Gaza. Palestinians. Israel. Genocide. Taylor Swift? This odd cobbling of words is the extent celebrities make a mockery of serious conversation, even in such middle-brow outlets as Australia’s Radio National. Admittedly, it was breakfast, and the presenter a seasoned impressionist of journalism, but surely listeners did not have to know that Swift’s private jet had just arrived in Melbourne, making it an occasion of national significance?
Ground had already been tilled, and seeds scattered, by desperate academics keen to draw gold dust from the Swift worship machine at Melbourne’s Swiftposium 2024. Seriousness was not the order of the day and papers such as “Taylor Swift and the Nuremberg Effect on Teenage Girls” were never going to feature on any panels. Instead, it was an event to give academic circuitry – and sophistry – its deservedly bad name. “We thought we’d be having a small conference with 50 researchers in two rooms in our Faculty,” remarked Eloise Faichney, chair of the Swiftposium Steering Committee. “Then, when we ended up in publications like Rolling Stone and The Guardian, demand from the academic community to take part was like nothing I’ve ever seen before for an academic conference.” Faichney evidently knows little about the bandwagon effect of the academic scavenger, always engaged in a futile quest to find false novelty among the same bones of an argument.
And they were not the only ones. Members of the fourth estate, and many offshoots of that once revered profession, have fallen for the Swiftian rhetoric, be it in terms of the harmony effect or economic stimulus. Forget monetary or fiscal policy; get Swift to do a tour and she will add tens of millions of dollars to the country’s cash registers. Take, for instance, the following, near shameful selection of predicted returns, which the Australian historian, Humphrey McQueen, valuably gathers for us: the Australian Financial Review, A$140 million; the Daily Telegraph, A$130 million to New South Wales; the Herald-Sun, a staggering, fanciful A$1.2 billion for the state of Victoria alone.
A less noted fact is that the Swift phenomenon is costly, inflationary and exploitative. As The Daily Telegraph reported in January, airlines such as Virgin, Qantas and Jetstar were all cashing in on spiked prices, hoping to squeeze every little bit of cash from passengers, Swifties or otherwise. A one-way flight from Brisbane to Sydney with Jetstar would cost anywhere between A$399 to A$460 on the planned Sydney tour date on February 23, as compared to A$92 to A$123 the week prior. Hotels were hardly going to miss out either on the lucrative bonanza: the Marriott Sydney Harbour’s prices, for instance, rising from the pre-Swift level of $A589 to an unforgivable $A1039.
All of this served as the teaser for Swift’s mid-February arrival. Bulletins, even of such self-professed, serious news hounds as those at the twenty-four-hour ABC network, would furnish updates on the songstress’s movements. Every banal detail became significant, the fans worthy of top billing as interviewees.
Political maturity and cultivated disinterestedness also went out the window, expelled with glee. Here was a chance to get close to the phenomenon and cultivate voters – current and future – and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was not going to miss out. In an interview with Hit WA FM, he professed his delight and anticipation in attending one of Swift’s shows. “I am going to Tay Tay,” he sighed. In cringingly shallow fashion and for pure effect, he even suggested that opposition leader Peter Dutton might have a preference for the Canadian rock band Nickelback, a truly wicked contrast. “Or, the angry death metal stuff.”
Newspapers such as The Guardian Australia even urged the PM to get with the Swift program, as her “ubiquity in a fragmented world might carry some broader lessons for a man with a more modest megaphone at his disposal.” She offers, for instance, lessons in collaboration. She had “used her fame to build a network of grassroots support that has its own power, energy and agency.” And, in case you were not listening, Mr Albanese, she offered a “sense of shared joy” instead of privileging conflict.
On the other side of this gushing sludge, the Swift phenomenon manifests as a brooding presence for reactionaries worried that her influence is clandestine and planned by a politburo central committee. Or, perhaps, the Pentagon. Steady yourself, warn the likes of Jesse Watters of Fox: he has evidence that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” In some GOP circles, the singer is a deeply embedded psyop with collusion from the NFL. The lunacy comes full circle and Swift is very happy to tease it, telling The Washington Post in 2022 that she, and her legion of fans, have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.” Threatening stuff.
