In a new interview with EonMusic, Skillet frontman John Cooper shared his thoughts on fans with different beliefs than his and sent them a message.
The singer was asked if he ever thought he would still be doing what he is doing today thirty years later. “Yeah, in ’96 I thought; ‘In 30 years, I’m going to be opening for Mötley Crüe at Aftershock!’ No, never in a million years, I ever thought that,” he responded. “I think Skillet’s longevity is due to our authenticity. Here’s the ironic thing, most of our fans don’t believe the same way I believe. I meet them every show. They’re like, they’ll say; ‘I didn’t even know you guys were a religious band, but your music make me feel good,’ and I give them a fist bump.”
The rocker mentioned the band’s authenticity and clarified that no one had to agree with him to enjoy the music: “You don’t have to agree with me. I think it’s the authenticity that people relate to, and I will say that I’m a big fan of say, Rob Zombie, for instance, I’m a big Zombie fan, and I have a feeling that I don’t agree with a lot of his lyrics, too. I don’t think me and Trent Reznor agree on maybe a lot of stuff; I have no idea, I don’t know it, but when I hear the music, I go; ‘Man, that’s good. I believe that you believe it,’ and it makes good art, and I appreciate it. I think that’s what it is.”
“We treat our fans good, and I think it’s because Skillet is so positive. I think that’s a little bit of that empowerment that people need to say; ‘it’s okay that I’m me,’ and ‘I don’t have to please anybody else.’ That can be a positive; that’s not a negative, that’s a positive thing. You’re not telling somebody to screw off; you’re just like; ‘you do you,'” he added.
While he seems to treat his fans the way they want to be treated, the band released a new song titled ‘Unpopular’ to slam the haters. Cooper explained his reasoning for making such a song: “It was, and it was kind of tongue in cheek, and kind of in a funny way because the point we were trying to make is that most everybody, especially young people that have grown up with social media – they’re not necessarily all young – but they know what it’s like just to get people not just disagreeing with you, but hating you; that’s intense, yeah? And so they live with it, and so I thought it’ll be funny to put up some of these things like; ‘girls shouldn’t be in rock and roll’; and then the video shows our girls, like, just crushing it, so I thought it was kind of funny, and I thought I’d poke fun about it.”
Cooper also said in another interview that the song reflects the band’s message, explaining that the members “want to be on the side with people that are like, ‘Oh, I still kind of like raising my family and going to church and loving my kids and not being weird and loving freedom.'”
‘Revolution’ was released on November 1 and is the band’s first album in nearly three years, after ‘Dominion’ in January 2022.
