In our digital age, where everyone is simultaneously more far apart yet more connected than ever, the most attractive thing a celebrity can be is barely available. We, as a society, feed ourselves off the pieces they willingly — and sometimes unwillingly — give us.
And even for the few celebrities who manage to maintain some semblance of distance between themselves and their fans, their followers tend to gravitate towards the pieces of their private lives they let slip to the public. Some artists fight this status quo by rejecting social media. But others have gone the opposite direction: baring their souls to fans and followers in newsletters that best resemble public diaries.
Musician’s Substacks (Ivanka Brown)
Most of these newsletters have found their home on Substack, a platform where writers, bloggers and journalists — also anyone else — can publish their writing for subscribers, without the middle man of traditional media blockading or aiding them. It allows for direct distribution and the potential for monetization, and it’s a way for writers to make money for their work in a world where they otherwise don’t get paid much for it anymore.
Substack might’ve started off as a platform used by career writers, but it’s become saturated by celebrity profiles portraying their — and if I could put this next part in quotes, I would — most authentic selves. These profiles are an exacted attempt to blur the lines between who we think they are and who they really are. But it doesn’t come across that way.
Charli xcx’s substack, which the musician started in November 2025, is perhaps the most popular example. It’s not up to me to judge if this is good or bad writing — there’s plenty of people online who have taken it upon themselves to do so already. What I question more is what purpose these essays serve.
There’s little in them that makes me understand her more as a person, or that gives me deeper admiration for her art. Mostly, it reads like a conversation meant to entice the reader with the unique details of a life most only dream of. It begs to be relatable, but the nature of her celebrity makes that impossible.
Maybe the purpose of these newsletters, as Charli says in her essay titled “The realities of being a pop star,” is to prove that she “isn’t stupid” — which many female popstars are often expected to be. Substack surely offers artists a platform where longer and deeper thoughts can be expounded. But anyone who’s listened to her music knows that she is intelligent and talented — and anyone who doesn’t shouldn’t matter, right?
Charli isn’t the only one. Maggie Rogers and Troye Sivan, fellow pop singers, also have Substack newsletters, each with thousands of subscribers, relatively high numbers for the platform. And it’s the same kind of writing across their respective pages. It begs to be introspective, but they fall short of their ultimate goal.
As of now, most musicians don’t require a paid subscription to read their Substacks, which saves us from confronting the moral dilemma of fans being charged for yet another sliver of content, and these celebrities potentially feeling the pressure to keep producing more. Granted, it’s a fan’s choice if they want to subscribe, and artists have more control over their legacies now than ever.
But for a space that was created to elevate writer’s voices, it all rings shallow, like the sample journal entry that serves as an advertisement for the notebook itself. Vulnerability for the sake of being vulnerable is empty and useless. And it simplifies what I imagine are the very real and complicated emotions that come with being a popstar.
It’s not that the platform is limited to those who meet a certain definition of “writer.” One of the things I love about Substack is that it makes writing more accessible. But for some of these artists, their lyrics are more than enough. They can keep the journal.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source dailyfreepress.com ’
