A man needs an office. Well maybe not every man. But I know I do. You can have a house (I'm lucky to have one). You can have a man-cave (I'm lucky to have that too, complete with four guitars, one keyboard, and two ukuleles). But an office is a place where real work gets done. You walk in and you know, this is it. You put on your work face. And. You. Work.
I don't understand how anyone can work at home. I'm writing this blog post in my man-cave but a blog is not work. It's just some sideline fun thing. Work for me is producing something truly designed for others to use. Writing a book. That's work. Writing a song is usually work, too. So is writing a science paper or putting together a report for a client (something I'm not doing that much of lately). If I'm doing any work, I have to get out of my house.
It's not the distractions that are a problem. It's that no ideas come if I'm at home. Sure, I'll get a seed of an idea in the shower or while cooking or even cleaning. But if I'm going to follow through on that idea with any creativity or spark, I need to get out of my blissful domicile.
I got my first office in graduate school. I can remember that first day putting together my office, which I shared with a very nice guy from Indonesia. I pinned up a little picture of Billie Holiday as I decorated. "Who's that, you're mother?" My new office mate asked me. It's true, the resemblance between Billie Holiday and me is uncanny!
Eventually, I had three offices at one time in graduate school. One at the U. One at the local U.S. Geological Survey. And one at the Illinois State Geological Survey. This would turn out to be my high water mark in office space acquisition. I think of it as my Mormon period. I got work done in all three offices, but the one at the U was best even though it was bug infested (the Department of Entomology was upstairs and apparently they suffered frequent bug leaks). Every night before getting on the bus to go home, I'd shake my backpack to get rid of the random exotic cockroach that had managed to crawl inside.
I was down to a mere two offices at Stanford, one at the U and one at the regional headquarters of the U.S. Geological Survey. Someone who is undoubtedly reading this was one of five or six females who shared my U office with me. It was cramped. I didn't use my desk except to pile papers high on my way to the U.S. Geological Survey or, more commonly, the Math Library. The desks were jammed together and my paper pile would, once it had exceeded its angle of repose, slide onto my neighbor's desktop. Sorry!
At Duke, I got to design my own office, walls and all. It was fabulous with a beautiful view. Unfortunately, my wonderful office was the best part of my job. I'd hunker down in there trying my best to focus on my research and avoid all the nasty and unpleasant people that tend to occupy academia.
When I moved back home to California (North Carolina was never really my home; I lived there for 11 years but never sold my old California house and never even got a North Carolina drivers license), Stanford was nice enough to give me an office for a couple of years. That was great! All those university resources without having to ever attend a department meeting or serve on a university committee. Ahhh, utopia. Then I rented a little cottage in back of a house nearby for several years. It was very cute.
About a year and a half ago, I decided - partly because my landlord was going bonkers - that maybe I didn't need an office/cottage anymore. I'd just go back to my undergraduate model and use libraries. It was an interesting experiment. I'd bring my laptop with me and play the role of library bedouin. Sometimes, I'd go to Stanford's libraries, which were a little too eerie for me; college students don't use libraries anymore - they seem to get everything they need online - and Stanford's libraries are essentially ghost towns. You spot an occasional middle age guy or gal like me and that's it.
In the spring and summer, I liked to go to the Los Alto library because they have a beautiful apricot orchard visible from some desks. It was inspiring to see all that organized photosynthesis. But most public libraries aren't at all quiet anymore, and seem more and seem more akin to shopping malls. People talk and use cell phones. Little kids run around and scream. No one even tries to shoosh someone else. I'd have to use earplugs to get work done.
Mountain View's library was a little better on the quiet front. A cop would literally come by to keep the racket down and get rid of any bums who reeked of alcohol. But still, I'd put in earplugs when I worked.
After a year or so of being a library bedouin, I started to long for some privacy. The guy next to me mumbling New Testament bible verses whenever the cop wasn't around to shut him up was starting to get to me (I probably would have been OK with Old Testament bible mumbling because I've been blocking that stuff out all of my life). I wanted four walls around me and a window. You know, a room with a view. I'm not an undergraduate anymore. I'm a grown man. And as I noted above, a man needs an office.
I went on Craig's List and tried to find an office. Things weren't looking too promising. But I'm a patient man and times are hard. There's a lot of empty office space out there. There was one place listed whose initial price was too high (like all the others). Next month it was slightly lower. The next month it was lower still, reasonable. I called the realtor up, took a look at the place, and knocked him down another $25 a month. I went on Craig's List again and found a room full of Ikea furniture - futon, desk, end table, dining room table, two office chairs, and four dining table chairs - for 120 bucks.
Voila. I have a furnished room with a view. My back didn't seem to mind all the hauling around of furniture either. That's the advantage of buying Ikea stuff; it's junky, but hardly weighs anything. Next week I'm officially moving in. It feels good.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Hollywood Consistently Gets Country Music Wrong, But I Guess That's Not Surprising
Since I've been on a country music kick, I think that I should end the week on that topic before I go on to something else. I know most people who read this blog hate country music. Tough. I don't. Most of country music is not good, I agree. But it tends to be way better than any pop music out there today. A fair amount of it is at least tolerable to listen to. That's not a ringing endorsement, I know. But I do listen to new country music for a couple of hours every month.
I note that every once in a while Hollywood decides to make a country music movie. For example, this January they're coming out with a new one, Country Strong. Making country music themed movies is an odd thing for Hollywood to do because as far as I can tell, Hollywood doesn't have a clue as to what country music is about. Instead Hollywood directors make these movies using cliches and never do the homework to see how their preconceptions differ from reality.
I guess that's not surprising. Hollywood directors do the same thing with college themed movies. Usually, they focus on some English professor and his ability or lack thereof to transform students. But English departments and the humanities have been in decline for decades. Less than ten percent of all student enrollments are in the humanities. If it weren't for distribution requirements that force students to take humanities classes, the numbers would be even smaller. Earth to Hollywood: English professors don't matter anymore. Want to really depict college education? Focus on an accounting or economics professor, please.
