Posted on 05/23/2015 11:50:45 AM PDT by drewh
Over the last few years, Taylor Swift has become one of the two or three biggest pop stars in the world. She has accumulated no fewer than four homes (including a $3.5 million place in Beverly Hills and a $20 million Tribeca penthouse) and drawn enormous press and media attention. She’s still on the cover of lots of magazines and we’ll probably see her there far into the future.
On its release last year, her “1989” record became the biggest selling album in more than a decade, at a time in which record sales have been way down. She became, according to Business Insider, “the first woman to have three albums sell more than 1 million copies in a single week.” The album has now sold more than 4 million – the kind of number we thought, in the age of file-sharing, we’d never hear again.
Swift’s current tour will take her to stadiums all over the world, including Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, capacity 82,600. Her net worth is roughly $200 million – that’s about 3,550 times the median net worth of an American household. By every available measure, she seems to be doing pretty well, and at 25, she’s probably just getting started with her world domination.
But to the New York Times, she is, apparently, an “underdog.” The paper of record used the term twice in its review of her show in a relatively intimate 13,000-seat arena in Louisiana and pulled it out for the headline as well: “On Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ Tour, the Underdog Emerges as Cool Kid.”
Well, Taylor Swift may be a lot of things, but we’re not really sure “underdog” is one of them. Let’s back up a little bit.
Like a lot of country singers – that’s how she first broke in – Taylor Swift grew up on a farm. It wasn’t a subsistence farm in the rough part of Kentucky but a Christmas-tree farm in Pennsylvania. “Her mother worked in finance,” a New Yorker story says, “and her father, a descendant of three generations of bank presidents, is a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. (He bought the tree farm from a client.)” In Swift’s hometown, she told the magazine’s Lizzie Widdicombe, “it mattered what kind of designer handbag you brought to school.”
So let’s acknowledge that she began life with a slight leg up on the privilege escalator. But the playing field is about a get a lot less level: “When she was ten, her mother began driving her around on weekends to sing at karaoke competitions,” the New Yorker tells us. “Then she persuaded her mother to take her to Nashville during spring break to drop off her karaoke demo tapes around Music Row, in search of a record deal; they didn’t succeed, but the experience convinced Swift that she needed a way to stand out.”
When Swift was 14, her father relocated to Merrill Lynch’s Nashville office as a way to help dear Taylor break into country music. As a sophomore in high school, she got a convertible Lexus. Around the same time, her dad bought a piece of Big Machine, the label to which Swift signed.
This is hardly the first case of stage parents or a rich kid breaking into the music world. And along the way, Swift has worked hard, behaved reasonably nicely, and so on. But why are we describing her as someone who’s triumphed over adversity?
Part of this is because of a critical/journalist school that worships money, popularity and fame: Unlike previous generations of critics, or the traditional journalistic mission to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” Poptimists like the New York Times’ Jon Caramanica don’t buy the old small-is-beautiful premise. And what better way to reconcile the contradiction – to inject a bit of rebel cool into the story – than to make a millionaire daughter of the plutocracy into an underdog?
Specifically, the review refers to a much-quoted song, “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which is about her relationship with one or another celebrity actor or singer or Jonas Brother. Here’s Caramanica:
In the song, she’s lashing out at a dunderheaded ex: “You would hide away and find your peace of mind/ With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.”
Indie rock – and punk and alt-country, and left-of-the-dial R&B and related genres that are uncomfortable with corporations or consumerism – is exactly the kind of thing an offspring of Wall Street like Taylor Swift is not going to respond to. So does her dissing a celebrity ex make her into an underdog? To a poptimist, maybe.
But this kind of thing is especially offensive since there have actually been plenty of musicians who really were underdogs.
Johnny Cash was raised by poor cotton farmers during the Great Depression. John Lennon’s mother and father abandoned him. Jimi Hendrix’s early life was a nightmare that involved shoplifting food so he could eat. For decades, the average blues and country musician came from poverty or close to it. Billie Holiday was jailed, as a teenager, for prostitution. And so on.
And even for the musicians raised middle-class – many were – a life in music has involved real risk and suffering. The punk band the Mekons has bounced up and down, from label to label, for decades. Jason Molina, who made transcendent records on tiny labels with Magnolia Electric Company until alcoholism took him down two years ago, never found a substantial audience. Chan Marshall of Cat Power recently filed for bankruptcy. In a post-label world where piracy has shredded artist’s earnings, just about everyone trying to play music professionally below the superstar label could be considered an underdog.
Somebody should tell the New York Times: Just because the Jack Black character in “High Fidelity” doesn’t think you’re cool doesn’t mean you’re an underdog. He doesn’t call the shots anymore, and really, he never did.
Scott Timberg is a staff writer for Salon, focusing on culture. A longtime arts reporter in Los Angeles who has contributed to the New York Times, he runs the blog Culture Crash. He's the author of the new book, "Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class."
