Just a one-off really, because it's you and I feel you deserve a little extra for Easter. The content will give you some idea of how my
head works, plus my senile percolation time. I’m sure you were all at this
particular intellectual station a year last Monday, just humour me; I’m an old
person.
Publicity departments for singer/songwriters, writers, actors
work hard to promote their talented treasures and there is really no way of
knowing what the end result will be because involved in all this is ‘the fickle
fuckin’ public’. As it is they have to try and shoe-horn what is often and
ostensibly a sow’s ear of talent into any and every niche that bears even the
slightest resemblance to a silk purse opportunity or has any connection whatsoever
to their talent’s latest song, film, book or other artistic endeavour not
matter how flimsy, and I have to say it’s a pretty thankless task; unless, of
course, your talent happens to not only be blessed with a good voice, have a polished
way of putting over a song or film’s character, has cut his/her musical/acting
chops on the circuit AND is also vivacious…with just a touch of eroticism for
the punters to cling on to. Happy the PR department in those circumstances; job
done and, in Taylor Swift’s case it’s not a case of a shoe-horn, it’s a
shoo-in.
IMHO, she has everything, in spades, the lot. I think she’s a
consummate performer, has an obvious ability with lyrics, can strum a guitar at
the ‘better than average’ level, is very attractive, moves well, dances OK, the
whole package has such a veneer, such a gloss and is so well produced that,
really, you should just lie back and let the talent wash over you…but you know
me; can’t just take things at face value, have to rummage around…and you have
to do quite a bit of rummaging around and undertake a lot of carefully considered
research before you even begin to hit Ms. Swift’s cracked pottery, such is the
depth and quality of her marketing strategists. The first couple of things mentioned
below I discovered and considered after doing a bit of research; the third
happened by complete accident and also made the biggest impression.
Maybe it’s because I have an inbuilt mistrust of PR (don’t we
all) but when researching for this one-off blurb two things struck me about Ms.
Swift and caused me some eye-rolling.
1. Her biog: On the official Taylor Swift site it reads like a Miss World
chant (world peace, love, furry animals, love, ‘my life is all about you, my
fans’, love…). Nothing wrong with that, and I’d like to think Ms. Swift wrote
it herself ‘cept it does tend to read like the output of some PR hack in an
office who was tasked with the job of writing the ‘one-size-fits-all-cross-out-‘dog’-insert-‘goldfish’
star CV. If these statements are really what she believes and she really did
write it herself then her overuse of hackneyed phrasing and clichés really
lessens the impact of her lyric writing and, IMHO, does her a grave disservice;
if it was the work of some hack then she should sack him/her and sit down to
write it herself because he/she is also doing her a grave disservice and,
providing she really thinks it through, self-penned, carefully considered,
self-evaluating detail would carry so much more weight and conviction;
providing she could get it passed by her publicists…
2. Her live performance: Watching her live performance on the Graham Norton
show when she performed her new release, ‘Trouble’. Can’t say the lyrics and
the body language she used would help move the female cause forward any (and
certainly not the ‘show’ she put on at The Grammys) but, that aside…well, let’s
just say, for a live performance, I didn’t see the front skin of the kik-drum
moving, and the skins on all the toms and the snare were level with the rim,
uniform white and had not a mark on them.
I know, I’m a sad old fucker and it may be they changed all
the skins after the sound check or were using an electronic skin system to
reproduce the recorded sound...if, however, there was a certain amount of digital enhancement going on; two
things;
a) I know everybody does it these days but it doesn’t make it
right.
b) Why? I mean, why would you want to reproduce the exact
same thing over and over at each and every concert or ‘live’ performance? That
must be mind-numbingly boring for the performer, same set-list, same order,
same steps; and don’t tell me you do it because you want to give each and every
fan the exact same quality of performance no matter where they see it (‘my life
is all about you, my fans’) because you want them to get value for their money;
that’s like touring the Premier Inn, and I’ve never met a promoter who puts the
audience first; never. You know what makes a great and memorable live
performance? I’ll tell y’. Never knowing quite what you’re going to get; ask
Bob Dylan fans; Rush fans; Led Zepplin fans; early David Bowie fans… It’s called
living your time, that time, in the moment and exclusively with the artist; with
their mood, their fancy, their health; their temper, you know…live… I mean…FM,
if that’s what you want then buy a fuckin’ video FCS.
However, in spite of all this ‘sound and fury signifying
nothing’ of mine and for all that hard work and effort by your team of
promoters, stylists, marketers, managers, designers, support musicians, PR
pushers, personal managers, continuity and diary secretaries…the whole
machinery that swings into action with every breath the talent completes, no
matter how big your star in the fame-constellation, it only takes one mistake,
one misreading of the audience’s perception of your work to cause your
trajectory into the stratosphere to stutter to a standstill; and correct me if
I’m wrong, I think Ms. Swift may have inadvertently strayed into that
territory.
I went to see my son’s band, Silence the Weak, when they supported Chelsea Grin in Wolverhampton . No,
this is not a nepotismic ad for Jake or the band (although, they were by far
the best on the bill apart from the headliners and they ran them a VERY close
second) it was what happened between bands that stuck.
As each band’s set came to a halt so the various band support
staff and the in-house crew stripped out the component parts of one band and
replaced it with the next band’s kit; all very ordinary. To fill this hiatus,
as is the way with these things, the house sound crew played ‘in-fill music’ to
cover what would otherwise be a silence that had the occasional clunk of
assembly/disassembly all accompanied by swearing and cursing. I went to have a
look at the drum kit the headline band were using (sad, sad) and, along with
about forty others by the front of the stage, watched them assemble it to the
backdrop of the house music playing in the background, just tunes to fill the
gap…until Ms. Swift’s rendition of ‘Trouble’ hit the laser.
You know the ‘goat’ bit? Multiply that by a factor of 100 as
the whole audience joined in with bleating at the appropriate point in the song
and I thought to myself; well if that’s not your career fucked then it’s
certainly stalled, Ms. Swift. All that work, all that effort: Seven Grammys – 1
million sales in the first week of release – first artist since The Beatles to
have six and more weeks at No.1 – 1.2 million copies sold in the first week of
the release of ‘RED’…all for nowt, all that effort burnt up in the bleat of a
goat that had become the audience’s verdict on her work and their signature to
her credibility; it’ll be what’ll haunt her for years, that goat, and I predict
Ms. Swift will drop ‘Trouble’ from her set list, at least for the time being.
My guess is that her promotion/publicity department has been in overdrive since
that video hit YouTube; 15+ million hits later and with remixes and compilations a-plenty, I
figure they’re ‘not waving but drowning’, why it’s even billed as ‘Taylor
Swift’s Goat Song’. OR, will they and she dodge a bullet and have it work in
reverse? Will this defining overdub just add extra fuel to her already
supercharged rocket of fame…? God, the fluff that clogs up my head…
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