Category: Country and western

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Taylor Swiftย from “teenage wunderkind” to “artist of the decade” (part 2)

During the last five years, Taylor Swift is pushing her musical boundaries (again). Part 2 of this post covers the period from 2020, during which four new albums saw the light of day and she was named ‘Person of the Year’ by Time magazine. In 2022, that accolade went to Volodymyr Zelensky.

The outbreak of the corona epidemic led to the cancellation of a planned tour in 2020, which suddenly gave her an unprecedented amount of time and rest. Nevertheless, 2020 proved to be her most successful year yet, both artistically and commercially. In the second half of 2020, she released two albums in quick succession unannounced: Folklore and evermore (written with lower case). She had read many books and was fascinated by the variety of human characters she encountered in them. She continues to write from the โ€˜me-person’, but many songs are about other people, fictional or existing. Her lyrics reach an even greater degree of self-awareness, introspection and poetic content. 

Folklore

At first, Listen to โ€˜Betty’ from the album ‘Folklore’, performed live at the Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. It is part of a ‘teenage love triangle’. In this song, Taylor (in the person of a 17-year-old James) apologises for how he cheated on Betty with an unnamed person, who ‘gets to talk’ in the song ‘August’.

You can find the lyrics of this song here

In another song “Cardigan”, Taylor sings from Betty’s perspective. Betty still hopes for the relationship with James to continue. 

You can find the lyrics to this song here

In the third song ‘August’, we hear the anonymous girl James was in a relationship with over the summer. She laments that James has ‘made up’ again with Betty. But she resignedly says: “You weren’t mine to lose.”

The recording of these songs comes from the ‘Folklore Long Pond Studio Sessions’ a music film that features all of Folklore’s songs. Taylor Swift wrote these with co-producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner because concerts were not possible in corona time. They also provide the accompaniment on these recordings. Other songs you should definitely listen to and read the lyrics. Here are four further examples: ‘The 1’, ‘Mirrorball’, ‘This is me trying’ and ‘Peace’.

Most critics called ‘Folklore’ the best album Taylor had made up to that point. The New York Times goes even further and considers this album the best thing the pandemic has produced. 

evermore

Amid euphoria, a few months later ‘evermore’ appeared unexpectedly, an album that was also very well received. It resembles ‘Folklore’. The character studies go a little deeper; Swift still fathoms human emotions around love, grief, marriage and infidelity from the ‘I’ position. Some songs have a clearer pop accent, with melodies that are easy on the ears. This includes the song ‘No body no crime‘ To the more ‘poppy’ songs, you could add ‘Karma’ and ‘Anti-hero’. I will present the the music video for the latter song later. 

โ€˜evermoreโ€™ is also characterised by dreamy ballads. ‘Willow’, for instance, has that same subdued quality as most songs from ‘Folklore’. 

You can find the lyrics to this song here

Similar songs on ‘evermore’ are: ‘Champagne problems‘ ‘Coney  island’ and ‘Marjorie’, The latter song is about Taylor’s grandmother, the opera singer Marjorie Finlay. ‘Tolerate it’ is about relationships between young women and older men. The maker of this (unofficial) music film has provided the song with images from the Netflix series โ€˜The Crown’, specifically Charles and Diana.

Midnights

The albumsย Folkloreย andย evermoreย were based on fictional narratives.ย She imposed emotions onto imagined characters and stories, which liberated her from tabloid attention. On 21 October 2022, the tenth album, Midnights, was released. It matches older albums like 1989 more than the two previous two. T, such as anxiety, insomnia, self-criticism, revenge and schizophrenia and but also confidence in herself. She deals with these themes in a more abstract way to enable the listeners to recognize their own emotions.

The album incorporates a restrained electropop and synth-pop sound with elements of hip hop, R&B, rather than from indie folk and ‘alternative rock, labels that graced the previous two albums. One commentator speaks of โ€˜chillout music’. Critics were again very positive because of the understated production and vocal style. They also praised the refinement of Swift’s writing. 

You can now listen to ‘Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.

The lyrics of this song are here

In this song, she laments the relationship she had at the age of 19 with a ‘grown-up’ man, the way he treated her and the trauma she suffered as a result: “I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil at 19 / And the God’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven / And now that I’m grown, I’m scared of ghosts.”

