Taylor Who?

Nothing has made it more clear to me that I am an old fuddy-duddy than the fact that, despite the media craze over Taylor Swift, I couldn’t name one of her songs if my life depended on it. Nothing against Taylor. I’ve never been big on filling my brain with pop trivia in general, and I stopped actively listening to popular music long ago.

That doesn’t mean I don’t like music. I’m a guitarist after all. In my teens and early twenties, armed with three chords and Kumbaya, I embraced the folk craze and fantasized about the life of a wandering minstrel. During my 20’s and 30’s, when my time was dominated by my medical training, I listened mainly to classical music and took piano lessons until I realized, too late, I’d wasted precious years on the wrong instrument.

For the past few decades, although I served a short stint with a rock cover band, I’ve focused mainly on blues, a classic form of music that is timeless and eternally fresh. Its improvisational nature keeps it innovative and varied. The lyrics are gritty and real. Today’s pop music, along with the bits of recent musical show music I’ve heard does not move me. Rap strikes me as an obscene expression of the rage that has taken over the zeitgeist. Hip-hop, in its tedious monotony is a reflection of the uniformity and soullessness of our mass produced, prepackaged, ultra-processed world. In both, melody is lacking.

But Taylor is supposed to be the best of her genre. Given all the hype, I thought I owed it to her and to myself to sample her music. I made it partway through a video, soon realized it was going to go on— and on— and on— the same, switched to another and quickly tired of it as well. I forced myself to do this a half dozen times, long after I’d had my fill. Even codgers like me don’t tire of ogling attractive young women, but watching Taylor prance, preen, pose and pout was more of a distraction than a turn on, just another manipulative, exhibitionistic, narcissistic display that annoyingly reminds me of the superficiality of our selfie driven world.

I wanted to give Taylor the benefit of the doubt, so I asked my daughter, herself past the age of going ga-ga over pop icons, for suggestions. She sent me a list to sample. I tried, really tried to give them serious consideration, but didn’t find them any more appealing than what I’d already heard.

Taylor has a good enough voice, but I’d prefer it enhanced more interesting music. As for the lyrics, what I picked up on were mostly the usual overworked themes.

Granted, popular songs have always been about love and sex—yearning for it, rejoicing in it, or mourning its loss— or the trials and tribulations of finding yourself and your place in this mean old world. There’s plenty of that in blues as well. But blues lyrics with their salty language, their themes rooted in the pathos and richness of African American culture, are anything but trite. They rarely wallow in the adolescent angst so common in pop tunes. You won’t hear lines in pop songs like “Born under a bad sign, been down since the day I learned to crawl. If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all” or “you can bury my body down by the highway sign, but that evil spirit just take that Greyhound bus and ride.”

To many listeners, though, lyrics are superfluous. If they do know any, it’s usually just the hook or the breakout chorus in bar anthems like “Sweet Caroline.” Generally it’s the beat that grabs them.

A good beat is a must, but today’s music is, to my ears, all beat. That’s good for dancing to I suppose, but I prefer to make the music and leave the dancing to less self-conscious folks. Whenever I see the requisite movie scene of people on a dance floor gyrating to ear-splitting music, all I can think of is how rich they will make the hearing aid industry once they hit their forties. Dancing these days, it seems to me, is mainly an excuse for women to display their armpits. Not to criticize. They’re an oft overlooked and underrated aspect of erogenous female physiology that indeed deserves more attention.

I suspect much of the reason those people are jumping around to the droning soundtrack with such abandon is because they are intoxicated. Maybe I should get drunk and listen again. As for the lyrics, Taylor’s may be a notch better and original than the usual cliched filler of pop music tunes, but I remain unmoved.

I know that’s par for the course at my stage of life when the trials and tribulations of the young, no matter how well expressed, seem trivial. They have long been in my rear view mirror. What I’m looking at through the windshield is a much more daunting landscape.

Though I don’t enjoy her music, I have nothing bad to say about Taylor. Her talents can’t be denied even if they are “wasted” on her genre. I’m particularly glad she’s turning her fans on to the progressive causes I share with her, but I’ll leave it to them to enjoy her music. They are surely in need of some mindless escapism from the troubled world they inherited from my generation.

As for the world, it will happily, or unhappily, go on as pop styles and artists, yes, even Taylor, come and go. But this, bless her heart, is Taylor’s moment. She certainly will enjoy it no less without the appreciation of this grumpy old man.

And, speaking of old and grumpy, I see it’s time for my nap.