I guess Bob Lefsetz was more hurt pver Taylor Swift’s “Mean” slam then he let on, it is not surprising and nobody insisted on fair and equal treatment, but Bob’s “Taylor Swift Exits Spotify” column is a game changer for him as well, it is a story in which he can’t seem to find the truth because he is so blinded by dislike and it is very very clear. He has lost credibility.
Lefsetz has a problem, he is faithful to corporations: he chooses a side and he can’t be really swayed whether it is Apple or Spotify: Lefsetz has decided they are the winners and they are the winners. And the reverse is true as well, when Taylor Swift sang out of tune at the Grammys, Lefsetz claimed her career was over and Bob found himself with a vested interest in claiming Taylor was done and as she went from success to success, he was left undressed. His one gift, his one skill, as a prognosticator, was left in shambles. For Bob, it was a battle between Swift and him to see who was right about her limitations.
On a personal note, I started rock nyc in 2009 and one of the first things I wrote dubbed Taylor one of the three greatest songwriters in the world right then, so I kinda tied myself to her success from the start.
Anyway Lefsetz then got caught with a double whammy:
- 1989 sold over a million copies.
- Swift removed her music from Spotify.
So how did Lefsetz respond?
- He claimed the sales didn’t matter
- He claimed Swift removing her catalog from Spotify didn’t matter.
- And the album kinda sucked any way.
“So on one hand we’ve got Ms. Swift. Whose scorched earth publicity campaign will end up putting the weekly sales crown on her head, the only 2014 debut to sell platinum in one week. If that’s a statistic that tickles your fancy.” Says Lefsetz. If scorched earth publicity was enough to fuel sales, something Lefsetz has claimed over and over it isn’t, then why doesn’t it work for any one else? Then he brings in the best selling first week of all times, NSYNC’s 2.4M from 1996 to bash her about with, and closes it by sneering that selling 1M in a nation of 300N is nothing. Incidentally, Lefsetz’s beloved Spotify has only 3M subscribers in the US. And at least Taylor’s numbers are from sales. , that is like claiming if you are hitting .300 you are missing .700 of the time. It is sophisticated nonsense for no reason. If Luke Bryan or Avicii had approached those numbers we’d never hear the end of it, but because Taylor will probably sell more than the rest of the top 100 combined, because it is Taylor and he dislikes Taylor, he completely dismisses her achievement.
As for Spotify, I would agree in theory that removing her music from Spotify, unless there is something we are not seeing, was spiteful and silly (I called her Taylor Grinch for it). As I wrote, if I didn’t already own the albums I could steal them in two seconds flat and she would get nothing at all and despite my friend Dick Destiny’s claim she could then sue me, that’s nonsense on the face of it, it would be a public relations disaster. So, yeah, still it wasn’t NOTHING for Spotify, missing on the two biggest albums of the year doesn’t help, and they are about to go public. Still the real problem is it is a publicity debacle for Spotify. When the biggest star in pop won’t do business with you, you have a publicity nightmare. Former Billboard editor Bill Werde iwrote in an open letter to Spotify “most of America is paying $40 annually for music. I’m paying three times that, and for what? The privilege of not being able to play the two most acclaimed, buzz-worthy albums of the past year, by the two biggest contemporary stars in music.” Look, I got 20 albums I wanted today off Spotify, major releases, I love it with a passion, but only a fool could claim this wasn’t a disaster for them.
Finally, to quote myself:
Pop Music is ephemeral
Just because Bob remembers an album from 1971 doesn’t make the album memorable
Complaining pop music doesn’t last is the same as complaining you can’t still taste an ice cream you enjoyed an hour after you ate it.
For the record, the one thing Lefsetz is completely terrible at is actual music. This is the guy who championed Toto, for God’s sake. 1989 is a terrific album, it is certainly better than the progressive dullard rock crap Lefsetz champions, the rubbish punk rock rid us of. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Lefsetz is undone, he is seen as being small minded and bitter. I think the word is gnomic, for no reason. Gnomic or mean.
