Taylor Swift

Bebe Salon

I got a haircut yesterday. I go to a woman's hair salon because my wife thinks they do a better job than a barber does. Something about the my hair being fine (yes, my hair is so fine, so fine, so fine). I go to Bebe because it's run by immigrants and it's cheap - $20.

Anyhoo, I'm there and the lady now has a TV I can watch while she's cutting my hair. Britain's Got Talent is playing and we are treated to a succession of female singers caterwauling their hearts out to a big and wildly enthusiastic audience of mostly women. It doesn't do anything for me, it sounds just like all those women singing in Six, but my hair cutter tells me their singing gives her chills. Well, that kind of explains why the audience is so ecstatic.

All this is just so I can point you to a review of Taylor Swift's show in Paris. It's a very entertaining read, especially if you don't give a rat's patootie for Taylor. I don't. Her success baffles me. I've tried listening to a couple of her songs, but I get bored in the first minute and tune out. 

Here's a couple of bits that tickled my funny bone. First, the setup:

Concertgoers — mostly young, mostly female — are in sparkly dresses, cowboy boots and glitter.

Now, the punchline:

Periodically, Swift sinks down a trapdoor in the middle of the stage, into what must be her era-shifting chamber, then remerges, moments later, from an ingenious new position and in a different outfit. I get the sparkly costumes now, because this is very much what Swift goes in for herself. Sparkly hot pants, sparkly ball gown, sparkly miniskirt with sparkly thigh-high boots — even what looks like a sparkly dressing gown. The battalion of dancers go through endless outfit changes too, but no-one’s allowed to sparkle quite like Swift. 

Anyway, it just goes to show that not everyone is tuned into the rock and roll wavelength. I don't know what the percentage is, but if you are running a propaganda campaign you don't want to ignore them.

Statista has a chart of musical preferences, but they don't have a category for caterwauling, so I don't know where Taylor Swift and Musical Theater would fall.