So it goes with Hollywood and country music. The disconnect with reality maybe began in the 1970s with the widely acclaimed Robert Altman movie, Nashville. Henry Gibson rambled on and on singing songs that wouldn't make it within 100 yards of a country radio music station, and we were supposed to believe that this little pipsqueak was a Nashville country music legend. You've got to be kidding. The movie was completely unbelievable. Nashville was hailed for its slice of life realism, but in fact it was a fantasy.
Last year, Jeff Bridges kept the tradition of Hollywood creating an alternate reality for country music alive. Bridges won an Oscar for a performance as a country music legend has been who is forced to play bowling alleys to try and make a living. Sorry Hollywood. I guess the closest real life analog to the Jeff Bridges character Bad Blake would be George "No Show" Jones and as destructive as he was, Jones could (and still can) always find a decent gig. Earth to Hollywood: there's a lucrative county and state fair circuit for country music has beens. Country music fans stay loyal to those that made hit albums decades after country music radio has forgotten them.
But forget about the stupid stories Hollywood comes up with. I want to focus on the music for a bit. Hollywood seems to think that country music is still all about losing your truck, your wife, and your job set to a melody that is backed by a mere three chords. It hasn't been that way for decades. Just like Hollywood is lost in the 1950s with regard to college campuses (English professors not only don't matter anymore, they don't wear tweed and bow ties anymore, either) they are in a time warp with regard to the music country radio plays.
There are still songs about loss in country music. Here's the best of that today, Jamey Johnson:
Jamey Johnson is a wonderful throwback, and I only wish that Hollywood would find someone who could sing and perform with half his power in their little fantasies. But you hardly hear people like Jamey Johnson on country radio today. What dominates country radio is what Hollywood knows everything about, fantasy. It's often about love gained - either god or a man or woman - rather than love lost. It entreats people, like a Sunday sermon, to do better. Here's one of the practitioners of that brand of country music today, Josh Turner (actually he mostly does treacly love songs, but here he is singing from his heart about God, albeit in a treacly way):
And much of country music today is about affirming the superiority of Red State values and attitudes with ass-kicking drums and rock guitar as Montgomery Gentry do with just about every song they perform (they're not exactly one of my favorite country bands, but I do have a photo of me and Eddie Montgomery arm in arm somewhere on my laptop):
But most significantly for me is that country music is about being funny, laugh out loud funny. That side of music used to be present in pop as well. The Beatles weren't afraid to be jokey in their music, that's for certain. But sometime between 1968 and now, humor left pop music altogether. That's not so in country music, whose king jokester is Brad Paisley. He made his name with this cute little number:
Jamey Johnson, Josh Turner, Montgomery Gentry, and Brad Paisley are just a slice of what country music is about today. It's mostly about - like Hollywood movies - wish fulfillment. Mr. Turner and Mr. Paisley are both clean living, Belmont University graduates. Eddie Montgomery works out religiously and has had his teeth whitened to such a degree that when he smiled at me I suffered from temporary snow blindness. Why does Hollywood focus on broken down performers singing about their hard luck when it makes country music movies? Hollywood likes its cliches and in its movies it tends to avoid real life. Country music is about loss according to Hollywood. Colleges are about teaching poetry. And don't get me started about how Hollywood treats the EPA and EPA employees in its caricatures.
I don't know if I'll go see the movie Country Strong. In it, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a country diva just coming out rehab. That's a bit of casting against type, but who knows, Paltrow is a solid professional and just might be able to carry it off. Her comeback song in that movie, though, leaves me a bit worried. Here's Ms. Paltrow performing it live recently to promote the movie:
That's a very impressive performance for a singing amateur. But is that a hit song? Yeah, maybe in 1979. It's the kind of thing that Vince Gill (singing backup) would have written for his old band, Pure Prairie League. Hollywood is, as always with regard to country music, stuck in the past.
I note that every once in a while Hollywood decides to make a country music movie. For example, this January they're coming out with a new one, Country Strong. Making country music themed movies is an odd thing for Hollywood to do because as far as I can tell, Hollywood doesn't have a clue as to what country music is about. Instead Hollywood directors make these movies using cliches and never do the homework to see how their preconceptions differ from reality.
I guess that's not surprising. Hollywood directors do the same thing with college themed movies. Usually, they focus on some English professor and his ability or lack thereof to transform students. But English departments and the humanities have been in decline for decades. Less than ten percent of all student enrollments are in the humanities. If it weren't for distribution requirements that force students to take humanities classes, the numbers would be even smaller. Earth to Hollywood: English professors don't matter anymore. Want to really depict college education? Focus on an accounting or economics professor, please.
So it goes with Hollywood and country music. The disconnect with reality maybe began in the 1970s with the widely acclaimed Robert Altman movie, Nashville. Henry Gibson rambled on and on singing songs that wouldn't make it within 100 yards of a country radio music station, and we were supposed to believe that this little pipsqueak was a Nashville country music legend. You've got to be kidding. The movie was completely unbelievable. Nashville was hailed for its slice of life realism, but in fact it was a fantasy.
Last year, Jeff Bridges kept the tradition of Hollywood creating an alternate reality for country music alive. Bridges won an Oscar for a performance as a country music legend has been who is forced to play bowling alleys to try and make a living. Sorry Hollywood. I guess the closest real life analog to the Jeff Bridges character Bad Blake would be George "No Show" Jones and as destructive as he was, Jones could (and still can) always find a decent gig. Earth to Hollywood: there's a lucrative county and state fair circuit for country music has beens. Country music fans stay loyal to those that made hit albums decades after country music radio has forgotten them.
But forget about the stupid stories Hollywood comes up with. I want to focus on the music for a bit. Hollywood seems to think that country music is still all about losing your truck, your wife, and your job set to a melody that is backed by a mere three chords. It hasn't been that way for decades. Just like Hollywood is lost in the 1950s with regard to college campuses (English professors not only don't matter anymore, they don't wear tweed and bow ties anymore, either) they are in a time warp with regard to the music country radio plays.