This Styrofoam performer, this master of magisterial vacuity, who is all machine, promotion and blare, has perfected the insubstantial, promoted a competent formula and boosted it. In some ways, she has the hallmarks of Tony Blair and the New Labour experiment: start solidly, proclaim a genre, an ideology – then subvert it, discarding most of it on the way. Sincerity evaporates in the heat of its confection. Her success lies in her ability – and that of the Swift dissemination army – to mobilise the image of Swift. Everything else is just costumery, flying private jets, victimising people who monitor her flight paths, and being given stock market advice by Daddy.
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Were the tv PR campaigns for Taylor Swift & Pink freebies, or are the commercial networks getting a slice of sales?
I like watching Pink fly through the air, twirling in a harness, above the heads of admiring screamers.
Yesterday I watched a promo for a new artifical heart pump built with 3 pipe parts from Bunnings. Cool. So high tech.
Apparently the ‘pump’ will first be trialled in pigs, part of the trans-sus-domesticus agenda probably.
I am thoroughly sick and bloody tired of hearing about Taylor bloody Swift!
Having never listened to a Taylor Swift song, I asked the brains of the internet to give me a list of her best songs, chose one at random – with no idea given I’d never heard her sing – and gave it a crack. Bailed out before it was over.
Not that that says anything in particular, but she certainly didn’t impress. Nina Simone she ain’t, or Joni Mitchell, Angelique Kidjo, Billie Holiday, Eva Cassidy, Joan Baez, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, Mercedes Sosa, Patti Smith, Phoebe Snow, Sade, Shirley Bassey, Sinéad O’Connor, Susana Baca, just to name a random pick of female artists of exemplary skills and exceptional virtuosity.
Just goes to show what mambo and bling along with a good PR team can do for a person determined to succeed. Hypnosis writ large.
The fanfare over Taylor Swift?
Much ado about not much.
The furious backlash?
Even more over even less.
Yawn.
Beatlemania,minus the talent,but give us bread and circus games to distract from the farce masquerading as government…the latest example being that fucking idiot Marles,giving a good example of what’s seriously wrong with our incompetent,inbred,dumber than fuck, pretend politicians.
And our mate Albo badly needs some new advisors.Not being those other fuckers is not going to cut the mustard.
I’m with you, Cangaru.
, “Time interview: ‘Learning choreography is not my strong suit. ‘I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones.”
So, she cannot dance and she cannot sing but who cares her bling is hypnotising for not only my family females, under 50 but Swift can reach over half a billion others.
ps
I wear a few bangles made by my grandchild or bought from vinnies-type shops and at vridge monday I was asked if I was a swiftie because I wore bangles.
Comprehensive diversion, one of many, to divert from Gaza. Reality seems to upset Australians, or at least their media and press.
Why waste my time on reading this rubbish about a con job on the public. No one deserves to earn billions for strutting about on a stage while the rest of the world is boiling. I know you are telling us all about it, but, sorry, I don’t care.
Parents foregoing bread to afford the circus. How brain addled we have become. I too checked out a Swift track to find out what the fuss was about. iMHO much ado about nothing. I have even had my grown up family talk about her values. Well if she was so influential perhaps Albo should have asked her to get Biden to drop the charges against Julian Assange. But then does she even know who he is, or who Navalny was or where Gaza is? Or is she just another ignorant American whose talent is exploitation of the young.
Being an old muso, jazz and old pop, I give the newies a minute of youtube, so I’ve heard Sheeran, Eyelash, Bay Once, etc. but, Swift is no different of better musically, very ordinary, and one might stick to music one loves, from Bach to Miles Davis and much in between. A Melbourne grand daughter went and the show was “huge”, and all the girls loved it…
Only bloody Rupert (and I won’t be surprised if Der Spud joins in) would twist this nothing event into a “Look at what nasty horrible Albo did!” attack piece.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/radio/anthony-albanese-refuses-to-hand-over-taylor-swift-ticket-to-megafan-insists-hes-a-real-swiftie/news-story/91860bac8752655cb2745247f2a09e91
It is difficult to understand what all the hype is over this overrated little girl. Her music is dull and boring to anyone but 12-14 year olds high on hormones and social media. She is nothing special to look at, plain and ordinary comes to mind. The only American that revolts me more than her is the treasonous orange ogre with the bird’s nest stuck on his head.
Against my better judgment and my principles, and so on – I kind of liked the whole Swiftie thing.
There were thousands of young women, and especially teenage girls – having a happy time – friendly, laughing, singing, getting along well with each other. No alcohol, drugs, no aggression – just colourful clothes and beads.
