A fuckton of musicians also using suspicious nazi aesthetics, being open to performing/collaborating with fashy bands, etc.
It even extends to more innocuous seeming stuff.
Oh, an experimental industrial album from 1970? You see, one of the members actually did some work with nazi black metal musician Euronymous in the 80s. Oh, an innocuous sounding 1985 synthpop album? Oh you see one of the band members did a lot of work with the neo-nazi band Death in June. Not to mention the more problematic artists around without a political reason for it.
Germany is apparently especially bad for this kind of thing, in the goth scene, because of course. I don't know what your politics are, if I can even find that information, but if your band is named for example Ost+Front (Eastern Front), I am going to be suspicious of you even if you claim to be communists and as a foreigner am sure as hell not considering going to a performance where you or people who like you will be around even as spectators.
The deeper I dive into less than mainstream music, the more I start realizing that it is bad.
Did Imagine Dragons base their musical repertoire on the basis of the work of Varg Vikernes? Do they insert Nietzsche into their lyrics? Are they going to perform in festivals where you play Russian roulette whether the person you are next to has a Hakenkreuz-tattoo?
Probably not is the answer to all of the above.
spoiler
at least Depeche Mode and the Cure haven't done anything too problematic, as far as I know.
Was he always cringe, or did he become that over time?
I think it was always there. You can hear it on some songs. Getting older while privileged does accentuate that part of a person's personality, though.
As a child I remember looking up to him because all everyone complained about him where I lived was his hatred of the monarchy, support for the IRA and vegetarianism, which to little me all seemed like good things so I went through a contrarian "Morrissey did nothing wrong" phase because where I grew up literally nobody cared about his racism enough to bring it up as a point against him. It was almost a year until I actually found out about his racism and then just stopped doing the entire thing sheepishly.