“Taylor Swift Has Given Fans a Lot. Is It Finally Too Much? – Swift has been inescapable over the last year. With the release of ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ her latest (very long) album, some seem to finally be feeling fatigued.”

Free link: https://shorturl.at/ejVYZ

Gregg said he hadn’t heard anything about Harry Styles recently, was he over? No, I said, HE WAS BETWEEN CYCLES!

That’s something you learn in elementary school, letting farmland lay fallow, otherwise you drain all the nutrients. Sometimes you have to go away for a while to sustain.

So on Friday, all Taylor Swift information was hosannas. Now, a handful of days later, negative feedback is slipping in. Did the album change? Not a lick!

Oh Bob, get over it. She wrote a song about you and you can’t let it go. She’s the biggest star in the world and you can’t handle it.

But does that mean I can never comment about her again?

“Paste Magazine opted not to put a byline on its harsh review of Swift’s album, citing safety concerns for the writer.”

It’s a RECORD! It’s not Trump, it’s not Gaza, but the writer of this review was afraid to attach his name.

“For some, the constant deluge that has peaked in the past year is starting to add up to a new (and previously unthinkable) feeling: Taylor Swift fatigue.”

This is a business story. How do you manage a career in the 2020s?

“‘It’s almost like if you produce too much… too fast… in a brazen attempt to completely saturate and dominate a market rather than having something important or even halfway interesting to say… the art suffers!’ Chris Murphy, a staff writer at Vanity Fair, posted on X.”

“Some admonished Swift for selling so many versions of ‘Poets’ only to double its size after those orders were in, part of a cynically corporate rollout. (Care for the CD, vinyl or the Phantom Clear vinyl?)”

For twenty years we’ve heard that selling out is no longer an issue, that brand extensions are good, that you cannot oversaturate the fans. Is this true? That is the question.

What do we know about Michael Jackson? He peaked, was the biggest star in the world with “Thriller,” and then he needed to stay at that level thereafter. Not only was no subsequent album as good, he labeled himself “The King of Pop” and became a caricature of himself, a punchline.

But that was in the last century.

So the hardest thing to get these days is attention. Which is why you must stay in the public eye 24/7, if you go away then you’ve got to make a comeback. That’s been conventional wisdom. But what if you’re a superstar, do the same rules apply?

Forget the music, this has been an endless sell, an incredible hype, ever since the announcement of the album on the Grammys. Could anything live up to this buildup?

Or is it just non-fans who are antagonized, who want Taylor Swift out of their feed…

Then you have Courtney Love:

“She added that Swift is ‘is not important’ and noted that she ‘might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.'”

https://tinyurl.com/45x6dwfu

Can Love get away with this because she is seen as the last gasp of credibility, from an era when music still meant something, moved the culture, or is she just laughed off as a cartoon? All I know is the story is everywhere, you can’t avoid it, whereas you had to dig, be a fan, to find minutiae like this in the last century.

And then you’ve got another Madonna lawsuit:

“Madonna Sued Again for Late Concerts: ‘A Consumer’s Worst Nightmare’ – Plaintiffs also allege singer kept concert uncomfortably hot on purpose and that she lip-synced.”

https://tinyurl.com/38h37ktf

How can we miss you if you never go away?

How do you manage a career in the twenty first century?

Let’s be clear, Taylor Swift wrote a song about me because I believed her horrific, off-key performance at the Grammys would seriously damage her career. Turned out that I was wrong. That’s what happened in the twentieth century, but not the twenty first, where we all live in separate silos and a fan forgives all faux pas.

But how about now?

People can tell if you need it. And at some point, with a certain level of success, you have to appear that you don’t. The classic example being Neil Young, who peaked with “Harvest” and went on tour with a noisy rock band and played all new material. And I wish I could mention more names, but Young is just about the only one who’s been willing to kill his career to save it, in order to have artistic freedom.

And is it art, or is it sales? The tech bros were beloved for most of this century, now they’re loathed. Public sentiment shifts.

Furthermore, most people just don’t care. They’re not going to listen to Taylor Swift or so much of the hyped music of today. We no longer live in a monoculture, but we’re told we do by media, and if you question this…be ready for feedback, NEGATIVE FEEDBACK!

