Mastermind

The Important Uncoolness of Caring Too Much

No one wanted to play with me as a little kid
So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since
To make them love me and make it seem effortless
This this the first time I've felt the need to confess
And I swear
I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian 'cause I care…
It was all my design
'Cause I'm a mastermind.

You probably already know whose lyrics those are. If you do, then you know that the singer is confessing that she puppet-stringed her entire relationship with her beloved (Screeching brakes sound meets scratching record sound. Welp, make that former-beloved. The Taylor/Joe breakup is official¹). But also in the same song, if the lyrics are true—and I think they are, or why would I be writing this now—Ms. Taylor Swift lays bare a broader mission statement, one that stretches beyond her romantic endeavors and into her entire M.O. as an artist/entertainer/icon:

I will make you love me and make it seem effortless.

That—effortlessly making people love her—is what hit me most, after the sheer grandiosity of the spectacle and the undeniably singalongable communality of her songs, standing in a stadium packed with 70,000 fans at the opening night of her long-awaited and now widely-lauded Eras Tour. She hit her marks like an OCD scientist who somehow was also a born entertainer with a genetically engineered voice that sounds amazing while also having some je-ne-sais-fille-next-door-ness to it. Every gesture, every coy smirk (and there were many), every head-tossed-back-eyes-closed-mic-in-my-hand-goin’-for-it moment²….was, well, perfect. Mathematical almost. Calculated for sure.

And, yet, seemingly effortless.

That’s not a dig, either. See, there are some artists whose entire “thing” feels dangerous and alive and careening near (or sometimes beyond) the edge. The spontaneity in their performances surprises even them. While there’s likely still some affectation for said artists, it can often feel like watching a sentient open wound or an escaped, sleep-deprived rabid animal. Think early punk rock….or….Kurt Cobain (who certainly put on his own airs…again, I’m not saying one is better or purer than the other) or Iggy Pop, how about Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, maybe Cat Power. They’re a species of seemingly feral, unpredictable performers. Alternately, there are other artists, though not necessarily raw or unhinged, where everything is more organic and taking-it-as-it-comes. Less thinking, more reacting. Think….Grateful Dead or The Band or Phish or any Bob Dylan live show—really, any number of improvisationally-oriented bands or basically any free jazz group. They’re not overplanning (though there is typically structure of some kind). Those types are carving out the most room for the unexpected, for the wild, though their virtuosity (and appreciation thereof) is typically more of a priority than for the feral open wound types.

Taylor Swift was neither of those.

I have always said: if you have the chance to play a lichen-crusted grand piano in front of thousands of people, YOU SIMPLY MUST DO IT.

What I saw with Taylor Swift was, like she says herself, a mastermind at work. The banter felt tossed off and in the moment, not unlike an Obama speech “ad lib” painstakingly written and rewritten and focus-grouped and rewritten days before (or much like her oft-noticed Surprised I Won An Award Face³). I’m not saying everything was pre-written, but she knows which buttons to push and just how hard/soft/often. Her banter—never mind the actual songs—inevitably caused cheers, tears, or both. By design.

DIGRESSION: Let me say, just once more, that this is not a critique. In recent years—on my comparatively nearly-nonexistent scale⁴—I’ve personally made more peace with the fact that, as a performer, sometimes I’ll have some of my onstage banter written out for reference. Sometimes just notes and keywords to trigger my memory. But, hey, I’ve even read “banter” directly, unabashedly. I spent years before that, though, 1) failing at being spontaneous and thus clamming up and freezing up onstage, paralytically worried about saying the wrong thing and/or 2) trying to pretend that my banter was casually tossed off, but not fooling anybody. What happened when I decided to be unashamed of writing it all down and even brazenly referring to it onstage? Surprise: I became more spontaneous. My banter got looser and better because I had a crutch. My brain unclenched itself and everything went better. Sometimes I don’t use it at all and it just serves as a prompt, or I even opt out of it. It’s worked for me in managing anxiety and being the person I want to be onstage—present, in the moment, but also prepared and ready to do my thing.

