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I don't think Twitter has much to do with it. The night before Thanksgiving, I attended a Taylor Swift trivia night that my cousin's boyfriend convinced me to attend because it was at a local brewery. The vast majority of the attendees weren't the typical brewery clientele, but suburban moms and their young daughters. Not too many men. And the place was absolutely packed; there were at least 20 teams. I guarantee you very few of these people have Twitter accounts, or care too much about Elon Musk. I attribute Swift's sudden blowup to the following factors:
She was already very famous. This may seem obvious but it seems like there's more staying power when an already famous person reaches this level of popularity compared with the meteoric rise of an unknown. She's 34 years old and has been in the public eye for nearly 20 years; there's no sense that she's the flavor of the month.
She has a history of making risky professional moves that have the potential to wreck her career but end up bolstering it. In 2014 there was some serious discussion as to whether she'd be able to appeal to the pop market in the same way she appealed to the country market. There have long been country stars with crossover appeal, but most of them never stop ostensibly being country musicians, no matter how pop they get. The only other musician I can think of who pulled this off was Linda Ronstadt, but she gets an asterisk because she was at the fringes of the country world; she came out of the more rock-oriented Laurel Canyon scene rather than being a product of Nashville. I think a big part of the reason Nashville artists are hesitant to break out like this is because country is a sort of security blanket. The country world wants something that's ostensibly country, and they will loyally buy it if it's marketed as such. Making a full transition out of Nashville means casting off the last vestiges of this to make it in the wider world. You run the risk of losing your old audience and failing to find a new one. But she correctly calculated that the country fans who were buying her music were probably already buying pop records anyway, and that her pop audience was where all the growth was. And when I say she I mean whoever does her marketing. So she managed to get two audiences for the price of one, so to speak.
Then — and people often forget about this — she pulled her music off of streaming services because she didn't like the business model. For three years. I'm not going to attempt to quantize the impact this had, but I doubt it did her career any favors in the short-term. However, it probably helped her career long-term, because it encouraged people to buy her albums rather than stream them. This probably fostered a sense of loyalty that she wouldn't have had if she'd been available at the touch of a button to anyone with a Spotify account. And then it was a big deal when she got back on the streaming services, which again increased her audience.
So at this point she's been steadily consolidating her power for over a decade. This is important in and of itself because most pop stars don't stay on top for that long, especially just by being pop stars. Contrast this with Lady Gaga, who is still famous but more because she did things like movies and albums with Tony Bennett. No one has cared about her pop records since 2011. The fact that Swift is in her mid-30s and has been able to sustain a career since her days as a teen idol without making any major changes is an accomplishment in and of itself and probably feeds into our current moment. She's been around long enough that women who listened to her in high school can take their kids to her concerts.
Despite her fame, and her numerous celebrity relationships, she's managed to avoid the kind of scandals and tabloid gossip that surrounds other pop stars, especially ones who become famous at sixteen and have to navigate the transition to adulthood while in the public eye.
She has an uncanny knack for making decisions that are totally about money and convincing people that they're not about money. The whole "Taylor's Version" thing is a prime example. She didn't like the fact that she didn't own the rights to her old recordings. The main advantage of owning the rights to her recordings is that she can collect all the money they generate. Otherwise, there's no real advantage. This is a big deal for most people, but for someone like Swift, who has more money than she's ever going to be able to spend, the schlubs at whatever private equity firm owns the rights to them probably need the money more than she does. But she casts it as a matter of principle, rerecords new versions she owns the rights to, and convinces her fans to shell out money for five different collectors' editions of the same albums they already own. The whole thing was about as transparent a cash grab as you could find, yet she pulled it off in such a way that even people who could care less about her career thought it was a slick move to stick it to those fatcats. It got her the kind of publicity you can't buy while minting her a pretty penny.
And, finally, in the same vein, we have the Eras Tour. At some point in every pop star's life, there comes a point where they are no longer a "frontline artist", by which I mean a contemporary artist who makes contemporary music for a contemporary audience. At some point, people don't go to your concerts to hear the new album but to hear the old favorites. It's usually the obvious sign that a band is over the hill — there's a new album out and the kind of people who paid 70 bucks to hear you play don't give a fuck. And if your biggest fans no longer care... Becoming an oldies act is depressing. Bob Dylan and Neil Young have defiantly refused to go down that path, regardless of the crap they take for it, and insist on being contemporary musicians who will tour the new album and maybe throw in a few old favorites. Mike Love's insistence on the Beach Boys playing touring their 60s hits in the wake of the compilation album Endless Summer's success in the mid-1970s drove a wedge between the band that they never really recovered from. (And most of the band was younger then than Swift is now.) The huge appeal of the Eras Tour was that, for the first time, Swift would be taking listeners on a musical journey through her entire career. She was becoming an oldies act, proudly and deliberately. At a time when she was still viable as a frontline artist. This is almost unheard of. Sure, contemporary bands usually play some older material at all their shows, but it's unusual for someone to actively embrace what is usually the sure sign of a has-been. Because the dirty secret of oldies acts is that they're very profitable. People like hearing old favorites, even when they're still willing to pay good money for the new shit. And the whole Taylor's Version thing was perfect cover. Combine this with the fact that she hadn't toured in half a decade and the stage was set for all hell to break loose.
I wonder if the whole "lottery" aspect to the tickets also made this go crazy. They were so exclusive! I know people who couldn't get tickets. I know someone who bought tickets online (Stubhub maybe?) And flew to brazil and when they landed found out their tickets didn't exist! There were all these stories and tales of great sacrifice to go to these concerts.
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I think this is an often underappreciated aspect of an artist's career. Many of them just do not know when to throw in the towel on new stuff. Mad respect to Billy Joel who has not released new material in 30 years but still plays a few concerts (including Madison Square Garden) every month. He's someone who knew when he was done.
Or since yesterday:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/billy-joels-turn-the-lights-back-on-1234958448/
How can you be a pessimist when life is this funny?
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great write up. nominated
Thank you for providing positive reinforcement.
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Doesn't require a comment.
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