In the MCG quite a contrast to the usual swearing and yelling abuse at umpires, and the other team.
Perhaps , in this troubled world, with so many awful things going on – perhaps Swiftiness was a necessity – a bit of joy for teenagers?
Wow, the usual suspects going off at an independent, succesful young woman. I’m shocked, I tell you; shocked, stunned, amazed and utterly flabbergasted. How totally unprecedented.[/sarc]
leefe,
h8rs gonna h8.
Whatever.
“Shake it off” is no ‘worse’ than glitzy pop songs of my youth.
Myself, I prefer this kinda sound; https://youtu.be/EKKmIVdcLs0?si=DQ1PjVUC6I_wLP-H
Or sometimes something more like this; https://youtu.be/QRg_8NNPTD8?si=-Ov_zPgwRbQSvlq3
Noel Wauchope raises a pertinent point about spectator fanaticism surrounding competitive sports in terms of both messaging and behaviors.
Modern competitive sports are much more akin in spirit to the events conducted at the Circus Maximus and Colloseum than the individual striving for personal best idealised within the games of Olympus.
An opportunity for organised betting syndicates to predate upon enraptured herds, a captivated market for hawkers to peddle numbing intoxicants and valueless trinkets, a way to mobilise parochial mobs through antagonistic division under banners of colour and sigil.
In Rome and Byzantium, colour-coded chariot racing fanclubs provided readily mobilised organisations that were often hired to conduct street violence to aid political agendas.
In modern Straya, law enforcement and emergency services statistics show a marked spike in incidents of violent assaults on ‘footy’ grand final and state of origin nights.
Yeah, I tend to agree with Noel that, in wider context, I don’t really find the “swiftie vibe” all that troubling a societal trend.
In George Gurdjieff‘s opus magnum, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, he pins the advent of organised sport as the point at which humanity began to decline in its sense of being and relation to matters of fundamental importance vis-a-vis the critical questions of who are we, why are we here, what are our possibilities, what is the meaning of life and so on. Hard to disagree with that assessment when viewed through a critical lens in relation to the current grip sporting activities have on the psyche of millions.
Canguro,
An oft-spruiked media cliche:
“When sports are the headline it must be a good news day”.
An alternative viewpoint;
“When sports are the headline, it either means that a sporting event has other sparked a major international incident or caused mass fatalities, or, more likely, that the editors-in-chief of the publication have reduced their journalists into mere promotional ringmasters”
cb, are you missing a comment?
Roswell,
I miss a lot of comments, but none of mine seem to be missing…
PS, thanks for asking 😉
One was in the bin. I wasn’t sure if you’d deleted a comment or if the system was playing up.
Roswell,
Occasionally I’ll reconsume the most bilious of my own regurgitations and drop them out the other end of my alimentary.
I blarted out some reactive thoughts regarding John C’s expressed attitudes towards females (1:26pm), then relegated such as invertebrate smallfry compared to N Wauchope’s more informatively interesting comment about the negatively pervasive tribalistic influences upon society of corporate-driven competitive sports.
No biggie.
No worries. I appreciate you letting me know.
I’ll leave it where it is.
Is there nothing this superb analyst can hold back opining on?
I’m with Noel. There’s a happy cross-generational shared excitement and there’s something refreshing about that in these dark times.
And it’s a positive take compared to the envy, musical snobbery (see The Harvard Gazette/Arts and Culture take on Swift), and misogyny being trotted out, never mind the worrying likelihood the plastic merch and planes hit on the environment will rapidly overtake both transient thrills and carbon credits.
leefe: I don’t know nothin’ about no Taylor Swift, and never cared enough to find out. I do note in passing, that as yet her music has not bothered the Spotify algorithms that compile my weekly listening recommendations.
But I am enough of a communist to consider her reported $1.1 billion wealth, including her $150 million real estate holdings, potentially indicative of important imbalances in society and economics at large, and thus worthy of contemplation and comment. In my view, the socio-economic “Phenomenon Swift” (as distinct from the person Taylor Swift – but who might she be, if stripped of her mind-boggling commercial effect) is quite a few orders of magnitude beyond “an independent, succesful [sic] young woman” – an accomplished medical researcher, say, an incisive reporter or journalist, or indeed the numerous female strummers and songstresses who crowd my playlist.
