AusGeoff wrote on Dec 9^th, 2023 at 2:20am:


and yet you bought it up as if it was relevant

AusGeoff wrote on Dec 9^th, 2023 at 2:20am:



Ahh, so it is about the money


AusGeoff wrote on Dec 9^th, 2023 at 2:20am:


driving that marketing machine TAKES talent ... and millions of people would disagree with you about her talent. You aren't the final arbiter of who is and who isn't talented.

AusGeoff wrote on Dec 9^th, 2023 at 2:20am:


It always is .. Times doesn't publish the magazine so they can lose money

AusGeoff wrote on Dec 14^th, 2023 at 4:47pm:


Person of the Year (called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999) is an annual issue of the American news magazine and website Time featuring a person, a group, idea, or object that "for better or for worse... has done the most to influence the events of the year".

"Every year contains light and dark; 2023 was a year with significant shares of darkness. In a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light. No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well. Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power."


https://time.com/6342816/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift-choice/

Last month, Harvard announced that I would be teaching a class next semester called “Taylor Swift and Her World,” an open-enrollment lecture partly about Swift’s work and career and partly about literature (poems, novels, memoirs) that overlaps with, or speaks to, that work. When the news came out, my inbox blew up with dozens of requests, from as far away as New Zealand. Reporters wanted to know whether Swift would visit the course (not expecting her to), whether her online superfans were involved (some will be), whether Harvard approved (yes, at least so far), and, above all, why a Millennial pop star deserves this kind of treatment at a world-class university.
The Atlantic




English 183ts. Taylor Swift and Her World
Instructor: Stephanie Burt
Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD
Course Site

The first song on Taylor Swift's first record, released when she was 16, paid homage (by name) to a more established country artist. Today she's the most recognizable country-- or formerly country? or pop?-- artist in North America, if not the world: her songwriting takes in half a dozen genres, and her economic impact changes cities. We will move through Swift's own catalogue, including hits, deep cuts, outtakes, re-recordings, considering songwriting as its own art, distinct from poems recited or silently read. We will learn how to study fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation; how to think about white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts. We will learn how to think about illicit affairs, and hoaxes, champagne problems and incomplete closure. We will look at her precursors, from Dolly Parton to the Border Ballads, and at work about her (such as the documentary "Miss Americana"). And we will read literary works important to her and works about song and performance, with novels, memoirs and poems by (among others) Willa Cather, James Weldon Johnson, Tracey Thorn, and William Wordsworth.
https://english.fas.harvard.edu/english-183ts-taylor-swift-and-her-world




The valorisation of the banal.
Don't let your kids enrol in English departments at uni.

Dnarever wrote on Dec 7^th, 2023 at 8:26pm:

Bobby. wrote on Dec 7^th, 2023 at 11:13pm:

Frank wrote on Dec 8^th, 2023 at 3:37pm:


Don't like Swift .... never liked Spice Girls.

Both don't & didn't rate in my music preferences.

Dnarever wrote on Dec 8^th, 2023 at 9:49pm:


She markets herself for profit

Is she Jesus?