I don’t care if the Swifties love the new album, buy multiple copies of vinyl… Then again, I will ask why you need more than one copy of a record, if you even have a turntable.

I don’t care if Swift sells out stadiums for eternity.

But is the penumbra, which is really the majority, just sick and tired of hearing about Swift, period. This isn’t a judgment of her music, but you know how it is when you keep seeing the same ad online, it drives you crazy, are people just sick of being bombarded with info on Taylor Swift?

Many are. And it’s not that they’re haters. Hell, in the old days most people did not have a voice, there was no internet, never mind no social media. And if you express your opinion do you have to worry about your safety, online or in real life?

This is not about Swift the person, this is about marketing. We were told there were no limits, are there?

And the major labels can’t break new stars so they keep pushing the old ones upon us.

And media is looking for universal stories.

Can there ever be too much?

I think about this each and every day. How many e-mails can I send to my list? More than one a day and I get sign-offs. Do I think about the audience and adjust to it or live by my own inner tuning fork? But if you’re operating in a personal vacuum, you’ve got to accept the consequences. Sometimes I just want to say something, it’s important to me, and I hit send knowing that some of the audience won’t want to read it, others will be offended, others will tell me to stay in my lane and…

It’s hard to be a saint in the city.

Then again, have you seen Bruce Springsteen’s hype for his shows on TikTok? At first I thought it was brilliant. But now, he just looks like an old guy shilling. And X told me there were a lot of tickets available in Syracuse. Bruce sold out multiple stadiums back in the eighties, but that was almost forty years ago.

If you’re in everybody’s face all the time there’s going to be fatigue.

Maybe you don’t care because your fan base still supports you.

But these are all questions a manager should ask. Taylor Swift has just illustrated the issue. In a world where we’ve believed there can never be too much, can there be? At some point do you have to hold back?

Once again, if you have to make an artistic statement and you don’t care about the consequences, that’s one thing. But selling multiple versions of the same damn album on vinyl is not about art. And telling us every day you’re setting records… Sometimes you just have to STFU!

Now that was a surprise.

After yesterday’s frustrations, today we decided to hire a guide. I was taken aback by the price, but when’s the next time I’ll be in Rome? Possibly never!

Back in ’72, which is a great Bob Seger album unavailable on streaming services, you flew to Europe for $200, bought a Eurail pass and the goal was to spend as little as possible, to come home with money, and that was a mistake. When you’re confronted with an entrance fee, any fee at all in a foreign country, and you desire to partake, pay, you’ll regret it if you don’t, when you’re home.

So we said yes.

And walked down to the lobby this morning to find a little old man and a driver and from the moment we pulled away from the curb this little old man with the vigor of someone decades younger started to speak. And he didn’t stop speaking until we were dropped off three hours later.

Giancarlo started with facts and figures, the number of palaces, the number of churches, while telling us the layout of the city is the same as two thousand years ago, it’s the same buildings, redone.

One palace had two thousand rooms, that’s where the Pope used to live, before the Vatican.

And I’m positively riveted. Paying attention. This is the learning experience I didn’t get in college.

Then I thought about it… The college teachers were pedigreed with a degree, there were no teaching assistants where I went to school, the professors had their doctorates and they couldn’t have been more boring. But Giancarlo?!

That’s why I became an art history major. Because the teachers were all good, it was a pleasure to go to class. I remember Art 101, which I only took as a sophomore because everybody recommended it, John Hunisak showed us some slide and said there was a great ice cream place around the corner… In art history you could think for yourself, do your own analysis, whereas in the English department it was all about someone else’s theories, too much was set in stone instead of being vibrant and alive like in art.

Giancarlo is telling us how Napoleon was Italian. And then the French took over Corsica… And after becoming emperor, Napoleon built a palace for his mother and brother in Rome, with a veranda where she could look down on the hoi polloi, unseen. It’s still there!

And then city hall, redone by Michelangelo… The walkway is built of stones ripped-off from the Coliseum.

