GLORIFICATION

 

Since it still seems to be an unnecessarily slow walk for the U.S. Senate to pass the foreign aid bill, I have to fill the time somehow. So in response to that I’ll go ahead with the word for the day:

Glorification: the action of describing or representing something as admirable, especially unjustifiably.

In the political and business realm, there can surely be no one as into self-glorification as Donald Trump. Now what about in the celebrity realm? Now look, there are plenty of people to talk about in Trumpworld, like Majorie Taylor Greene and J.D. Vance. But in the celebrity world there is Taylor Swift—and Taylor Swift. The media follows her everywhere; she even upstaged the Super Bowl.

She’s also like the Benson character in Michael Crichton’s novel The Terminal Man, in that the media stimulation feeding her brain is allowing her to become “addicted” to it, causing “seizures” that in Swift’s case causes wild swings of emotional responses to outside “stimuli”--particularly from her "fans"--that are made worse by her own psychological contradictions.

Well, alright, we’re talking about “real life” and not a novel or a film? This is “real” life? For whom, except for someone who is living their own fantasy, for better or for worse. Money and fame can’t satisfy anyone this egotistical; there is that “poor little girl” deep inside whose "needs" require constant satisfaction.

One thing for sure, Swift is one greedy individual. She can never have enough; she demands, and the critics and fans oblige her. What’s her latest demand? Call her a poet. When the media calls, the “experts” oblige:

 

There has been some mild “controversy” whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays attributed to him, or if he existed at all, and was just a “pen name.” But somebody had to write those plays, and it makes things easier to use the name everyone knows. Swift supporters seem to be mystified by the fact that she doesn’t actually write her songs all by herself, but has an “army” to assist in turning her “poetic” efforts to explain why her personal life isn’t “normal” into some kind of coherent nonsense:

 

But at any rate, I can’t believe that literary “scholars” actually think that Swift occupies the same pedestal as Shakespeare—or any classical author—now or ever. I suppose that some musicians consider themselves “poets,” and a few justifiably so. Paul Simon had “poetical” pretensions, and he actually has a college degree in English. Music critic Robert Christgau compared his song “Peace Like River” from his first post-S&G album to modernist American poet William Carlos Williams:

Ah, peace like a river ran through the city
Long past the midnight curfew we sat starry-eyed
Ahoh, ahoh, we were satisfied
Ah, and I remember misinformation followed us
Like a plague
Nobody knew from time to time if the plans would change
Ahoh, ahoh, ahoh
If the plans would change
You can beat us with wires
You can beat us with chains
You can run out your rules
But you know you can't outrun the history train

Poetry or not, it speaks to a general audience, not the self-pitying self-obsessions of a narcissist who alienates half the audience that critics forget exist from the jump.

Did Bob Dylan deserve the 2016 Nobel Prize for the literature? There was plenty of “outrage” by those who considered themselves “real” writers. The website The Collector notes that

When it was announced on October 13th, 2016 that Bob Dylan would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature that year, many were outraged by the Swedish Academy’s decision to privilege a singer-songwriter and musician over a more conventional literary writer. Unsurprisingly perhaps, some of this outrage was expressed by writers, who took to Twitter to vent their displeasure…Despite being a self-confessed fan of Dylan’s work, Irvine Welsh did not mince his words, dismissing Dylan’s Nobel as “an ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies.” And Hari Kunzru declared it “the lamest Nobel win since they gave it to Obama for not being Bush.

Others were supportive of course, like Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie. The Swedish Academy even suggested that Dylan’s work was a natural outgrowth from the tradition of Homer and Sappho. Really? But then again, Dylan himself suggested that people needed to come to grips with changing tastes in “The Times They Are A-Changin”:

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

 

But there are limits to what we should accept. Simon and Dylan were not egotistical enough to compare themselves to “real” poets; they might have considered some of their work influenced by poetry, but if someone thought it was, then they might be flattered, but they never kidded themselves that their “business” was music, and not “poetry.” Dylan received an honorary doctorate from Princeton University in 1970, but by then he had compiled a body of verbal artistry that few could muster in a lifetime.