ZeroSumGamer: I haven’t read the The Harvard Gazette/Arts and Culture take on Swift to ascertain whether it really amounts to no more than “envy, musical snobbery”. It quite possibly does, considering that Harvard University’s reputation generally seems to be in freefall.
Then again, is any criticism of McDonalds that insists that this franchise – although wildly popular globally with young and old, man and woman (and inbetweens), of many creeds and philosophical, personal, lifestyle, occupational, and recreational persuasions – is nevertheless not exactly the very epitome of culinary perfection and nutritional optimisation, necessarily an expression of envy and gastronomic snobbery?
Arnd:
Musical taste is irrelevant. You aren’t the demographic to whom she mostly speaks. A lot of women – especially younger women – find the songs she writes relevant to them where the music you like may not be. Different people, different life experience, different tastes.
I’m not personally a fan (well, since my deafness reached a certain level, music ceased to be an option for me, but country/pop has never been one of my preferred genres) but I don’t have a problem with her successs (extra S to make up for the one missing earlier) and The Man had the best video I’ve seen for a song in a very, very long time.
There are so many male performers and entertainers with a comparable level of wealth, but they don’t attract the same level of disapproval. All those decades of male comedians making wife “jokes” and rape “jokes” and gay “jokes” and disability “jokes” – still doing it, even – and this opinionista never felt compelled to call them out publicly, but as soon as Hannah Gadsby refers to Picasso in a routine or says something not-nice about Barry Humphries, Dr Kampmark rushes to the defence. Anna Funder writres an impeccably researched book about the erasure of Eileen O’Shaughnessy (Eric Blair’s first wife) that shows Blair (and his biographers) in a negative light, and he’s back at it. A group of women make a bright, fun and thoughtful film centered on a toy character aimed principally at girls, a film principally for women and feminist allies, and the predictable “critique of the banality of popular culture” once again surfaces.
And now it’s Tay Tay. Excuse me for seeing a pattern where one clearly exists.
It reminds me of the Beatles tour downunder in 1964 with a bit more technology.
At the concerts nobody could hear anything just as a young girl said this morning on the news, she couldn’t hear anything from all the screaming and could hardly see anything as everybody was jumping up and down.
Ms Swift must be exhausted – she has done very well.
Agree with leefe on the irrelevancy of musical tastes and the particular demographics at play; Some years ago I went through a stage of attempting to convince younger colleagues of the intrinsic superiority of the pop music of the seventies & eighties as cf. later expressions by artists of the nineties and into the current phase over the last twenty years or so. Hopelessly so… a totally wasted endeavour. Doof doof was the epitome of good music as far as they were concerned.
In a similar vein, I have a son in his mid-thirties who’s a professional cellist and has been deeply immersed in classical music all his life, having started to learn the instrument when he was three years old. He’s been described by people far more qualified than I am as a prodigy. I would expect he’d have next to no knowledge of the universe of popular music that emanates from across the english-speaking world or for that matter, from other cultures. Context is everything, when it comes to musical tastes and likings.
One man’s meat, another’s poison, as it’s noted, not that it seems to matter to those who wish to voice an opinion.
leefe: “Musical taste is irrelevant.” I thought I said as much.
Also, I admit to not reading The AIMN often enough to notice any patterns of Binoy’s choice of victim.
But thanks for making me look up “Wealthiest Entertainers”. Not exactly a total surprise, of course, but the money in entertainment is quite mind-blowing. Part of an economic dynamics which I consider clearly – CLEARLY – unsustainable. Though I might not personally be around when it finally collapses, and takes everything else with it.
I think I’ll go back to watching YouTube videos now. There’s a promising one on Stirling engines …
Arnd: My bad, no nasturtiums meant against Harvard article, poor grammar or something on my part when meant misogyny, snobbery, envy etc more generally, points perhaps made during the Harvard discussion, but abounding here in ways.
There’s a place for cynicism and I got plenty to spare, but to witness young family members (including a 15 yr old recovering from a recent hip replacement after a miserable couple of years in pain & passed at the 11th hr by her surgeon as fit for travel from Rockhampton to Sydney) commuting huge distances with all kinds of extended family support to make the show, then a mum on the final leg of their pilgrimage home saying it was the experience of a lifetime for their beautiful girls is not something over which even me at my most jaded would be tempted to play spoiler.
We all know what we know, but sometimes it’s best to just take a hike.
I find it very entertaining that an attractive young woman who writes and performs her own music gets so many middle aged men triggered.
