Let’s check in with National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, shall we? Lopez, the world’s greatest political blogger, has made two very compelling points about last night’s Republican debate. The first, made shortly after it ended:
In all seriousness, it cannot be easy to be governor of Texas and run for president at the same time.
That is the entirety of the post. (Commenter “motherofthetroops”: “K-Lo, I say this in Christian love: what Perry is to debaters, you are to Corner commentators.” People who preface things with “I say this in Christian love” are people who are about to say something awful to you, usually.)
This morning, she published a longer reaction to last night’s debate, informed by a night of careful consideration. “These candidates aren’t half bad,” she declares. “I do wish Santorum would have his moment,” she sighs, wistfully, imagining herself chastely holding hands with the former senator on a lovely spring day as they block the entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Her conclusion:
The winner of the night was the delightfully talented young Taylor Swift, though, who just won the Country Music Awards “Entertainer of the Year” award. Who scheduled country-music awards the same night as a Republican party debate? CNBC wins for ending the debate in time for the Glen Campbell tribute.
As I said: World’s greatest political blogger.
(The commenters are similarly unimpressed with this item, or at least many of them don’t really understand what Taylor Swift has to do with anything. AndrewTP: “For some reason you seem to have been brainwashed into believing that Taylor represents your side in a culture war, a belief for which there is no evidence.” Uh oh, they’re catching on! Quick, Rich Lowry, write a post about how you heard a liberal New Yorker disrespect NASCAR or something!)
Still though, is Justin Bieber country music? His award came in the form of Collaborative Video of the Year for his song ‘That Should Be Me,” featuring Rascal Flatts. Does it fit the specifications required of country music? Hard to say.
Why “That Should Be Me” may be a country song:
1) It’s about breaking up
2) “Women are bitches” mentality
3) Chords sound vaguely ballad-ish
4) The appearance of Rascal Flatts
5) Sounds like something Taylor Swift would write about a recent break-up with a celebrity
Why “That Should Be Me” may not be a country song:
1) Rotoscoping
2) The line “Did you forget all the mem’s that we made” (Real country crooners would never try to shorten the word “memory”)
3) Too many appearances of malls, texting
4) Boy with long hair and girlish features pouting into camera hasn’t really worked for anyone in country music since Gram Parsons.
5) He’s Canadian (Though that can work both for and against him, as half of the “country” in “country music” actually refers to Canada. See also: Shania Twain)
I was surprised to see Justin show up and accept his award, since he was almost a no-show at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday. But hey, maybe he is trying to be a crossover star. What do you think: Is “That Should be Me” country enough to win a CMT award?
Taylor Swift’s “Mean” might be interpreted as the country singer’s attempt at an “It Gets Better” song, especially since the video features a kid wearing purple who just wants to read a damn Vogue in peace. I’d advise against this reading, though, since the whole point of “It Gets Better” — or any anti-bullying message, really — is that someone from a place of authority is telling you that they’ve been there, they know how tough it can be.
Sorry, kids, Taylor Swift has not “been there,” as is clearly evidenced in her own fantastical bully scenario, which involves a guy dressed like Snidely Whiplash tying her to the train tracks. That is some damsel in distress imagery, which really doesn’t scream “It gets better,” so much as “I am the definition of heterosexual norms.” (Not to mention the somewhat offensive cutaway to the kid in purple when Taylor sings, “And you, picking on the weaker man.” Are gay kids inherently weak?)
From what Taylor shows us in the video, she is so far from ever having been bullied that she immediately equates it with some fairy-tale vision of evil.
But, hey, Taylor gave it a good shot in her own right, even if she’s living in La-la-land. As Kyle Buchanan of Vulture pointed out, “Its aspirational chorus, ‘Someday / I’ll be / livin’ in a big ol’ city,’ is practically a rebuke to small-town values,” which is probably as subversive as this country gal is ever going to get.
But perhaps more important than debating how sincere an anti-bullying message is from someone who has never been bullied is the fact that it’s the first Taylor Swift song I can think of that’s not about her last celebrity boyfriend. That is, unless Jake Gyllenhaal had a kinky fetish of tying her to the tracks of oncoming trains (while wearing a fake mustache) that we didn’t know about.
Country music has enjoyed a resurgence in the past decade, and while it may be a little derivative to give all the credit to the surge of patriotism that Americans felt post-9/11, consider this: In May 2001, the Country Music Association took heat from its fans when it officially changed its slogan to “Admit it. You love us.”