Our ultimate destination was the Catacombs, since we’d been to the usual tourist sites on previous visits to the city.

So what you had was the pagans. They thought life ended with death. Done, gone. So to preserve your memory, they created a sculpture of you and posted it on the Appian Way. There are thirty thousand of these sculptures in the Vatican Museum.

But the Christians were persecuted, at least until Constantine conquered Rome in the fourth century, and they believed you never really died, you went to heaven, hell or purgatory. So, you “rested in peace” until this happened.

So because of this persecution, the Christians buried their dead underground, they dug into soft volcanic rock, made a hole big enough for a wrapped body, and then put a marble plaque over the whole thing to signify who was there. If you were a martyr, you were buried under an arch. There are four levels and forty seven miles of paths and this is not the only catacombs. Giancarlo told us we’d see no skulls, but there might be some bones. And he reached into one of the graves and pulled out a humerus or something and it was absolutely creepy. And he pulled out a fragment of a ceramic jug. And he’d sift his hand through the dirt for bone fragments… I thought in a museum you looked but did not touch, but I guess there are so many graves…

And they had these carved out spots where they put these little pots of deodorant. It smelled like hell down there back in the day.

So when we came back above ground, we had to get Giancarlo’s story. Turns out he has a Ph.D. And taught not only in Italy, but at Penn State and the University of Phoenix. If only I had a professor like this…

And from there we went to the Appian Way, which for years I thought was just a home pizza kit. And on each side of the Appian Way are these giant tombs, like houses. And the road goes on for seven hundred kilometers, and it used to be smooth before they ripped up the paving stones to lay modern utilities and just put the stones back willy-nilly. Giancarlo kept on telling us that back in the day they had what we do now, newspapers… Until the Mongols came along and wiped everybody out with the plague they carried.

It was mind-blowing, I didn’t want it to end.

And then I thought of my mother going to Elderhostel, now known as “Road Scholar.” Yes, old people go to some far-flung place and learn.

And I thought of how life was the same at the beginning and the end. In the beginning you know nothing and go to school to learn. And when you get out of school you think you know everything. But when you get old and retire you realize all you don’t know, you’re fascinated by history, imagination, you contemplate how much you’ll never know, never experience.

Made me want to go back to every city and hire a guide, but I’m not rich enough to do that. When I was in Rome half a century ago, it was like my art history courses come alive. But Giancarlo filled in the details between the paintings and sculpture. Furthermore, you could tell he enjoyed doing this, it just wasn’t a gig.

He’s eighty four, although he has the vim and vigor of someone much younger. And a girlfriend in Dublin who he owns a house with who is dying of brain cancer after their twenty years together, her sisters don’t want him to visit her in the hospital for fear he’ll convince her to give him all her money. And he’s got a son. And he keeps pushing the envelope.

I hate to tell you this, but life has no meaning, it is what you make of it. No one is keeping score, and I’m down with the pagans, there is no afterlife. So you have to gain your own perspective.

In school they tell you what to do, how to behave. And the freedom of graduating feels so liberating. But then you get older and there’s no structure, no one telling you what to do, no scorecard that applies to all.

Some just put one foot in front of another at a job, whether it be digging ditches or being a doctor. Others lament that they didn’t pay more attention in school for a better adulthood. And some have families, but eventually even the children grow up and have children of their own. So what do you do?

That’s the big question in life, what do you do?

Ultimately it’s your decision, even though you might feel parental or societal pressure. It’s tough to go your own way. Even worse, when people truly have freedom, they’re so often paralyzed.

And you can’t do everything, and a lot of times we can only do the same thing, Giancarlo told us he took Bill Gates and his family on a tour of the Vatican… I can go on that tour too, and so can you!

But deeper…

Most people live in a bubble, because to contemplate what is going on outside it is too overwhelming. That’s what being in Rome is like, overwhelming. There’s so much to learn, so much to see. And you realize the people two millenniums ago were really no different from us. Which is hard to fathom.

So I learned plenty today, it was utterly fascinating. Will there be a test, will I get a gold star? Absolutely not. I’ve got to get off on it for itself.

And I did.

