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WHAT happens when a society gets obsessed with those who win at the capitalist game, when marketing becomes the new religion, and the gatekeepers of art and music stop caring ab0ut the fields in which they labor but get hypnotized by the machinery of star-making? We get “artists” like Jeff Koons or Taylor Swift.
The onetime country singer — the descendent of several generations of bank presidents — is celebrated in the press for her marketing and self-branding (like George W. Bush she’s framed herself as a folksy “regular” person), which seems to be more important to many scribes than the machine-made blandness of her music. (What’s with all the stories on the pseudo-events that make up her PR strategy? I know pop music has always been, in part, about money.)
Compare her to real country heroes like Johnny Cash, or Willie Nelson, or Lucinda Williams, and her genius is really for self-promotion, not music-making. Much of the media coverage seems uninterested in noticing this: The hunter has been captured by the game.
That’s why I’m especially pleased with the New York Times story about the backlash to Swift’s world-domination campaign.
Taylor Swift has been named a Global Welcome Ambassador for New York City a week after the release of her single “Welcome To New York” — but for many listeners (and viewers of the surrounding publicity campaign), her depiction of the city is neither particularly accurate nor particularly enticing.
The story quotes a Village Voice story by Tessa Stuart about Swift’s new role as New York’s ambassador: “Some people might look at all this and say Swift is a marketing genius with an eye for ~ S y N e R g Y ~ …Others (us) will say she’s a cyborg sent to this planet to convince people without ideas to drink Diet Coke, and shop at Target, and move to New York.”
The story also quotes Dayna Evans on Gawker:
I’m not sure who comes off worse in this public relations horror: New York City or Taylor Swift. When affordable housing is near impossible to come by and as monolith branded-cool companies push out arts communities and while entitled rich children run through the streets proclaiming ownership over everything and while minority arrests continue for low-level crimes, the least (or most?) likely choice for the promotion of a city with equal problems and triumphs is a whitebread out-of-towner who says, ‘Hey, don’t think about those scary, unjust things! Let’s talk about that night we stayed out late dancing instead!’
I expect Ms. Swift is a very nice person, and lots of her fans are, too; I don’t mean to incur the wrath of legions of teenage girls. But in the same week the New Yorker devotes an enormous amount of space to Billy Joel, another overrated hack — while so many more talented musicians starve on a tiny sliver of the sales and attention — I am awaiting the end of this latest media cycle.
Most musicians who hit young have stage parents to some degree, but the story of Swift’s rise resembles the way billionaire Sheldon Adelson tried to buy Newt Gingrich the presidency. Her banker father certainly knew how to exploit a market niche: He moved to the family to Nashville so little Taylor could break in, hired expensive handlers, and bought part of her label. This is the winner-take-all culture taken to a whole higher level.
I don’t think anyone – well, anyone who isn’t paid to do it – was ever planning to compare Taylor Swift to real country heroes like Johnny Cash, or Willie Nelson, or Lucinda Williams.
This month she will outsell all of them put together
Scott,
But her commercial success does not indicate a new phenomenon. What about Shaun Cassidy or the Monkees? Or before that, all those bland Doo-wop groups from the 50s and 60s? Or what about Lawrence Welk and his ilk?
And I am serious about not knowing the answer to the following question: How is Taylor Swift different from her predecessors. whose style triumphed substance, especially as it pertains to sales and marketing?
Brian
I can understand why people who don’t really know the history would consider The Monkees a good comparison here, even though they aren’t. But “bland doo wop groups from the ’50s”? Really? I know it’s all subjective. But some of us view those “bland doo wop groups,” especially the black and Italian-American ones, as the creators of some of the greatest records in rock ‘n’ roll history.
Bill — thanks for that. Doo-wop is one of the great chapters in American popular music.
The context is different. Shaun Cassidy did not sell like Swift, and that era was not a period of winner-take-all capitalism. We also had a press/critical culture that was not yet obsessed with the glories of marketing at the expense of everything else. Sure, Cassidy showed up on 17 magazine — but swift’s PR rollout is being celebrated (in places where other coverage could go) in the pages of the New York Times and other serious publications.
I’ll also quote a friend who will remain anonymous:
“Shaun Cassidy was not considered a great feminist critic and the leading songwriter of his day. Everyone knew he was crap. I don’t think everyone knows this is crap. “
Bingo! It’s sort of the way I felt when the New Mickey Mouse Club became a test ground for subsequent pop stardom. This wasn’t new. Some early Mouseketeers also had pop record hits in the late ’50s, most notably Annette Funicello. The major difference was that even though it was cute, no critics or music lovers took “Pineapple Princess” seriously as art.
I don’t disagree with anything here, but it’s a little painful – at a time when country music is dominated by incomprehensible abominations like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan and Brantley Gilbert – to hear Taylor Swift, a rather skilled and effective songwriter and a good-natured performer, held up as a symbol of what’s wrong or inauthentic about the genre in 2014. Watch the CMA Awards next week if you really want to be depressed and bewildered. We who live and work in the arts in Nashville and who cherish the country songwriting tradition are mortified by today’s country radio format and TV machine. It’s making it that much harder to get the word out about Nashville’s excellent Americana, jazz and classical music.
Swift doesn’t — especially these days — have much to do with country music.
Agree with your larger point. If you value the tradition that comes from the Carter Family and Hank Williams, contemp mainstream Nashville pretty appalling. That said, there are a handful of wonderful musicians there, incl Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings, Grant Lee Phillips, Jack White, etc who give me hope.
As a full time musician who comes from the same folk music tradition of the Carter Family, Hank Williams, etc, this article strikes such a nerve. Today, the marketing dollars (and resultant success) go to fewer and fewer, and with the collapse of music sales and smaller venues to support regional touring, the middle class artist is fast becoming a relic of the past.