There are still songs about loss in country music. Here's the best of that today, Jamey Johnson:
Jamey Johnson is a wonderful throwback, and I only wish that Hollywood would find someone who could sing and perform with half his power in their little fantasies. But you hardly hear people like Jamey Johnson on country radio today. What dominates country radio is what Hollywood knows everything about, fantasy. It's often about love gained - either god or a man or woman - rather than love lost. It entreats people, like a Sunday sermon, to do better. Here's one of the practitioners of that brand of country music today, Josh Turner (actually he mostly does treacly love songs, but here he is singing from his heart about God, albeit in a treacly way):
And much of country music today is about affirming the superiority of Red State values and attitudes with ass-kicking drums and rock guitar as Montgomery Gentry do with just about every song they perform (they're not exactly one of my favorite country bands, but I do have a photo of me and Eddie Montgomery arm in arm somewhere on my laptop):
But most significantly for me is that country music is about being funny, laugh out loud funny. That side of music used to be present in pop as well. The Beatles weren't afraid to be jokey in their music, that's for certain. But sometime between 1968 and now, humor left pop music altogether. That's not so in country music, whose king jokester is Brad Paisley. He made his name with this cute little number:
Jamey Johnson, Josh Turner, Montgomery Gentry, and Brad Paisley are just a slice of what country music is about today. It's mostly about - like Hollywood movies - wish fulfillment. Mr. Turner and Mr. Paisley are both clean living, Belmont University graduates. Eddie Montgomery works out religiously and has had his teeth whitened to such a degree that when he smiled at me I suffered from temporary snow blindness. Why does Hollywood focus on broken down performers singing about their hard luck when it makes country music movies? Hollywood likes its cliches and in its movies it tends to avoid real life. Country music is about loss according to Hollywood. Colleges are about teaching poetry. And don't get me started about how Hollywood treats the EPA and EPA employees in its caricatures.
I don't know if I'll go see the movie Country Strong. In it, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a country diva just coming out rehab. That's a bit of casting against type, but who knows, Paltrow is a solid professional and just might be able to carry it off. Her comeback song in that movie, though, leaves me a bit worried. Here's Ms. Paltrow performing it live recently to promote the movie:
That's a very impressive performance for a singing amateur. But is that a hit song? Yeah, maybe in 1979. It's the kind of thing that Vince Gill (singing backup) would have written for his old band, Pure Prairie League. Hollywood is, as always with regard to country music, stuck in the past.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Taylor Swift Can't Sing or Write, But That Doesn't Matter, and No I'm Not Being Mean, Part 2
When I was going to Nashville pitching songs, most of my effort was centered on new female acts. It seemed to be where my songs consistently found the most interest. At any given time, record labels had a combined six to ten acts like this and for each one they were looking for "the song," the one undeniable hit that would launch a career.
I'm trying to remember the names of these singers signed to major labels, but they all kind of blur: Catherine Britt, Lauren Lucas, Jessica Harp and many more. They were all young and gorgeous. They all had major league voices. They were all like Carrie Underwood, very nice girls with demure personalities. But how many Carrie Underwoods does the genre of country music need? The answer is one. Once Underwood's career was launched, there was no oxygen left for similar performers.
Still, the record companies insisted on developing these new singers. They'd listen to thousands of songs for each one. For reasons I never understood, they'd never put these acts on the road to generate buzz and get the singers seasoned for live performance. No, these girls would just hang in Nashville and wait a year or two to be launched on the radio.
The record companies would release play it safe singles for each of these acts that hit all the "right" buttons - songs that proclaimed that the singers were sweet country girls and proud of it - that were overproduced out the ying yang. The songs were accompanied by promotional campaigns emphasizing the girls' country bona-fides with lots of pictures of the girls sweetly posing in country settings. In every case, these girl acts instantly flopped.
It was always a mystery why these record companies kept beating this dead horse. When the act flopped they'd shake their heads and say, well girls are a tough sell. But that wasn't it at all. Girls aren't a tough sell. They just can't be sold the way country record companies usually try to sell them.
Over the time I was visiting Nashville regularly, there were four female country acts that rose to stardom. None of them fit the sweet country girl with a big voice mold. One was Jennifer Nettles aka Sugarland, who sang Mamas and Papas type songs written with her co-performer, an obviously butch Kirsten Hall. Another was a rather homely woman a little long in tooth, Gretchen Wilson, who had spent years being a top-flight demo singer, and whose songs played on her trailer trash "heritage". Then there was Miranda Lambert, a gorgeous girl with a not-so-great voice, who sang and wrote songs about shooting things, usually men.
Finally, there was Taylor Swift, who has risen higher than all those three successes I just mentioned, and who, as I noted in Part 1, invented the sub-genre of country-kiddie-pop. Her first album sold a ton. Her second album, Fearless, which was a slicker version of the first, took off in a hurry. Some of the songs were co-written with her collaborator on her first album, Liz Rose. The songs on the second album focused again and again on teen-age love. Liz Rose made sure the songs were well crafted and followed the well established rules of country radio.
The launch of Fearless was accompanied by an incredible slew of positive reviews, some in places that normally would have nothing to do with country music. Even the New Yorker called Taylor Swift a "prodigy." I didn't get this. The album was run of the mill country radio fluff. But it did fill a niche that had never been filled before. Kids loved this thing. If it hasn't happened already, Fearless will soon have achieved 10 million sales worldwide, a number that's phenomenal in today's depressed music market.
A couple of strange things happened with the promotion of this album. One was a very public brouhaha involving Kanye West at an awards show. I've actually never seen the video clip, but apparently Mr. West did something very bad and disrespectful to Ms. Swift on television and the video of their interaction went viral. Taylor Swift wasn't just a singer anymore. She was a very public and sympathetic personality.
Second, Taylor Swift sang on the Grammys in 2010 and absolutely stank. Worse yet, she sang not just one time, but twice. Even if you were inclined to be sympathetic with her mangling her first performance, you got annoyed in a hurry by bomb number two.
The fact is that Taylor Swift cannot hit her notes live. She is a studio manufactured singer who couldn't make it in the music world without Auto-tune. While these performances generated much negative publicity, most of the public is tone deaf anyway and musical ability has never been an important thing in the world of kiddie pop. From Fabian on to Britney Spears, kiddie pop is all about personality and looks, not musicality.
