singers

American popular music has produced some unforgettable female icons during my lifetime: Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Cher, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Adele, just to name a few. They have all been influential on their fan base, and to some degree, to the public in general. Joplin gave young women permission to experiment with sex and drugs, often to dangerous excess. She died of a heroin overdose. Dolly Parton has always encouraged women with her words and by example to be strong and independent without sacrificing their femininity or sexual charm. Madonna in some ways paralleled the rise to fame of Michael Jackson. She was definitely the queen of pop for a while, more so than Michael’s own sister, Janet. She still holds the record as the biggest selling female artist to date. All of these women enjoyed success here and around the world.

Perhaps these women prepared the way for the female entertainer who has taken the world by storm in the 21^st century and will likely surpass them all at some point. Taylor Swift is so much more than a singer, songwriter, musician, producer, and entertainer. She is a force. With the release of her single “Our Song” in 2006, she became the youngest singer-songwriter to perform an original song and reach the number one spot on the Hot Country Songs chart at the ripe age of seventeen. Two years later she became the youngest person to win the Country Music Association Awards’ top spot. She has won more American Music Awards than anyone else in history. She is the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard 200 chart’s top 10 simultaneously. She also broke Billboard’s record for most number one albums by a female artist. Swift made history again at the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took home the Album of the Year, becoming the first and only person to have won the award four times.

These accolades are phenomenal; however, some of her other accomplishments have served to establish her as one of the most influential women in the country, if not the world. According to some sources, the opening night of Swift’s Eras Tour set a record for the most attended concert ever by a female musical entertainer in the U.S. The tour continued to break attendance records across the country and became the first to surpass $1 billion in revenue. According to Forbes magazine, Swift became a billionaire in 2023 and thus the highest-earning female performer in the music industry. Between vinyl, streaming, and other media, Taylor Swift continues to break sales records in various categories every year.

I couldn’t find an estimate of how many people have seen Swift in concert over the course of her career. Based on stats that are available, close to 10 million people worldwide have attended her Eras tour, which ends in December 2024. She has been a dominant figure in the lives of at least two generations: her adoring fans and the many parents who continue to take their young children to her concerts. It is amazing how many of those parents and children (mostly female but certainly not all) sing along to every word of every song Taylor Swift performs. What a rush that must be for her.

Swift is an outspoken advocate for progressive causes, especially related to women and the LGBTQ population. She is not afraid to let her fans know through public statements and social media where she stands on controversial issues. She is not overtly political, and she attracts fans from across the political divide. Yes, there are Swifties for Trump – they may not agree with her ideologically, but they still love and identify with her music. She doesn’t shy away from publicly revealing her candidate of choice, even on the national level. She backed Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. She wisely stops short of suggesting who her fans should support, but she strongly encourages them to do their research and vote their conscience. Shortly after the presidential debate between Trump and Harris in September 2024, Taylor Swift sent messages on her social media platforms making her choice known and including a link to a voter registration site. According to multiple sources, over 400,000 people clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Swift posted it. That’s power, and I would guess that very few people in this country have that level of influence.

For those who still think that Taylor Swift’s work is just a bunch of shallow revenge music obsessing over her broken heart, I suspect they haven’t followed her career closely enough. Her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, has considerable depth thematically in places. Her lyrics really started to show her maturity as a songwriter with the 2020 release of Folklore. Okay, perhaps her musical compositions are not complex or interesting enough for some people, but I maintain she is writing good stuff. The song “This Is Me Trying” from the Folklore album packs a powerful punch that almost channels Bruce Springsteen in my mind. Oh, one more thing. My wife and I live in Missouri and are Kansas City Chiefs fans. We absolutely love seeing Taylor Swift at the football games and think the budding romance between the rock star and Chiefs tight end, Travis Kelce, is a refreshing American celebrity love story. They are adorable. Go ahead, call me a Swiftie. I’m “fearless.”

Source consulted:
https://theweek.com/culture/entertainment/1025810/taylor-swift-records-2023

Images:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift

There is no entertainer whose work I have admired more than that of Elton John. His 1974 Greatest Hits may have been the first album I ever personally owned, only because I have a sister who is about six years my senior, and I listened to her albums and singles until I discovered Elton John on the radio as I approached my formative teen years. I played that vinyl until it warped. Three years earlier I had started learning to the play the guitar, at first with a few lessons from a fellow who loved old folk tunes, but I quickly began picking out chords on my own and learning to play by ear. I had been singing both melody and harmony parts since I was a young child, mostly in church, school, or with family and relatives.

Elton John concert, February 1, 2022 (Kansas City)

The songs that Elton John and his lyrical collaborator, Bernie Taupin, produced interpreted the human condition for me and countless others around the globe. By his own testimony, one absolute constant in Elton John’s roller-coaster life has been his love and admiration for his songwriting partner. It was their songs that largely inspired me to start playing music, and I have been playing and performing them ever since. I still cover several of their tunes to this day (on guitar and keys), including the brilliantly composed “Your Song,” which I am still astounded to know that Taupin wrote at the ripe old age of 19.

If I had to choose one word to characterize Elton John’s life, it would have to be “outrageous,” an adjective that he has used from time to time in public appearances and in writing. By his own admission, Elton John has an addictive personality and spent many decades fighting horrible battles with drugs before finally going sober. He has a nasty temper nurtured by his wealth and fame, a personality trait that in my view is his least attractive. “I’m perfectly aware of how ridiculous my life is, and perfectly aware of what an arsehole I look like when I lose my temper over nothing,” he writes in his 2019 memoir simply titled Me. Of course, he is known for being self-indulgent, something he shares with many other pop stars of his generation. He is fairly critical of himself and open about what he perceives as his failures.

Elton John has endured his share of sadness: a troubled relationship with his parents, the many friends he has lost to AIDS, his own broken personal relationships, and the many years he was imprisoned by cocaine and alcohol. Those low points are perhaps balanced out with times of great joy, especially his hundreds and hundreds of live performances through the decades, the part of his career that he perhaps loved the most. He found what seems to be enduring love with his husband, David Furnish, and the couple have two sons, Zachary and Elijah. In the end, for multiple reasons connected to his upbringing and his rise to fame, I get the sense that Elton John had a very difficult time growing up, even long after he reached adulthood. Even so, I don’t see him as a tragic figure. I see him as an incredibly talented musician, songwriter, and entertainer who from a young age wanted to be loved and needed to be the best at what he was doing. By my account, he succeeded.

In a post from a few years back, I mentioned that I missed an opportunity to see Elton John perform when I was studying abroad in England in 1984. Fortunately, my wife and I were able to catch him in Kansas City in February, 2022, for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. He was showing obvious signs of his 75 years on the planet by then, but his voice was still incredibly strong. Yes, I know that backtracks and other enhancements make it possible for concerts to sound almost flawless, but Elton John has been extremely critical of performers who lip sync at their shows. I’m assuming he doesn’t. He has probably tuned his songs down a half or whole step from the original, and he has younger vocalists to help with the stratospheric notes, but he also rearranges songs to make them more manageable for his septuagenarian voice. Some of the tunes don’t sound the way most of us remember them, but they are still wonderful songs, and he remains a fabulous and generous entertainer.

If You Want My Opinion

Here it is!

A Swift Rise to Stardom and Influence

Sir Elton John