Today’s Controversy
I was watching football and Mad Men during the Video Music Awards last night, but I now feel fully caught up on the Kanye West / Taylor Swift controversy and am prepared to offer the following expert commentary:
— First, “Single Ladies” is a good song, but the video’s pretty boring and the dance routine is derivative.
— “You Belong With Me”, by contrast, provides a solid narrative context for the song:
That said, the conceit of Taylor Swift as the plain girl next door type is a hard sell. The whole video is basically a smear against nearsighted-Americans. Maybe instead of ditching the glasses for uncorrected vision, thus offering a horrible lesson to young girls everywhere, she could have just bought some more attractive frames?
— I’m also a bit confused by the conceit that this is a “country” song. The concept of genre seems to get a bit fuzzy when applied to the tween market. Swift’s nominally country tune seems to bear a striking resemblance to Avril Lavigne’s nominally “punk” music.
— Both of the videos in question are demonstrably inferior to “Heads Will Roll”. Compared to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, neither Beyonce nor Swift appears to really even be trying. The band is dismembered by a werewolf!
55 Responses to “Today’s Controversy”
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September 14th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Kanye is a racist asshole.
Imagine the outcry if Tim McGraw jumped onstage and stole an award out of Beyonce’s hands and said “Taylor Swift should have won this instead!” Every backward-hat wearing thug in this country would be screaming racism and have every guilty white liberal on their side.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:36 am
YYYs being devoured by a werewolf is derivative of them being bitten by vampires in “Y Control.” So I don’t think they’re trying very hard either.
And that song (and that album) is terrible.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Unless Taylor Swift’s character is a “My So-Called Life” fan, she should get contacts. If she is a fan, then she’s got bigger problems to worry about.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:48 am
This is why Matt’s blog is my homepage. Not only does he wade into the pop culture waters, but he engages it on both its terms and his own terms, offering a sincere analysis of the relative artistic merits of the videos in question. This basically proves that one can have a serious social and political analysis without being a pompous elitist Volvo driver.
That said, I still can’t drink Budweiser. Just can’t do it.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Derivative on purpose, no? A tribute, a homage, a self-conscious update? The (conscious) Fosse mystique is one of the reasons I like it so much.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Dude, a nearly omnipresent banjo line and the occasional steel guitar flourish makes it country. Plus, she moved to Nashville. Duh.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Kanye West is lucky Pink or maybe even Gaga didn’t win that one. They would have knocked his bitch ass out for interrupting like that. I thought Beyonce was nice to Taylor Swift at the end, and that never happens on TV shows about girls, except maybe sometimes at the end of the show (like last night). It’s also the first time I thought about Beyonce since Cadillac Records. I like the way Taylor Swift is sort of goofy and gawky, although it’s probably inappropriate for me to dwell on such things, given my age and all.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Ah, OK- there’s a pedal steel in the mix. QED country music.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Solid narrative? Sure – but one that goes precisely against the narrative the lyrics supposedly sell. Like the boy in question, she’s only interested in the male equivalent of a cheer captain, not regular guys who sit on the bleachers. And as you note, she’s more than willing to change herself for the object of her desire. And that’s before we even get into the stalkerish side of this, the voyeurism and people you’ve rarely actually talked to “belonging” to you. It’s precisely the kind of thing that’ll sell to teens and tweens – but it’s still a troubling narrative.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Rusty is WRONG ON THE INTERNET.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Wow. I don’t want to make too much of a silly pop song, but just…wow. She ditches every touch of intelligence, originality and individualism and then she gets the boy. And doesn’t the video completely subvert the message of the song? After all the singing about “I’m in sneakers…”, she only succeeds in love after she loses the sneakers and t-shirt and puts on a nice dress.
I guess that’s what makes it country rather think Avrilish pseudo-punk.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:02 am
I’m also a bit confused by the conceit that this is a “country” song.
