Fed Up Father John Misty Lectures XPN Fest: “Entertainment Is Stupid”

Fed Up Father John Misty Lectures XPN Fest: “Entertainment Is Stupid”

Waxing philosophical about how everything is bullshit is kind of Father John Misty’s thing, but some combination of the Republican National Convention and the world in general seems to have gotten him particularly down lately. Josh Tillman was supposed to perform at the XPN Festival in Camden, NJ last night, but he spent more time preaching than performing, starting things off with a rambling speech about the ills of modern society that climaxed with the proclamation that “Stupidity just fucking runs the world, because entertainment is stupid. Do you guys realize that?” Reader Tim describes the scene:

When Father John Misty took the stage today, he immediately proceeded to talk semi-coherently for about ten minutes, during which he proceeded to question the crowd on whether or not we deserved to be amused and what entertainment is. This was met with boos from the audience.

Following that, he played a new/improvised ~10-minute song that referenced various things at the festival as well as its own length. He then played a Leonard Cohen cover “Bird On A Wire,” that was requested from the crowd. After that, he aimlessly talked about a battleship that was docked in the river behind him. Then he said he was done and left the stage with more than half of his time remaining, having played only 2 songs (0 of them being Father John Misty songs). In addition, about 5 minutes after his set, while leaving the stage in a van, I saw him laughing hysterically, as if he were incredibly proud of his performance. In addition, following his set he tweeted out the phrases “Pure entertainment” and “Amused to death,” referencing his actions on stage.

Watch some footage from the performance/speech/whatever below.

A very heated #fatherjohnmisty , can’t say I blame him. #xpnfest

A video posted by Elise (@beetle_bumm) on

UPDATE: Father John Misty has issued a very Father John Misty statement about the incident via Instagram:

UPDATE 2: A long stretch of FJM’s speech has emerged. Watch below.

UPDATE 3: Tillman responded to Strand Of Oaks’ subtweets about (and XPN’s criticism of) his lecture. Read about that here.

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