Giancarlo Alú: https://shorturl.at/tM056

Make reservations.

Andrew Zimmern and David Kuller recommended the restaurant Roscioli. Andrew wrote “you’d be hard-pressed to find a better griciathan than at Roscioli.” Honestly, I had to look up “griciathan.” Turns out it’s pasta with three ingredients: Guanciale (pork cheek), pepper and Pecorino Romano cheese, and that appealed to me. So we went downstairs to the concierge and announced we wanted a reservation.

And they pooh-poohed the restaurant. This makes me crazy, like when the guy at the shop said there are better skis than Peaks. Well, Peak is direct to consumer only and you can’t sell them… But I stood my ground and said we wanted to go anyway.

No problem, we could get a reservation on June 19th.

Well, that took us aback. But the concierge said he knew an even better place around the corner and…

The fact that the place was empty should have been a heads-up. But it was after one and…

The salad was substandard. And the pasta… Was oversalted.

This put me in an extremely bad mood. I know my food, it was one of my father’s priorities, if I’m paying I want the best. Yes, I’m that person, I need the best. I want the iPhone 15 Pro, not the one with last year’s chip. Sometimes the best is the same price as the also-ran, usually it’s just a little bit more. And you do your research and…

Most people just ask their friends. Our world runs on misinformation. Everybody thinks they know the most and have got the best spot and it drives me crazy.

And I was beyond frustrated over our meal. I mean with just a bit less salt the pasta would have been agreeable, but I’m wasting all these carbs and eating something substandard? Put me in a really bad mood.

And then Carrot said there was going to be thunder, lightning and rain. (You can’t trust Apple Weather, it’s worthless, somehow Cupertino bought the best weather app, Dark Sky, and positively ruined it. The worst thing is it never says it’s going to precipitate…and then it does.)

So we got our rain gear and entered the Borghese Gardens and it starts to sprinkle and then the thunder claps and Felice gets reluctant. The day is going from bad to worse, she doesn’t want to be out in the rain, but I’m in ROME, I don’t want to waste any of my precious time.

So I say let’s go into the Gallery. But Felice is anxious that I’m going to spend too much time there…

Yes, I’m that guy. As in a quick walk through is not enough. I just don’t want to say I saw it… No, I want to consume it, I want to explore every nook and cranny, I want to drink up the experience…and most people don’t want to do this.

So we parted ways. Maybe not a bad idea after a week together with her family. And I go to enter the museum and…

It’s sold out. There’s a waiting line, but the information desk says I probably won’t get in. So I pop my umbrella and go out into the rain and ponder my next destination. And for some reason the Piazza Navona comes to mind. I remember sitting in a metal chair at the end of the square on a Sunday back in ’72 and at least I can connect with that.

So I start walking and…

What kind of crazy, f*cked up world do we live in where Apple Maps is better than Google Maps? Remember when we used to argue over cell phone providers, over which map apps to use? My default has been Google, I remember when Apple Maps launched and took you far from your destination.

But in L’Aquila, Google Maps steered me wrong, very wrong. And wasn’t so comprehensible. Furthermore, the blue dot wasn’t always accurate. But when I switched to Apple Maps? Everything was hunky-dory.

So I fired up Apple and started walking to the Piazza Navona.

And I was in one of those moods where I wasn’t sure who I was anymore and how I fit in. I could have taken a cab, or even an Uber, but I’m walking half an hour… Do I still have college values, have I not grown up? And others don’t even bother with the sights, that’s not what travel is about for them. But that’s what it’s all about for me. I don’t want to lie on a beach, I want to be stimulated. I could go to museums all day long, every day.

And I’m feeling so alienated. Thinking about how different I am. I mean did you read that “Wall Street Journal” article about the high end confabs? Do I really want to hang with a bunch of rich people and feel fabulous? And to tell you the truth, I’ve done that, and it’s all about networking and that’s not who I am. I’m not looking to use you, and I certainly don’t want you to use me. And lifestyle is not everything.

And my feet are hurting on the uneven pavement and I’ve got no idea where I am, but I’m just following the blue line and then…

I arrive. And it’s crowded. The opposite of the empty plaza from half a century ago. They keep making more people, but they are not making more sites.