Other songs from this album include ‘Karma’ and Bejuweled, a paraphrase of the Cinderella fairy tale. Worth mentioning is the ballad ‘Youโ€™re losing me’. Many saw in it the foreshadowing of the end of her six-year relationship with English actor Jo Alwyn. Furthermore, you should definitely listen to ‘Sweet  nothing’, about the periods of peace Swift experiences in her own home, ‘Maroon‘, a song about missed opportunities and ‘Midnight rain’ in which Swift muses on how things would have been different if she had not chosen her career first and foremost with a previous love. 

The song “You’re on your own, kid” from Midnights describes the insecurities young adults face when they have to build a position, face relationships and see friends go their own way too: “Summer went away / Still the yearning stays / I play it cool with the best of them / I wait patiently / He’s gonna notice me / It’s ok, we’re the best of friends”.

You can find the lyrics to this song here

Midnights was her fifth album to open atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over one million copies, and its tracks, led by the single “Anti-Hero“, made Swift the first artist to monopolize the top 10 of the Hot 100.

Midnights is her the most commercially successful album too. Spotify reports never had so many albums have been streamed in one day, and it was the first time in history that Billboard’s entire top ten consisted of Swift’s songs.

The tortured poets department

Swift’s 11th album was released unexpectedly on April 19, 2024. She had been working on it in secret during the โ€˜Eras Tourโ€™. She referred at the album as a โ€˜lifelineโ€™, with introspective songs that depict emotional tumult, with self-awareness, mourning, anger, humor, and delusion as dominant themes. Swift wrote and produced the album with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.

The album broke numerous commercial records, including the highest single-day and single-week streams for an album on Spotify. It became the world’s best-selling album of 2024. โ€˜Fortnightโ€™ was the highest rating single, co-written by Post Malone.

Listen to Fortnight here.

From a musical point of view, a variety of musical styles can be recognized, like minimalist synth-pop, chamber pop, and folk-pop effort with country and rock stylings. Fortnight is exemplary for synth-pop. The songs that are co-written and co-produced by Aron Dessner feature acoustic arrangements, driven by piano and strings, evoking folk-pop arrangements, compared to Swift’s 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore. Listen for example to โ€˜So high schoolโ€™ en โ€˜Who is afraid of little old meโ€™

Comments were polarized. Critics praised her songwriting for emotional resonance and wit, but others found the album lacking profundity. Stepwise, the favorable reviews grew in number. Paul Bridgewater saw the album as Swiftโ€™s โ€œmost cohesive bodyโ€ finding the music sophisticated and the lyricism symbolic. Multiple reviews complimented the album’s heavy, unfiltered emotion.

Other activities

In 2023 Taylor Swift embarked on her sixth world tour. It lasted until the end of 2024 and includes 150 performances. In each show, she has been singing 40 songs taken from each of her 10 and in 2024 11 albums. Each album represents a period (‘era’), hence the name ‘Eras tour’.

Taylor wrote the song ‘Beautifull ghosts’ (2019) together with Andre Lloyd Webber for the film ‘Cats’, in which, incidentally, she had a role herself. You can watch a film clip in which Francesca Hayward performs the song as a frightened young cat. This clip is subtitled so you can easily follow the lyrics. On the music video below Taylor sings the song herself.

You can find the lyrics to this song here

For another film ‘Where the Crawdads sing’, she wrote the song “Carolina” (2022) You can also watch the music video below. Lyrics and composition are widely praised for being completely in tune and contributing to the atmosphere the film wants to create. Taylor’s unusually dreamy voice also fits perfectly with this.

Swift emphasizes visuals as a key creative component of her music-making process. Her production company, โ€˜Taylor Swift Productionsโ€™, is credited with producing all visual media. Swift debuted as a filmmaker with All Too Well: The Short Film, which made her the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Music Video as a solo director.[

Talyor Swift as a person

Taylorโ€™s songs tell more about her as a person than you know from many people around you.  Still, if you want to know more about her and the thousands of articles about her in tabloids do not appeal, read Sam Lanskiโ€™s essay, written in response to the fact that Time magazine named her person of the year 2023. You find it here. Time described Swift as the first Person of the Year to be recognized for “achievement in the arts“. 

Relations

The relationship between Taylor Swift and American football player Travis Kelce seems to be stable and the two seems to be happy. Their public appearances together are less frequent, but when they do appear, their bond is clear and reinforces the image of a serious and long-term commitment.