I’m not saying Taylor Swift has a crutch. Her onstage game is impeccable. Crisp. Bulletproof. Crutchless. She’s a total pro in every way. It doesn’t feel recited or read. It’s clean. Like the lie someone tells himself enough that he eventually wholly believes it, her onstage game feels natural and flawless.

What I am saying is that some people operate better with a plan. And I get that on an intimate level. Is it less artful because it was planned out?

So when I say Taylor Swift had a Golden Student Body President energy to her, that she was giving off Alpha Theater Kid vibes, that there was a Benevolent Queen feel to everything….it’s not a dig. It’s actually me saying I’m impressed. A handful of years ago, the internet ganged up on Anne Hathaway after she co-hosted the Oscars with James Franco and his inverse slacker energy. The discourse/critique was that Hathaway was guilty of the crime of….caring too much? The knives came out because, apparently, it was/is uncool to care like she did. And, look, that exact sentiment is just sitting there in Taylor Swift’s “Mastermind” too:

I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian 'cause I care

And not as a bug. As a feature.

You simply don’t put on the kind of mega-production that the Eras Tour is without caring. And caring A LOT. When people gush about epic concerts, one name that comes up most frequently is Bruce Springsteen, famed for going 3+ hours even as his age has bumped into AARP territory. The Boss is spoken of mythically. But nobody criticizes Springsteen for “caring too much.” That slam feels like a gendered cousin of the “shrill” description that typically lands only on women and not men. A sexist aggression. On her latest album, Iris Dement addresses the issue, in the context of The Chicks being crucified by country radio when they dared speak up about George W. Bush’s war-mongering (and WMD-not-finding) actions.

Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, any gun in a cowboy hat
Would have walked away unscathed
Takin' a stand like that⁵

And, surprise, Taylor herself has a separate song about the double standard. Because, yeah, she’s felt it:

They'd say I hustled
Put in the work
They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve
What I was wearing
If I was rude
Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves?

I was just gonna review the concert, but I guess it was time for a detour into sexism and power dynamics and Springsteen and Haggard and Machiavelli and the absurd idiocy of critiquing someone for the crime of giving a crap?⁶

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I drove to Phoenix, Arizona for the show with my daughter⁷. It was her Christmas present. We had two tickets, thanks to a ticket-wizard niece. But only two tickets and one of them was going to my daughter for sure. So my wife and I did not Rock Paper Scissors to decide who would go. I instead suggested we both pick up a piece of paper, start a 2-minute timer and write down as many Taylor Swift songs as we could. Winner goes to the show.

We never picked up the paper.

Nothing like seeing a show through the lens of a superfan.

Between the road trip and the interminable traffic-insane drive to the stadium, my daughter and I listened to every Taylor Swift song on every Taylor Swift album⁸. And then, of course, there was the epic 44-song set that comprised the concert. It was intense. Immersive, to say the least.

One observation emerged from my weekend of hyper-concentrated listening:

I posit that Taylor Swift writes every song to be a hit. Maybe that sounds obvious. But I think there are lots of songwriters who compartmentalize the hits from the other songs (often more beloved or more artsy but less “crafted” for hitdom). I don’t think she writes any songs without believing that they could be someone’s favorite song and also be sung at lungtop⁹ by a stadium of 70,000 people. She doesn’t seem bothered if this song has a similar chorus to that song, or if the chord changes are the same. Some songs chase the same chord changes or seem to be drafting off the air of a same root concept. Maybe her disinterest in worrying about repeating herself stems from a confidence that she’s already written loads of hits, combined with the knowledge that you’re lucky to have people remember even ONE of your songs, so if one of them is remembered, that’s good enough; who cares if some other song you wrote was similar? That’s a gift of perspective (not to mention a gift to be able to write songs that 70,000 people want to sing at the same time).

