My musical immersion (Taylor’s Version)
So this is a bit of a deviation from the norm for me (can you even have a norm after five newsletters?). For the observant, it states on my hurriedly-written about page that my usual stomping ground is ‘digital’. However, on this occasion I really wanted to write about pop music.
As a compromise, and an attempt to not veer totally off course, there are a couple of snippets about innovation and the Internet woven in.
Why pop music?
Well, yesterday marked the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and you should really drop everything else, head straight to your nearest streaming service, and listen to it without passing Go.
The original 1989 was released on the very same day nine years previously, and it is without doubt one of my favourite records of all time.
It’s partly to do with it encapsulating a particular moment in my life: I was approaching the end of my thirties, had recently become a parent, and could sense change in the air. 1989’s themes of coming of age and wistful reminiscence resonated; the album represents Taylor’s full transition from her country-ish origins to a purveyor of masterful three-minute pop songs. It’s phenomenally good.
Pop music is a funny one, isn’t it? Although I can quite comfortably and unashamedly write about it here, I don’t necessarily lead with it when someone asks what music I’m into. I have plenty of ‘legit’ stuff to fall back on – mournful Scottish guitar bands, alternative Americana, the late 80s/early 90s Manchester heyday – however I don’t recall ever coming straight out with “I just really love pop”.
In my clubbing days I could happily shoegaze or mosh or shimmy along to jingly-jangly guitars with the best of them in whatever generic Indie venue I happened to be in, but in all honesty I’ve never felt more euphoric than when Ray Of Light, The Edge Of Glory, or I Feel Love (either Donna or Jimmy/Marc on vocals) came on in Glasgow’s Polo Lounge or Club X.
There’s something strange about the on-the-fringes-not-quite-hip-enough space that pop sits in. Popular in name, but somehow not quite good enough in practice, often relegated to a guilty pleasure rather than worthy of critical attention.
There are thankfully some who go against that particular grain, and seem at ease with the pop classification. On the release of the exquisite Heavy Heavy, Young Fathers spoke of their love of “choruses, hooks. This is the pop music that we want to listen to.” Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s description of Self Esteem inhabiting an “art-pop” category highlights the weird struggle of having to defend the genre her music falls into, despite Prioritise Pleasure being one of the best albums of the last decade. It’s difficult to be pop and multi-layered at the same time.
And there are some who don’t. Damon Albarn’s well-documented and disappointing belittling of Taylor Swift in an interview last year felt at best rooted in the inherent snobbery around pop music, and at worst age-old music biz misogyny.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blur and The Ballad of Darren is by some margin the album I’ve listened to most this year, but also, y’know, fuck the patriarchy.
(As many pointed out at the time, there is some delightful irony in the fact that all Albarn’s co-writers on Gorillaz’ Cracker Island are male).
That theme of what’s considered ‘serious’ music and the fan base that goes alongside it is explored in Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It, Kaitlyn Tiffany’s brilliant, forensic account of One Direction stan-dom.
Not only an exposé of the double standards rife in the music industry, it also reflects how the predominantly female 1D fanbase go largely uncredited with the Internet culture they helped create, both good and bad.
In it you see the origins of what is now commonplace: multi-layered memes, cross-network pollination, tribalism, tightknit as well as fractured online communities. It’s such an enlightening read, and so far away from the usual version of events.
Swift’s enormous following are of course deeply immersed in the culture of the Internet and whether it’s tumblr memes or ticketing schemes you can pretty much guarantee they’ll be one step ahead of whatever gets thrown their way. Google’s recent collaboration for the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) managed to put the network under serious strain (33 million puzzles solved in a day!). Who else can break the Internet these days?
In the fullness of time I think we’ll appreciate just how unprecedented Taylor’s decision to re-record all of the albums she made under Big Machine.
What might look on the surface like a weird spat, or quite a functional act as each ‘version’ pops out in turn, is actually all about power, equity, identity, and rewriting the rules.
And the fact that she’s goddam following through on the promise of systematically re-recording all of her Scooter Braun acquired back catalogue at the same as coordinating the biggest concert tour of all time boggles the mind. Pop music and staggering economic impact.
At some point I’ll follow this up with some thoughts on how ‘being more Taylor’ is good for your business (current snarky thesis: you might be better off taking your innovation inspiration from TS rather than, say, another confident man peddling Artificial Intelligence ideas).
Until then, I’ll mostly be listening to Welcome to New York on repeat.
👋 Shake it off