Near the beginning of NBC’s Thanksgiving Prime Time counter-programing coup, Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now”, Taylor is in the studio playing “The Story Of Us” on an acoustic guitar for the session musicians who will help her arrange it (you can see the drum part being added a moment later). Her face is a mask of concentration and when she claims in the voice over to have been in recording studios, on and off, for years recording “Speak Now”, you believe her. It is true.
It is a revelation because this is the real woman doing what she does. She sits at home and writes songs and then she sits in the studio and arranges and records them: this is the essence of her heart.
I didn’t much care for “The Story Of Us” on Speak Now but I like it now.
The TV show has a bi-coastal Taylor anchoring a couple of sets in New York and Los Angeles, with the palaver surrounding the release of her album as filler. There are two more moments worth mentioning. Both on the roof of a building at night overlooking the Empire State Building. She plays “Mine” at the start and “Speak Now” at the end.
The rest of this show is shameful. Taylor buys a copy of her album and hugs fans at show sponsors Target stores, Taylor invites fans on the cross country flight to LA and hugs fans. Taylor does an interview on Sirius Radio and… hugs fans. Isn’t this illegal or something? Will she please stop touching up the audience.
Worst of all is a trip to Universal’s “Haunted House” . A staged and badly staged ten minute infomercial. Universal as in NBC Universal, of course. It was as fake as the letter F. It wasn’t real for a moment.
I haven’t seen the overnights but I will check em out when I get to work Monday. It’s gonna suck on household but should hit up its target demo.
But maybe not. People aren’t stupid and little of this crap is real. There may well be a real woman under the PR bullshit that surrounds Swift but it wasn’t on show last night. Perhaps where you can see it is in Kanye’s extremely accurate comment that she didn’t stand up for him once. That isn’t very nice. I mean, he ruined one minute in her MILLIONS OF SPOTLIGHTS true, but he apologized andt he was publicly chastised to a ridiculous level, would it have killed her to take the high road? Kanye didn’t invade Poland, or even Iraq.
Swift is in the market to humiliate anybody who crosses her. That’s what she does. Incidentally, wasn’t she best buddies with Miley at one point? Deafeningly, she hasn’t said a word in defense of the disgraceful prurient reaming Cyrus has received.
And when Taylor isn’t humiliating her friends and exes, she is hugging her fans. Honestly, I prefer Kings Of Leon’s coolness. At least KOL leave me alone to love or hate them. Swift makes you feel guilty and “mean” if you think she sucks, or is manufactured, or an exercise in Public relations.
This is what Swift is: a gifted songwriter who has lost some quality control on the product. Everything else is hype.