Artisticy

Swift’s passion for writing and composing is clear in the 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana. We see images of a young girl who wants to become a singer. The dream came true. In 2011, Swift told The New Yorker that she considers herself to be first and foremost a songwriter. ‘I write songs, and my voice is just a way to get those lyrics across”. Unlike a lot of modern pop, her songs tell stories in succinct and emotive ways. Fans of Swift see her as a woman whose songwriting reflects their concerns. She writes about the anticipation and disappointments of romantic love, emphasising the intensity of the female experience. Nevertheless, humour and self-mockery are always present. Take, for instance, the song ‘Anti-Hero’ from the album Midnights. It is an absurdist clip in which Taylor juggles her own guises. The song depicts all her weaknesses, fears, self-hatred and the idea that her life is out of control.

You can find the lyrics to this song here

She’s the first woman solo artist to win the โ€˜Album of the Year Grammyโ€™ four times, with each win coming in a different musical genre. It’s a credit to Swift’s masterful songwriting, as it demonstrates her ability to adapt her craft for different audiences. When it comes to mainstream music, Swift is widely regarded as one of the most talented and engaging performers on the scene. Her showmanship and stage presence are often praised.

Assets

As of June 2025, Forbes estimates her net worth at $1.4 โ€“ 1.6 billion, making her the richest female musician in the world. She achieved this status solely based on her songs and performances, which earned her widespread acclaim and recognition. On Spotify, she is the only female act to amass 100 billion streams, the only artist to have received more than 250 million and 350 million streams in one day (260 million on October 27, 2023, and 380 million on April 19, 2024), and was the first female act to reach 100 million monthly listeners.

Approximately 6โ€“7% of Swift’s total net assets is represented by the $100 million she has donated in cases of natural disasters and supporting social and educational initiatives. 

Political impact 

Swift has positioned herself politically only recently, with her stance on issues such as gender equality and climate change. Initially, this was reflected in her support for women’s rights and civil rights in general. Secondly, she also pledged herself to the Democratic Party. This put her position within the conservative country and western establishment on edge.  It is widely believed that if Swift had done this earlier, Hillary Clinton would have become president. A survey conducted by the weekly magazine Newsweek in January found that 18 percent of American voters are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate if they have Swift’s support.

Impact on the music industry

Swift has been instrumental in changing the business game for musicians. She’s taken on record labels and streaming services. She is advocating for better deals for artists.

She has successfully used her massive number of downloads on Spotify and Apple Music to push both companies to improve the remuneration of young artists. At one point, she initiated a boycott of both streaming companies.

She used her influence with politicians to pass legislation that prevents companies like Ticketmaster from abusing artists’ popularity to drive up prices.

Finally, she has stopped investors (private equity) from enriching themselves by trading the master recording of her albums. She achieved this by re-recording each of her first six albums (‘Taylor’s Version’). As for the later albums, she had already negotiated ownership over the master recordings. This did not hurt her financially.  She recently repurchased the original master recordings too.

Becoming a victim herself

Her personal life and career have been subject to intense misogyny and “slut-shaming”, as well as rampant media scrutiny and tabloid speculation. Swift has also been a victim of numerous house break-ins and stalkers, some of whom were armed.

Each step Swift takes is under public scrutiny. Her private jet use has also been criticised for its carbon emissions. In 2023, Swift’s spokesperson announced that she had purchased more than double the required carbon credits to offset all tour travel and personal flights.

Though Swift has never spoken officially on the topic of mental health, she has written many lyrics that suggest the impact of her public expositor on her mental health and subsequent alcohol use.

Academic recognition

Time described Swift as the first โ€˜Person of the Yearโ€™ to be recognised for “achievement in the arts”, and she received an โ€˜Honorary Doctor of Fine Artsโ€™ degree from New York University, where she also served as its commencement speaker on May 18, 2022.

In 2022, New York University’s Clive Davis Institute announced a course focused on Swift, which was to be taught by Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos. Swift was also awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts, in recognition of her status as “one of the most prolific and celebrated artists of her generation”.

Journalists, politicians and scholars have devoted considerable attention to Taylor Swift’s lyrics and music, conducting research and offering insights. Swift, according to Vox, appeals to the feelings of the millennial generation in a way that Bruce Springsteen did to the baby boomers. She connects ethnic, cultural and national differences and is of great significance for women’s empowerment.

Well, the story about Taylor Swift is far from over, is it? 

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Taylor Swiftย from “teenage wunderkind” to “artist of the decade” (part 1)

“From ‘country & western to crossover’ is a recurring theme in recent posts. Now is the perfect time to focus on Taylor Swift. At the start of her career, she decided to focus on this genre. After releasing three albums, she has since become a versatile artist.

