Following Boy George’s release of his controversial pro-Israel song “We Will Dance Again,” Bandcamp removed his song and his page from its platform. Bandcamp is an online music platform where independent artists sell their music directly to fans.
According to the platform, the ban was activated because the song violated its policy not to publish AI-generated, or partly AI-generated, material. Boy George has admitted that he composed the song with the assistance of AI.
The pop icon said that Bandcamp shut him down and took his money, and he hopes they will issue a refund.
“The drama continues. Sadly Bandcamp have removed my profile, so anyone trying to get a copy of We Will Dance Again will have to wait until I record it and find a way to put it out,” the singer said on social media.
In the meantime, anyone who has already downloaded the song should “make videos, play it on the internet… get it heard,” Boy George urged his fans. The singer also promised to release the song independently.
“My faith in humanity will not diminish and the truth will always win,” he wrote. “I come from a place of peace. I am a jew loving, trans hugging queer hippy and my mother would be proud of me.”
The singer has faced fierce backlash for his song. His manager, Tony Pontius, quit over the song, saying he wanted “nothing to do with it.” His manager, Paul Kemsley, pulled him from a two-week performance tour of the hit West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which he was supposed to play King Herod.
Boy George wrote the song to honor the victims of the Nova Music Festival massacre and express his rock-solid support for the Jewish people.
The singer, best known as the frontman of the group Culture Club, expressed views in the song that he has shared before as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the entertainment industry, laying it out in black and white: “But if you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Despite the backlash, he has doubled down on the sentiments shared in the song. Replying to someone who called him “Zionist scum” on X, the singer responded by saying, “Jew love is true love!”
Explaining why he refused to tone down his rhetoric, he wrote on X, “I’m afraid it’s not an option.”
“So many people are calling me and saying I should pipe down and let it blow over and while they mean well I’m afraid it’s not an option,” he wrote in his signature comma-less style.
“What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me but I am smart enough to realise that what you are cannot disguise who you are,” he continued. “No gay person speaks for an entire community and if you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f— a garage.’”
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers not just the Jewish community. When will you wake up?” he demanded.
The Jewish community has responded warmly to the release of the song, with a famous Jewish artist honoring Boy George by painting a giant mural of the singer in London.