Saturday, November 23, 2019

Taylor Swift the "Artist of the Decade" for a decade that deserves no award for artistry


Life is tough enough for most people without having to endure the shenanigans in the nation’s capital too. Of course the problem is that for thinking people it is something they must do, because unlike most administrations, there are real and palpable effects for many people to endure from the Trump administration without their desire or input—and we have yet to feel what impact on an economic downturn that Trump’s tax cut will have, especially since the wealthy have merely been putting the extra cash in their own pockets. When I want to “escape”—which is hard, due to the fact that I feel the effects of Trump and Stephen Miller’s “mainstreaming” of hate—I watch old movies that actually have human stories to tell, read books that are acknowledged classics (a recent indulgence was William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!), and listen to music stored on my phone. 

The 1970s and 80s were time when I came of “age” and my musical “education” took place. But the music I liked were not merely contained within that period. The most successful musicians of the Eighties cut their teeth in Seventies, and music of the Seventies was influenced by the music of the Sixties, and musicians of that period were influenced by the founders of rock and the precursors of soul music. The biggest “changes” were not in song structure but the recording techniques and musical production. I didn’t like everything I heard on the radio, but thanks to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio program, I became familiar with a lot of great tunes (especially Philly soul) that I rarely heard on local stations. 

There was thus a straight line from the Fifties through the Eighties and even into early 90s, when for a brief time even a musician like Bonnie Raite, whose time had apparently long past, could come out of the shadows and find her biggest success still playing blues rock. I even learned to appreciate classical music; many record producers in the Seventies had “classical” orchestral pretensions, and even the Fifth of Beethoven was recorded into a big disco hit. But as the 90s rolled along, music which did not follow traditional song composition, in fact was purposely opposed to it, took over. With digitized music downloading (usually “illegal”) causing record companies losing sales of hard media, the “need” to reduce the cost of studio production, the abandonment of orchestration, for me my “fandom” of pop music hit a brick wall by the time the 2000s came along. 

Not only are the most recent iteration of song (when they could be called “songs”) often offensive, dreary whining and purposefully intended to be draw out the negative in the listener, they are boring to listen to, almost immediately forgettable. Not that all music in the last 20 years is that bad; I think that there are maybe two dozen songs that I like as well as the middling efforts of the past. But there were literally many thousands of hits running from the Fifties through the Eighties that I think are far, far more memorable. I have a CD collection of doo-wop tunes, and although that music was recorded before I was born, songs like the Five Satin’s “In the Still of the Night” and The Flamingos “I Only Have Eyes For You” just bring to shame stuff being recorded today. Naturally, there are so-called “music critics” who in order to justify their occupations purposely don’t know the difference between “good” and “bad” music, and are obliged to make the “best” of a bad situation—unless, of course, they are completely clueless as well. 

Which brings me to this Sunday’s American Music Awards presentation of “Artist of the Decade” to Taylor Swift, who is literally as “vanilla” and pointless as they can get. Last weekend, presidential contender Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stepped into Swift’s manure pile, and stepped out of it smelling just as bad. Ostensibly it concerned something about her not owning the rights to her early records and not being able to use them in a medley when she is presented with the award. Something or other about a disagreement with her former manager, Scooter Braun, and the owner of Big Machine Label, Scott Borchetta. Music today is such a fraud that I have to admit I have no clue who those guys are, or care to know, or care to hear anything from Swift—even her “greatest hits.” It’s already bad enough to have to stomach all the whining of Swift and her “fans” and supporters. Warren and AOC themselves have differing reasons for coming to Swift’s defense; Warren, of course, made it a gender politics issue, while AOC made it about the “little” people being beaten on by the corporations.

From what I can gather Swift pretty much brought this all on herself, due to her monumental arrogance and conceit. There are a lot things not to like about her; her blue-eyed blonde Aryan-Nordic appearance has not only attracted fans and media willing to overblow her “talent,” but neo-Nazi groups for whom she is some kind of “goddess.” Every time Swift has had “disagreements” with another party, she twists the facts to suit a narrative that portray her as the “victim.” She has frequently been caught engaging in falsehoods, yet her apologists continue to take her side. Braun and Borchetta both claim that they have tried to come to an agreement agreeable to both sides, but for Swift has been an all-or-nothing proposition.  The fact that she runs through “boyfriends” like water out of a tap seems to suggest that just maybe she is the one with “issues.” A recent video showing her whining like a baby over a banana suggests that this is very much the case.

Elton John also had a reputation as a “diva,” and I could forgive that because I thought much of his music was actually not just good, but “stuck” in the memory and reminded me of better times. That is what really matters: is the music good enough to stand the test of time? Why do you think that Seventies songs are still used to push product on television commercials, or used on film soundtracks? When Rolling Stone magazine published its 100 Greatest Songwriters list, do you think that they were going to put Taylor Swift in the same category as Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder? You can breathe a sigh of relief—they didn’t. Those were the top-ten songwriters, although I would have put Bruce Springsteen in the top-ten myself, and Randy Newman should have been a lot higher than 48.  Swift was 97th on the list; I suspect that the compilers of the list were reluctant to put her on the list at all, but did so knowing that her “fans” would be “outraged”; her low placement was however an acknowledgement of this reluctance, and the blurb justifying her being on the list was, unlike the rest, not a serious estimation of her talent but read like a “fan girl” tweet.