Taylor Alison Swift is born on 13 December 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania, US. Her parents named her after American songwriter James Taylor. To get right to the point, she is currently considered the world’s best singer-songwriter in the popular genre.

At nine, she performs at local festivals, singing her own songs. Taylor travels regularly with her mother to New York, where she take singing and drama lessons. Taylor feels attracted to the narrative nature of country and western music. She was a great admirer of Shania Twain.

At the age of 11, she recorded some songs. With these, she and her mother visited several record companies, but they thought she was too young. Yet she did not go unnoticed, because at the age of 15, Sony/ATV hired her as a ‘songwriter’ and record company Big Machine Record offered her a contract. The family then moved to Nashville.

In 2006, she debuted her first album ‘Taylor Swift’. This album subsequently spent 157(!) weeks on the Billboard 200 list. This made her the youngest artist in US history to reach number one with an album full of self-penned songs. 

First album ‘Taylor Swift’

You can listen to one of the songs from this album, titled ‘Tim McGraw’, here. He is also a singer-songwriter. In the song, she asks her ex-boyfriend to always think of her when he hears Tim McGraw’s song ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’. This recording shows Taylor meeting Tim McGraw and his wife Faith Hill. She was 16 years old at the time.

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Tim McGraw’

Other songs from this album that topped the charts were Teardrops to my guitar, Our song and Pictures to burn. You can also listen to these songs by following the links.

Before I delve a little deeper into the development between 2006 and now, I want to illustrate her abilities. This recording was made during of the 2019 American Music Awards ceremony. The show is a ‘potpourie’ of seven songs from previous years. Swift herself was awarded the title ‘artist of the decade’ (2010 – 2020). She had previously been named ‘woman of the decade’.

I consider the last song, Lover’, one of the highlights of her work.ย 

On next versionย of the same song, she accompanies herself on guitar along with the band that has accompanied her for years, including during the big stage performances.ย 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Lover’

I return to the beginning. In the early years, like Shania Twain, she was considered a country singer and on her first three albums ‘Taylor Swift’, ‘Fearless’ and ‘Speak now’, it was evident.ย 

Three characteristics are often mentioned as distinguishing country music: its narrative character, simple melody and the choice ofl instruments.ย ย As for the first characteristic, even her later songs are about personal experiences. The typical country instruments such as banjo, dobra (steel guitar) and violin soon disappeared from the scene. Her songs are not complicated, but their literary content exceeds that of the average country song. The tempo is also much faster and therefore suits a younger audience better.

Fearless

Her second album is Fearless. Half a million albums were sold in its first week of its release. This turned into 18 million worldwide. It is also the most acclaimed album in the history of country music. Here is from this album Love story, the song with which she broke through internationally (2008). It tells the story of Romeo and Juliet, with Taylor in the role of Juliet.ย 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Love story’

The songs on the first three albums were fueled by personal experiences: Infatuation, heartbreak and insecurity. A rotten afternoon at school could easily produce a world hit. She usually wrote down what she felt first and corresponding melodies bubbled up naturally.

Red

From the fourth album ‘Red’, you have already heard a song during her show at the American Music Awards ceremony: ‘I knew you were trouble’.

You can now watch and listen to another song from this album ‘We are never ever getting back together’. The song expresses her frustration over a revolving-door relationship with an ex-boyfriend, in which she also felt humiliated by his lack of appreciation for her music.

You can look and listen to three versions of this song. the first one is a recording for a limited number of fans, with her accompanying herself on guitar.

Clickย hereย for the lyrics of ‘We will never ever get back together’

Then compare this with tversion wo more ones from her world tours, namely theย Red tourย and theย 1989 tour. You can hear the ‘pop’ content increasing; especially in the latter version where Taylor starts with a long introduction on an electric guitar.

Other songs you can listen to and watch here are: ‘Begin again’, ‘Everything has changed’ (featuring Ed Sheeran), ‘The last time‘ and ‘Red’.

1989

In 2014, she announced that her album ‘1989’ would be her first ‘proper’ pop album. On previous occasions, she had always waved away criticism from the Nashville establishment that her music was more pop than country, saying “I leave the genre labelling to other people”. Now she did just that herself. She considered it a ‘rebirth’, hence the reference to her birth year of 1989. The album is predominantly synth-pop, 80s-style and was widely praised and Taylor was now also added to the line-up of the decade’s best pop stars.

