The moment revivalist rock band Geese got branded a psyop was a turning point. For decades, artists with substantial financial backing had been derided as ‘industry plants’, but the discourse changed when evidence emerged that Geese’s rise had been facilitated by digital marketing agency Chaotic Good and their fleet of artificial fan pages and algorithmic manipulation. Industry plants were now psyops, and their control over the public consciousness was more insidious than ever. 

This shift also marked a watering down of psyop’s original meaning. A portmanteau of ‘psychological operation’, the word ‘psyop’ emerged in the early 20th century to describe a shift towards covert operations and the use of soft power by governments attempting to control people and outcomes through subversive means. The recent Geese-gate discourse, then, reflects how similar techniques are now standard practice for marketing agencies in the digital age, subtly manipulating fans into following certain trends and artists. The crucial difference is that these campaigns are conducted for commercial, rather than political, goals.

But that definitely doesn’t mean that artists have never been accused of being quote-unquote real psyops. Below, we break down seven times musicians were actually alleged to have been involved – knowingly or not – in state-led psychological operations (unsurprisingly, many of these originate in the USA during the Cold War). 

‘JAZZ KILLED LAMUMBA’

Rewind the clocks back to the year 1960, and Congo has just elected its first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, who posed an existential threat to the existing world order. Emerging amid a neo-colonial scramble for Africa’s rich natural resources, Lumumba sought to unify African countries under a Pan-African movement that would protect their own interests. This was rapidly becoming a real possibility: if all the newly independent African countries aligned their interests, they would become the most powerful voting bloc in the United Nations.

So, here’s where the conspiracy comes in. As depicted in Johan Grimonprez’ 2024 documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, in 1960, American ‘jazz ambassadors’ Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong were flown out for performances in newly independent African countries, ostensibly to “win the hearts and minds” of the African people, dispel Soviet Union criticisms of racism in America, and prevent Africans from turning against the West. Behind the scenes, however, without the awareness of the participating artists, these performances were used as a smokescreen for CIA attempts to overthrow Lumumba’s government. 

In the years and decades following these performances, the CIA’s involvement has gradually emerged. As just one example, it was later revealed that the ‘diplomat’ who hosted Armstrong during his tour of Congo was actually the head of the CIA, Larry Devlin, who was using Armstrong’s entourage to sneak into the country’s strategically important Katanga province. Lumumba was murdered within two months of Armstrong’s tour by insurgents from Katanga province, and Devlin later told the US Congress that “the coup […] was arranged and supported, and indeed, managed, by the CIA.” (SPM)

“WINDS OF CHANGE” WAS WRITTEN BY THE CIA?

Sitting closer to the more fanciful, conspiracy theory end of the spectrum is Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2020 podcast documentary series Winds of Change, which investigates a rumour that German rock band Scorpions’ hit 1991 single “Winds of Change” was actually written by the CIA to usher in the fall of the Soviet Union.

Featuring cryptic lyrics celebrating the new policy of glasnost (‘openness’) in the Soviet Union, the track was wildly popular within the USSR even though listening to Western records was illegal at the time, and the song has since been branded the “song of the [20th] century” by German TV station ZDF. While Keefe never manages to prove or disprove the theory in his series (surprisingly, CIA agents don’t like to spill secrets), he does make a compelling case for the CIA’s involvement in the song. 

In his podcast, Keefe draws on examples like the use of ‘jazz ambassadors’ in Congo to prove that American agents were acutely aware of the power of music to tip the precarious balance of the Cold War. Elsewhere, he investigates the bizarre Moscow Music Peace Festival of 1989, which was broadcast by MTV and saw rock artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Jon Bon Jovi and, indeed, Scorpions perform inside the Soviet Union two years before it toppled in 1991… was this just an innocent music festival, or something more sinister? (SPM)

‘COOL BRITANNIA’ FOOLS THE WAVES

In 2013, the frontman of My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields, shared an ominous message about Britpop, the happy-go-lucky cultural movement that swept these ailing isles in the 1990s. “Someday it would be interesting to read all the MI5 files on Britpop,” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “The wool was pulled right over everyone’s eyes there.”

