Taylor Swift Sweeps Awards, No Longer Just Country Queen but Queen of the Pop World

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Now that the American Music Awards, to the shock of the non-country music industry, has anointed Taylor Swift as the voice of American music, what does that mean to the good old folks back home? In winning five AMA awards including artist of the year over Michael Jackson and others, what does that hold for the future.



It was a very good night for country music in spite of the Swift landslide but one wonders how much was because of the Swift coattails which were very much in evidence with the award to Gloriana as breakthrough artist of the year without being well known compared to Lady Gaga who lost to both Swift and Gloriana. Taylor did take Gloriana on tour with her to help introduce the singers.



Still, Swift is the story as she is now known as America's pop queen having demolished the competition in the Country Music and American Music Awards, competition that included all the best performers, male and female in country and pop music including Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, George Straight, Brad Paisley, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, and pop starts Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Kings of Leon, Beyonce and Daughtry.

So how does a 19 year old kid dominate the greatest artists of all music genres for the last couple of decades? How has Taylor gained world recognition as the queen of pop music and the best selling artist in the world for all types of music? And what will be the Swift impact on country music?



Just like her friend Miley Cyrus who also came from country roots, Taylor Swift is already facing the many seductions of entertainment fame and fortune as they tend to first become a self contained money machine hungry to dominate every aspect of the entertainment business. Both quickly took control of every aspect of their lives from writing music to television appearances.



The rocket to fame opened doors to performing and recording with other established artists. An avalanche of money allowed them to break new ground with music videos. Their packaging for concerts and special performances was flawless. But each degree of control has a price.



Taylor Swift has shattered record sales in a time when the tough economy has driven down the sale of records. That means a whole bunch of other performers have been squeezed out of the fragile sales market. Her concerts are becoming more rock like all the time leaving less money and fan support for other artists.



By writing her own music she has blocked untold writers from ever being a success. When she co-writes and performs with anyone else it is usually because that person is also successful, note, Miley Cyrus, Kellie Pickler, etc. But those hand picked friends are always successful in their own right thus further closing the doors of opportunity to other struggling artists and writers.



In the record business more than any other money talks. But just like Wall Street, money only feeds on more money as costs escalate, video production becomes more extravagant, concert shows become more complex and expensive, and the price of everything from tickets to records has to go up to make sure the public is bled dry.



You reach a certain point and suddenly risky investments stop while formula ideas, known techniques, or songs or styles whose cost benefit analysis offers the least risk begin to dominate. The industry vultures hover around you at all times. Some kids can handle it. Most don't.

The more commercial the kid, for example, young Miley, the more demands on them to continue making tons of money to feed their own machine. They become an industry in and of themselves and they become a slave to their own success. All the time their creativity, which thrives in the early stages gets worn out in the later stages.



That is when they are forced to compromise everything they stood for when they were young and unknown in the first place. Fame has a horrible price to pay. Just look at the lives of music legends like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. You reach a certain point when you can never again be one of the genre but become the genre. Yesterday Taylor Swift was the hope for country music, today she is the poster girl for pop music.

It will be a miracle if she ever has control of her young life again. As she is seduced by the masters of entrapment in Hollywood, New York and Wall Street through television and movies, then fashion and cosmetics, her world will open up just as her life is becoming more and more isolated. All the time the greed of those using her will keep pushing her while denying other aspiring artists the chance for any hope of success.



The people of the entertainment world now pouring ideas and dreams into this new star are masters at their game and their game is pure and simple, greed. Squeeze every last ounce of profit out of the celebrity because they might break under the pressure at any step along the way and suddenly the gravy train is gone. To them she is the golden goose and when the goose stops producing it is cast aside for the next Taylor Swift waiting in the wings.

Right now young Taylor has the enthusiasm and energy of youth. But her breakneck schedule and the amazing diversity of activity they have her doing cannot be sustained for long. Most likely she has already been lost to the country music industry. The lure of Hollywood and the mega bucks in the genre will take care of that. Others are pushed in that direction, like Carrie Underwood, but they do not stay there and survive. If they are lucky, they get back to their roots before they are broken.



Swift was a talented kid who just happened to break through in country music. There is no evidence that she was grounded in country as her roots were never deep enough to establish that fact. It was only a matter of time and luck before she found her home and most likely that is in the pop culture. Her music is every bit as much pop as country so the genre of the arrangement determines which doors are open to the artist.



Now that she is the best selling female of all music, and the heir apparent as pop queen, her true roots will never be known. Her opportunities may be endless, but the risk reward ratio just took a gigantic leap forward, meaning what you may ask? It means this. When you have reached the pinnacle of your life's endeavor there is no way to go but sideways or down. You go sideways by jumping from country to pop but from either perspective the only way to go is back down.



Let us hope and pray that Taylor Swift is not already a victim trapped in her own success. She needs to find her own way but also needs to understand she never walks alone. As she is faced with untold wealth and opportunity may she never forget that the gifts she has came from a higher source and the success as measured from that perspective is how you use your gifts to help others in need of help, not those already drowning in success.



Compassion and empathy comes from the heart, not from the largess of foundations and tax deductions. Young Taylor is at a crossroads where she can find a solid foundation in life or forever walk on quicksand. The latter comes from a world of glamour and glitz while the first comes from listening to the heart and soul.



Perhaps she should journey to the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona with no media, no photo ops and no status symbols and see how the most sacred and oldest of cultures has survived with nothing but a bond to Father Creator and Mother Earth and a desire to bring all people together. Honoring God and all God's creations is the highest service possible to the Hopi, the Children of God and People of the Sun. Then Taylor will see what being grounded is all about.

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Kayne West the Idiot - Obama's Buddy - Ruins Taylor Swift Award

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After strutting the red carpet at the MTV Video Music Awards this weekend with a bottle of booze in his paws Kayne West demonstrated once again why he is a fool and idiot beyond compare and Obama should stop patronizing him by inviting him to perform at the Presidential inaugural and other presidential events.






When Taylor Swift, the 17 year old country music queen took the stage to accept her first MTV Video Music Award for female video of the year Kayne interrupted her and jerked the microphone out of her hands leaving her stunned.

West and his bionic tongue then said Swift did not deserve to win the award and it should have been given to his friend Beyonce whose video was the best in the world. The debacle left Swift in tears as her time to thank people ran out.





If a white person had jumped on stage on national television and Beyonce had won the award and the intruder had said a white singer had the best video in the world the liberals and Black leaders would have been up in arms screaming racial bias, much like Obama did when police ticketed his good friend from Harvard earlier this summer.





Reverse discrimination and racial bias are real problems but actions like that of our president and entertainers like Kayne West only serve to further polarize the nation. Perhaps they should try setting an example for a change rather than rushing to judgment.

First there was the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Obama's preacher of 20 years and mentor to the president who was a raving racist. Then came the Cambridge, Massachusetts police who Obama said, "acted stupidly" for bringing disorderly conduct charges against Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The incident, Obama said, shows "how race remains a factor in this society."

Van Jones was next, close friend and key advisor who was an avowed racist and communist on the staff in the White House when the press caught up with him and forced him to resign. The latest person is Kayne. stealing the microphone from Taylor Swift on national teleivsion. There seems to be a pattern here.

Of course West is not new to such displays of gutter class as he twice before interrupted award shows to protest the winners when he was left out. MYV should ban the fool from all future shows if they were more interested in class than ratings.

To her credit, Beyonce demonstrated class and maturity whenn she won an award later and called Taylor up to finish the speech motor mouth had interrupted. Now Beyonce showed what real class is all a bout.





Shame on you Kayne, and please Obama stop giving this little person more publicity than he deserves. At least take him off your Christmas Card list if you have one.

The New Country Kid - Taylor Swift - Savior or Destroyer of the Country Music Genre?

Believe it or not the first country music recording session in history took place just 88 years ago although the musical genre had much deeper roots. In 2007 country music hit a peak in album sales which fell off the chart in 2008 when sales dropped 24%. Did this signal a death knell for the industry? Hardly.

But it did signal that once again it is time for country music to rediscover itself so it can be discovered again by the people of America. As sales were plummeting in 2008 there was a glimmer of hope with Taylor Swift, the new kid on the block, selling four million albums.

There are a lot of complications facing the country industry just like many other industries. Greed has been a dominant force. As people get more sophisticated and the Internet more accessible and more powerful our world has changed. Newspapers are rapidly becoming a dinosaur of the past as the publishers forgot about journalistic integrity and became servants to the advertisers.

Television and radio stations and networks face the same dilemma as Internet choices for news, entertainment and movies caused traditional stations to increase ad rates and frequency to the point the public got fed up. Formula TV shows and radio music came to dominate the airways and quite frankly, people know better and expect more from the industries.

Just a couple of years ago the major record labels paid over $35 million in fines for the newest form of payola to radio stations and 600 stations have been under investigation for taking the bribes. Does that sound like a formula for a healthy industry?

But worst of all the massive mergers and acquisitions in the radio industry have left us with a vast number of people-less radio stations as computers send pre-recorded play lists to their automated network affiliates meaning there is no chance for relating to a local audience which is what made radio popular in the first place. When greed dominates destruction is not far behind.

Radio managers are under pressure from advertisers to play certain types of songs because holding the audience is all about big bucks. Thus the top forty have little relationship to consumer desires nor to the quality of the music but simply to the latest fad on the air. When people have no choice they find a new way to get control and that way is the Internet.

So far the Internet has provided the creative and experimental pool of talent shunned by the record labels and radio stations and the Internet set in motion the practice of giving away music to get people to buy music. The Internet also did what the labels refused to do which is price single records so people could afford them like in the 1960's and thus the iPod generation and music downloads was launched.