It ain’t your father’s (or your father’s generation’s) country anymore. My son loves him some Rascal Flatts, so I’ve seen them in concert a couple of times. In my day my band was Deep Purple, who were then the Guiness Book of Records annointed “loudest band in the world.” Flatts was WAY louder from the back row, and the guitars were just about as distorted. It’s my belief that if Lynrd Skynrd were coming up now they wouldn’t be played on country radio because they were too country.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:09 am
if Lynrd Skynrd were coming up now they wouldn’t be played on country radio because they were too country.
A couple of years ago some ijut made a list of the Top 100 country acts of all time and Jimmie Rodgers wasn’t on it.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:13 am
The one other problematic thing about the Taylor Swift video: it’s basically She’s All That set to music. Which is, I’d say, as derivative as Beyonce’s.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:14 am
If you need something “countryish” and of quality, this is hard to beat. If you need your rock and roll connection, I think Tony Rice is playing (and is still playing) Clarence White’s old guitar, with the enlarged sound hole. He played with the Byrds for a bit, and he was also on the Andy Griffith Show one or two times.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I don’t think so, Yglesias. You forgot to mention the obvious, something Acer describes:
September 14th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Clarence White played with the Byrds and on Andy Griffith, that is.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Beyonce even owns up to it being derived from a Bob Fosse routine so just what is your problem?.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I don’t know. I think the story in Taylor Swift’s video would have been much clearer if she were wearing Groucho Marx glasses and a propeller beanie.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Country music has been trending that way for the last 15-20 years. Back then the country music industry made a concerted lobbying effort to get airplay on the more mainstream charts (Shania Twain being one of the first & most successful examples). Really the only difference between a pop song & a country song these days are a pedal steel & a slight ‘twang’ to the singer’s voice.
Also, Kanye West is a preening douchebag.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Thats what i call a good video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6AQiihYrkI
September 14th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Are you sure Hank done it this way?
September 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Don’t forget that Shania Twain, mentioned above as an originator of what passes for country today, was created or tailored by her husband and producer Mutt Lange, who had been a producer for AC/DC. You gotta have a gimmick.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Does anyone else agree with me that Beyoncé is an awful dancer? She stomps around like a goddamn elephant. No timing whatsoever. Utterly graceless. She’s got a great body, and I’d hump her from hell to breakfast, but when she dances I want her to disappear from the planet forever.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Does anyone else agree with me that Beyoncé is an awful dancer?
Never studied her dancing, but her singing is often atrocious. I’m not being a curmudgeon. She’s really awful. I’m sure she’s technically proficient — certainly enough to be part of a group. But as a solo artist she sucks. I blame it on the material: she (or her management) choose songs for her that are waaaaayyyy to high on the register for her pretty unremarkable voice. She’s the antithesis of Madonna and Britney (two chick who also have pretty unremarkable voices but choose their material very wisely). The problem is Beyoncé wants to be Rhianna or Whitney, both of whom have gorgeous, powerful instruments. But she doesn’t belong in the same sentence with those two.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Pop music. It’s all pop music, good and bad.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I guess that’s what makes it country rather [than] Avrilish pseudo-punk.
Because in Avril Lavigne videos, the nerdy girl with glasses doesn’t change — instead, the popular girls beat her up, humiliate her in every way they can think of, and steal her boyfriend. Is it that much of a difference?
September 14th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Sigh.
1. This was a scripted “incident”, folks. Kanye and Beyonce’s hubby just happen to be among the first guests on Jay Leno’s first show tonight.
2. Why exactly is there an MTV Video Music Awards show when they don’t show videos anymore?
3. It’s interesting to see that in terms of sales and Grammys, that the most honored country artist of the last twenty years or so is Allison Krauss, who doesn’t get played on country radio ever.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:07 am
YYY is ineligible for Best Female Video.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:11 am
“Wow. I don’t want to make too much of a silly pop song, but just…wow. She ditches every touch of intelligence, originality and individualism and then she gets the boy.”
