Taylor Swift
Surfing the new paradigm or tone-deaf?
I’m not sure.
Bernie Sanders captures the youth vote by appealing to millennials’ lack of opportunity, their mountains of college debt in a land of income inequality. The modern economy losers voted for Brexit and Trump won the nomination by appealing to those left out. Yet Twizzle Stick is jetting all over the world with her new star boyfriend after having a July 4th party so over the top, shot by a professional with the results distributed on all platforms online, that one has to ask if she’s winning or losing.
Is America just aspirational? Do we all believe something better is gonna come? And when we see winners, do we venerate them, adhere to them, because we view ourselves as victorious soon?
Or, are we sick and tired of the b.s. and want a revolution.
Is everybody content with their mobile and flat screen or do black lives really matter?
Forget Rudy Giuliani. He’s from an over the hill generation. That’s what this election cycle has taught us, the oldsters are out of touch and while they were asleep the game changed and those speaking truth, or perceived truth, ascended to power. And the media has gotten it so wrong for so long that it’s become untrustworthy, another elite denigrated and tossed on the scrapheap.
But Taylor Swift keeps rolling right along.
Or does she?
It’s all about perception. And one thing about pollsters and research, they can tell us where we’ve been but not where we’re going.
On one hand TS owns social media. Her brand is bigger than her music. She never disappears and despite saying she’s doing it all for her fans, she seems to be doing it mostly for herself. She surrounds herself with elite celebrities, mostly women, and she is lauded for her girl power but it’s hard to sit at home and not feel left out. And the manipulation is self-evident. There are cameras everywhere, nothing is secret. Is she laughing all the way to the bank, with a bead on today’s culture, or is she as out of touch as the politicians?
I don’t know.
Music used to be the cutting edge, it defined the culture. But now an ancient video game comes out of retirement to steal the social scene more than any track in memory, no one’s got the mindshare of Pokemon Go. Makes the uninitiated want to play, the same way they used to buy the work of Grammy winners after viewing the telecast, before all popular music became so niche that most people tuned out. How can it be that a video game can cross all lines?
One with a brand name, sans promotion, sold by word of mouth, enhanced by the social element outside the house. They keep telling us today’s generation is one of couch potatoes, but suddenly they’re up and at ’em without provocation from adults and traipsing all over the landscape?
Not that there will be a new augmented reality app as big as Pokemon Go in the future, but the paradigm remains the same, we love the unexpected, the different, the limit-testing, and we want to belong.
But there’s been nothing different coming from Taylor Swift since she jumped to pop. She’s just utilizing the best hitmakers, her sound is anything but revelatory, and the lyrics have gotten dumber, but she’s gotten BIGGER!
Or maybe not. Maybe the laugh’s on her. That’s certainly the story of entertainment, of fads, they’re huge and then they crash.
But we do live in a social world where we constantly interact. And we’re all purveying our personal brand, admit it, the reason you post concert and vacation videos is to make yourself special, you were there and your followers were not. And fashion is fast and cheap and everybody’s focusing on their look…
But the have-nots have been left behind. Even though their ranks are swelling. Will they take over or continue to be laughed at?
Or is the Taylor Swift universe really not that big and the media is just saying it’s so.
TS has her finger on the pulse of social media, but no frustration is in evidence, is the national temperature angst and anger, or is the truth that everybody’s happy and wants to party like it’s 1999?
Oxy and heroin are a scourge.
Then again, they make you really skinny. And if you put together the right outfit you too can be a social media star, a world in which followers and likes mean everything.
Or do they?