Think about it. The albums being released by labels contained maybe one or two hits and a bunch of junk yet were priced in the $12.99 to $15.99 range, an equivalent to selling singles for $1.29 TO $1.59 except you had to buy every single, good, bad or otherwise on the album to get the one song you wanted. The record labels gave away the market to Apple and their iPod who priced a single song at .99 cents and you only paid for what you wanted. Even more, the Internet allowed you to sample the songs and see videos.

Duh...

So what does this have to do with our country kid, Taylor Swift? Right now she is the dominant new face in the music world and Taylor has become a superstar in the world of pop as well as country. I mentioned she sold more albums last year than any artist in any genre. Taylor fought her way up through the country music industry to make it unlike stars such as Carrie Underwood who was the product of the TV sensation American Idol demonstrating that in spite of the collapse of the broadcast industry there are still ways to become known overnight. Most significant, neither was a product of the controlling force in music and radio, the major record labels.




Taylor Swift belies her age, beauty and perceived vulnerability with a wisdom and sense of adventure not seen in decades in the industry. She took the hard route from a small town in Pennsylvania to the studios of Nashville thanks to her own determination and the dedication of her mother. She spent two years working with song writers in Nashville after being the youngest writer ever signed by Sony at just 14 years of age. She peddled demos to major and independent labels constantly on her own.

When she was performing at a writers showcase at the legendary Bluebird Cafe she was spotted by Scott Borchetta who was considering forming a new record label, Big Machine Records. She became the first and most successful artist of the label after turning down an offer from a major label that refused to let her sing her own songs.

Now, that brings up one of the many flaws in the Nashville scene. Greed has become such a dominant force that there is a practice that made a mockery of what used to be a good Nashville thing. Once upon a time there was really a style of collective song writing where several people would contribute to the development of a new song. This collaboration technique brought many great minds and talents together.

But somewhere along the way the industry got lazy and greedy and the publishing rights and song writing rights that used to go to the writer were taken away if they wanted their record to be used. Co-writing and publishing credits and royalties were demanded as a price for being on the record and still are being demanded to this day whether the co-writer makes any significant contribution to the creative work or not. It is a form of legal corruption that has left many a talent the victim.



Another corrupt practice that flourished was hiring A&R people as consultants when submitting demos to the major labels including their own. This conflict of interest was no less disgusting than the payola being undertaken by the labels and stations.

Taylor did not wait for things to happen as at age 15 she launched her career by becoming the most successful country artist to use the Internet and MySpace to introduce herself to the world. She now has over 230 million plays on her web site and that was critical to her success. Apparently young Taylor Swift was not seduced or caught up in the world of Nashville and major label practices and she joined forces with Scott at Big Machine Records to put them on the map.

Every step of the way she defied the odds, stayed free of the traps and preserved her own integrity as she exploded to the top of the charts. By all standards this curly haired country chick should be classified as one of the modern country outlaws for breaking the mold like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jesse Colter did nearly 50 years earlier. Fed up with the Nashville establishment, they did their own thing.

If Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire have been the innovators and early rebels of contemporary country music then young Taylor Swift is their new standard bearer and should be the poster girl of the country music industry. All three have refused to give up to the temptations of formula music, the conventions of major labels and the control over artistic creativity by the labels and producers.

To survive country music always has to change when it becomes stagnate. From the old time music at the beginning of the 20th century hillbilly became hillbilly boogie then bluegrass. Boogie, honky tonk, blues, singing cowboys and gospel all became elements of country music as it evolved. Once it was called folk then country and country western.

Elvis ushered in rockabilly which spawned Buddy Holly's Lubbock Sound. Ray Charles introduced country soul while out west Bob Wills and Lefty Frizell merged honky tonk and western swing and brought us the Bakersfield Sound. After the British invasion the Nashville Sound merged with rock 'n roll to give us another new genre called Country Rock with The Byrds, The Marshall Tucker Band, The Allman Brothers and The Eagles.

The Country Outlaws kept it growing as Country Rock and Country Pop traded leading roles as stars like Dolly Parton, Rosanne Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Juice Newton, Alabama, Hank Williams, Jr., Brooks and Dunn, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakum, Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Keith Urban kept expanding the genre by bringing it back to rock. At the same time Olivia Newton John and John Denver were folding Country Pop into the cross over arena for country stars.

Today exceptional stars remain extremely powerful. Last year six of the top ten artists on radio were diverse country stars. With Rascal Flatts 2nd, Toby Keith 3rd, George Straight 5th, Tim McGraw 6th, Taylor Swift 8th and Alan Jackson 9th country music dominated the radio airways. Add to them Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Sugarland, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood and Faith Hill with their concert success and you find an industry with potential to make the changes necessary to survive.

You see, country music remains strong when it is vital, when it is creative, when it pioneers new sounds and when it is relevant. Taylor Swift now stands as a young but seasoned survivor who can once again breathe new life into the industry and help lead the natural change in the genre as worn out record labels and radio give way to the new technologies and techniques of the future. Four years ago a 15 year old kid created a web site on MySpace that has now produced over 230 million plays of her music. At just 19 she is a pioneer of the future of country music.