Deep in the heart of Twitterland, a place where every day is a game of “Who’s Next on the Cancel Culture Carousel?”, 90’s crooner Michael Bolton finds himself in the unenviable spotlight. His age-old classic, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” has been flagged by the all-seeing, all-judging, meme-slinging Zoomer army as a lyrical landmine, a blatant betrayal of the non-binary love narratives.
In the same universe where mullets are staging a comeback, the “Never Gonna Give You Up” meme is considered vintage art, and cryptocurrency is the new Monopoly money, Zoomers have again flexed their investigative muscles. They’ve excavated Bolton’s 1991 cover of Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a song that apparently dared to suggest that love could sometimes involve—gasp—a man and a woman.
“Really, Bolton?” said a TikTok user named @nonbinary_nirvana, their voice dripping with the kind of righteous indignation that only a seventeen-second video clip can contain. “What about when a person loves a person? Or when a genderqueer individual loves a two-spirit? Does your narrow vision of love include us?“
The tweet of a user named @BoltonBinaryBuster has been retweeted over 50,000 times. It reads, “Just listened to ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.’ Grossed out by the binary-ness. #MichaelBoltonIsOverParty.” If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Bolton had personally insulted each and every one of their 20,000 followers.
With the subtlety of a chainsaw cutting through a birthday cake, the Zoomer squad has declared war on Bolton. Their weapons? A barrage of tweets, TikToks, and Instagram stories, each one more cutting and hyperbolic than the last. If cancel culture were an Olympic sport, the Gen Z team would be well on their way to a gold medal.
Meanwhile, Bolton, who had probably hoped his biggest problem in 2023 would be maintaining his luscious locks, is now knee-deep in a social media quagmire. In a turn of events that is surprising to exactly nobody, Bolton’s Spotify streams have skyrocketed in the wake of the controversy. It seems there’s nothing like a good cancellation to stoke the fires of nostalgic listening.
So, here we are. A moment in our cultural zeitgeist where a 30-year-old love ballad has been deemed the enemy of progress. One thing is clear as we wait with bated breath to see if Bolton will release an apology, a retraction, or a remix of the offending song. No one is safe in the wild, whacky world of cancel culture. Not even the mullet-sporting maestros of yesteryears.