From ‘1989’, you’ve already heard ‘Blank Space’.  Other big hits from ‘1989’ were ‘Shake it off’, ‘Bad Blood, ‘Style’, ‘Wldest dreams‘, ‘New romantics‘ and ‘Out of the woods’. You can hear the latter song here. In it, Taylor accompanies herself on the piano. 

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Out of the woods’

The song describes a fragile relationship full of uncertainty and doubt .The recurring question ‘Are we out of the woods yet’ describes her unrequited desire to stabilise this relationship. According to critics, this song succeeds best of all the others on ‘1989’ in approximating the synth-pop of the 1980s.  Of course, you hear less of that on this acoustic version. On the music video, which you can see here, Taylor tries to escape from a magical forest.  The beautiful footage was shot New Zealand.

The two subsequent albums, ‘Reputation’ (2017) and ‘Lover’ (2019), unlike ‘1989’, include crossovers to rhythm & blues and hip-hop.

Reputation

In ‘Reputation’, she broaches the drawbacks of her celebrity after a period in which she had received a lot of negative press attention because of her many and what she considered opportunistic relationships, and themes of alienation and sexism come up. Reputation has a heavy sound and is made almost entirely with synthesisers and (drum) computers except for the last song ‘New year’s day’ which was recorded with only an acoustic piano. You can see the premiere of this song here.  Other songs include ‘Ready for it‘, ‘End game’, ‘Delicate‘, ‘Getaway car’, ‘Look what you made me do’and ‘Georgeous’, which you can watch now.

This song is dedicated to a new love, but whether it will be something she does not know. In any case, she doesn’t take it too hard: In that case “I’ll just stumble on home to my cats… alone”. Critics call the song a relief compared to the sombre nature of the rest of the album.

Click here for the lyrics of ‘Georgeous’

Lover

‘Lover’ covers the whole spectrum of adult relationships and love and, according to Swift, is “a love letter to love”. She also takes a stand on human rights, feminism and against racism. The production is lighter in nature than ‘Reputation’ and besides electronics, acoustic instruments make their return. In terms of style, it contains elements of country, folk, funk and pop. The album was received very positively by critics, critics also saw in it a consolidation of the qualities she had established before Reputation. Some raise the question, what will Swift come up with next…. 

You have already heard the title song ‘Lover’; it was the piano solo in her 2019 American Music Rewards performance. Other hits from ‘Lover’ include ‘I forgot that you existed’, ‘You need to calm down’, ‘me‘, ‘Soon you’ll get better’ and ‘The man’. Finally, an acoustic rendition of this song. It’s about double standards: much more is accepted from men than from women, so she imagines what it would be like if she were a man. For the witty music video, directed and played by Swift, she received an MTV Music Award.

Clickย hereย for the lyrics of ‘The man’

What you’ve heard so far now reflects Taylor’s first six albums.ย ย In the next post, I’ll explore the last five ones and then you’ll get acquainted with other aspects of Taylor Swift’s singing.

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Shania Twain, exploring the crossover between country and pop music

Since the 1950s, there are musicians, who want to enrich country & western music by building bridges to other types of music (‘so-called crossovers’), such as European pop, rhythm & blue sand rock. From the late 20ste century, the popularity of crossovers seems to have surpassed that of traditional country & western. A person that has contributed to this is Shania Twain who thus paved the way for Taylor Swift among others. To get acquainted with Shania , listen to her rendition of ‘Man, I feel like a woman’, a song from her third album.

Back to the beginning. Eilleen Regina Edwards was born on 28 August 1965 near Ontario.  She never knew her father. She was raised by mother and her stepfather, whose name she also took. He was an Oibwa, a Canadian First Nation and from his language would also come the name Shania, which she started using as a stage name around the age of 20. From the age of eight, she worked alongside her school to help earn a living for the family.  She cleaned in pubs and worked with her father in forestry.  Later, she became a singer in several bands with which she gained much appreciation.

Here is a clip from that time of otherwise poor quality on which she sings the song ‘What Made You Say That’, a song she did not write herself.

The lyrics of this song are here

Her Cinderella days were yet to come to an end. At her 22the, she took up caring for her younger brother and sister when her parents were killed in a car accident. 

She managed to get the attention of a record company, Nashville-based Mercury, and on her 28the , she released her first album: ‘Shania Twain’. It also contained the song ‘What Made You Say That’. The record company produced a rather explicit music video with it for the time, which you can hear here.

