So it’s 2024 and the world is all buzzing about the Taylor Swift tour, and as usual I may have something to say about it.
This is a phenomenon, the popularity of this woman is incredible, and what an impact her popularity has… But is it the person, the product, or is this thing that is happening the result of the salesmen? Let’s examine one of the things often said by her fans, that her lyrics are poetry and in the same league as the great song, word, and prose writers.. I’ve had a scan, they are not, this is nonsense…
So where does the popularity come from, and why the hyperbole?
Jean Baudrillard had a theory that simulation, objects that represent reality rather than are reality, cultural affects we may call them, will some day replace the real objects entirely. In his possible future, our now, the phenomenon of popularity as a simulated object would accumulate the same impactfulness that the real historical popularity of an actually real object would hold as a result of its substance, even though the simulated object would lack the same substance. That’s a bit of a mouthful, and a head wrecker, let’s put it a different way…. It is the popularity of Taylor Swift that has become popular, not the substance of Taylor swift. Her popularity is the stuff of popularity, it is the subject that drives the popularity further, it is the reason of her popularity.
Her songs, and their somewhat infantile lyrics about love and hurt, merely act as a pleasing melody, they could be replaced by an instrument or be in a made up language and the song would have no less meaning. They themselves have little or nothing to take away, they are not a protest, they will not make you think differently, they do not speak the feelings of an oppressed minority, nor do they rally a movement for or against anything. She is not going to change the world, but her popularity might, so it is that that is the phenomenon and not her. She could be any one of many, she just happens to be the one that ticks the media outlets boxes, so they push her popularity as the product. This is created popularity rather than substance popularity.
Bob Dylan wrote God On Our Side, The Times They Are A Changing, Hurricane, Maggie’s Farm, Masters OF War, all protests songs that reflect the time and the feelings of the people, he wrote some love songs too of course, and they are good also for their lyrical melodies rather than their lyrical meaningful impact. Swift does not have one of these in her, at least not one that has emerged yet, and that is just fine, there is nothing bad about a good pop song, and since it’s subjective then if you like it then it is good. To assign to her the imagined role of a singer with a culturally important song to sing, is to both misunderstand her, and to misunderstand Dylan and his ilk. I personally feel the value of Dylan’s output is somewhat diminished by the comparison.
Now I have nothing against Swift, it’s just pop music, I don’t mind a bit of pop music and neither do you, but I am annoyed with the nitwittery of her fan base and the media in calling it what it is clearly not. They should maybe stop mistaking a roadside cafe burger for wagyu, Swift’s music is naive, Dylan’s work is an observation, a protest, a social commentary, these are not the same kind of art.
This post was written somewhat in jest, there is no point in having an argument about it, but have at it if you fancy, I’m game…
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