Quite bizarrely, I find myself liking Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do," several weeks after everyone else has moved on. I still don't hear the "I'm Too Sexy" melody, but I don't necessarily need to--it's a clever, catchy, dramatic bit of pop, and more distinctive than most of the stuff out there at the moment. (Not that I have a good sense of what's au courant. All they play in Toronto is wall-to-wall Drake, Canada's Rapper.)
Having said that, I think it's high time we issued an amber alert for Taylor Swift's soul. It's been missing for years, if it ever existed at all. I suspect she sold it to Mephistopheles sometime around the age of 10 and that her real name will eventually be revealed as Taylor Faustus. In another scenario, I imagine in her spare time she's busy spinning straw into gold trying to figure out the name of that little guy that put her in this predicament. Talk to some of those German-Americans around Reading, Pennsylvania, Taylor's hometown. They know.
The weird thing for me--and this is no great reveal as I've wondered about this for some time--is how real is any of this? Was Taylor ever a good girl? Is she now a bad girl? Does she have a beef with Katy Perry? Is she just serving as a beard for any number of fey pop stars and movie actors? And most importantly of all, why do any us have to give a shit?
It's not the details of a thousand cuts that keep me puzzled and pondering, however. It's the whole "star-maker machine," the pop culture industrial complex. Britney and Justin did it back in the day. Madonna has always done it. Bowie is Bowie because of it. Our "dizazsthuh" of a president currently revels in it.
"It" being this fabricated narrative that keeps us watching, turned in, and tuned out to the stuff that really matters--family, friends, human rights, economic equality, and real music.
But what do I know? I'm seriously considering paying for and legally downloading this ditty.
So keep on groovin', TS Industries, Inc. You're manufacturing some memorable, interesting-sounding pop.
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