This month, Taylor Swift released her third album, Speak Now. She shed her collaborator on her first two albums, Liz Rose. She is now too old to be a kiddie pop singer - although she still has a big pre-teen and teen following - and so she redefined herself with Speak Now. Ms. Swift doesn't sing about high school romances. Instead Speak Now is about weddings and adventures falling in and out of love with famous movie and music hunks. Her fans can be voyeurs as they listen to Ms. Swift sing about what a rat John Mayer is or how she's sorry she broke up with Taylor Lautner. It's a reality TV show set to music.
The songs aren't very good. Without Liz Rose, Ms. Swift seems to have forgotten about the importance of a good hook, making sure a song's central theme is all about that hook, and keeping a song tightly structured. Speak Now has a bunch of messy and sloppy songs that just don't stick. Be that as it may, singing about breaking up with famous boyfriends is a time honored way for a pretty female singer to have a good career (note these two, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon). Speak Now went platinum in its first week.
Can Taylor Swift be a long-lived star? I have no idea really. It's always a mystery to me why certain stars fade and others shine bright for decades. No, Taylor Swift can't really sing, but that doesn't matter as I've noted above. Plus, she's finally discovered the value of Live Auto-tune for performances and as a result, she no longer sounds so awful on TV.
Taylor Swift can probably keep singing about losing famous boyfriends for another album or two, but then that's going to get old. She doesn't have anywhere near the talent of Joni Mitchell and can't sing nearly as well as Carly Simon, so she's going to have to rely on her personality to carry her. It is a pleasant and winsome personality. Lord knows, we could always use more pleasant and polite people in this world.
I imagine that in another three years Taylor Swift's records will start to go stiff and her career will shift to playing state fairs and whatnot. But I also note that Britney Spears - someone with less talent than Taylor Swift and a whole lot of emotional baggage and bad publicity - made something on the order of 60 million dollars last year. Madonna - who in terms of talent is at about the same level as Taylor Swift - is still an improbable big draw at the age of 52. So maybe Ms. Swift will be around singing badly about love lost for decades. Stranger things have happened.
I'm trying to remember the names of these singers signed to major labels, but they all kind of blur: Catherine Britt, Lauren Lucas, Jessica Harp and many more. They were all young and gorgeous. They all had major league voices. They were all like Carrie Underwood, very nice girls with demure personalities. But how many Carrie Underwoods does the genre of country music need? The answer is one. Once Underwood's career was launched, there was no oxygen left for similar performers.
Still, the record companies insisted on developing these new singers. They'd listen to thousands of songs for each one. For reasons I never understood, they'd never put these acts on the road to generate buzz and get the singers seasoned for live performance. No, these girls would just hang in Nashville and wait a year or two to be launched on the radio.
The record companies would release play it safe singles for each of these acts that hit all the "right" buttons - songs that proclaimed that the singers were sweet country girls and proud of it - that were overproduced out the ying yang. The songs were accompanied by promotional campaigns emphasizing the girls' country bona-fides with lots of pictures of the girls sweetly posing in country settings. In every case, these girl acts instantly flopped.
It was always a mystery why these record companies kept beating this dead horse. When the act flopped they'd shake their heads and say, well girls are a tough sell. But that wasn't it at all. Girls aren't a tough sell. They just can't be sold the way country record companies usually try to sell them.
Over the time I was visiting Nashville regularly, there were four female country acts that rose to stardom. None of them fit the sweet country girl with a big voice mold. One was Jennifer Nettles aka Sugarland, who sang Mamas and Papas type songs written with her co-performer, an obviously butch Kirsten Hall. Another was a rather homely woman a little long in tooth, Gretchen Wilson, who had spent years being a top-flight demo singer, and whose songs played on her trailer trash "heritage". Then there was Miranda Lambert, a gorgeous girl with a not-so-great voice, who sang and wrote songs about shooting things, usually men.
Finally, there was Taylor Swift, who has risen higher than all those three successes I just mentioned, and who, as I noted in Part 1, invented the sub-genre of country-kiddie-pop. Her first album sold a ton. Her second album, Fearless, which was a slicker version of the first, took off in a hurry. Some of the songs were co-written with her collaborator on her first album, Liz Rose. The songs on the second album focused again and again on teen-age love. Liz Rose made sure the songs were well crafted and followed the well established rules of country radio.
The launch of Fearless was accompanied by an incredible slew of positive reviews, some in places that normally would have nothing to do with country music. Even the New Yorker called Taylor Swift a "prodigy." I didn't get this. The album was run of the mill country radio fluff. But it did fill a niche that had never been filled before. Kids loved this thing. If it hasn't happened already, Fearless will soon have achieved 10 million sales worldwide, a number that's phenomenal in today's depressed music market.
A couple of strange things happened with the promotion of this album. One was a very public brouhaha involving Kanye West at an awards show. I've actually never seen the video clip, but apparently Mr. West did something very bad and disrespectful to Ms. Swift on television and the video of their interaction went viral. Taylor Swift wasn't just a singer anymore. She was a very public and sympathetic personality.
Second, Taylor Swift sang on the Grammys in 2010 and absolutely stank. Worse yet, she sang not just one time, but twice. Even if you were inclined to be sympathetic with her mangling her first performance, you got annoyed in a hurry by bomb number two.
The fact is that Taylor Swift cannot hit her notes live. She is a studio manufactured singer who couldn't make it in the music world without Auto-tune. While these performances generated much negative publicity, most of the public is tone deaf anyway and musical ability has never been an important thing in the world of kiddie pop. From Fabian on to Britney Spears, kiddie pop is all about personality and looks, not musicality.
This month, Taylor Swift released her third album, Speak Now. She shed her collaborator on her first two albums, Liz Rose. She is now too old to be a kiddie pop singer - although she still has a big pre-teen and teen following - and so she redefined herself with Speak Now. Ms. Swift doesn't sing about high school romances. Instead Speak Now is about weddings and adventures falling in and out of love with famous movie and music hunks. Her fans can be voyeurs as they listen to Ms. Swift sing about what a rat John Mayer is or how she's sorry she broke up with Taylor Lautner. It's a reality TV show set to music.
