I have increasingly felt that when we appreciate a work, we should keep a measured distance from its creator.

Human beings are not internally consistent in the way we often wish them to be. Someone may show genuine courage in a critical moment, even save another person’s life, and yet behave appallingly within their own family. The rescue hero at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was rightly praised for what he did in danger. It was moving and brave. But later reports of violence against his father were deeply disturbing. The point is not that we must immediately erase the earlier act of courage. It is that both things may be true. The rescue was real, and so was the violence. Excellence in one part of life does not cancel serious wrongdoing in another.

This tension seems particularly visible among musicians. Music enters our emotions so directly that we easily assume the tenderness, strength, warmth or weariness in a song is a faithful portrait of the whole person who made it. Often it is not. Beethoven’s music is certainly related, in complex ways, to his loneliness, illness, volatility and difficulty with other people. But it would be far too simple to say that he wrote great music because he had a bad temper. A work is not a complete moral report on its maker. It is what that person achieved through particular abilities, experiences and artistic form.

Han Hong is an easy example. I have always found her performance of That Sea deeply compelling. Her voice has power, but not power alone. In Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, she has an expansive, solid sound that carries something of the landscape suggested by the song. Li Na made the song famous first, but Han Hong’s version still has a distinct identity of its own. There have been public discussions about Han Hong as a person and, more broadly, questions around rights, credit and financial arrangements in music. Those are separate matters, to be judged by evidence and proper rules. They do not change a straightforward aesthetic judgment: in some works, she sings exceptionally well.

The reverse is also true. An artist who once made very good songs is not entitled to automatic admiration for every later work. I find Dao Lang’s earlier songs, including The First Snow of 2002, The Punishment of Impulse and Love Song of West Sea, highly listenable. His voice carries a weathered quality that is nevertheless young and defiant. It is not the flatness of complete defeat. It has force, experience and a refusal to give in. Some people may dislike the style, but it has a recognisable character.

My response to his later song Rakshasa Sea City is entirely different. I do not think a song becomes artistically successful simply because it alludes to something, answers something, or seems to give voice to an artist who has long felt overlooked. Many people may be praising Dao Lang’s circumstances, sympathising with his frustrations, or hearing satire directed at particular targets in the lyrics. I understand those reactions. But judged as music, I find the melody, arrangement, vocal delivery and lyrics harsh and unpleasant as a whole. The lyrics layer allusions, concepts and metaphors without producing an expression that feels genuinely clear or powerful. To me, it sounds more like an emotional discharge than a fully realised song.

There is also a subtle but important difference here. The weathered quality in Dao Lang’s early work came from someone who was still young, still strong and still unwilling to accept defeat. Even when it carried bitterness, it had forward tension. In Rakshasa Sea City, the same quality sounds to me more like the powerless lament of later age. Its strange combinations of tones do not create deeper force. They amplify that sense of helplessness instead. The two kinds of weariness may appear only slightly different, but artistically the distance between them is immense.

This is, of course, my own aesthetic judgment. Other people are not wrong to like the song. But I do not want sympathy for an artist’s experiences, or agreement with a perceived position, to compel me to call an unconvincing song a great work.

Perhaps mature appreciation means separating these layers a little more carefully. What a person has done can be judged on its own terms. Whether their circumstances deserve sympathy can also be discussed separately. But whether a song, a book or any other work is actually good must still return to the work itself. In this way, we do not turn a rescue hero into a flawless saint, nor automatically treat an artist who has been wronged as permanently correct. When a work deserves appreciation, we appreciate it. When the person has serious problems, we do not pretend not to see them.