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.
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