were the were most engaged in the broader culture in that time.  Once you passed this age and started settling down, you lost touch with the broader culture that is continually evolving, instead settling for your own comfortable sub-culture niches that were less invested in new music, but driven by work, family or religious life. You may assume that what you experience is the broader culture, because much of your young adulthood was spent being advertised to and being told You Are The Target Audience.  Sudden exposure to the actual broader culture then seems like an unwelcome interruption into your natural order; if You Are The Target Audience, then why is this thing you don’t understand suddenly so important? The only natural conclusion is that it must be some aberration and that it sucks because it was not made to appeal to you. 

The reality is that your path diverged from that of the broader culture, and you never realized it.  While you were diverged, many things were happening to the broader culture that shaped, shifted and changed it.  Those things did not happen to you, so you stayed the same while the culture didn’t.  You no longer have the context or the experiences to understand what is going on.  The Super Bowl half time show is for someone else, because You Are Not The Target Audience.  But someone else is. 

Maybe you are not older, or white, or never participated in the broader culture.  Maybe you are a metalhead, or into anime, or share passions about some niche art style on a Discord server.  You Are Also Not The Target Audience.  You may understand the culture up to the point that you diverged from the path, but lost track once you actively forged your own path with your own friends developing your own sub-culture niche.   You changed along the way, but in ways that are different than the broader culture.  You occasionally re-converge and have a similar reaction of dismay and confusion.

Realizing that You Are Not The Target Audience is a bit like Socrates being told by the Oracle at Delphi that he is wise because he knows that he knows nothing; this realization that the broader culture moves on without you is an opportunity to understand the lens in which others view the world. 

If You Are Not The Target Audience, then what?

By this realization, now when you are in an environment where an artist is performing and others are enjoying an event, it is an opportunity for discovery.  What is the symbolism in Kendrick Lamar’s performance?  Who does it speak to and why?  What were the cultural shifts and impacts that brought this into the mainstream?  Apply these lines of questions any time you are in a situation where someone else is the target audience. By opening ourselves up to letting others Be The Target Audience, we can achieve greater understanding of the world around us.  Encourage others to do the same when they are participating in your sub-culture. We can work this understanding in the opposite direction as well.  By understanding the separation of sub-cultures and niches from mainstream culture, and recognizing You Are Not The Target Audience, you can also recognize when mainstream culture is Not Your Target Audience.  This then starts to make sense why Slayer or Metallica is a poor fit for the Super Bowl, and a better fit in other venues. 

If you are an artist, this becomes paramount.  If you can learn to understand why You Are Not The Target Audience, then you can begin to understand Who The Target Audience Is and Why They Are The Target Audience.  This is important for your success as an artist.  Artistic success comes from being able to connect your art to the appropriate audience. 

Artistic success comes from being able to connect your art to the appropriate audience. 

I have had a few experiences that helped me understand this.  I work for a large semiconductor manufacturer as an electrical engineer and play in a progressive post-doom metal band.  If this were a Venn diagram, you would have a large circle for engineers, and a tiny one for progressive post-doom metal fans, and the overlap would likely just be me.  But, being the passionate artist that I am, I love sharing my art with people.  Soon after our last album was released, I was discussing it with my mentor, Dave, a very intelligent man with many years of expertise, with a love for classic rock, especially AC-DC.  I sent him a link to the album and he replied with “Wow! You guys sound like Disturbed!”.  My insides cringed so hard they might have turned into a black hole.  Of course, from his perspective, it wasn’t an insult, it was a compliment.  He Was Not The Target Audience.  As lovely as he is, he has not taken the path from AC-DC and Black Sabbath to arrive at the place and time where avant-garde funeral doom types of music exist in his world.  From the outside, the difference between my band and Disturbed is far smaller than it is from inside this niche. 

Another experience, far more recently occurred while chitchatting on a zoom call before a meeting.  After talking to another engineer about my experience self-recording our new album, they suggested that I have our band play at the next corporate event.  Internally, the thought of my band playing 40 minute songs at gut rupturing volume in that environment is hilarious, but now that I can come to grips with Who The Target Audience Is, I can politely engage with my co-worker who just means the best. 

Crafting Your Audience Is As Important As Crafting Your Art

All artists know what rejection feels like and it is difficult to take it in stride when we are so emotionally invested in our art.  We must remember that the people that are critical of our art oftentimes have not taken a path that is similarly diverged to the point that they can understand the context in which the art came to be, and most people are not self-aware enough to step back when they are not the Target Audience to try to understand the context in which the art was created.  This means that the artist must take the time to find their audience.  Sometimes that is easy, as many of our sub-culture niches brought people along the same path and they are traveling with us; these travelers are often our audience.  Sometimes it is hard, when you are traveling the path alone, or you are pulling elements from multiple paths at once and the overlap in the Venn diagram is reduced even further.   This requires further craftsmanship from the artist to build the story they want to tell in a way that works within the cultural context of the audience they are trying to tell it to.  It also requires a mental toughness to be able to decipher if criticism is from our audience or not.  Sometimes the criticism itself is enough to clarify if the source is the target audience or not, by the nature of the critique. 

This requires further craftsmanship from the artist to build the story they want to tell in a way that works within the cultural context of the audience they are trying to tell it to. 

An important exercise for us artists is to take a step beyond realizing You Are Not The Target audience, but to actively seek out experiences in both mainstream culture and in other sub-cultures.  I had this realization a few years ago when doing karaoke….I knew none of the songs.  The pop-culture knowledge that was commonplace to everyone else in the room was a blaring gap in my own experience.  As a means to participate and understand the mainstream culture, I have now downloaded the Top 40 songs from every year since 1960 into my personal collection.  Every January, I collect the previous year’s biggest hits and keep them in my collection, so they are constantly getting shuffled into my regular music.  I will occasionally write personal reviews of albums outside of my normal genre when they become culturally significant. Last year, I wrote personal reviews for Billie Eillish, Post Malone, Taylor Swift and Beyonce, as these were topics of conversation for my non-metal loving friends. 

Consciously realizing that You Are Not The Target Audience moves the experience of alienation into one of discovery and connection.  It makes us better artists and better people by encouraging us to seek understanding with other audiences, and become more effective at connecting with potential audiences that truly matter.