So I find a spot on a bench and sit down and…

My pants get wet. That’s why I could find a space.

So I end up finding a railing where I park my ass and start researching on my phone.

And that’s when I read about the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, known in English as the Fountain of the Four Rivers…

Wait a second, this rings a bell. Doesn’t one person have their face covered because they didn’t know the source of the Nile back then?

Is this even the same sculpture?

Meanwhile, I’m looking at the nearby fountain and it’s not resonating.

So I stand up and walk to the center of the Piazza and…

There it is. Straight out of the 1600s.

Bernini didn’t want to do it. But at the last minute he was convinced to send a model to the Pope, who immediately green-lit his vision.

That’s how it always is. There’s a level of talent above the rest, and too often the rest don’t like it. They want you to believe they’re just as good, even though deep down inside they know this is not true. And the most talented are often mercurial, anything but warm and fuzzy.

So there it is, the river god of the Nile, with his face covered.

And suddenly there was a spark, a connection to college, to who I once was, and my mood changed.

And under the god representing the Americas, there was a stack of coins, because the new world was seen as the land of riches.

But it was the feet that truly impacted me. I noticed the second toe of one god was longer than the first. And it rose above, just like a real person. There were all these nuances. Bernini had to get it right, every little thing. He wasn’t making it for a price.

Yes, Bernini was better than the rest. Just like the right restaurant and the right phone, it feels so good when you experience it. It’s not about status, but an inner mounting flame, a good feeling inside. You feel whole.

And nothing else matters.

Bernini has been dead for nearly half a millennium. He’s not bitching about Spotify payments. All that’s left is the work. This is the opposite of Gene Simmons saying that it’s all about money. It’s not. When it’s art.

So what is art?

I don’t want to define it, I’ll just say on the opposite end of the spectrum is commerce.

Now when I went to college there was no commerce. No business classes. College was not seen as a career prep, but an enrichment of the individual, of their mind. This was back before being an art history major made you a pariah.

Yes, I was an art history major. And I never wanted to work in a museum, I didn’t want a job in the art world, but there was a sensibility…in the art, in the art department, that was different from the usual subjects, that impacted me.

I’m all about splitting hairs, trying to reach the zenith, whereas too many people say good is good enough.

And this makes me feel alienated.

But in truth the great musical artists were all alienated. Bob Dylan? John Lennon? These were outsiders commenting on a world they were not a part of. They couldn’t sell out, even if they wanted to, they constitutionally didn’t know how to. They were on their own journeys.

And people don’t like it when you go your own way. Especially now, when it’s all about groupspeak. Reviewers are afraid to say anything negative about the new Taylor Swift album for fear of backlash, or appearing a hater.

As a matter of fact, you need to read the comments on the Swift articles in the WaPo and the NYT. Readers are APOPLECTIC! Can these outlets stop writing about Taylor Swift! The readers are maxed out, and they have no intention of listening to the music, they’ve checked Swift out and she’s not for them. What’s interesting is the blowback is more about the press than Taylor or her work. Dedicated readers wonder who these papers think their audience truly is. But Taylor Swift has been anointed the biggest story in the land and if you don’t agree…

What if you don’t agree? What if you’re not part of the mainstream? What if you want to go a different way?

Be prepared to go it alone. But know that you have forebears.

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi centered me, made me feel whole and good. Maybe not connected to society, but I could feel the thread back to college and Bernini and his fountain. There was meaning, there was elation. And it wasn’t about money, but it was truly inspiring.

Funny how your mood can change on a dime.

But that’s the power of greatness, that’s the power of the long ball. It’s not about hype, it’s about the work itself. It may need to be interpreted and explained so you can understand it, but the penumbra is irrelevant, the trappings don’t matter, the art stands on its own, makes its own statement. And greatness lasts while the rest fades away.

So I didn’t feel closer to society looking at the Fountain of the Four Rivers, I felt closer to myself. Yes, this is who I am. This resonates, engenders a feeling inside that makes me whole. That explains my life. That makes me feel I’m o.k.

Tune in Saturday April 20th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz