TAYLOR
- To the tune and backing
music of Lemon Water by Guttermouth -
The deranged should be caged, what is wrong with
people
It must be them, can’t you see that it couldn't be me
Where their road ends, that’s where my day begins…”
I’ll tell you what really winds me up on a near-daily basis, is adult fans of Taylor Swift. When did it become acceptable discourse for the likes of Taylor, Kylie and Girls Aloud to be treated as highbrow musical concerns by broadsheet critics and readers alike? Honestly, Taylor Swift could fart on the toilet and the BBC would run a story about it. No-one asked for this situation, and yet we all seem to have been saddled with it anyway - a bit like salted caramel, cucumber shavings in the table-water at wedding receptions, or a slice of lemon added to your half-pint of Coke.
“Have you heard it though, Chris? Have you heard her latest album? Have you sat waiting patiently for 20 years in an online queue in a futile bid to obtain tickets for her upcoming stadium tour?” No, I haven’t, and I’ll tell you why – because I’m not a 14-year-old girl. I don’t need to listen to Taylor’s latest heartfelt entreaty to “be my besty” to understand that it isn’t meant for people like me - i.e. grown adults. Honestly, is there anything which makes your heart sink more than logging onto Tinder – or, as it should perhaps now be better known, ‘The Binfire of the Vanities’ – and seeing a grown woman claiming to be a “Disney fanatic” while listing ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ as her own personal anthem. There is a reason why these people are still single, and it is just that. Literally the only thing I can imagine being more embarrassing is someone in their mid-40s claiming that ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish somehow speaks to them. I can absolutely assure you that when she grows out of it in a few years’ time, Billie Eilish is going to bitterly regret having ever put her name to the bit in that song that goes “Duh…”, and curse her misfortune at having to now regurgitate it every night to an audience who’ll then be pushing 60. In the meantime, Sandra from Lenton, you are 46 years old. Please have the dignity and intellectual wherewithal to acknowledge that the likes of Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift have precisely nothing to say about your life.
The deranged should be caged, what is wrong with people
It must be them, can’t you see that it couldn't be me
Where their road ends, that’s where my day begins…”
- No, before you ask, I haven’t had any matches
on dating apps recently. However, please don’t think I’m being sexist or reductive
when I say these things; I am an equal opportunities abuser when it comes to
matters of musical taste, or lack thereof. I once met a man who was also in his mid-40s
and who claimed, without the merest hint of irony, that his favourite record of
all-time was Jennifer Paige’s ‘Crush’. Just think about that for a second: you are
stranded on a desert island after the nuclear apocalypse, and can now only listen
to one song for the rest of your life. Having given it careful consideration in
the face of existential oblivion, you’ve decided that what lurks deepest within
the recesses of your soul is a mall-pop tween anthem from 1998.
It could be worse though, I suppose – you could
be one of those infernal men-children who still listens to American frathouse pop-punk
from the early-to-mid noughties as a matter of course. I mean, don’t get me
wrong, I liked Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket as much as the
next person back when I was a teenager, and am still able to locate a modicum
of nostalgic value in a song about Grandpa shitting his pants on Labour Day. However,
while you might think this is a bit rich coming from someone who still dresses
like they’re 15, I think it’s fair to suggest that doing synchronised chord-rips
and choreographed pogo routines while going about telling everyone how you
fucked their “Mom” last night - as the likes of Blink and Simple Plan still are
in 2023 - rather lacks a certain grace and sense of self-respect. I saw a video
recently from the Blink reunion tour in which they invited a 12-year-old boy onstage
and handed him the microphone. Evidently inspired by the terminally juvenile antics
of his suburban punk heroes, the best he could muster was to shout “FUCK YOU”
at the assembled masses, to much yukking and wild applause from singer Tom
DeLonge - a man who is now just two short years away from turning 50. I ask
you, in all seriousness: what kind of fucking rebellion is that.
The deranged should be caged, what is wrong with people
It must be them, can’t you see that it couldn't be me
Where their road ends, that’s where my day begins…”
I swear to God, I don’t know what I clicked on a
couple of weeks back that’s caused the Facebook algorithm to think I give
anything even approaching a glittery neon pink shit, but if I see another fucking
post in my News Feed about the Barbie movie, I am going to absolutely chin
someone. Congratulations to Greta Gerwig on navigating the testy waters of Hollywood
and turning out what is no doubt a sassy postmodern take on the contemporary
blockbuster that operates on a level which is at least 4-out-of-10 subversive. I
for one can certainly appreciate the merits of pissing off Ben Shapiro, Sarah
Vine and a bunch of other right-wing fucknuts who think that any film in which
a woman speaks onscreen is somehow “woke”. However, can we please all just try
to get a little bit of perspective here and see this for what it is, which is essentially
a 2-hour commercial for an existing toy property.
“Have you seen it yet, Chris? Have you been to see it yet?” No, I haven’t seen
it, but I’ll be sure to catch it on Blu Ray at some point in the future. I’m fairly
sure it’ll turn out to be distinctly bang-average, just like Oppenheimer
will be, having also been hyped beyond belief by people who think that Christopher
Nolan and his massive brain represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. Frankly,
listening to clueless internet movie bros talk up The Dark Knight and Inception,
blithely tossing around words like “masterpiece” when their only frame of
reference is Tarantino films and Guardians of the Galaxy 3, is a
bit like the moment when a 15-year-old boy tries to tell you that Muse are
really intelligent, simply because they’ve never actually encountered anything
intelligent and thus don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. But that’s where
we apparently are now in the modern media landscape, where having continual access
to everything, everywhere, all at once across a multitude of platforms has
meant that we’ve lost the ability to differentiate between what is actually good,
and what is merely talked about - just so long as it keeps unfolding before us in
an endless, unbroken stream of “content”. ‘Barbenheimer’, is it…? Fuck me sideways and
call me Margot. Let these massive corporations do their own fucking marketing,
rather than having you willingly step up to do it for them. I wouldn’t worry
too much about those idiots who’ve been body-shaming Florence Pugh for her nude
scene though – they’ve never seen a naked woman in real life, and likely never
will.
The deranged should be caged, what is wrong with people
It must be them, can’t you see that it couldn't be me
Where their road ends, that’s where my day begins…”
C.C. 1/8/2023
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