The message was clear to anyone reading between the lines. If you liked country music back in the early part of the aughts, you hid that love, like a high-school girl who only listens to musicals. (Hey, I can relate.) The CMA even issued a statement, saying the quote was “a challenge to everyone who has ever connected with a country song or a specific artist but may not feel a current connection to the format as a whole or is reluctant to share their enjoyment of the music with others.” Yikes.
The attempt was part of a campaign by the CMA to “brand” its music, something that had never been tried before “as far as we can tell,” according to the CMA executive director Ed Benso. It wasn’t that country music had taken a nose dive, but the ’90s had been such a booming time for the genre that producers and music executives were loath to take a hit. Garth Brooks, Lyle Lovett and Billy Ray Cyrus had allowed the brand to go international and platinum in the space of a few short years, but it was still a struggle to find the right marketing techniques to sell Europe on the Country Music Television channel.
And then, Sept. 11. If country music benefited as a result of the twin towers falling, then it was a bittersweet victory. CMT garnered its highest ratings in October of 2001 after holding the “Freedom Concert,” which raised $5 million for the Salvation Army Disaster Relief Fund. Alan Jackson achieved a moment of fleeting worldwide fame when his single “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” became a symbol both of America’s pain and cynical attempts to cash in on the hurt. (See “South Park’s” takedown of Jackson in the episode “A Ladder to Heaven.“) The same went for Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American),” which the country star had to be coaxed into playing after an initial bout of discomfort with the material.
“… if country songwriters have been reluctant to talk, country fans have been more than willing to listen … both Jackson’s and Keith’s records topped the Billboard country singles chart, Jackson’s for five weeks. Several similar records, ranging from generally patriotic numbers to songs written in direct response to the attacks, have made at least nominal showings.”
Not all performers were shy about tackling the tough issues post-September either. Steve Earle put out his response in the album “Jerusalem” in 2002, which included the song “John Walker’s Blues,” written “from the vantage point of ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh.” The song was met with criticism from both sides, with some calling it “unpatriotic” and others claiming that it was too controversial a subject. Some performers were accused of cashing in on the attacks, like Bruce Springsteen, who released “The Rising.”
But the legacy of country music is bigger than the individual. Once the dust has settled, what will people see when they look back at country music in the aughts? Taylor Swift, the CMT Awards, the CMA Awards (completely different), Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Gwyneth Paltrow and “Country Strong”; just in the past year the popularity of the genre has allowed its stars to overtake the Grammys, both in nominees and interest in other music award shows.
Perhaps we can attribute the rise in popularity of country music as much to Swift, Underwood, Miley Cyrus and “American Idol” as we can to the attacks on Sept. 11. But I’d wager that these fresh faces in the industry flocked to country music specifically because it resonated with the first historical event they were alive to witness.
Taylor Swift has never been one for enigmatic ballads. So far in her young 21 years, she’s made a habit of penning songs with specific guys in mind, whether that’s John Mayer (“Dear John“), Taylor Lautner (“Back to December“) or Kanye (“Innocent“). It would be easy to make fun of her, but lets face it: At her age, I was using a public LiveJournal account to write “anonymous” notes to boys in school who were still trying to grow mustaches. Beating around the bush isn’t something that new adults do well.
Still, if you asked me last week to put money on the next mysterious boy Taylor would pine for in her liner notes, I would have put my life savings ($250 plus $5k in college debt!) on Jake Gyllenhaal, the most recent of her mismatched paramours.
So lucky (unlucky) for me then, that nobody asked me to place any Taylor-centrics bets this weekend. On Valentine’s Day, Adam Young of Owl City (a one-man electrop project from Minnesota who had a breakout hit with the song “Fireflies“) became wise that Taylor’s liner notes spelled out his name in the capital letters of each line. Plus, Taylor had recently mentioned that her song “Enchanted” was about a crush that she had been recently emailing with in New York! That’s where Adam lives!
Like any normal teen (actually, Adam is 24), the bashful crush waited until Valentine’s Day to send his perspective admirer a note. And since these kids get to live out the most embarrassing moments of high school relationships in front of the entire world, Adam didn’t write Taylor a letter, or tell his publicist to tell her publicist to tell Gwyneth Paltrow to have them meet in a dinner party. Instead, Adam manned up and wrote to Swift on his (not LiveJournal) blog:
Dearest Taylor,
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a rather shy boy and since music is the most eloquent form of communication I can muster, I decided to record something for you — as sort of a “reply” to the breathtaking song on your current record. This is what I wanted so badly to tell you in person but could never quite put into words:
Everything about you is beautiful. You’re an immensely charming girl with a wonderful heart and more grace and elegance than I know how to describe. You are a true princess from a dreamy fairy tale; a modern Cinderella. I’m terribly sorry it’s taken me such a long time to reply but I figured Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to write this note to you and simply say… I was enchanted to meet you too.