Now, it’s technically impossible to confirm or deny whether intelligence services (or the deep state) had a hand in “Wonderwall”. But it’s hard to deny that bands like Oasis and Blur were seized on by political schemers – namely, New Labour – to sway the electorate. See: the famous picture of Noel Gallagher shaking hands with Tony Blair, or Damon Albarn sitting in on a “strategic meeting” with Blair and Alastair Campbell before the 1997 general election. Yes, Albarn would go on to vocally oppose the Iraq war – maybe they didn’t put enough mind-control drugs in his lager that week. But by then the damage was already done. (TW)

K-POP VS. KIM JONG-UN

This one is not a conspiracy theory or clandestine operation – over the last 70 years, South Korea has intermittently and very publicly used giant speaker systems to blast propaganda over the border into North Korea. The practice began during the Korean War in 1950, in which the American-backed, capitalist South fought against the Chinese and Soviet Union-backed, communist North, but has continued after a tentative peace was established in 1953.

While the initial broadcasts focused primarily on speeches and radio shows highlighting the failures of the North Korean regime and the benefits of capitalism, in the last two decades the South Korean military has increasingly incorporated K-Pop music – which is banned in the North for being a “reactionary ideology”. Broadcasts in the 2010s included recordings of first-generation K-Pop groups APINK, BigBang and IU, as well as flying balloons loaded with USBs of K-Pop and K-dramas into North Korea – all intended to highlight the successes of South Korean society. Surprisingly, this practice has actually worked, with many defectors from the North citing South Korean media as helping them to see through North Korean propaganda. 

These speakers were officially removed from the demilitarised zone in August, 2025 after incoming South Korean President Jae Myung decided to “recalibrate” his relations with the North. However, this practice still survives in South Korea’s yearly DMZ Peace Train festival, which aims to promote reunification through booking both local and international acts to perform near the border. (SPM)

THE CIA FOUNDED THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT (AND TRAINED CHARLES MANSON)?

Perhaps the most famous of all musical conspiracy theories is this long-running claim that the 1960s hippie movement, which saw the rise of modern music festivals, psychedelic rock and recreational drug use, was actually orchestrated by the CIA. Their alleged goal: to sedate the States’ growing anti-war protest movement with weed and LSD (among other drugs).

This theory takes many forms, but most retellings centre on how LSD, which the CIA stockpiled and made extensive use of during its MK Ultra mind-control experiments in the 50s, resurfaced at the heart of the emerging hippie movement a decade later. Just one month ago, investigative journalist and author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, Tom O’Neill delivered evidence of cult leader and musician Charles Manson’s connection to the MK Ultra program to the American Congress. Perhaps Manson's horrific murder spree in 1969 – which, crucially, he persuaded other people to carry out on his behalf – was connected to US covert operations and the brainwashing techniques the CIA had developed in the prior decade, or so the theory goes.

Elsewhere, people point to the fact that several hippie icons, including The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison and guitarist Frank Zappa, were the children of high-ranking military officials. The broader theory that the sixties counter-culture was a psy-op has never been proven in its entirety – and, of course, these artists aren’t necessarily defined by their parents’ jobs – but evidence of the CIA’s meddling still continues to surface to this day. (SPM)

HIP-HOP WAS A PROFIT-SEEKING PRODUCT OF THE PRISON SYSTEM

Hip-hop has a long history of critiquing the prison system, especially in the US (which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world), stretching all the way back to the 1982 conscious hip-hop classic “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. But what if we told you that the carceral state actually promoted the rise of hip-hop, to further its own agenda? 

This is the claim made in urban legends dating back to the 1990s, before blowing up via music blogs around 2012, when an allegedly leaked letter circulated showing a deal between prisons and music industry executives some 20 years earlier. Allegedly (as explored in the NPR Music podcast Louder Than a Riot), the prison higher-ups were pushing for music execs to promote more hip-hop that glorifies violence and crime, in exchange for a stake in the prison business. Rumours have swirled that the Bone Thugs group were approached by the CIA early on in their career to encourage them to rap about violent crime.

But, while this does track with broad trends in the genre at the time, this theory does underplay the agency of rappers like Krayzie Bone themselves, whose work could also be understood as a reaction to the adverse circumstances facing African-American communities at the time. Between allegations of a sustained psyop by profit-seeking parties and the socio-political context that these rappers emerged in, the truth here appears to be a little more complicated than a simple, one-sided conspiracy. (TW)