The Fan’s Perspective: Why We Love Cult Heroes More Than Superstars

Before we dive into the psychology, it helps to define what we're actually talking about, because the line between a cult hero and a superstar isn't always about talent, and it's definitely not a value judgment.

Cult heroes are artists with deeply devoted, often niche followings. They might have a dedicated fanbase of tens of thousands rather than tens of millions, usually with limited mainstream exposure and little to no radio or TV presence. Still, what they absolutely do have is community: a close-knit group of fans who feel personally invested in the artist's universe.

Think of figures like Neutral Milk Hotel, Scott Walker, Nick Drake (for much of his career), or countless underground metal, jazz, and electronic acts that never broke into the mainstream but inspired extraordinary devotion.

Superstars are artists characterized by mass-market appeal – broad reach, high media visibility, and the kind of cultural ubiquity that means even people who've never actively sought out their music can hum one or two of their songs. Examples might include Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, or Beyoncé. Their music is everywhere, and their fanbases are enormous.

The key difference between the two terms isn't about quality – there are extraordinary artists on both ends of this spectrum. It's more about scale and structure, meaning how many people are listening and how those listeners relate to both the artist and each other.

It’s also important to note that sometimes, as odd as it may seem, the two terms might overlap somewhat. Some musicians may enjoy significant commercial success and critical acclaim, yet have their careers defined by avant-garde choices and by their presence in niche genres and communities that align more with the “cult hero” archetype. Great examples of this are Björk, Manu Chao, or Nick Cave.

At the same time, some global superstars may cultivate devotion that rivals, or even surpasses, that of underground scenes. We mentioned Taylor Swift as an example of a superstar, and she definitely is one. Yet, her passionate fanbase, known as Swifties, operates with many of the same dynamics found in cult communities: insider language, symbolic rituals, multi-album narrative analysis (particularly Easter egg decoding, a favorite activity among fans), curated outfits, and intense parasocial identification.

This suggests that large-scale, then, does not automatically eliminate intimacy (as you will read in more detail below). Nor does obscurity guarantee it. Cult artists can still achieve significant fame and commercial success, while some underground artists might struggle to foster close, meaningful fan relationships. Overall, scale and intimacy are not mutually exclusive – instead, they exist in tension.

There's a particular thrill in discovering a “new” artist. You might have found them through a friend's recommendation, a niche subreddit, an obscure blog, or simply through an endless chain of highly-targeted playlists. The discovery itself, along with the countless hours spent obsessively listening to the artist’s entire back catalog, may feel like you’ve done work.

On an emotional level, the energy and effort you invested in this, one might say, yet undiscovered artist, can create a unique connection with them. It can almost feel like that attachment is something only you share with the artist – as if the artist is yours.

Psychologists often call this phenomenon a parasocial interaction. This describes one-sided emotional bonds that form through repeated exposure to a person (or in this case, an artist). You come to feel like you know them, even though they don't know you. With mainstream artists, parasocial bonds form on a large scale: millions of fans feeling the same perceived closeness, which paradoxically makes the relationship feel less special. Knowing that millions of people love the same artist takes away the emotional intimacy of that “relationship.” With cult heroes, the scale is smaller, and the intimacy feels more plausible.

The American rock band Grateful Dead is perhaps the most famous example of this kind of fandom. Their devoted fan base, known as Deadheads, didn't just listen to the band – they followed them on tour (literally traveling from one show to another to see as many as they could), built communities around shared experiences, and treated fandom as a way of life.

That level of immersion created bonds that have even outlasted the band itself. For instance, singer and songwriter John Mayer discovered the Grateful Dead’s music by accident. He became such an avid fan – part of the Deadheads, of course – that in 2015 (20 years after the band stopped performing), he co-founded and has since been actively touring as Dead & Company with the band’s original members, including Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart.

Reciprocity can be extremely powerful in the eyes (and hearts) of listeners. When we give something – attention, money, time – and receive something back, our attachment deepens. Underground artists, almost by necessity, tend to be far more accessible than their mainstream counterparts. They reply to messages, remember returning faces at shows, and share the mundane details of their lives and creative processes in ways that feel genuine rather than managed.

This is not to suggest that superstars are cold and distant. However, they do operate at a scale where interaction becomes unavoidably mediated. They tend to closely guard their privacy; their social media is often managed by a team, and their meet-and-greets (if any) are ticketed and brief. The sheer volume of fans makes real reciprocity simply logistically impossible. Even with the best intentions, the relationship between a superstar and their fan is inherently asymmetrical in a way that the cult hero/fan dynamic doesn't have to be.

When an artist responds to your comment, remembers you at the next show, or shares something personal and unfiltered online, the psychological effect can be significant as the perceived mutual recognition strengthens attachment. The fan stops feeling like one of many and starts feeling like someone instead.

