Taylor Swift On 60 Minutes: Lazy, Sloppy And Already Well Documentated Reporting
many, many years ago I was at an uptown club called the Red Parrot with Billy Idol. he was a huge star at the time. A fight broke out, nothing to do with Idol, and we left the club in a hurry. The next day the gossip columns was full of how Idol was in the middle of a drunken brawl.
It taught me that the gossip columns don't know what they're talking about.
Last night I watched Leslie Stahl's Taylor Swift profile and it was terrible.
1. Just abut the whole lot was covered on Dateline two years earlier.
2. Stahl had NO IDEA about music or Swift.
3. Swift's personal life was ignored. A songwriter who writes so personally. Where's John Mayer? Taylor Lautner? Jake Gyllenhaal?Jake is ten years her senior. If Swift wants to set herself up as the voice of a generation of tween girls (and their mothers), isn't this fair game?
Instead, her love life (which she writes about obsessively) is completely ignored.
The story of Swift's childhood is well documented and 60 Minutes adds not a damn thing. Except, incidentally, the lie to Swift having been an ugly ducking. Here she is at 15 years old,
This is ugly in the movies. In the real world, she was gorgeous.
For the music, Leslie decided upon is a fantasy where her songwriting abilities are under appreciated because her fans are teenage girls. This is complete nonsense. Swift is considered, and rightly, one of the greatest songwriters of her generation (and has the awards to prove it). IT'S HER SINGING THAT WAS GETTING DISMISSED. How can Stahl and 60 minutes not know this? And if they don't know this, what else don't they know?
Swift is a mash-up of publicist profile and fairly nice girl. FAIRLY NICE. She was graceless with Kanye West's apology and threw Miley Cyrus under the PR bus. She havd a well publicised brief encounter with a man ten years her senior, dumped Lautner after the movie was over ,and wrote the bathetic "Dear John", calling out John Mayer for making a move on her when she was 19 years old. 19?? How old is old enough to be responsible for your own decisions?
Here is what I would have asked Taylor:
1. what are you going to do about your voice? It is light, masked in the studio and on tour. you need more voice lessons.
2. At what point do you stop calling out ex-boyfriends?
3. John Lennon once said to be the biggest band you have to be the biggest bastard, are you the biggest bastard?
4. How is sleeping with a 30 year old man a good role model?
5. You co-wrote your first two albums (and none of your Christmas album) and wrote all of your last album. Who arranged it? Are you gonna fire them?
Swift will grow with her core audience and add to them. She will spend her life a superstar and deservedly so But that doesn't excuse 60 Minutes pathetic puff piece. Really, Stahl was embarrassing. If 60 minutes is this sloppy with the rest of their reporting, then even the primary TV News program is not to be trusted.