The songs aren't very good. Without Liz Rose, Ms. Swift seems to have forgotten about the importance of a good hook, making sure a song's central theme is all about that hook, and keeping a song tightly structured. Speak Now has a bunch of messy and sloppy songs that just don't stick. Be that as it may, singing about breaking up with famous boyfriends is a time honored way for a pretty female singer to have a good career (note these two, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon). Speak Now went platinum in its first week.
Can Taylor Swift be a long-lived star? I have no idea really. It's always a mystery to me why certain stars fade and others shine bright for decades. No, Taylor Swift can't really sing, but that doesn't matter as I've noted above. Plus, she's finally discovered the value of Live Auto-tune for performances and as a result, she no longer sounds so awful on TV.
Taylor Swift can probably keep singing about losing famous boyfriends for another album or two, but then that's going to get old. She doesn't have anywhere near the talent of Joni Mitchell and can't sing nearly as well as Carly Simon, so she's going to have to rely on her personality to carry her. It is a pleasant and winsome personality. Lord knows, we could always use more pleasant and polite people in this world.
I imagine that in another three years Taylor Swift's records will start to go stiff and her career will shift to playing state fairs and whatnot. But I also note that Britney Spears - someone with less talent than Taylor Swift and a whole lot of emotional baggage and bad publicity - made something on the order of 60 million dollars last year. Madonna - who in terms of talent is at about the same level as Taylor Swift - is still an improbable big draw at the age of 52. So maybe Ms. Swift will be around singing badly about love lost for decades. Stranger things have happened.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Taylor Swift's Newest Song, Dear Jake
I haven't gotten around to writing Part 2 of my Taylor Swift post. But while doing my "research" I noted Ms. Swift was currently dating Jake Gyllenhaal. Since her m.o. is to sleep with some famous guy for a couple of months and then write an "emotional" song about it, I decided to beat her to the punch.
Dear Jake
By Taylor Swift (and Stuart Rosh)
Dear Jake, it’s been nice
But I have to say good-bye
Coz my career requires
I write, all these songs
About breaking up with famous guys
So I can't stay ‘round too long
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Dear Jake, yeah you’re cute
But so were all the others
And I’m giving you the boot
Besides, I’m worried
I saw you kiss another man
In that creepy cowboy movie
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Bridge
You’ll be a new teardrop on my guitar
As I write about how I've lost
My hunky movie star
(Breaks down and cries and sobs and then says: I’m getting vehrklempt here, that’s a word that my new best friend Barbra taught me.)
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Dear Jake! Dear Jake! Dear Jake!
For those who want to endure listening to this thing, you can find it here. I think the song begins, after a rambling monologue, at about the one minute mark.
Dear Jake
By Taylor Swift (and Stuart Rosh)
Dear Jake, it’s been nice
But I have to say good-bye
Coz my career requires
I write, all these songs
About breaking up with famous guys
So I can't stay ‘round too long
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Dear Jake, yeah you’re cute
But so were all the others
And I’m giving you the boot
Besides, I’m worried
I saw you kiss another man
In that creepy cowboy movie
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Bridge
You’ll be a new teardrop on my guitar
As I write about how I've lost
My hunky movie star
(Breaks down and cries and sobs and then says: I’m getting vehrklempt here, that’s a word that my new best friend Barbra taught me.)
I gotta put an album out next year
And you know what that means
I gotta throw out boyfriends like stale beer
And write how they all hurt me
And break my poor little precious heart
Like you have!
Dear Jake! Dear Jake! Dear Jake!
For those who want to endure listening to this thing, you can find it here. I think the song begins, after a rambling monologue, at about the one minute mark.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Taylor Swift Can't Sing or Write, But That Doesn't Matter, and No I'm Not Being Mean, Part 1
If I remember correctly, I was Taylor Swift's friend number 520 or so back in the recent past when Myspace was the thing. She was about 16 and had signed a contract with a new tiny Nashville record company, Big Machine. On Myspace, she'd post tidbits about songs she was working on and hooks she had come up with. For those who don't know song lingo, a hook is a catchy musical phrase or song title that's used in the chorus. In Nashville, hooks are always song titles.
At 16, Taylor Swift was already well aware that a song lived or died on its hook. I didn't know it at the time, but she was working with and learning from a songwriter I vaguely knew, a Nashville songwriting veteran at a tiny publishing house. The writer was a suburban mom who probably related to Ms. Swift well. And clearly she was being a good mentor.
I had a lot of young female aspiring Nashville stars as friends on Myspace back then. No I wasn't being a stalker. But if you're going to write music for the Nashville market, the odds of getting a song signed to a major star are almost non-existent (when I heard from a publisher that Tim McGraw was going to record a song of mine, I felt like I was going to die and go to heaven; but neither - going to heaven nor having Tim McGraw sing my tune - happened). So the better bet - still remote - is to find talented young aspiring stars in Nashville and write songs with them. Male singers tend to think they can write songs on their own (they're usually wrong). But female singers know they can't.
The standard strategy of a songwriter in Nashville is to try to be avuncular and helpful with as many young female Nashville singers as possible and co-write with them. The hope is that one day one of them will get a record deal and record a song on her first album that you co-wrote. That approach used to be surprisingly effective - if time consuming and inefficient - for quite a few people I know.
Big Machine Records was one of many boutique labels that popped up in Nashville after the downloading-induced collapse of the record industry. Midas, Cloud 9, Broken Bow, Montage (I'm trying to remember the names of record companies I visited fairly regularly off the top of my head). A lot of rich people from god knows where who had Nashville record company dreams started labels at the time. They'd hire people to head them who had gotten laid off at RCA, Sony et al. Their chance of success was ridiculously remote.
Taylor Swift was, I think, one of three initial acts signed by Big Machine. No major label would have signed her. It's not that she was too young. It's that she can't sing. At the time, singing ability was an essential requirement for females who wanted to get signed by RCA or Curb or Warner or Capitol. You really had to have serious vocal chops. You had to sing on pitch. Major country labels had old school standards about female singers, not so much for male singers. Taylor Swift wasn't even close.
