Do we like them?

Do we like Kevin Parker?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and real good done, but he rarely talks publicly about the causes we care about, so there's little on the record either way.

His biggest legal-adjacent saga wasn't of his own making. In 2015 publisher BMG sued his Australian label, Modular Recordings, over an alleged shortfall of around a million dollars in Tame Impala royalties. Parker's response was weirdly zen: he said he'd already written the money off, called it something he accepts, and described himself as “a spectator at this point”.

On the harm check, we looked for anything he's said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines, climate or politics, and came up empty. No campaigning, no conspiracy rabbit holes, no dodgy company-keeping that we could source. That's a pass, with the honest caveat that he's a private sort who doesn't use interviews to wade into these debates, so the record is thin rather than loud.

The recent stuff is mostly low-stakes. He admitted he slept through the Grammys where Tame Impala's “End of Summer” won, saying “I forgot they were even on”. Then came the autograph policy: he said collectors were “using kids” and that crowds were getting out of control without the security to manage them. You can find it a bit precious, but it's a boundary, not a barb.

The real good stuff: in January 2020, with the fires raging, he announced Tame Impala would donate AU$300,000 from the Australian tour to bushfire relief. He said it should help both people and wildlife, and also support climate research and bushfire prevention. That's money and a public stand on the planet, from a bloke who otherwise keeps his opinions close.

So: would we support him? Yes. He's an enormously successful artist who hasn't turned his fame into grievance or culture-war content, and who stepped up when his home state was burning. We couldn't open every outlet we wanted to, so treat this as a solid but not exhaustive read.