ANTI-HERO…

I do not want to write this. 

Of all the things I haven’t wanted to write, this is at the tippy top of the list. 

Throughout my “commentary” career, I’ve written about presidents and culture and history and art and religion and literally hundreds of other things. And I’ve found a few curious hot-button subjects that kind of surprised me. 

Obviously, any time you write about Trump you get barraged with comments and heat. It’s almost too easy. He’s a cash cow for anybody who is even “media adjacent.” 

But some tender areas I didn’t count on were 1) soccer. Good lord! I had no idea how passionate people could be about such a boring game (irate comments start in 3….2…). 

And the other one I didn’t see coming in the way it has evolved, is 2)…deep breath…Taylor Swift. 

Swifties have become an army of Karens (no offense to my friends named Karen) ready to take you to cyber-school if you even breathe the least bit of criticism in the general direction of the young phenom. It would be much easier for me to simply let this pass without so much as a whisper.   

But I can’t allow the biggest music star on the planet to drop a 31 (yes, I said THIRTY-ONE) song record and not comment on it in some way, shape, or form. I simply wouldn’t be doing my job (whatever that is) if I didn’t. 

So, clears throat. Straightens for the impending body blows and cheap shots. And here we go…

First of all, I didn’t listen to any – not one note – of this record. I have never listened to a single Taylor Swift record, so why start now? Obviously, I’ve heard all the singles. Everybody has. And even as I type this, I have You Belong With Me pounding through my head because I literally just heard it at the grocery store. 

And, yes…it’s infectious. But so is herpes. Anyway…

I actually have nothing against Taylor Swift. Anyone who has achieved anything spectacular (and she definitely has) always gets due respect from me. I know how hard it is to bend the world in your direction. It can be maddening and soul crushing. Anybody who can see it through to becoming ubiquitous is absolutely someone to be reckoned with. 

So, I don’t take her lightly. And I don’t dismiss her out of hand. But I know a little too much about how she became what she became. So, she can never be a hero to me. 

In fact, very few people (in music, anyway) are heroes to me, anymore. If you’re a star, I know exactly what and who you are. You’re a narcissist. You HAVE to be, to get where you got. It’s quite simply…that simple. 

All the time you could’ve been spending pouring into others or helping those in need or listening to someone who needed to be heard, you spent focussed on YOU. It’s just the way it works, folks. 

Take it from a world-class narcissist.

In Taylor’s case, she didn’t just come to Nashville with a sack full of songs and a dream. She came with something far more powerful – money.  And lots of it. 

And that money got her into doors the rest of the world can’t get into. It got her meetings with labels and writers and producers and all of the talent who need that magic ingredient to make their own dreams come true. 

And when she had enough songs (written with world-class writers, some of whom I know) to put out a record, that money was infused into her career to prop up radio success and little extras maybe everybody else couldn’t afford. 

When I got signed to the largest record label in the world, they would refuse to pay for little things, like maybe supporting me on certain legs of a tour. Or they would balk at a music video or EPK for certain press opportunities. Just because you’re signed to a record label doesn’t mean they are obligated to pay for everything in your career. Only what the contract stipulates. And they read the “creatively.”

So, I paid for most of whatever happened to (and for) me, myself. The record label paid me a licensing fee for the project, exactly three plane tickets to Seattle and three hotel rooms, a photo shoot and some cover art. 

All in all, they spent less than a hundred thousand dollars on me. I went broke doing the rest. 

In Taylor’s case, I would imagine those conversations were never difficult ones. Because the Swift war chest was well-stocked and sustainable to begin with. I’ve said this before, but Taylor Swift has never in her life sang in a dive bar to disinterested alcoholics, hoping she makes enough tip money, or sells enough merch, to pay the electric bill. 

When you can guarantee that the funding won’t be an issue, you get to sidestep a lot of the pitfalls of the music business, which always operates in a deficit. And that keeps you at the front of the line. 

Now, does it guarantee success? Of course not.

I actually personally know of two other blonde would-be starlets who had funding from daddy or a boyfriend, and burned through several million dollars with nothing to show for it.

You have to bring the hit songs and the charisma. And she did both of those. But I also know dozens (maybe hundreds) of people who brought both of those things, but simply couldn’t afford to sit at the poker table anymore. 

Music Row is littered with those people. They’re driving your uber. They’re delivering your pizza. They’re selling you your house. 

Did daddy buy TS a career? Not per se. But he DID ensure that it wouldn’t be de-railed over budget cuts. And how many ever millions he put into her, has paid big dividends. She was a good investment. 

But keep in mind that that is what she is…a corporate product. And she has been since she was 16. 

Taylor Swift isn’t the rough and tumble chick who banged it out in bars and got her life turned upside down a few times, then came up through the murky waters with a tough skin. She’s a debutante who walked in the front door, and started dating Jonas brothers pretty much right off the bat. 

She’s not like you. 

So, I remain baffled at those who defend her as if she’s a cult hero; as if she is the embodiment of the down trodden female experience. Everything society can bestow on a human being has been bestowed on this person. And she still talks about her “female rage” as if we’re supposed to have the slightest idea what the hell she’s talking about.

My great-grandmother got married when she was 12 and left the ceremony on a donkey. Was a widowed (because her husband was murdered) single mother by the time she was 15. Then, married another man who died when she was 22, leaving her with two more daughters – one of whom was crippled by polio. 

When she married her third husband (at 29), he introduced her to his SIX children he’d been hiding from her, at the wedding. She took them all in and raised them as her own. She could wire and plumb and a house, put together a carburetor, and do it all while making dinner. And I promise you, that woman had less of an ax to grind than Taylor Swift and her army of cohorts. 

But in a weird way, I think I kinda get it…

Taylor Swift is what eventually happens when you get everything you think you want. And it isn’t enough. It will never be enough. And after reading some of the lyrics of her new record, I think she knows it too. Everything I’ve read so far, feels like a lament. And that is sad for someone who just made a billion dollars and broke every music business record ever created. 

I have no critique of the record. I’m old enough to be her father. I’m not her audience. And I’m also an artist. Creatives go where they have to go. And right now, she’s a creative with no worlds left to conquer. But without a legitimate struggle for much of it. And she really needs for there to have been one. So do her fans. But it really isn’t there. 

And, at some point, that leaves you with nothing real to write about. So, you do it 31 times, trying to find the truth in yourself, somewhere. And you bang against convention and you cuss and you make eyebrows go up and you go really dark (at least as dark as your life experience will take you) and you get Rolling Stone to call it great. But you know. And we know. 

And that has to mess with your mind. 

All I say is, be careful what you wish for. Also, be careful who you turn into a hero… 

Or an anti-hero.    

R 

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