But either by luck or genius, Big Machine was on to something with Ms. Swift. Unlike any singer that came before her, she ignored the types of topics that were the staple of country music, tales of long-lasting love, hardship, nostalgia, and hard won wisdom. Instead, she sang about teen age boys in a winsome way. She and Big Machine invented a whole new sub-genre, kiddie-country-pop. And it took off.
Before Ms. Swift, the dominant market for country music was the suburban red-state mom, the kind that played CDs in her minivan while shuttling kids to soccer, baseball, dance class or whatever. Every Nashville artist and every song had to pass the suburban red-state mom litmus test. These women were the ones who bought their CDs at Walmart. And Walmart drove country music sales.
Major labels and publishing houses were well aware of the importance of the suburban red-state mom and Walmart. They were dismissive of newbies like Big Machine because they assumed rightly that little labels couldn't get the financing and credibility to push for major purchases at Walmart. The feeling was that a new record company might be able to generate a hit on radio, but if it did, CD sales depended on Walmart having at least tens of thousands of copies of the song in their warehouses three weeks before it took off. Newbies like Big Machine couldn't make that happen. They were doomed as a result.
The first song that hit the charts for Taylor Swift was a cute-kiddie-pop thing named Tim McGraw (after the singer). It was about a teen relationship that ended badly co-written with Taylor Swift's mentor; in the song, hearing Tim McGraw on the radio is supposed to trigger a memory. The song broke a cardinal rule in pop songwriting, the chorus needs to lift up. But Taylor Swift has only about a one octave singing range. It's hard to lift a song by a fourth or fifth in the chorus when the singer can only hit eight notes. Instead of lifting to maintain audience interest, the chorus in the song has a rhythmic change to separate it from the verses. This little trick has turned out to be Taylor Swift's signature style.
The song started very slowly on the country charts. Big Machine made a music video of Taylor falling in and out of love with a cute boy that was popular on CMT. It was Blue Lagoon without the sex. And they also did a very clever thing that endeared them to country music stations. There's a line in the final chorus,"some day you'll turn your radio on," in that song. Big Machine sent a personalized version of that line to every radio station; they included Ms. Swift singing the radio station's call letters in the song. It was a cute idea and Taylor Swift was cute as a button.
Slowly but surely teen and pre-teen girls started to get interested in Taylor Swift. They'd never been courted before by country music. That music was the stuff their moms listened to in their mini-vans not them. They listened to pure pop, people like Avril Lavigne, on their headphones.
Those kids liked what they heard. Tim McGraw kept rising in the charts. An album was released in the fall. On the strength of the slowly building radio play of the single, Walmart bought tons of album copies. About 40,000 CDs were sold in the first week, numbers unheard of for a boutique label. Big Machine had created an entirely new sub genre in pop music and they had that sub-genre's only practitioner. Teenage and preteen girls have a lot of disposable income. The album went platinum.
In May of 2007, rising star Taylor Swift appeared at the Academy of Country Music show in Las Vegas for the first time. I was there. Two things were obvious. One, Taylor Swift couldn't really sing. Two, she was extremely confident, poised and could easily connect with an audience.
Taylor Swift's success wouldn't depend on her music. It would depend on her message and personality. She wasn't a singer, but for lack of a better word, a "singtertainer". Her role models weren't Pasty Cline or Trish Yearwood, but performers with weak voices and big personalities like Madonna. She would have to re-invent herself every couple of years to maintain interest. And that seems to be what is happening. I'll continue this next time.
At 16, Taylor Swift was already well aware that a song lived or died on its hook. I didn't know it at the time, but she was working with and learning from a songwriter I vaguely knew, a Nashville songwriting veteran at a tiny publishing house. The writer was a suburban mom who probably related to Ms. Swift well. And clearly she was being a good mentor.
I had a lot of young female aspiring Nashville stars as friends on Myspace back then. No I wasn't being a stalker. But if you're going to write music for the Nashville market, the odds of getting a song signed to a major star are almost non-existent (when I heard from a publisher that Tim McGraw was going to record a song of mine, I felt like I was going to die and go to heaven; but neither - going to heaven nor having Tim McGraw sing my tune - happened). So the better bet - still remote - is to find talented young aspiring stars in Nashville and write songs with them. Male singers tend to think they can write songs on their own (they're usually wrong). But female singers know they can't.
The standard strategy of a songwriter in Nashville is to try to be avuncular and helpful with as many young female Nashville singers as possible and co-write with them. The hope is that one day one of them will get a record deal and record a song on her first album that you co-wrote. That approach used to be surprisingly effective - if time consuming and inefficient - for quite a few people I know.
Big Machine Records was one of many boutique labels that popped up in Nashville after the downloading-induced collapse of the record industry. Midas, Cloud 9, Broken Bow, Montage (I'm trying to remember the names of record companies I visited fairly regularly off the top of my head). A lot of rich people from god knows where who had Nashville record company dreams started labels at the time. They'd hire people to head them who had gotten laid off at RCA, Sony et al. Their chance of success was ridiculously remote.
Taylor Swift was, I think, one of three initial acts signed by Big Machine. No major label would have signed her. It's not that she was too young. It's that she can't sing. At the time, singing ability was an essential requirement for females who wanted to get signed by RCA or Curb or Warner or Capitol. You really had to have serious vocal chops. You had to sing on pitch. Major country labels had old school standards about female singers, not so much for male singers. Taylor Swift wasn't even close.
But either by luck or genius, Big Machine was on to something with Ms. Swift. Unlike any singer that came before her, she ignored the types of topics that were the staple of country music, tales of long-lasting love, hardship, nostalgia, and hard won wisdom. Instead, she sang about teen age boys in a winsome way. She and Big Machine invented a whole new sub-genre, kiddie-country-pop. And it took off.
Before Ms. Swift, the dominant market for country music was the suburban red-state mom, the kind that played CDs in her minivan while shuttling kids to soccer, baseball, dance class or whatever. Every Nashville artist and every song had to pass the suburban red-state mom litmus test. These women were the ones who bought their CDs at Walmart. And Walmart drove country music sales.