Maybe it’s just me but she comes across as cold and mechanical. I’m not a fan but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish her success. I haven’t seen one ounce of passion in anything she does,,all pop. Yes, there’s a market for that,,just seems disconnected and cold.
Then again, I’m not a teenager.
As I was reading your reply I was thinking, “But you are not a 13 year old girl.”
Of course if you are a 13 year old girl, I should not be communicating with you on the internet.
But seriously, I am not a huge fan of hers. My daughter was a big fan when she was in high school. Not so much now, four years later. But...TSWIFT writes, records, performs, and manages the product. She designs the tour and the staging. She does stuff that is way, way beyond her years.
The more my daughter would tell me about her, the more I was impressed with her abilities. Her music? I can take it or leave it. Generally, not my taste. But I CAN stand to look at her. She could have been a super model if the singing thing didn’t work.
I would also hate to BE her. Everyone is just waiting for her to implode—drugs or legal trouble. I think she is too smart for that. However, her choice of men is abysmal.
LOL.
ping ;-)
No, the record industry is finally getting it's long deserved payback.
They were all controlling greedy bastards for years and it finally bit them in the ass.
The business model is simply shifting towards "stream on demand."
Purchasing music on a physical media (i.e. compact disc) is quickly becoming an oddity.
My two daughters are grown but they love Miss Swift. I consider her's to be a relatively clean act compared to all the nonsense that pretends to be music entertainment. I like her.
So does Kellie Pickler. From big bucks. Leg up you betcha. But add in talent, drive and oh yes I happen to know she works her butt off. And low and behold sucess.
I’m not a fan. But I know.
That’s hilarious. The market cost of all music worldwide is now zero. Streaming companies paid Lady GaGa roughly $15 for a billion some odd downloads. The industry is toast. Therefore up and coming artists do not exist. The public will get nothing but records from one of Rod Stewart’s 300 illegitimate children for the next decade.
As a former musician, I can’t wait till it happens to Spielberg and all of Hollywood. Complete utter destruction.
BS. Dollar sales tell the story. Dollar sales have dropped in half since 2003 and CDs are still the single largest portion of music sales revenue.
Streaming Isn’t Saving the Music Industry After All, Data Shows…
The thievery of copyrighted music is massive.
Because Swift’s parents loved her she had an unfair advantage against her peers while growing up.
That would ruin the underground markets in 3rd world Asian countries.
That’s because the music industry is too dumb to adapt their business model to the new technologies. The revenues and profits are there if they want them.
Nobody downloads illegal MP3s anymore. Theft of music is not the problem here.
Not that I give a rat’s ass but photo ops like the one you posted are used by celebs to spin a thought into potential fan’s minds and eventually their pocketbooks.
Swift locked up the lesbian crowd with that one.
Reminds me the time Ryan Seacrest was being hammered with the gay rumors and suddenly there appear photos of him playing patty-cake with Terri Hatcher.
Massive even falls short. It is complete. That is all there is of music. Record companies now exist to try and land their talent Sprite commercials. Music is free. Musicians threw in the towel, it’s over!
Lower level acts have stopped touring because there isn’t enough big money acts to fund the production companies year round. No one to drive the bus, no one to run the sound, no one to run the lights. These people threw in the towel too. The kind of guys that ran sound for Motorhead for twenty years have all quit.
If you see music now, it’s a hobby and they are broke or its one of Rod Stewart’s kids.
In Kelly Pickler’s case you also have to factor in a store bought set.
Not to mention she does really nice things for her fans.
There was a viral video this Christmas on how Swifty secretly selected several fans on social media and bought them Christmas gifts. She and her assistants researched each recipient to get them something they really wanted. Fans got a box via UPS with the stuff and a hand-written card from Taylor.
She also bought several pizzas for fans in London who were waiting outside her hotel.
I don’t care for much of her music, but I respect her for how she treats her fans.
And that she’s drop-dead gorgeous.
Actually it is the problem. Prior to your internet service provider charging you $60 a month for the tools to steal from me, you actually had to steal my record yourself physically.
Ten years later, all music is free and we are all out of business. I’m not whining, I’m just telling you that you are wrong.
All this new technology you keep talking about has provided thieves with numerous ways to acquire music without paying for it. Ever heard of youtube.com? Theft of music is absolutely the problem in the US and around the world.
The revenues and profits are there if they want them.
So, the music industry just lost almost half its revenue over ten years and they don't care? They could get the revenues and profits back "if they want them"? I guess they just don't want that other six or seven billion a years they once realized.
Lol, you really don't know what you're talking about.
That's about what I've thought for a few years. If an act hasn't become popular enough to make money touring, they have few other ways to make money. You probably have the local talent playing gigs in their area and hoping for a break, and then the big acts who can fill large arenas, and not much in between.
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