In its most recent list of the 500 top albums of “all-time,” Rolling Stone picked Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On as the "best" of "all time." Is it a “great” album? Sure, it has contemporary commentary on sociopolitical and even environmental concerns (decidedly lacking in today's "music"), and being a fan of orchestration on pop songs, there’s plenty of that on this album. In fact this and Gaye’s belated follow-up Let’s Get It On both have the “feel” of a symphonic work beyond the lyrics themselves, with each song melding into the next to maintain a strictly sonic “mood.” But if you like some “variety” in an album, then these works are better off as background music.

The Rolling Stone top-500 is a bit of a joke anyways; The Rolling Stones took the biggest “hit” to make room for the likes of Kanye West, Beyonce and Swift, going from 10 albums in the top-500 in 2003, to "just" 5 in 2023; in fact West has more albums in the top-500 (6). Given that West's mental state has been questioned, maybe  those RS compilers should revisit what they think they are listening to.

I suspect that the only reason the Stones, the Beatles and Dylan even have any records in the top-500 is by reputation and history, not that current critics have any appreciation for the classics; they just have to “judge” based in relation to clearly inferior work that they in turn have to judge “merit” based on what’s out there now—and even that is dependent on current  social and gender politics. And no, I don’t think the three mentioned in the previous paragraph have anything that belongs in the top-500, but everything is “relative” and you have to roll with the “times”—or with the punches if you deign to disagree.

In the meantime, we have to deal with self-glorifiers like Swift, who probably has more in common with Trump than she thinks, although in this Instagram video she seems to need to defend herself against about saying anything at all bad about him, since her father suggests she needs an “armored car” to fend off angry Trump supporters:

 

Swift also defends her “leftist” politics by attacking Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who she claims is against all this and that about gender and gay rights. Frankly, Blackburn is all talk when it comes to gender culture war issues; what she really “runs” on that the self-obsessed Swift seems clueless about is this kind of thing, as noted by the Nashville Scene in 2018:

Election Day is a little more than a week away, and polls show the U.S. Senate race between Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Phil Bredesen could be a close one. So, naturally, Blackburn is stirring up anti-immigrant bigotry apparently in hopes that it will give her supporters an extra bit of motivation to get to the polls on Nov. 6. 

It's 2024 and nothing changes. 

In her review of The Tortured Poets Department in The New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich tries to sneak in there somewhere between the lines that Swift’s arrogance, fed by media and fan desire to turn her into some kind of god, “feels nearly terrifying. Superstardom tends to turn normal people into cartoons, projections, gods, monsters. Swift has been inching toward some sort of tipping point for a while.” 

Is she even “human” anymore? How detached from “reality” is she? We are told she is “beholden to her fans” but that is her fault, because “She has encouraged and nurtured a parasocial affection (at times she nearly demanded it: inviting fans to her home, baking them cookies), and she now has to contend with their sense of ownership over her life.”

Swift has only herself to blame for making her "romantic" complaints public in the majority of her songs for this MeToo generation. She needs people to feel sorry for her that her "love life" is all screwed-up.  She is more the “judgmental creep” who never seems to have the time for self-examination. 

I also find it amusing how Petrusich talks about her lyrical “signature precision” even after noting that Swift’s lyrics are dependent on clean-up jobs by the likes of Jack Antonoff and  Aaron Dessner; it will be interesting when they feel “safe” to talk about their contributions to her “poetry.” 

Come on, now: This is someone who became a billionaire charging people $1000 or more to "brag" about simply "being there," feeding people sob-sisters stories--and she has anything to complain about? She is 34-years-old and still seems to have the maturity level of a child, as testified by that infamous "banana" episode. Is she ready for her own kid? Doubtful, since that would mean she would have to grow up first.

Petrusich admits that all this “suffering” wears a bit thin: “In the weeks before The Tortured Poets Department was released, it seemed as though a backlash was inevitable. Swift’s lyrics are often focused on her perseverance against all odds, but, these days, she is too omnipresent and powerful to make a very convincing underdog.” Swift is a walking commercial selling herself, a corporate brand. Her adoption of a “poet persona” is “cringe.” Swift is “cocky and self-loathing, tough and vulnerable, totally fine and completely destroyed. She is free, but trapped. Dominant, powerless. She wants this, but she doesn’t. Those sorts of contradictions can be dizzying, but, in the end, they’re also the last things keeping her human.”