Major labels and publishing houses were well aware of the importance of the suburban red-state mom and Walmart. They were dismissive of newbies like Big Machine because they assumed rightly that little labels couldn't get the financing and credibility to push for major purchases at Walmart. The feeling was that a new record company might be able to generate a hit on radio, but if it did, CD sales depended on Walmart having at least tens of thousands of copies of the song in their warehouses three weeks before it took off. Newbies like Big Machine couldn't make that happen. They were doomed as a result.
The first song that hit the charts for Taylor Swift was a cute-kiddie-pop thing named Tim McGraw (after the singer). It was about a teen relationship that ended badly co-written with Taylor Swift's mentor; in the song, hearing Tim McGraw on the radio is supposed to trigger a memory. The song broke a cardinal rule in pop songwriting, the chorus needs to lift up. But Taylor Swift has only about a one octave singing range. It's hard to lift a song by a fourth or fifth in the chorus when the singer can only hit eight notes. Instead of lifting to maintain audience interest, the chorus in the song has a rhythmic change to separate it from the verses. This little trick has turned out to be Taylor Swift's signature style.
The song started very slowly on the country charts. Big Machine made a music video of Taylor falling in and out of love with a cute boy that was popular on CMT. It was Blue Lagoon without the sex. And they also did a very clever thing that endeared them to country music stations. There's a line in the final chorus,"some day you'll turn your radio on," in that song. Big Machine sent a personalized version of that line to every radio station; they included Ms. Swift singing the radio station's call letters in the song. It was a cute idea and Taylor Swift was cute as a button.
Slowly but surely teen and pre-teen girls started to get interested in Taylor Swift. They'd never been courted before by country music. That music was the stuff their moms listened to in their mini-vans not them. They listened to pure pop, people like Avril Lavigne, on their headphones.
Those kids liked what they heard. Tim McGraw kept rising in the charts. An album was released in the fall. On the strength of the slowly building radio play of the single, Walmart bought tons of album copies. About 40,000 CDs were sold in the first week, numbers unheard of for a boutique label. Big Machine had created an entirely new sub genre in pop music and they had that sub-genre's only practitioner. Teenage and preteen girls have a lot of disposable income. The album went platinum.
In May of 2007, rising star Taylor Swift appeared at the Academy of Country Music show in Las Vegas for the first time. I was there. Two things were obvious. One, Taylor Swift couldn't really sing. Two, she was extremely confident, poised and could easily connect with an audience.
Taylor Swift's success wouldn't depend on her music. It would depend on her message and personality. She wasn't a singer, but for lack of a better word, a "singtertainer". Her role models weren't Pasty Cline or Trish Yearwood, but performers with weak voices and big personalities like Madonna. She would have to re-invent herself every couple of years to maintain interest. And that seems to be what is happening. I'll continue this next time.
Monday, November 08, 2010
When Grade Inflation Really Began
"Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily -- Grade A for work of not very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity . . . One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work."
The assumption is that Harvard in 1894 represents all of higher education in 1894 and decades thereafter. No data usually back up these attempts to dismiss grade inflation by making it seem common as dirt for over a century. The only person I know that has attempted to use data is Harry Lewis from Harvard, who meticulously examined Dean's Lists over time at that school. Here are the trends in the percentage of Harvard students who made the Dean's List (from Lewis' book, Excellence Without A Soul):
Looking at this chart probably makes you inclined to agree that significant grade inflation has been going on since at least the 1920s at Harvard. A greater percentage of students end up on the Dean's List every year.
But Dean's List percentages are not grades. They are a proxy for grades. Actual grades at Harvard show a different story:
You can see just why Harvard was concerned about high grades in 1894. A's and B's, according to 1890 data, were being handed out 47% of the time. The university wasn't particularly selective then in its admissions either. They accepted very run of the mill students and there is no way that those students were producing good to excellent work nearly half the time. Harvard was in fact, being too easy on its students back then and the ease wasn't just in grading as is documented in the recent and excellent sociology book The Chosen by Karabel.
But then in the 1900s, Harvard decided to get serious about education again. Grades dropped accordingly. It wasn't until the 1960's that A's became as common as they were in 1890.
Was there grade inflation from 1920 to 1960? Yes, but it was, like at other schools (as I and Chris Healy documented in our 2010 Teachers College Record paper), very modest. B gradually replaced C as the most common grade. A's were still uncommon. The change was to be expected. Student quality did get better at Harvard over that time. Students also didn't drop out as frequently, which meant they increasing took upper division classes; these classes traditionally have higher grades. Nationwide, part of the modest rise in grades at that time was due to a new requirement that a 2.0 GPA or greater be required for graduation.
But the changes in grades prior to 1960 at Harvard and elsewhere pale in comparison to the grade changes in the Vietnam era and beyond. A's rose dramatically in the 1960s. By the 1990s, A was the most common grade at Harvard. As Chris Healy and I show in a paper that should be published before the year is out, A became the most common grade not only at Harvard, but on average nationwide in the 1990s. By early in the 2000s, A was by far the most common grade at Harvard, easily eclipsing the once common B; this too happened, on average, nationwide. Excellence became ordinary.
Has grade inflation truly been with us for a century or so? At Harvard the answer is no. Not surprisingly, that's also true at the other schools for which we have extensive historical data. Grade inflation is really a Vietnam era and beyond problem. I note that Harry Lewis, after seeing the grade chart I show above, agrees with this assessment for Harvard.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Overhyped and Weak Tea
Given all the press coverage the Tea Party received this year, you would have thought a revolution was in the works. The media, always desperate for something to fill the 24 hour news cycle, covered every little twitch, protest sign, and shout in anger of the Tea Party for over a year. Somehow the press was convinced that photos and videos of deranged white people were an audience magnet. Every day, the news looked more and more like the Jerry Springer Show.
And what happened to this revolution? Sharron Angle? Gone. Christine O'Donnell? Gone. Ken Buck? In a dead heat with 85 percent of the vote in a race that should have been a walk. Joe Miller? Kicked to the curb by a write in vote. So much for the revolution.
