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I would like to start this article off by thanking Beyonc\u00e9<\/a> and every other artist who has been accused of devil worship or being part of some occult group of elites whose main intent is to rule the world through mind control. For as long as music has been around, listeners have loved to imagine the person behind the songs as part of a satanic cabal, trying to snatch your soul for the sake of retaining relevancy. In the 1950s, with the rise of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, performers like Little Richard<\/a>, Elvis Presley<\/a>, and Chuck Berry<\/a> were victims of this moral panic, accused of \u201ccorrupting\u201d young people with their provocative lyrics on race and sexuality. This \u201cSatanic Panic<\/a>\u201d would resurface in the 1980s with heavy metal. This time, the perpetrators were Led Zeppelin<\/a> and Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2014even Michael Jackson<\/a> was the subject of rumor and fetishized speculation, accused of selling his soul for fame.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over time, we\u2019ve come to laugh at ourselves for ever seriously seeing legends like Elvis or the Prince of Darkness<\/a> as devil worshipers. We consider ourselves \u201cabove\u201d throwing successful artists under the bus. However, the witch hunt is alive and well, just repackaged for our time. Instead of whispers among parents in the neighborhood, everyone can now take part in this witch hunt, loudly accusing artists online. The Michael Jackson urban myth may have faded, but you\u2019ll still find some in The Weeknd<\/a>\u2019s comments section, begging him to \u201cfind Jesus,\u201d despite the explicit spiritual nature of his recent releases. After all this time, why do we keep running back to the comforting fiction that singers are aligned with the shadows?\u00a0<\/p>\n The victims of satanic panic, both past and present, share a common thread: They are subversive, provocative, or just unsettling in their time. Little Richard was a Black man in the United States before the Civil Rights Era, bringing a Black\u2013pioneered music genre to the forefront of entertainment while performing in ways considered \u201ceffeminate\u201d by mainstream audiences. But what made him most threatening wasn\u2019t his music\u2014it was his identity and refusal to conform. He was seen as transgressive, so much so that white\u2013owned radio stations refused to play<\/a> his hit song \u201cTutti Frutti<\/a>\u201d despite airing covers sung by white artists. The case is similar with Lil Nas X<\/a>, currently, where the majority of the outrage surrounding his music has nothing to do with the songs themselves, most of which are quite polished and safe for radio. Instead, the issue is with who he is. His number one hit, \u201cOld Town Road<\/a>,\u201d was pulled from country charts<\/a> and radio, claiming its trap elements made the song not \u201ccountry enough,\u201d while Billboard and radio stations would later come to allow Morgan Wallen<\/a>, a white country\u2013trap singer, to chart on the Country Hot 100 and receive air time regardless.\u00a0<\/p>\n Satanic accusations don\u2019t pop out of nowhere\u2014it makes sense how major social and political upheavals also influence the volume of Satanism allegations. How could the paranoia of McCarthyism in the \u201950s<\/a>\u2014when Americans were encouraged to spy on their neighbors and suspect hidden motives everywhere\u2014not spill over into music, a visible cultural stage? Logically, many people projected their insecurities onto prominent figures, manifesting as accusations of demonic corruption. In the \u201980s, people were already on edge about the occult, thanks to over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of satanic ritual abuse<\/a> coming up around this time. Heavy metal rockers just so happened to be easy scapegoats, because their darker, heavier music was an easy symbol for cultural fear.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really easy, even comforting, to deflect our own fears and insecurities about the changing state of the world onto people we don\u2019t know\u2014especially celebrities. That instinct hasn\u2019t gone away. We continue to resurrect satanic panic when tensions rise. Following the arrest of Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs<\/a>, online edits of J. Cole<\/a>\u2019s \u201cShe Knows<\/a>\u201d surfaced, implying that Beyonc\u00e9 is a devil worshipper given the collapse and deaths of other high\u2013profile figures associated with his alleged crimes. Or maybe she\u2019s simply a successful Black woman in the music industry, and we\u2019re not sure how to process our discomfort with a powerful producer allegedly tied to sex trafficking. Lil Nas X isn\u2019t a Satanist\u2014he\u2019s just a gay, Black man in rap, a genre long steeped in hypermasculinity and homophobia. Doja Cat<\/a> isn\u2019t a part of a cabal; she\u2019s a biracial woman choosing self\u2013expression in an increasingly conservative climate. It is becoming more and more evident that \u201cdevil worshipper\u201d is just a label attributed to successful artists who unsettle us during bad times. But this accusation isn\u2019t without its pushback.<\/p>\n While society may try to push artists out with sinister allegations, many just choose to address it in their artistry instead. Beyonc\u00e9, who has fought such accusations her entire career, made her stance in her hit single \u201cFormation<\/a>,\u201d singing, \u201cY\u2019all haters corny with that \/ Illuminati mess,\u201d and \u201cYou know you that bitch \/ When you \u2019cause all this conversation.\u201d Doja Cat put out a darker, edgier concept album, Scarlet<\/a>, around the time it was alleged she had sold her soul, appearing in her \u201cDemons<\/a>\u201d music video dressed as, well, a demon. In her lead single \u201cPaint The Town Red<\/a>,\u201d she likens her loyalty to creative vision over fame and likability as a kind of soul\u2013sell, bragging she\u2019s so \u201cbad,\u201d \u201cthe devil,\u201d and a \u201cdemon lord.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n