That sort of relentlessness and effortful writing comes down to, that’s right, caring.

As I listened through, it was cool to hear Taylor working on an idea—whether it was a melodic motif or lyric turn or chord sequence or just a general theme or emotion or situation—in various songs (a better researcher would provide concrete audio examples here but I didn’t take notes, I just noticed). You can hear her fleshing out themes across the albums. Sometimes it lands (hit!) and other times it’s just there. Painters get sketches and versions, the working through of a concept, the fleshing out of an idea. Why not songwriters?

We see Picasso’s sketches or Mondrian working with lines and color or Warhol’s repetitive stabs at the same idea—and we call it vision. It’s obsession. And, you know what else it is? It’s (motions with hands to have everyone say it in unison) caring. And Taylor Swift CARES A LOT¹⁰.

That caring rubs off. Fans don’t show up to these concerts in whatever they happen to be wearing that day. My daughter obsessed for months over what to wear, because she knew that How You Dress For The Taylor Swift Concert matters. That you’re not just getting dressed, you’re styling your memories. We showed up and, sure enough, people were dressed to the nines, or whatever fancy number comes after the nines—bedazzled, bejeweled, hair did, makeup all fancy, elaborate costumes representing even the smallest minutiae of the eras of Taylor Swift’s career (like, say, a refrigerator that’s in a music video for 4 seconds). And I found it absolutely amazing…this sense of universal fabulousness combined with a sense of belonging. Somehow every costume, every interpretation of every era of Taylor’s career….belonged. And everyone participated (even me! My daughter made sure that, at very least, my color scheme matched hers, which was Midnights-era themed.) That dedication and commitment doesn’t happen without some serious trickle-down care-onomics. 

There was no happenstance to opening night of the Eras tour.

Not onstage, with every era of her career represented like its own Broadway (but higher budget) production, every costume like a masterpiece, every transition between songs its own moment, the setlist plotted like, yes, a mastermind. And not offstage, with fans who had soldiered through Ticketmaster headaches and interminable traffic jams, showing up in full splendor and regalia, ready to launch the Eras Tour into the stratosphere, sartorially and decibel-ically¹¹ with spirit and hope and communion and release.

And with a whole lot of care, right?

When that many people care in the same place at the same time, that’s when the magic happens.

1. I, for one, look forward to a good breakup album. And new beau Matt Healy seems genetically engineered for that sort of thing.

2. Even my traveling concert companion, a 12 year old ultramegahumungosuperfan, commented on some of the go-to moves. Editorially, of course.

3

4. One of the most humbling features of Spotify’s app for artists is the ability to put your streaming numbers or listener count and plot them on a graph next to any other artist whose music is on Spotify. I can’t say I recommend the exercise, though I have taken my share of plunges into the abyss.

5. Show me the lie. You can’t!

6. I’ve thought a lot since Covid hit about earnestness and how it can be a target for hipster culture, how it’s easier to hide behind irony and coolness than to commit to caring. I don’t know that Jeff Tweedy was getting at that necessarily, but I found it reassuring that he too was reexamining his relationship with (and looking at their role as cultural punching bags) the ultra-earnest U2.

I have a whole post in me about Coolness vs Uncoolness and my lifelong charade that I can be cool and how eventually I made peace (ish) with the fact that a lot of the things I really like are sincere, earnest, and care a lot, all of which are jailable offenses in the Land of Cool (as is using the term “Land of Cool”).

7. Rule #72a of Concertgoing states: whenever possible, attend concerts with the person you know who loves The Artist the most. My daughter was that for Taylor Swift and it made the night all the more enchanting.

8. Pre-trip, my main familiarity was with Taylor’s albums 1989, Red, and—because I am a card-carrying bearded white dude in his 40’s and love The National— the Covid albums (produced in part by Aaron Dessner of The National). That obviously changed.

9. Not a word.

10. Shout out early Faith No More. Glad to see you got some love in the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, my dudes.

11. Also not a word.