The album was not a commercial success, but it did attract the attention of producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, whom she married soon after and who was a key support on the three albums she released between 1995 and 2002.

The woman in me

The first of these (her second album) ‘The woman in me’ (1995) sold 20 million copies. Her husband had an unerring sense of marketing and replaced the country ‘flavor’ in this album for sales outside the US with ‘pop’ elements, for instance swapping violins for synthesisers. Market segmentation would continue in subsequent albums. 

The two most successful songs were ‘(If you are not in for love) I ‘am outta here’ and ‘Any man of mine’, a clear example of a ‘crossover’.  One of the rare pure country & western songs is ‘Whose bed have your boots been under?’, which is accompanied by a funny music video.  You can listen and watch it here.

‘I’m outta here’ is the first of the two recordings from this album. This song also has a humorous video, that also has several versions.  You can watch the somewhat absurdist ‘Mutt Lange pop remix’ here. In this video, drums play an important role. This was also the case in her concert tour.  This song was usually closing number (before encores) and she was always accompanied on stage by a local drum band in the process. Watch and listen here:

The lyrics of this song are here

The second song from ‘The woman in meโ€, that you can listen to and watch here is ‘Any man of mineโ€™

Read the lyrics here

With this song, Twain reached No 1 on the country charts in the US for the first time. You can watch a live performance filmed in Dallas. The widely viewed music video (watch here) undoubtedly boosted Shania’s acceptance as a country singer. 

From the songs in this album, I picked a couple of good recordings:ย Come Over Here,ย Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love) andย From This Moment On.

Critics were generally positive, praising the way Shania adapted country & western music to the inevitable influence of rock and pop. Others felt that the album had nothing or little to do with country & western anymore. Still others felt that Twain did not need her superficial flirtation with country & western at all to excel as a singer. Critics looking back on this album a decade later believe that she has definitively put ‘country pop’ on the map as its own genre. Taylor Weatherby of Billboard speaks of a ‘brilliant fusion of country, pop and rock’.

Up

Shania’s fourth album ‘Up’ (2002), which sold 20 million copies, plays even further into the differences between outlets. Here  is the title track ‘Up’, live in Chicago. 

Three different CDs were released, a green CD that has a predominantly country & western character and also contains some acoustic songs, a red CD, on which pop and rock dominate and a blue CD with a dance and South American character. Using the links above, you can compare the three genres using the three official music videos of the title track ‘Up’. I think the differences are very small.

Again, comments were mostly positive. Something for all tastes, surely seems to be increasingly becoming Twain’s (or Lange’s) trademark, but it was also noted that ‘Up’ is “too generic and emotionless for that level of diversity”.

You can now watch two other songs. The first is “Thank You Baby (For Makin’ Someday Come So Soon)”. The music video was shot at a gallery in Vancouver and released only in Europe. 

You can watch and listen to this video here.

Read the lyrics here

Next, watch and listen to ‘She’s Not Just a Pretty Face’, live from Chicago. Billboard’s comments did not lie: The song is an “ultra-lightweight country-girl power anthem” but also “exquisite country pop”.

The lyrics are here

Her next new studio album came just 15 years after “Up”. Lyme disease significantly weakened her voice and she endured open throat surgery to strengthen her vocal cords. Moreover, she divorced in 2008, after Lange got into a relationship with her best friend. She remarried in 2011 with Frรฉdรฉric Thiรฉbaud,  ceo of the Neslรฉ group[1]. She did not perform again for the first time until 2012.

Now

For this album ‘Now (2017) and for the subsequent ‘Queen of me’ (2023), Shania Twain not only wrote all the songs, but she also took responsibility over the production, something her former husband did for the previous albums. Listen to from ‘Now’: ‘Life’s About to Get Good’.

You will find lyrics here

The song, which is about coming out on top after a difficult time, was well received.  Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger called it ‘Come on over’-worthy (her third and best-reviewed album, 20 years earlier)

Queen of me

Netflix made a documentary of Shania Twain’s life in 2022. It was called ‘Not just a girl’, after a 2022 song that is also on ‘Queen of me’.  I am showing the ‘unofficial’ music video of this song, which consists of a collage of photos and videos covering her entire life as a singer. Those who want to hear ‘Not just a girl ‘live’ listen to the (mediocre) recording in Las Vegas here.   

