Ted Gioia:
You can create a unifying vision. You can build something that’s fair and transparent and gets people excited about music again. […]
Taylor Swift, you are the one person who can make this happen. I believe this is your destiny.
That makes me very, very sad. (It also makes me this.) Mostly because I think if T. Swift is the only hope for the music industry, then there is no hope for the music industry. Not that I’m qualified to disagree with Ted Gioia on anything, but… There’s way too much credit given here to “taking on the system”; all things Taylor Swift are very much part of the system. Generating cult-like interest in a tour of shitty pop songs is not the congratulatory same as “generating interest in live music.” And as someone who takes the Widow’s Offering as the true standard for generosity, multi multi multi millionaires handing out bonuses will never stop being unimpressive to me.
(To quote the great Raylan Givens, “Every longtime fugitive I’ve ever run down expects me to congratulate them for not doing what no one is supposed to be doing anyhow.” Mutatis mutandis and whatnot.)
I was happily ignorant of all this for a long time, mostly because I couldn’t have told you even one song she sang, or even recognized her music on the radio. (This is a place of peace I plan to return to, if at all possible.) But then I came to Montana last February, and after about the 40th song played at work, and after about the 40th 60-year-old doctor saying “You know, her music is pretty good,” I thought I must be losing my freaking mind. Maybe Mainers have a built-in immunity to the influence of crowds, or maybe I’m just blind and oblivious, but I just didn’t see any of this before. Now I see it everywhere, and between the Trumpers and the Swifties out here, I expect the universe to implode at any minute.
In fact, I’ll go a step further. Show me that Taylor Swift fans can be talked away from the punch bowl, and I’ll believe there’s hope for the Republican — no, I’ll believe there’s hope for both political parties. Apples and oranges? Maybe. Maybe.
But at the end of the day, I can’t tell you much about meaningful differences between many of the current cultural obsessions — can’t meaningful differentiate between the Swiftie phenomenon and the recent teen obsession with Prime energy drinks or the re-obsession with Crocks.
Honestly, if Taylor Swift can marshall her powers for the forces of good, then more power to her. I’m not planting a flag or claiming a hill to die on here. I could certainly be wrong, and like many things in life, I’m happy enough to be wrong. Call it a rolling of the eyes from the peanut gallery or something. But I’m simple (I’ll always take Wendell Berry over the next Big Idea) and the whole “use the momentum of bad ideas” is exhausting.
That being said, there is a great takeaway line from the article, one from a tune Gioia has been singing for a long time:
It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that ten thousand musicians live on peanuts so Spotify can cut a deal with Joe Rogan.
I’ve never had a Spotify account. (My music streaming sins were committed with Amazon, to my everlasting shame.) But, while I don’t think that Swiftogeddon will be anyone’s answer to anything — much less a force for a “unifying vision” — refusing Spotify’s poisoned apple is a simple song I’m happy to keep on singing.
Update:
For what it’s worth, I regret saying “shitty.” That was unkind, and certainly undermines what I wanted to say, which I think has little to do with “aesthetics.” Though I do think that arguments around aesthetics are unavoidable (see this post — different subject, same idea.)
Every alternative suggestion I have is based on small things for small people to do. (I have Curly Howard’s voice in my head on a regular basis: “A simple job for simple people!”) Pay for the music you listen to (i.e. buy albums) and support local music venues. It isn’t revolutionary, but at this point, even these basic things seem to constitute reform.
I loved being a small part of One Longfellow Square back home, for instance. And they remain my favorite live music venue in the world. And I’m looking forward to doing more of that when I get back there. For streaming, I’ve switched to Bandcamp. We’ve even talked about what it would look like to go back to using CDs and DVDs so that our son has a more streaming-free, physical experience of music and movies — and thus a better experience of support for those things — in childhood. And frankly, we’d benefit just as much ourselves.
I get that almost nothing I support is very new or ingenious or groundbreaking. I get that the impact seems so small as to be negligible. And I get that this has been a problem that has plagued lower-case-c conservatives of technoculture (if that’s a word), from Marshall McLuhan to Wendell Berry to your local librarian. I’m just convinced that, rather than change the “strategy” of what we know to be good, the questions we face are always the same: How do we maintain our lives and support our culture in good faith, and how can we be more convincing to more people that quality work — good quality and gritty work — is the way.
All of the writers and thinkers that I love have had at least a relatively small following, and even fewer real supporters. If they were looking for some measurable standard by which to gauge their success — by which to be “realistic” — I’m sure they would’ve quit long ago. But the fact that they weren’t is an essential part of the reason I have found them to be trustworthy in the first place.
For the record, I think that Ted Gioia has taken a higher ground than I in addressing Taylor Swift the individual. While my disagreements stand, what I cringe at is the Taylor Swift phenomenon, the “brand,” which, when a star gets as big as she is, is as real as anything else. But if T. Swift brought her acoustic guitar down to li’l ol’ One Longfellow Square, I would absolutely support her doing so.
***Please don’t misinterpret the fact that I am talking right now as genuine interest in Taylor Swift and attempt to discuss her career with me further. End of speech.