Posted on 06/25/2024 8:57:03 AM PDT by Red Badger
There is a new documentary called “Taylor Swift Vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” which covers the infamous feud between Taylor Swift and super-manager Scooter Braun. Braun owns Ithaca Holdings, the company that bought the record label Taylor Swift first signed with, including her albums.
The documentary spans events from June of 2019, when Braun’s company acquired Big Machine Label Group, the record label Swift was signed to for the first 13 years of her career. That acquisition included the rights to her first six albums, from her self-titled debut to “Reputation,” which was released in 2017.
The documentary is divided into two episodes. Episode one is Swift’s version, which is just her being obnoxious. It is Swift and all of her friends and allies suggesting that she is a victimized feminist, that she’s fighting “The Man,” and “Oh, my goodness, how everyone is so mean to Taylor Swift — and Scooter Braun is mean, mean man — he’s super mean.” She’s much more famous and rich because of his involvement, but she’s the victim.
You often see this in celebrity culture: people who are not victims, who make lots of money from particular companies and then claim victimhood. It’s not rare to see Taylor Swift do this sort of thing. And here she is, again, doing that sort of thing. That’s episode one.
Then, in episode two, Scooter Braun shares his side of the story. That’s the side where they explain what happened legally in fairly meticulous detail. It’s the side where everyone recognizes he bought a company and, along with that company, he bought her records and then she complained about it. A lot.
As you might guess, HBO finishes by saying, ”Who can tell? Who knows?” Then the documentary points out that Swift is a very important cultural and musical figure.
Who cares? That’s not the issue. Will she be an important cultural figure in 20 years? I doubt it. In 100 years? No.
But that’s irrelevant to the question at play here. The question is whether she’s kind of a bad person, because it turns out that people who routinely violate their contracts and then claim victimhood are not nice people. And that’s Taylor Swift. She’s used her platform in order to attack Scooter Braun over and over and over.
For example, she used her platform at awards acceptance speeches to criticize Big Machine and Scooter Braun. At her Grammy acceptance speech, she announced her “Tortured Poets Department” album. As I said after listening to that album, my only question about the “Tortured Poets Department” is where do they torture the poets and how do I join?
In any case, the documentary shows her being manipulative and weaponizing her fans to attack Scooter Braun, and she won’t call them off even after Braun releases the threats on his family’s life. And of course, she has lots of feuds with lots of other people because she’s not a particularly nice person.
So here’s the thing. The general public doesn’t tend to understand business deals. They don’t tend to understand legal issues. This is why you hire a lawyer, because if you’re not a lawyer, you don’t understand how legal things work, you don’t understand what provisions do.
You sign contracts with provisions in case something bad happens. And then, when the bad thing happens, the contract governs.
But for the general public — oh, my goodness, a bad thing happened. Now they think they have to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong.
No, they don’t. That was the purpose of the contract in the first place.
As it turns out, Taylor Swift’s actions — lying to her fans, lying to the public, rerecording all the old songs and releasing them — it all gets papered over with this “I’m a Feminist Icon” nonsense, which is a great “Get-out-of-Jail Free” card for being a cheat in business.
That’s Taylor Swift’s shtick. And don’t worry, she’ll continue the shtick as long as people are willing to humor her nonsense.
It’s a lucrative business, pretending to be a 16-year-old victimized feminist while making billions of dollars by violating your contracts.
Ahhhhhh, so sorry Karen.
“I just don’t find her singing at all interesting. She sounds like lots of other people out there.”
Yes. That’s it in a nutshell. She doesn’t seem to have her own unique style or thing that I could detect.
She has more in common with Milli Vanilli, she lip syncs her concert, and rehearses her ad libs. If there was a power outage, she would be exposed. Imagine trying to project her music past the first 10 rows of a casino floor show. Without the power of electricity and technology, she is a lounge singer. Only the rich and eccentric can possibly go to her shows. Or kids with rich and eccentric parents.
Ah milli vanelli. I read a bunch about that one. The singers could sing except the producer recorded the vocals himself and with other pro singers and preferred other vocals on top of Millie’s looks. That was more frank Fabian’s fiasco than Millie vanelli’s fault. The artists were used for their looks
We don’t have full access to the raw live vocals of Taylor swift. I suspect she sings it all. Lots of bands do use pitch correction in studio but it is tricky to use live without occasionally getting caught due to artifacts. Would need more inside info to fully know all that. The songs don’t sound that hard to me so I suspect she sings it live. Occam’s razor.
First of all. I have never attended a Taylor Swift concert or purchased any of her musical works. I do believe I have ever even searched/played her music on my Spotify account.
I do recall watching her as a teenager when she first appeared on the Country Music Awards many years ago.
Even then as a teenager I thought she had star appeal.
I typically do not listen to pop music at all. Rhythm and blues is more to my liking. I am 61. So I grew up listening to classic rock from the 60s & 70s.
You seem to assume I am a Taylor Swift fan and twice made derogatory statements regarding my IQ because of your incorrect assumptions.
All I have stated is that she is one of the most successful female singer songwriters of all time. Comparable to Madonna, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell.
Yes, all her songs are very simplistic. Her target audience(the people actually BUYING her music) are teenage and younger girls. However, I know women in their thirties, forties and even fifties that are fans of her. Some of which spent thousands of dollars to take their daughter to her concert in Foxborough last summer. These are woman who make six figure incomes. A couple make MID six figure incomes.
So, you can bad mouth her simplistic writing, music and style. She certainly is NOT as good as a singer as Adele. She is not the musician that many woman who attended Berkley School of Music. She can not begin to play the guitar nearly as good as Bonnie Raitt. However, none of those people can sell out multiple nights at stadiums all over the world. Oh, and as far as my IQ. I graduated from SUNY & Syracuse University with a 3.65 GPA in Wood Products Engineering and a Minor in Marketing. I am a member of the phi Beta Kappa natioanal honor society. I am a 100% straight commission lumber trader. That means I earn EVERY dollar that I am paid.
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