We’re at fault for the enormous vacant space in cultural history she represents
Like everyone else in the music business, she records albums, she tours them and, in between, she absorbs as much attention as she can manage. On a scale of musical impact, Swift is somewhere north of Barry Manilow and south of Elton John. She’s a less interesting Diana Ross, or a Madonna with better business instincts.
Forty-odd years ago, the Clash played what was then the O’Keefe Centre. It did not go smoothly. The next day, their road manager, Vinyl Cosmo, was in the auditorium assessing the damage. Cameras caught him on stage counting broken seats: “One, two, three, four … 16.” We’re not talking rickety modern Ikea jobs. These were metal-shelled captain’s chairs, bolted to concrete and torn out nonetheless.
A year-old Morning Consult survey broke down the demographics of Swift fans. Nearly half of them are millennials. One in five are Gen Xers. Nearly a full quarter – 23 per cent – are boomers. Which is not to say young people don’t like Swift, but that too many old people do.All the grown-ups who refuse to leave childhood spaces have already ruined fashion, movies and a wild night out. Now they’re tearing down music, using love of Taylor Swift as the jackhammer.
Financial Times’ columnist Janan Ganesh calls this “the middlebrow trap” – believing that cultural junk can be redeemed as long as it was thrifted. Its fans are the same people who have bought the conceit thatSwift and her contemporaries aren’t middlebrow masquerading as highbrow. They’re something worse. They’re middlebrow done up like lowbrow.
While in other moments of exciting disorder, the Western world has had brutalist opera or hip hop to groove it If there were another option out there, it’d be a little sad and kind of funny, but not in the ha-ha way. But there isn’t. It’s wall-to-wall pop without length, breadth or depth.
Swift People Artist Fine Everyone Thing Fault Time Gillian Welch Barry Manilow Taylor
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