I've always thought something was off about Taylor Swift. Her immaculate, porcelain skin, picture-perfect golden bangs -- and, certainly, her singing voice. Previously, I attributed these things to digital-image doctoring or recording software magic. More recently, I have become suspicious of the 24-year-old pop-country darling. Something about Swift's perfection almost seems a little too...well, perfect.
Until she wrote a completely jarring, disjointed, and delusional article for the Wall Street Journal that suggests she is some sort of malfunctioning cyborg. The piece, published this month and titled "For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music Is a Love Story," is a peculiar and meandering musing on...uh, being an artist, fans, the future or something.
The commentary begins with a safe and soggy question which reads like the opening line of a seventh-grader's essay, "Where will the music industry be in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years?" If somehow you manage to care further, this is what's in store for you...
Early on, Swift states, "In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on music when it goes out into the marketplace."
To translate, music is worth what someone puts into it. Oh but wait, music is also worth whatever the financial value the artist and label decide. So with that logic Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, which took fourteen years to write and release, is one the most valuable records ever created. And it is worth $11.99, the retail value at Best Buy when it came out. Still there? Nah, me neither, because that means nothing.
The article continues on, pausing for a brief moment to provide hope for little girls everywhere before resuming to ruminate nonsensically on the nature of music and art.
"Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for."
Are you getting the sense that one of her central processing microchips is being infested by inter-dimensional nanobots that are eating away at her fundamental programming? She's losing her ability to blend in with humanity, instead choosing to rely upon pure robot logic:
Music = Art Art = Rare Rare = Money
Although she's correct that music is technically art, the idea that all art is important and rare is a concept so far off it will make your eyes disintegrate into your skull as you rub them in disbelief. That's right, art is important and rare. For example, no one else could have written the piano-laden theme for Full House. That person earned and deserved every last penny, you un-evolved idiot. You know who else deserves some money? Your friend who got drunk and tried to re-record the Lion King soundtrack using a looping pedal and a pasta strainer.
Swiftbot1000 then switches gears (or galactic crystal cybertubes) and attempts to run simulations of human emotion and compassion, equating the love a fan has for music using the same terms as relationships between two humanoid organisms. Flash-in-the-pan dance anthems are referred to as "passing flings" while others symbolize more meaningful relationships from our pasts -- which is where it all falls apart.
Because that's a twisted and daft comparison that can only be made by someone who is either filthy rich and grossly out of touch with reality, or a total robot.
There's more inane crap in the obviously pasted-together garbage heap of writing. Functionless and drab positing on how autographs are archaic in favor of selfies, the idea of keeping fans in love with you by "surprising" them with live guest appearances, labels picking up artists preloaded with audiences -- you know, words of advice that apply to literally four extremely famous people who probably read the article as well.
Consider the simplistic head-shaking advice, the lawn-chair philosophizing on the future of music, and the fact that the article changes subjects drastically and without any segue. It all adds up to one thing.
Read the writing on the wall: She's an android, man.
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