–and yet people say this kind of pop is unrealistic!
ps–look, people, country and rap is where the hits are; they are the pop music of today; the assumption that it’s hip to know about rap and hip to NOT know about country is just weird–or, at least, just very 1988….
September 14th, 2009 at 11:22 am
-”Single Ladies” is a brilliant song, one of the best of the year.
-What I love about “You Belong with Me”, which is totally lost in the video, is that there’s no happy real narrative, just a feeling. The song is just a plainspoken, catchy version of the near-universal feeling – I assume it’s simply universal among 15-year-olds – that my friend is with the wrong person, and if he or she would just notice me, just once, we’d get together and be so happy together. It’s a foolish delusion 90% of the time, but what’s great is the way the song celebrates that feeling completely uncritically. “You Belong with Me” just re-presents the feeling of being 15.
Tacking a happy ending on to the song, via video, messes that up.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:23 am
1. urgs I laughed my butt off watching that video.
2. People who don’t like YYY’s can suck it.
3. I’m going to go against the grain here and say that the Beyonce video is about as close to a work of art as mainstream music videos get. While the song is pretty forgettable, that video makes it. Of COURSE it’s derivative. Any throwback is. But there have only ever been a handful of videos that have the artist and a handful of other people on a sound stage for the entire length of the video. And the ones that do have it were all made in the mid 80s. The dance is simple and easily mimicked (by people who are better dancers than I am). The whole thing is brilliant.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:25 am
“Dude, a nearly omnipresent banjo line and the occasional steel guitar flourish makes it country. Plus, she moved to Nashville. Duh.”
Well, she moved to Nashville as an unknown 14 year old. She’s hardly Darius Rucker or Kid Rock.
Look, I know a lot about this, and I’m telling you: trying to define “country” as a genre of music with certain objective characteristics, like banjos or twang, is a fool’s errand.
Country music post-Garth Brooks is really a matter of how the performer, listeners, and the business define the music. It’s an agreement or convention. Sometimes there’s a banjo, sometimes there’s a hat, sometimes not.
What used to be called MOR is now country. Music that sounds like Laurel Canyon-style mellow country rock is now mainstream country. But then again, relatively popular country artists like Lee Ann Womack can put out a couple records that are pure Nashville Sound. On the other hand, Jamey Johnson had a pretty good record that recalled outlaw country go gold. Then you have your Sugarland, etc.
To fans, musicians, and labels, all of that stuff is uncontroversially country music, As is the critically-respected world of indie-focused roots and Americana musicians in East Nashville, though that stuff comes up less on the radar at the CMAs or what used to be called Fan Fair.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Kanye West is lucky Pink or maybe even Gaga didn’t win that one.
The other day lady Gaga said she wanted to marry Kanye. I’m pretty sure the two of them work together so I doubt he would have interrupted her.
Also, this is obviously a crass marketing ploy, just like the ‘fake accident’ with Bruno and Eminem at the MTV Movie awards. Nobody watches this shit anymore because MTV never even plays music.
Furthermore, the Beyonce video won “video of the year”. It wasn’t even up for an award in the category that Tylor swift won, making Kanye’s ‘outburst’ extra stupid, if it were real, which it wasn’t.
And finally, Tylor swift’s video was derivative garbage to begin with. Jam packed with every light-hearted teen movie cliche imaginable.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Today’s “country music” produced by nashville has mostly devolved into just a slight variant of soft-pop with just a little bit of twang thrown in to act as a cultural cue for their target demographic. But there is lots of great country and country-ish music being made with closer ties to the indy rock scene than to nashville.
re: taylor swift – I don’t really understand how popstars are made. For every (fill in the blank pop star name), there are 10 unknowns who can write and perform their own songs and sound great without auto-tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpQGvFW9nRk
September 14th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Because in Avril Lavigne videos, the nerdy girl with glasses doesn’t change — instead, the popular girls beat her up, humiliate her in every way they can think of, and steal her boyfriend. Is it that much of a difference?