Let’s revisit something we mentioned earlier – and that is that discovering and obsessing over an obscure artist can feel like you’ve put in significant work. Here's a fact backed by psychology: we value things more when we've worked for them. This is sometimes called effort justification, and it's remarkably applicable to music fandom.

Supporting an underground artist often requires active effort. You have to seek out their music (it probably won't surface organically through mainstream algorithms), travel to shows even when they take place in inconvenient locations, and learn deep cuts and B-sides. You might even get involved in the scene: forums, group chats, zines, etc. All that investment deepens your connection to the music and artist because the emotional energy you've put into it becomes part of the experience itself.

Mainstream fandom, on the other hand, is often passive. A song comes up on a playlist, or a video goes viral. The music might be wonderful, but the ease of access reduces the feeling of personal investment. There's no story of discovery, no effort to justify, and therefore, often, less ferocity of feeling.

As it’s true in economics, scarcity creates additional value. Well, this applies to fan culture, too. Being an early supporter of an artist who later becomes more widely known carries a kind of social currency – a phenomenon sociologists call symbolic capital. “I was listening to them before they blew up” is not a plain brag (at least not on a psychological level). Instead, it's a statement of identity and status within the community.

Underground fandom offers things that mainstream fandom structurally cannot (unless, in many cases, you pay for it): exclusivity, early access, and the particular pride of being part of something that most people haven't found yet. The rarity of that experience makes it feel more meaningful. And as the artist grows, early fans often guard that origin story carefully as it represents a part of what makes their relationship to the music feel irreplaceable.

Underground fandom rarely exists in isolation; it often forms around scenes, such as local venues, niche online forums, Discord servers, record fairs, specific cities, or subcultural spaces. These scenes develop their own language, rituals, and hierarchies, and, crucially, they provide fans with a community to belong to.

This connects to social identity theory, a foundational concept in psychology that posits that people derive part of their sense of self from the social groups they belong to. Identifying as a metalhead, an indie kid, a crate-digger, or a hip-hop head isn’t just about expressing musical tastes – at least not for everyone. For many, it’s about giving your personality a name. These identity markers signal values, beliefs, aesthetics, and worldviews. The community becomes as important as the music itself, and the music essentially becomes a way to foster a sense of belonging.

Mainstream fans can absolutely feel connected to a community, too. However, the sheer scale of major fandoms often dilutes the uniqueness of shared identity. When everyone likes something, it becomes harder to anchor your sense of self to it.

There's a reason the word “authentic” comes up so often in conversations about underground music. For many fans, supporting an independent or cult artist is as much a statement of values as it is an aesthetic choice. To some extent, it is a form of resistance against the homogenizing forces of mass culture and the commercial machinery behind mainstream music.

This phenomenon is sometimes called the hipster paradox – a social and mathematical concept where individuals striving for uniqueness and nonconformity end up adopting the same, highly similar trends, paradoxically becoming a conformist group in the end.

In this worldview, mainstream success means compromise – softening the edges, appealing to a broader audience, giving up creative control, or even sacrificing one’s true identity. The underground is seen as authentic precisely because it hasn't been filtered through the demands of mass-market appeal. In the eyes of supporters, this demonstrates nonconformity and helps further establish one’s identity.

It's worth noting here that this is sometimes an unfair perception. Mainstream success does not automatically equal inauthenticity, and it’s important to acknowledge that plenty of underground artists have commercial ambitions.

Still, the idea of authenticity carries significant weight in fan psychology, even when the reality is far more complex. Ultimately, the core of the hipster paradox is that what is often driven by a desire to celebrate or seek the authentic self and reject mainstream culture often results in forming the latest uniform group – a new, synchronized mainstream.

Still, fans who feel their taste is countercultural don't just love the music – they also love what loving the music says about them.

The internet has transformed what it even means to be “underground” these days. In 2026, an artist can have a fiercely dedicated global fanbase of 50,000 people who discovered them through a niche Reddit thread, a Bandcamp deep-dive, or a fan-curated Spotify playlist, and still remain virtually unknown to the mainstream.

In many ways, this has made the dynamics of cult fandom more accessible. You no longer need to be in a specific city, at a particular record store, at the right time. Discord communities, targeted YouTube channels, and fan-run blogs have created new infrastructure for passionate, community-driven discovery. An artist can build an intimate, reciprocal relationship with fans that fosters cult devotion while ultimately reaching those fans worldwide.

The key difference, however, is between algorithmic discovery and community-driven discovery. When an algorithm recommends an artist because you listened to something similar, the discovery feels passive and externally driven. It reduces perceived agency, feels less unique, and gives the impression that not enough effort was put into the discovery.