No, these “contradictions” don’t keep a person “human.” It just means that people with these “contradictions” don’t accept reality, and in Swift’s case that means that deep down, she is a needy individual who must feel the victim which she blames on being female, and not accepting the truth that her success is in large part because of the gender glorification society we live in today--justifiable or not.

 

FRAUD

 

Fraud: A person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

On Friday mornings after I do my laundry I stop by a Big Lots to purchase junk for the weekend. They always seem to play a loop the same songs piped-in over and over again for what seems like years now. There is Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” and we know who that person that Ms. Masterpeice really knows “all too well.”  When Swift was wearing a cowgirl outfit like in the old days nobody paid too much attention to her, but once she went “pop” and starting prancing around on stage in a baton-twirler outfit, male “Swifties” ogled her and her female fans wanted to be her. Madonna is “sex” personified; Swift is just a blonde Aryan-Nordic “super model” who sings songs about someone who sells a worthless bill of songs that if she was still doing the cowgirl bit she would be nothing more than a niche country singer. In other words, she is fraud putting a “pop” veneer on tiresome self-involvement.

Still, you can’t argue with “success.” Just ask Lauryn Hill. You remember her, right? The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Hill who won all those Grammy scam awards?  Of course the title didn’t have anything to do with the songs and was just some cute made-up pity-party sentiment. The people who were really “misdeducated” were those who actually believed that Hill was the “Next Great Thing.” Todd in the Shadows, who has done some great videos about the stories of “one-hit wonders” and what he calls “trainwreckords” tells us the rest of the story:

 

 

Of course you wonder who was really responsible for her initial success after she left the Fugees. The producer? The musicians? As Todd shows us, Hill guitar-playing on her “unplugged” live “follow-up” record of her talking and rasping (to make it “real”) and strumming mostly unfinished “songs” was strictly on the beginner level. Was she a “fraud”? You decide.

But back to Big Lots. The songs they played were apparently ones that wouldn’t drive out an older demographic, but “new” enough not to sound out of touch with the new “generation”—or at least stuff that could pass as “oldies” to people born after 1980. There were actually a couple songs I thought were pretty good; one was “You’re an Ocean” by Fastball, which I think is a pretty catchy song. It’s not exactly “contemporary”; it had some radio play in the late 1990s but never made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which tells you where people’s minds were even then—and it hasn’t improved. And then there was this other song that I couldn’t get out of head (at least for five minutes after I heard it). It was actually sung without the aid of auto-tune and helped propel the melody rather than work against it, which was also immensely aided by a “killer” synth riff.

But for the life of me I had no clue who the singer was (such how much I care about contemporary “music”), and the fact that I couldn’t make out the lyrics because the singer “purred”—or “slurred” the words. But one day I decided I was going to focus every sense I could muster to make out at least a coherent sentence and hope that Google could do the rest. I thought I heard something like “After all we’ve been through, I know we could.” Apparently there had been other searches along those lines and Google recognized that the second phrase was supposed to be “I know we’re cool,” and the accompanying YouTube video confirmed that the song was “Cool” by Gwen Stefani.

That song, to my “chagrin,” turned out to be another “oldie” from 20 years ago. But worse was to be had. “Cool” is three minutes of slight sentiment, but that was a relief from vulgarity and negativity in so much “music” these days. Just one big “if” here, however. It was a fraud. It was just Stefani doing 80s Madonna (who she slightly resembled) for kicks, which critics either praised or criticized her for. Her highest charting hit was something called “Hollaback Girl.” I mean, what the hell is that? Although it was called a “pop” song, it sounded like (and sung more like) a hip-hop song, to make it more “commercial” in this day and age, because songs about “love” with melodies does this to people (from Billy Wilder’s underrated Cold War film One, Two, Three featuring a great comic performance by James Cagney):

 

I’m not kidding. I remember working a job when I convinced someone turn the radio dial to a real “oldies” station playing late 70s and 80s stuff. After a few songs some of the “kids” were getting red in the face and another person said that was enough “love” songs and turned the dial back to the vulgar and negative stuff. “Hollaback Girl” was just more negative vulgarity, featuring this refrain:

Oooh, this my shit, this my shit
Oooh, this my shit, this my shit
Oooh, this my shit, this my shit
Oooh, this my shit, this my shit

I hope it was still in her pants. Stefani sure faked me out.