Just because many listeners “identify” with Swift’s self-obsessed whining doesn’t mean that it is “good”—it just means that this country is full of self-obsessed whiners. So-called “music critics” have all but abandoned any standards of quality in warping her mind into believing that she is a “great” songwriter; I once was forced to listen to some sob-sister moaning and whining for an hour by a woman talking to someone on a telephone, and I swear, you could have gotten fifty Swift songs out of it. There is a YouTube video in which Swift purports to “school” people on the “art” of writing “hooks.” She had no clue what she is talking about. Folks, if you want to know what a “hook” sounds like, just listen to John Lennon’s “Instant Karma” or the Police’s “Every Breath You Take”; those songs have about as simple a melody as a song can get, with maybe one barely noticeable chord change. Yet those song are undeniable ear worms that are impossible to forget once you’ve heard them once. Since Swift abandoned country music producer Nathan Chapman, who gave her songs a semblance of structure and musicality, her songs have been marred by a forgettable “sameness” not helped by indistinguishable backing tracks and her frankly reed-thin vocalizing. 

In the comment section of the aforementioned video, the commentators were (almost) universally adoring; one female fan called her a “genius.” Of course, for people like that it is either gender politics if you are female, and if you are a male, it depends on how red your blood is.  I added a differing opinion, pointing out that the some guy named Bob Dylan had recently won the Nobel Prize for his songwriting, while Swift might be worthy of the “prize” in a Cracker Jacks box; that comment was quickly deleted literally in minutes by some irate “moderator,” and I resubmitted the comment and moved on.  I recall Jimmy Kimmel asking her to “interpret” the meaning of some of her nonsensical lyrics on his late night show; he was obviously poking fun at her, displaying the lyrics on placards not left to right, but in a circle. Swift’s self-aggrandizement was such that she didn’t even notice that she was being put-on, and repeated the talking points of those who have been inflating her talent. 

I mean really, do we have to belabor the point that Swift doesn’t even come close to the truly great pop songwriters of the past? I have about a 1,000 mp3 songs dating anywhere from the late Fifties to the early Nineties on my phone, with  only a few driblets after that; for forty years legitimate songwriters knew how to catch the ear of listeners; not so much today. The British group Cold Play isn’t bad, and I think that Katy Perry is actually a lot more deserving of “Artist of the Decade” than Swift, if only because she has two songs, “Teenage Dream” and “Firework,” that could have been big hits in the Eighties. Swift hasn’t recorded anything half as memorable as those songs. In a recent interview, Quincy Jones, who has been making music since the 1950s and produced Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller,  scoffed at the suggestion that Swift was a “great” songwriter, saying to the interviewer who apparently believed this “Whatever crumbles your cookie.” The opinionated Jones, who in the same interview professed to not being impressed by Elvis Presley as a singer, went on to say that if he was producing a Swift record, “I’ll figure something out. Man, the song is the shit -- that’s what people don’t realize. A great song can make the worst singer in the world a star. A bad song can’t be saved by the three best singers in the world. I learned that 50 years ago.” Jones went on to say that Swift’s success has come too easy without putting in the work; the artists of today he did admit to liking their work were not, needless to say, blonde, blue-eyed Arian-Nordic types.

Today’s “music” in which Swift’s is no exception all but abandons the “sweeteners”—whether by orchestration or by synthesizer—that could make a bad song at least “listenable,” no doubt  due in part to “cost.” But you don’t have to have massive production for a song to have a memorable melody; as an example, Paul Simon’s acoustic guitar on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Kathy’s Song” is the only instrument used on the song, yet he draws out a melody from it that fake guitar players of today seem simply incapable of doing. As Jones says, it’s the song, after all, and you can’t just fake a melody (or “hook” for that matter) if there is none to be had. And yes, its lyrics are far above what Swift is “artistically” capable of, and it isn’t even one of Simon’s (very) best songs. Unfortunately, people whose musical knowledge only goes back ten or 20 years are mired in the lamest period of popular music, where “music” has been either hi-jacked and encased in the straight-jacket of hip-hop and rap, or have been poor attempts to recall past glories—mainly because so-called songwriters themselves simply lack musicianship skills or the experience or imagination to create memorable songs.

Look, I have listened to what Apple iTunes calls Swift’s 20 “essential” songs. Out of those, “Our Song,” “Love Story,” and “Fifteen” sound “OK” to me, probably because they are from her country music period, and to be frank, country music these days sounds more like the “soft rock” of the early Seventies. Those songs don’t “stick” in the memory, but that is more the fault of the songwriting itself; there is only just so much you can do unless you add a heavy dose of “sweetener.”  “Don’t Blame Me” from her Reputation album is more “adventurous” than usual instrumentally, but the lyrics are a real turn-off, unless, of course, you are the ragingly self-pitying sort; “Beautiful Ghost”  might be its lamest song on the Cats soundtrack, mainly because it was written by Swift, although Andrew Lloyd Webber apparent  tried  to do something to “fix” it. I generally like any song with a string section sweetener, but this song is so lame melodically that this time the orchestra can do nothing with it, and doesn’t even try to.

As mentioned previously, Seventies music more than any other period continues to be used to pitch products in television commercials and be used in films. So many of those songs still have the ability to “speak” to us after so many decades, and I personally believe the best popular music of the so-called “rock era” was recorded in the Seventies. It is difficult to see anything that has been recorded in the last decade or two “speak” to people in the future, because of its vulgarity and negative “vibes.” The fact that someone like Swift can be deemed the “Artist of the Decade” just goes to prove how music has reached such a low point that listeners with no historical perspective make asses of themselves out of pure ignorance. When “critics” who are not exposed to literature and music that was made when the creators of those works actually sought to create something to last the test of time, actually strove for “greatness,” how are they to be taken seriously when they think someone whose “talent” is actually more “image” than substance is a “genius”?

Not at all.

No comments:

Post a Comment