Had the Republicans put forth center-right candidates instead of Tea Party nutters, they would have won control of the Senate. The Tea Party hurt the Republicans this election. Despite all the hype and press, the Tea Party represents a fringe movement. It's very weak tea.
The screaming people at health care Town Halls and the Glenn Beck gathering on The Mall were a side show. This country remains on average, center-right in its politics. I know it doesn't make for exciting news that people want social services, like Medicare, as well as defense and low taxes, but they do. They also want jobs, which is why they voted for the "other guy" this election. The disconnect between the press hype about anger and right wing rage and the reality of how people actually voted was huge.
Will the press start to get responsible and change from Jerry Springer type coverage of angry white people to real news? Not unless the public says no to the titillation and instead demands to hear information of substance. Ultimately, we get the press we deserve.
Tea Party winners like Paul and Rubio spoke like they were gods in their victory speeches, men with a vision of the dramatic change Americans want. These people are crackpots. There has been no massive political shift in the American public. The public wants an economy that works. They aren't suddenly going to be buying millions of copies of Ayn Rand, demand that Social Security be privatized, and roll back civil rights laws from the 1960s.
If there is still high unemployment in 2012, the public will vote the Republicans they just elected out of office and probably vote out Obama as well. Tea Party, Shmee Party. Just like in every election, it's the economy stupid.
And what happened to this revolution? Sharron Angle? Gone. Christine O'Donnell? Gone. Ken Buck? In a dead heat with 85 percent of the vote in a race that should have been a walk. Joe Miller? Kicked to the curb by a write in vote. So much for the revolution.
Had the Republicans put forth center-right candidates instead of Tea Party nutters, they would have won control of the Senate. The Tea Party hurt the Republicans this election. Despite all the hype and press, the Tea Party represents a fringe movement. It's very weak tea.
The screaming people at health care Town Halls and the Glenn Beck gathering on The Mall were a side show. This country remains on average, center-right in its politics. I know it doesn't make for exciting news that people want social services, like Medicare, as well as defense and low taxes, but they do. They also want jobs, which is why they voted for the "other guy" this election. The disconnect between the press hype about anger and right wing rage and the reality of how people actually voted was huge.
Will the press start to get responsible and change from Jerry Springer type coverage of angry white people to real news? Not unless the public says no to the titillation and instead demands to hear information of substance. Ultimately, we get the press we deserve.
Tea Party winners like Paul and Rubio spoke like they were gods in their victory speeches, men with a vision of the dramatic change Americans want. These people are crackpots. There has been no massive political shift in the American public. The public wants an economy that works. They aren't suddenly going to be buying millions of copies of Ayn Rand, demand that Social Security be privatized, and roll back civil rights laws from the 1960s.
If there is still high unemployment in 2012, the public will vote the Republicans they just elected out of office and probably vote out Obama as well. Tea Party, Shmee Party. Just like in every election, it's the economy stupid.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Driving the Car of the Future
It actually is already economically unattractive. The cost of driving an electric car per mile of use is 1/2 that of driving my Prius, which means it's about 1/4 that of driving a typical gas powered car. Drive a car 15,000 miles per year and you're spending about $1300 extra annually for the privilege of using oil and supporting oil rich nations that don't like the US very much. Why would anyone do that?
The answer to that question was easy in the past. Electric cars required an expensive initial cost relative to mass produced gas cars. They typically had to be charged every 40 miles or so, making them impractical even for a typical commute. Their top speeds were often on the low side, making them unusable for the highway. In short, they were impractical.
But increasingly, those negatives aren't true. I recently drove two all-electric cars, the Tesla Roadster and the Nissan Leaf. The Roadster has been out for awhile, at least a couple of years. On the negative side, it's basically a toy for rich people. The cost is well over 100 thousand dollars, and there is room for no more than two people and maybe one bag of golf clubs. The body comes from Lotus and it drives like a 1000-pound-too-heavy version of an elite gas-powered sports car. The handling is kind of clunky. Basically, the Tesla is a very expensive muscle car.
On the plus side, the car has a 230 mile range and its acceleration provides blood-boiling excitement. Personally if I were very rich and wanted a sports car, I'd just go for the gas-powered Lotus, which I'm sure handles much more nimbly. But the Tesla Roadster does have its uncompromising power.
Then there is the Nissan Leaf. I drove that car last week and it will be available for sale in December. If I remember correctly, 50,000 or so will be built the first year for worldwide use and in the US, every one of the cars that will be available for the first six months or so is essentially already sold. Why? This car is amazing.
The cost of the car after a federal rebate is in the 25-27K range. About 10K of that cost comes from the batteries themselves. I have no doubt that, like Toyota did initially with the Prius, Nissan is pricing this car below actual cost. But as the cost for batteries drops and production becomes more efficient, the Leaf will turn a profit.
What do you get for about $26,000? A Toyota Corolla type of car with a hatchback, comfortable seating for four with lots of headroom, a top speed of 90 MPH and a range (with the air-conditioning off) of about 100 miles. The acceleration is much better than my Prius. The handling is much better than my Prius. On the outside, the car looks boring, but it's actually very fun to drive. The handling reminded me of those old Civic hatchbacks from the 80's, "sportscar-ish" even though it's a front-wheel drive car.
It's true you can buy a similar gas powered car for about 8K cheaper. It's going to take you several years of driving to make up for the initial extra outlay of cash for a Leaf, and that's assuming your don't earn much interest on the cash you'd save by buying a gas car (which is certainly true today). Right now when you buy a car like this, you're really buying it - like the Prius of several years ago - for that feeling of moral superiority.
But wait a few more years. Battery costs will continue to drop dramatically. Battery efficiency will increase. With mass production, the cost differential between electric and gas cars will shrink to almost nothing. The range of these cars will stretch out to 200 miles or more. Basically, as I drove this car I became more and more convinced I was driving the car of the future.
Nissan has a couple more electric models in the works. Volvo is supposedly coming out with an electric car based on Nissan's technology as well. I'd be inclined to buy the Leaf next year regardless because the battery packs are designed to be upgradable. For me, the future is essentially now. My guess is that for many, electric cars will become a very attractive potential purchase by 2014.
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