Lastly, listen to a song from ‘Forever and for Always’ (album ‘Up’), recorded during the ‘Queen of me’ tour in September 2023.  The song is about friendships that last a lifetime. I noticed for the first time that her voice was lower than before. You (finally) start to see the age (58!).                                      

read the lyrics here

Music critics generally hold her songs, her vocal performances and her stage performances in high regard. That appreciation applies to a slightly lesser extent to her two latest albums. ‘Queen of me’ contains mostly unadulterated electro-pop. One critic notes that Twain “tries so hard to capture current trends that it already sounds behind the times”.

My next post is about one of the singers for whom Shania paved the way, Taylor Swift, whose artistry will be explored in the next two post.

[1] His name came up in another blog post of mine ear a few years members after this company was accredited as a ‘benefit corporation’, expressing that social considerations, consumer interests and nature carry equal weight with shareholder value.

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From ‘rock & roll to ‘rock’

From ethnical to age group based division of musical preferences

in the second half of the 1950s rock & roll was a previously unprecedentedly popular type of music. But ‘rock & roll’ was played in the black community in the US much earlier and was simply called ‘rhythm and blues’, boogie-woogie or jazz. Examples include: “Roll ’em Pete” by Big Joe Turner and pianist Pete Johnson (1939), “Rocking this house” by Memphis Slim and the House Rockers (1946), “Rock and Roll” by Wild Bill Moore (1948), “Rock the joint” by Jimmy Preston (1949), “Saturday night fish fry” by Louis Jorden (1949) and “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston.

The following short film (15 minutes) shows many artists who can be retrospectively classified under the ‘rock & roll’ label. The influence of Afro-American roots, boogie-woogie in particular, is clearly audible.

While the term โ€˜rock and rollโ€™ was well known, it did not refer to a type of music in the beginning. It was the name of the movement of a ship on the waves (‘rocking and rolling’) and later took on an explicitly sexual meaning when, among others, Trixie Smith sings ‘My (man) rocks me with one steady roll’ in 1922 or Billy Ward ‘I rock ’em roll ’em all night long’ in 1951.

Disk jockey Alan Feed was the first who used the term in 1951 as a designation for a type of music. His radio show was listened to by both white and black American youths. โ€˜Rock and rollโ€™ has been said to be the first style of music to appeal to a specific age group and not an ethnic group as had been the case in the US until then. With that, the term is also linked to the development of a youth culture, with its own clothing, style of going out and dancing. The twist is inextricably linked to rock and roll. 

The genre’s breakthrough was caused by white musicians – or perhaps better their record labels – such as Bill Haley and his Commets with “Rock the joint“(1952), which had previously been sung by Jimmy Preston, “Rock around the clock” (1954), and “Shake, rattle and roll” previously sung by Big Joe Turner. 

The song “Rock around the clock” only became a world hit in 1955 thanks to the film ‘Blackboard Jungle’, a film in which later icon Sidney Poitier debuted. For the first time, riots broke out with fans wanting to attend a performance by the group. You can see Bill Haley and his Comets (and his audience) at work here

Bill Haley’s other hits included “See you later alligator” ,” Rock-a-beatin’ boogie“, “Rip it up“, “Hot dog buddy buddy” and more….

Bill Haley’s fame declined rapidly; when Elvis Presley appeared on the scene and appeared to have much greater sex appeal, his fans turned their backs on him. But first and foremost, he had a fantastic voice. Bill Haley was giant on whose shoulders, Elvis could glory. Here you can watch “Ready Teddy” (1957) on the Ed Sullivan Show. Usually only his upper body is in view, as people found the jerky movements with his lower body offensive to viewers.

In an earlier post, I  have explored his songs.

Rockability: Cross-over between rock and roll and hillbilly music

Others who rode the wave of rock & roll were Johnny Cash with “Folsom prison Blues” and, of course, Buddy Holly, whose career ended by a plane crash (1959). Buddy Holly gained great fame with songs “Peggy Sue“, “Oh boy” and “That will be the day“. Here you can listen to Peggy Sue during a performance on the Ed Sullivan show (1957).

Incidentally, some black artists did gain recognition as rock & roll artists, such as Little Richard, here with “Long tall Sally“(1955, with Bill Haley in the audience), Chuck Berry with “Johnny B. Goode“(1958) and Fats Domino. In 1957, the latter said: ‘What they call rock ‘n’ roll now is rhythm and blues. I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans’.