It’s amazing what impresses people these days. 1974 was my favorite year for music, with 35 songs reaching number one, just one good-to-great pop song after another. Not all of the songs that year were good, of course; I hate to think what Tom T. Hall thought was “music, when it’s good,” and I still don’t “love” slow trains, especially during peak traffic hours; and that Paul Anka song “Having My Baby” only proved that there was a residual audience still around for stuff 30 years behind the times—especially next to songs that were practically pornographic, like Fancy’s cover of “Wild Thing."

There were also songs with pretty dumb lyrics saved only by catchy production gimmicks, like America’s “Tin Man,” which was just some meaningless gibberish thrown together that sounded “cool” to whoever “wrote” it. I mean, what the hell was the “Tropic of Sir Galahad”? But fast forward to the early 2010s, and you had something like “Royals” winning the Grammy for “Song of the Year.” Voters must have been “impressed” that a 15-year-old “artist” who called herself Lorde could throw together a bunch goofball lines like this:

But every song's like
Gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room
We don't care
We're driving Cadillacs in our dreams
But everybody's like
Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash
We don't care
We aren't caught up in your love affair

Maybe every song today. Was Lorde the next Bob Dylan? He never won a “Song of the Year” Grammy, not even for the classic “Like a Rolling Stone”; I guess Dylan had to “settle” for the Nobel Prize, which is the first time a recording artist ever won the Prize. Even John Lennon at his Beatles goofiest (“I am the Walrus”) had a kind of “sense” to it. As for Lorde, she has only recorded two albums since (admittedly more than Hill), and nothing that “matched” the “quality” of her masterwork song (actually just the lyrics, not the “music”). A “fraud”?  Well, if you are a fan, no; if not, you rolled your eyes and moved on.

But we live in fraudulent times, as exemplified with the emergence of the “mainstreaming” of fraudsters like Donald Trump who may (may not) be finally answering for their career of deception and crime. Well, I know it is, with the moral and ethical corruption of the far-right, the disregard of due process rights that “cancel culture” and the MeToo “movement” permits, the re-emergence of the mainstreaming of hate and xenophobia (see anti-immigrant and anti-DEI sentiment), the perpetuation of conspiracies and false “facts” by the right-wing media, the fact that in this divisive political climate simple disagreements of opinion become weapons of war, and that people think their lies are the truth, and truth has become “lies.”

That is the world we live in now. People don’t really believe in anything but chaos, whether they are creating it and living in it. They don’t want to “give,” they just want to “take.” They don’t believe in anything except themselves; I am speaking of the generality, of course, but too often those who speak out about the wrongs done to people in the name of culture war prejudice (like John Oliver) are becoming little more than voices in the wilderness. People don’t want to “fix” things, they just want them to continue and get worse (or pretend they are “worse”) just so they have something to complain about or to use as cannon fodder to continue the “fight,” even when the other side has given up.

The newer generation has been brought up on social media where any lie can morph into “truth,” and not from books and television documentaries (which were common in the “old days” before cable). There is so much “information” out there that is extreme (but principally from the “right”) that once latched onto, there is no convincing "believers" otherwise. Some people don’t even believe that the January 6 rioters engaged in an obstruction of an official proceeding—and that includes the far-right justices of the US Supreme Court.

Perhaps the music of today is just a reflection of the fraudulent times we live in. Many musicians in the 60s and 70s actually cared about the world outside of themselves, but those voices have all but disappeared. There is no place for “love” or “peace” anymore; you might hear a few noises here and there, but it is usually a public relations stunt and addresses problems outside one's line of sight, say in other countries. 

I ask myself, how much has the world changed since I was young. To be honest, everything “looks” the same, as this old Laugh-In skit about “beautiful downtown Burbank” seems to demonstrate:

 

 

Except for computers and cell phones, not much has changed at all, at least not on the outside; but on the inside a great deal has changed; you either don’t care—or care too much about not “fixing” the same problems we faced in the past that should have been “fixed” by now. We think we “care,” but most of us are just frauds.