Meanwhile, when a community – a group of people you respect and share values with – introduces you to an artist's world, the discovery feels earned and relational. That feeling of being initiated into something special is part of what creates cult attachment in the first place.

“Underground” today often means high community density rather than total obscurity. It's less about how many people have heard of an artist, and more about whether those who have are genuinely invested.

Exploring the importance of cult heroes and underground fandom not only offers an interesting cultural observation but also has real implications for how artists build careers and how the music industry thinks about success.

The industry has long been obsessed with scale metrics: followers, streams, chart positions. We explore them in depth in our articles on almost-famous musicians and the psychology of fame. These metrics are visible, comparable, and easy to report. But they don't tell you much about the depth of the relationship between an artist and their audience.

Connection depth is measured differently – and tells a more nuanced story. It shows up in:

• Repeat ticket purchases across tours

• High merchandise attachment rates

• Direct-to-fan sales

• Crowdfunding participation

• Multi-year retention

An artist with 10,000 deeply invested fans who buy tickets, subscribe to mailing lists, and return for every release may generate more sustained revenue, more word-of-mouth growth, and more career longevity than one with a million passive listeners who streamed a single once and moved on.

What this means: For independent artists, this often means focusing on owned channels rather than borrowed ones. For instance, an email list you control will always be more stable than an algorithm you can’t influence. And, a Discord server where fans speak to each other builds more loyalty than a post that disappears after 24 hours.

On paper, cult heroes typically build community first and refine their public image later. The branding, aesthetics, and official channels all come after a genuine community has formed around something real. This means that the shared experience comes before the product.

While today this might seem easier said than done – since building a strong artist brand and maintaining a consistent online presence are crucial – it can offer a meaningful shift in perspective for musicians today: instead of asking “how do I get more followers?”, the more impactful question might be “how do I create a community of people who are truly invested in what I'm doing?”

The great thing about communities is that they tend to produce advocates – people who won’t just listen to your music but actively bring others in. No advertising budget can match what that kind of organic support can provide, especially in terms of the quality of the relationships with your fans.

What this means: Rather than rapidly expanding into new markets, many cult artists focus on increasing their presence in existing ones by returning to the same cities, nurturing local scenes, and strengthening connections before growing outward. Using this strategy as an independent artist, especially when starting out, can help you build a strong foundation for your fanbase.

Loyal, deeply invested fans have a significantly higher lifetime value than casual listeners. That’s because they tend to buy tickets repeatedly, often to multiple shows per tour, and purchase merchandise – not out of obligation, but because they want to express their identity and support a musician they love.

They also back crowdfunding campaigns (or even run them), pre-order albums, and subscribe to Patreon pages. Additionally, they're more forgiving of slow periods, creative pivots, and the inevitable gaps between releases. Overall, they stick with the artist through thick and thin.

This is not to romanticize obscurity or to suggest that you can only have loyal but fewer fans or achieve worldwide stardom. Most artists want their music to reach as many people as possible, and that's a completely valid ambition. It also doesn’t mean that loyalty happens automatically. It must be cultivated intentionally and maintained through consistent interaction.

However, it does mean that focusing on growing a smaller, more engaged audience can offer more stability and sustainability than chasing passive mass visibility. Depth and breadth aren't always incompatible. But for independent artists building sustainable careers, depth is often the more manageable – and therefore more strategic – starting point.

What this means: Not all fans are equal in engagement. Some stream casually, others buy vinyl, travel for shows, and support crowdfunding campaigns. Understanding that difference and nurturing your most engaged listeners can create far more stability than simply chasing viral reach.

There's a reason a dedicated fan of an underground artist will drive three hours to a small city show, while a fan of a superstar might not bother to queue for wristbands. Emotional closeness doesn't increase directly with fame. In fact, the nature of cult fandom suggests something almost counterintuitive: that social intimacy, belonging, and real connection thrive at a smaller scale, where reciprocity is possible, community is close-knit, and discovery feels like a personal act rather than a passive one.

The power of cult fandom isn’t rooted in obscurity for its own sake. It emerges from the sense of belonging, shared experience, and identity. When fans invest time, attention, and emotion into an artist, that investment becomes part of their own narrative. Supporting music becomes an act of connecting with the artist, a community, a set of values, and a version of yourself that you've chosen to express through what you love.

For artists and industry professionals, the implication is clear: scale is visible, but depth and loyalty endure. While streams might fluctuate, algorithms shift, and trends accelerate and collapse, community – when built intentionally – can compound over time.

If you’re interested in how this dynamic plays out from the artist’s perspective – especially for musicians who gain recognition only after their creative peak – explore our article on being “famous too late.”