But the dollar is strong and the euro is weak, and since 2010 Europe has stagnated while America keeps getting richer, tickets for the Paris show, plus flights and accommodation, ended up costing them two grand. This city has finally found something new it can trade on: its poverty.
Swift is―and has for some time been―on what she calls the Eras Tour. As in all the previous eras of her career. And this is where it gets weird.
Doing a retrospective tour of the various aspects of your past is pretty standard. It's called nostalgia. In 1990 David Bowie took a break from Tin Machine to mount the Sound and Vision Tour, which wasn't supporting a new album but highlighting all his previous records and phases, with the theoretical idea of retiring his popular songs after that.
It's probably not even unheard of for a still young performer―thirties but still looks to be in her twenties―to mine nostalgia after a solo career of only about fifteen years. But it's been this fifteen years. Popular culture in the 21st century has been much more static than in the 20th. There's been no equivalent of "first there was flower power then Laurel Canyon then everybody got into disco." Which may account for the fact that only Swift obsessives (and to be fair there are a lot of them) would be able to put all these Taylors in chronological order.
2 comments:
This polemic by Sam Kriss was very entertaining in view of the fact that he made it pretty obvious he didn't know much of anything about her or even like her. My opinion is about the same so don't think I'm complaining. As well as being very droll he's also very informative. I had no idea about Taylor Swift's fanbase being made up of thirty year old women, nor had I any clue that the economy of France has fallen so far that it was cheaper for Americans to fly to Paris rather than go to Miami to see the show.
As you mentioned and as Jer also pointed out the idea of a retrospective after only fifteen years doesn't add up. When Bowie did a retrospective he'd been writing and performing for more than thirty years - and those were years when things were actually happening unlike now.
It seems to me that people like Zappa, Prince, the Beatles, the Talking Heads and so many more couldn't have been controlled for mass celebrity the way Taylor has. She is basically the Herb Alpert, the Broadway show, the soothing middle of the road pap that has always been popular in American culture. The powers who control/manufacture her act could have made anyone as popular - celebrating teen angst when you're in your thirties is embarrassing. So is watching TikTok videos and being addicted to Instagram. Ours has become a very shallow society.
The good news is there are still some very talented musicians in the world. I wonder if Sam Kriss has ever heard of this kid?
https://x.com/tedgioia/status/1846587204899909684
Both Kriss's Substack and his old blog are named after songs by the Fall. That doesn't necessarily preclude his liking Taylor Swift but it does suggest that he's coming from a very different place from her fans. And yes, he always brings a rather stunning breadth of knowledge to what he writes about. The reason her fanbase has so many thirty year old women is that they haven't aged out of it. The economy seems to be in a poor way in a lot of Europe. I'm sure there are long-term structural reasons for this. It also didn't help that they were actively discouraging tourism four years ago.
Yeah, there are markers in Bowie's career. Looking back on his career you can connect his phases with what was going on in the world and the culture, although at some point it's better to just enjoy the music. The various Taylors being dragged around on tour feel more insular, and to no great purpose. Hardcore fans will appreciate it, and as I said she does have a lot of those. But it's hard to imagine this meaning much in a couple of decades.
The problem is that the Beatles, Talking Heads, etc. were products of a stronger and more confident culture than we have now. Most of Frank Zappa's stuff never really got played on the radio, of course, but you could be out there because the cultural mainstream didn't fear for its own existence and thus could tolerate artists slipping outside of it. With mass media and especially the music industry being in crisis there's a reluctance to rock the boat.
It was fun watching that kid develop. Wonder what he'll be doing when he's eighteen.
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