When your favorite artist dies

What do you call that grief?

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to wake up on November 1 1993, to part your curtains and cast light upon the posters of River Phoenix on your bedroom walls, only to learn a few minutes later that he had died on the pavements of Sunset Boulevard. Or, barely a year later, to come home from school as a grunge-obsessed kid, and learn Kurt Cobain had taken his own life. Tragedy disseminates through push notifications nowadays; we know of something moments after it happens, and have digital forums in which we can discuss it. But there’s something strange about the idea of living out your grief in relative solitude, for someone who never really knew you.

The first celebrity death I remember being moved by was Amy Winehouse’s in 2011. I was in my kitchen that summer with the radio on. It was one of the rare instances where I wasn’t already on the family computer, but soon after I jumped online and started scouring over articles while the 24-hour news channel behind me blared updates in unison. My dad said I was too young for Back to Black, which my sister got for Christmas in 2006, but like many gay boys I’d gravitated towards her audacity and artistry. I had no addiction problems but I probably knew sadness, so I found myself in that part of her art.

By 2011, I had found ways to make friends online already, so even when other celebrities died who I was less enraptured by, there was a place to find people sharing their memories of how that dead artist’s art had moved them. Nowadays, the once emotionally dense online eulogy has become streamlined: a prayer emoji or a loveheart symbol over a Variety news announcement we’ve re-posted to our Instagram story.

That’s not to say our feelings about an artist dying lack integrity—it’s just never been easier to let people know how we feel. Right now, so many idols are ascending to the higher plane: Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill died this week; earlier this year, the musician Oliver Tree, Euphoria’s Eric Dane, and the treasured comedy actor Catherine O’Hara passed away too. These four feel specifically sad and strange because their deaths came out of nowhere: Oliver Tree was young, just 32, and died tragically; the others—older but not old enough for their deaths to be expected—battled their ailments in private. Even David Hockney, at 88 years old, felt unstoppable.

It’s a bittersweet feeling to lose someone whose work means a lot to you, but it’s a grief that is hard to place. The word parasocial carries negative connotations, like a stalkerish scent, but it accurately describes what we’re going through. It’s a parasocial kind of grief when we realize the articulator of so many of our strongest feelings is no longer able to put them into new words. In many ways, it’s a trickier grief to process. When a loved one we know passes away, we turn to the people closest to us and touch them. We attend funerals and work towards closure. With our favorite public figures, that process is far less linear.

Maybe it’s just the passing of time, but I sometimes find myself feeling as sad about the death of SOPHIE as I do about the death of my mother, who passed away in 2003. SOPHIE was an artist I never met, capable of such brilliance, but whose opportunity to continue her artistry was stolen from her when she died in 2021. That’s partly because I have followed the traditional beats of grief with one, and find myself stuck in the staccato rhythm of the other.

The Werther Effect was a term coined in 1974 by a researcher named David Phillips, used to describe the ripple effect of a publicized suicide, and the attempts that follow. The most prominent example of this came after Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962, when suicides spiked 12% higher than the annual average. Celebrity hyperfixation was reaching an apex point then, peaking with Beatlemania two years later. (Some sources state that three John Lennon fans were driven to suicide after his murder.)

We can’t walk into the funerals of an artist who’s passed, but it’s never been easier to surround ourselves with people who feel the same way. After Liam Payne died, vigils were held outside the hotel he was staying in. A week after Winehouse’s death, I found myself in London with my sister. We went to her home in Camden and found tealights and wilted flowers lying by the front gate. Online stan communities, derided for their obsessive behavior, also become places of solace at times like this. I once wrote an article about what it’s like when the subject of your stan account dies. Interviewing the admins of these accounts, I was moved by the metamorphosis of their purpose. What was once a place for a star’s every move to be traced instead became a place for fans of a late star to gather. As one admin put it: “No one is alone, we’re all together.”

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• The Odyssey is out this weekend and is as good as you’ve heard. Do you need to see it in IMAX? I didn’t, and still thought it was awesome.

• Speaking of endurance art and ancient Greek texts, the only thing longer than The Odyssey right now is a stage version of The Oresteia, currently running at London’s Bridge Theatre and starring our favorite Archie Madekwe. My interest was piqued further when I heard its first preview ran 15 minutes shy of 5 hours! Now, it’s sitting at a comparatively conservative 3 and half. I’ll see it soon.

• By the time this reaches you, the new Gracie Abrams album will be out. I’ve rinsed the two singles over the past few weeks to the point they’ve likely entered my top tracks of the year. Also, she has tour openers for the ages: Samia and Jake Minch.