What music would Patrick Bateman listen to today?
In Bret Easton Ellis‘ highly-celebrated and criticised controversial novel American Psycho, the banker-come-serial killer Patrick Bateman shares his profound love for the popular music of the 1980s.
Some of the novel’s best passages arrive when Bateman is eloquently explaining his love for Huey Lewis and the News, Whitney Houston and the Phil Collins-led formation of Genesis. However, it is believed by some critics that Bateman’s ability to describe the music is because his personal reviews are more or less pulled from the popular music magazines of the time.
However, it appears that Ellis is slyly giving shade to the aforementioned artists, as we know that Patrick Bateman is an utterly shallow and materialistic person. Ellis once commented on Bateman’s reviews in the book, “It’s strange: My editor wanted two of them gone. He hated all of them, but he also hated the book.”
When asked by the interviewer what he thinks Bateman would listen to today (the interview was in 2016), Ellis responded: “What is anyone listening to these days? This is the question. There just does not seem to be this consolidation of popularity that there was in the [1980s].”
He added: “What would they be? Adele? Taylor Swift? I don’t know who amasses the concentration of popularity that someone [like] Huey Lewis could and sell 16 million copies of his third record. I just don’t know whether that’s swirling around in the culture right now in the way that we listen to music. It all seems so niche.”
If the fact that Bateman is a Huey Lewis and Genesis fan is a condemnation of such acts by Ellis, then perhaps he is subsequently pointing a damning figure at Adele and Swift too. However, Ellis has actually previously made complimentary comments about both singers.
Ellis is at least a fan of Adele’s James Bond theme song ‘Skyfall’. In 2012, he tweeted: “Adele’s ‘Skyfall’ joins ‘Goldfinger’, ‘You Only Live Twice’, ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, ‘Live and Let Die’, and ‘Nobody Does It Better’ as a top Bond song.”
Then in 2019, Ellis revealed a love for Swift. He said: “I think she’s a phenomenally talented person. I love ‘All Too Well.’ Love the Red album. I think it’s a masterpiece. Her private life and her views are not something I have ever felt wrapped up in. I know Taylor through her records.”
So even if Patrick Bateman wasn’t to be a Taylor Swift and Adele fan, we could assume that his creator is.