She deserves plenty of success for this alone!
AC, can’t disagree with you, but I think you’re in need of a laugh.
Have a read of Grumpy Geezer’s post. You’ll thank me later.
Rhiannon Giddens
‘Julie’
5 strings plus larynx.
I’ve now heard one song more by Rhiannon Giddens than I have Taylor Swift.
PS: I enjoyed it.
Is Rhiannon Geddes’s dazzling virtuosity intended as an invidious comparison?
Apples and oranges maybe.
They say there’s no darkness without light but then there’s this pop behemoth to ‘deconstruct’!
Hi Roswell
I can’t see any comment from Grumpy Geezer here. Is it on another thread?
Cheers – I could do with a laugh!
AC, in lieu of Roswell’s reply, try the following link… and hope you’re not losing your mojo!
Here’s ya hat, what’s ya hurry?
I wasn’t very specific. My apologies, AC.
Canguro to the rescue.
All fine, it’s hilarious! He has a way with words!
Looks like TS also has a way with words…
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/13/from-emily-dickinson-to-joe-alwyn-taylor-swift-is-a-master-of-misleading-messaging
…so I must eat mine it seems!
Still, the kids had a great time.
ZeroSumGamer,
Apples and oranges,
oranges and lemons,
Which bell rings truer,
St Ives or St Clemens?
My personal preference for Rhiannon Giddens’ raw grassroots grounded burry sound demonstrated in her performance of ‘Julie’ in no way invalidates Taylor Swift’s more upbeat Nashville sounding harmonics showcased in her backed performance of ‘Mean’.
I just prefer the former.
Based on measurable levels of relative public exposure and popularity, I’m undoubtedly part of a demographic minority in that regard.
Sobeit.
PS,
Musical tastes aside, i do wonder what the author’s underlying intent was in singling out Taytay for this gratuitous spoonful of h8.
corvusboreus
I just read Binoy’s article again. I don’t see a “gratuitous spoonful of h8”, but rather ladlefuls of utter exasperation. And it’s not poured over Taytay, but vacuous academics, the media, and various other insipid hangers-ons who are desperately trying to parley the Swift-circus into grist to feed their own mills of career advancement, sense of self-importance, and bank accounts.
And I agree with Binoy’s sense of exasperation.
Thankfully, the crowd had moved on – to discussing Kate’s photo-editing efforts. Maybe if Ns Swift could write a so g about it, we could chinwag about both subject simultaneously. Think of the time and space savings – almost as significant as ignoring these sorts of irrelevances altogether.
“This Styrofoam performer, this master of magisterial vacuity, who is all machine, promotion and blare, has perfected the insubstantial, promoted a competent formula and boosted it.”
…how is this anything other than a “gratuitous spoonful of h8*?
A Commentator: >”…how is this anything other than a “gratuitous spoonful of h8*?”
It could just be an objective assessment? Taylor Swift, the musical equivalent to the culinary blandness, nutritional value and enduring mass appeal of McDonalds, as I said earlier. Or to the architectural and urban merit of square kilometres upon square kilometres of urban sprawl, made up of cheek-by-jowl brick-veneer project homes, with obligatory concrete driveway and dark grey heat-collecting roof tiles.
Goaded by all the hoopla over this performer, I did finally search for her on my Spotify app and listened to the first few bars of the first offering. Unimpressed, I quickly switched to the next, and just as quickly to the one after that. Then I gave up.
Someone who had been exposed to her creations with greater frequency did confirm my suspicion: she apparently does sing what essentially amounts to no more than variations of the same one song, over and over again.
And look: good for her to have hit on a riff that sells. But I don’t consider myself under any moral obligation to cheer on Taytay, her marketing machine, or her credulous fans. They might just have to indulge themselves without my approval. Somehow, I don’t think that all that many of them care about or have even noticed my disdain. More’s the pity!
As I said earlier, I think it is sensational that Taylor Swift get so many middle aged (white) men triggered.
An attractive young woman who performs and writes her own music, who doesn’t promote illicit substances, who is shunned by Trump supporters, who supports Gaza fundraising…
The antipathy towards her is hilarious!
AC, you’ll be pleased to know that I don’t belong in the triggered bracket.
Truth is, I have little – if any – interest in her.
@ corvusboreus: h8-resolving purity and perfection for you from a debut album recorded a lifetime ago…