Also, Avril plays the part of the popular girl, who beats up the nerd.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Well, if Pink were involved in the crass marketing ploy, she would have made sure it included Kanye West’s getting roughed up. I don’t know about Gaga, but she could do some damage with those shoes. If that crap is the best they can come up with for fake spontaneous tomfoolery, they need to get a new crass marketing firm.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Well the crass marketing ploy probably worked since at least one person — me — didn’t know that MTV still did the VMAs…
I would have figured that they would have come up with some realty TV show awards since that’s all MTV is anymore.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
A few points:
1. MTV plays videos early in the morning. Basically, they only play them when other cable stations would be playing infomercials.
2. “Single Ladies” is a good song with an awesome, iconic video. Taylor Swift is weak and inoffensive, and she’s marketed to people who want weak and inoffensive music, which is why she sells scads more records than the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
3. The YYYs video is good, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Depeche Mode’s WRONG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsXOcK9_Cw
September 14th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Well this is appropriate given the VMA show and I still like it better.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
If you play that back-to-back with the de-countrified UK mix, there’ll be no doubt in your mind that it’s country. Weak-ass commercial country blanded down to within an inch of its puny life, sure, but country nonetheless.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Everyone’s ignoring the “Kanye’s racist!” comments, which is a good idea—I know I should follow that lead—but I can’t help pointing this out:
Imagine the outcry if Tim McGraw jumped onstage and stole an award out of Beyonce’s hands and said “Taylor Swift should have won this instead!” Every backward-hat wearing thug in this country would be screaming racism…”
No comment necessary.
But anyway, I agree this is probably a stunt (though I doubt Swift knew about it), and also that Kanye was being an asshole, stunted or not.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Who has problems with italics tags? Guess I do!
September 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I”d like 42 better if it was Faith Hill jumping up!
September 14th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Matt, your rockism is showing. Your excursions into cultural criticism are worth reading when you’re talking about “serious” works, but when you turn your attention to pop ephemera, you get a little tone deaf.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I don’t watch that crap anymore. But caught the incident online. Kayne? What a silly, whiney, pissant. Can nobody in his circle tell him to stfu? He’s that shitty six year old brat that’s ruins your b day party by sticking his thumb in your cake.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Shouldn’t we ignore the West/Swift tiff and instead turn our focus to the wonderful performance Jay-Z and Alicia Keys gave last night?
September 14th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Yeah, I’m going with scripted. This stuff looks more and more like WWE all the time. They’ve decided to recast Kanye from a face to a heel.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
“They’ve decided to recast Kanye from a face to a heel.”
Well, after “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” they knew he was perfect for the role of provocateur.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I love Kanye. There is just this strange innocence around him. Like he just lucked into being a rap star instead of a producer and he has no idea what to do with himself. Thus, we get bizarre incoherent spectacles such as tonight. It’s strangely enough the opposite of a crafted persona.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Kanye West doesn’t care about country singers.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Win.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Does the public vote on these awards and who selects the nominees?
How can Beyonce be nominated for and win Video of the Year while not even being nominated for Best Female Video? It can’t be some formal prohibition on Video of the Year nominees being nominated for Best Female/Male categories as Lady Gaga, Kanye and Eminem all overlap.
Also, it seems odd Taylor Swift and T.I. could respectively win Best Female and Best Male Videos while not even being nominated for Video of the Year as they lost to other female and male performers.
Does MTV just spread the awards out to different demographics to keep everyone happy?
September 14th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Are you sure Hank done it this way?
Hank would’ve gutted both of them, with good cause too. These awards are nothing but narcissistic attention whoring by a bunch of no-talents who are famous for being famous.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:25 am
I like the Heads Will Roll video, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are better live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKgdXOmYIM
And:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqP8X9Au0mk