Love,
Adam
Oh yeah, and then he sang a cover of “Enchanted,” but sort of changed the lyrics to be about Taylor. Wait for it, the mood gets kind of sexy at the halfway mark:
You guys! Get a room! For all the romanticism that this story provides, I’d like to see an IRL time line of how this song/crush overlapped with Taylor’s supposed relationship with Gyllenhaal. According to last check, the couple had just broken up around this time last month. For all her sweetness, Taylor sure does move fast.
This weekend, America will mark the anniversary of an event that both divided us and brought us together, a shocking moment that will forever be etched in our collective psyche. Yes, it’s already been a year since Kanye West hijacked Taylor Swift’s victory at the MTV Video Music Awards with the “Imma let you finish” heard round the world.
In the ensuing 12 months, Mr. West has beaten a path back into our good graces in his usual unorthodox way. For a while, he laid low — to the extent that such a thing is possible for a man who has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in a crown of thorns. He went to Hawaii to toil on his new album. He managed to not upstage anyone at the Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys or even the Kids’ Choice Awards. But come on — Kanye not being a loose cannon is about as much fun as a Real Housewife not tipping over tables. It was only a matter of time before he’d return to form.
By the summer, he’d released “Power,” a tune that revels in the “screams from the haters,” and a video that combines chiaroscuro, Götterdämmerung, scantily clad hot chicks and our hero in a necklace that would make Mr. T shake his head and say, “That’s a bit much.” He then answered the prayers of lunacy enthusiasts everywhere by taking to Twitter, where he promptly began dispensing cryptic tidbits like “I just be feeling like I need to rap on incarcerated scarfaces some times!” Don’t we all, Kanye. Don’t we all.
But as this Sunday’s 2010 VMAs approached and both West and Ms. Swift were announced for the bill, the air began to hang heavy with an awkwardness unmatched since that time Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie ran into each other at the express line at Sam’s Club. That’s when Kanye decided to take the high road and do the gentlemanly thing, emphatically restating the apology he made to her last year.
A Kanye mea culpa, however, does not take the form of your typical stuffed-animal-festooned American Greetings “I’m ‘beary’ sorry” card. It’ll be more like a lengthy, peyote-flavored rant, doled out 140 characters at a time. Did you ever have someone call you up to “make amends” and find yourself remembering why you got that restraining order in the first place? Such was the feeling that Kanye’s Saturday Twitter litany of contrition inspired. Over the course of the day, he posted 93 tweets — digressing about race, about his history of outbursts, about his identification with the Broadway musical “Wicked,” culminating at last in a simple “I’m sorry Taylor.” It was sincere and unmistakably Kanye; it was pure hubris run amok. He didn’t hesitate to throw down the gauntlet that “I wrote a song for Taylor Swift that’s so beautiful and I want her to have it,” adding, “If she won’t take it then I’ll perform it for her.” This is the hip-hop superstar equivalent of submitting a picture of a spider as a payment for a bill. Oh, Kanye, you shouldn’t have! No, really, you should not have. Because a big brag nestled within an unsolicited offering is not the wisest way to win the affections of the people, nor the goodwill of someone you describe as “justa lil girl with dreams like the rest of us.” Swift meanwhile has remained decorously silent in the wake of West’s generous gesture, deciding perhaps that she’d said all she needed to express on the subject last year when she tersely noted she had accepted his apology
The circus of West’s lavish self-imposed walk of shame will no doubt include some new and whopping gesture at Sunday’s VMAs (come onnnnnnnn, hairshirt!), but maybe afterward he will at last be able to fire up a chorus of Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone” and return to his day-to-day problems of what’s the smoothest yacht on which to edit a film and where he last left his antique fish tank.
And while he has insightfully decreed that “The ego is overdone … it’s like hoodies,” we strongly suspect that Kanye West’s ego, like hoodies and his great big bag of crazy itself, is here to stay. And it’s so uncomfortably entertaining that frankly we wouldn’t have it any other way. So take that, haters.
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