The now next song “Jambalaya” was certainly not meant to be rock and roll, but the musicians didnโ€™t care about that and the audience even less. The musicians are none others than Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Ron Wood (now Rolling Stones) and Paul Shaffer. The totally revved-up audience provides the background ‘vocals’ (well, background….).

Elvis Presley was well acquainted with and greatly admire ‘black’ rock & roll artists.  When he was called ‘King of rock & roll’ he held it off by referring to Fats Domino, in his opinion (rightly) the only singer to whom this title was appropriate. 

The record industry, which was responsible for landing Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, later thought it would do well to launch a somewhat more polished version of rock & roll that was accessible to a wider audience and therefore more commercial. Partly as a result, artists like Ricky Nelson, here with “Hello Mary-Lou“(1959), and Del Shannon with “Runaway‘ (1959). 

This ‘new’ type of music was named ‘rockabilly’, a word that refers to the crossover of rock and country & western (‘hillbilly’ music). This is an example of how whites left their mark on historiography. Rock & roll music, as you have heard, was played from as early as the 1940s and has African-American roots.

Rather, whites, some of whom were country singers until then, were adopting the musical style of their black colleagues. 

Provider of a British rock and roll version was Harry Webb, who later adopted the stage name Cliff Richard, and his band ‘The Shadows’, previously called ‘the Drifters’. Their songs and instrumental numbers became world famous. They were widely imitated, especially in the rest of Europe.

Here, Cliff Richard sings with the Shadows “Move it” (1958), which was considered the first authentically British rock and roll song. 

The record company pushed Cliff Richard to impersonate Elvis, to dress as much as possible. It looks a bit forced, but he does his best. Here you can also see him in “Do you wanna dance“(1958).

It is fun to compare this performance of “Move it” from a performance by the same Cliff, now with Hank Marvin, one of the former Shadows in 1995. They perform at London’s Dominion Theatre with ‘The Queen’ in the front row. You can see it here.

But Great Britain had another answer….  

By the late 1950s, ‘skiffle’ music had gained high popularity. In essence, skiffle has the same roots as American country music, which in turn emerged from European folk music.  This can be well heard on a recording of Lonnie Donegan’s “Putting on thes tyle”(1957). 

The rise of skiffle was in response to the growing commercialization of mainstream pop music. The thousands of skiffle groups that sprang up all over the UK used simple instruments like guitar, mandolin and washboard or drums. For many, Lonnie Donegan was the role model. For ‘The Quarryman’ too.

Over time, ‘The Quarrymen’ developed their own sound, by adding a bit more ‘beat’ to their songs. They changed their name and with it music history. You can see their first gig at ‘The Cavern’ here (1962)

With their new name, ‘The Beatles’ conquered the world, at least musically, the ‘British Invasion’. Countless other English ‘beat groups’, such as Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman Hermits, Dave Clark Five traveled to the States. This list could also include the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds, but their music, especially in the early days, was more strongly inspired by the ‘rhythm & blues’ genre. All recordings date from the early 1960s.

The second half of the 1960s saw the emergence of many new styles of music, generally referred to by the term ‘rock’.  Within rock, a division tok place between ‘hard rock’, sometimes also referred to as ‘metal’, and ‘soft rock’, sometimes called ‘folk rock’.  Famous exponents of the former include Steppenwolf with, for example, “Born to be wild” and of the latter the Eagles with “Hotel California. From the turn of the century, the boundaries between pop and rock blurred and we also saw the rise of electronic (dance) music, with all its variations.   Of course, I will come back to all this later.

However, there are also musicians who keep the spirit of rock and roll alive. Some of them have recently formed the group “The Barnstones” and they made a brilliant album. This  super formation is featuring Jimmy Barnes, Slim Jim Phantom, Chris Cheney , Kevin Shirley and Jools Holland’, whose piano is unmistakably present.  Here you listen to the song ‘Johnny’s Gone โ€˜from this album, accompanied by a fast-paced cartoon. The best rock & roll ever from 2023….

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The European roots of music in America: 100 years of Country & Western

In this and the following posts, I will discuss the spread of European folk music across the US and its subsequent cross-pollination with African-American music.

The emergence of the Hillbillies

Folk music is from always and everywhere. It was the main form of entertainment in past centuries, especially in rural areas and by poorer people.ย ย Most of us know the often centuries-old songs, sang along and danced to them. When mass migration of Europeans to the US started during the 18deย century, migrants took their music with them. Many settled in the eastern coastal region, the Appalachians and later they spread across the southern states. Music groups also emerged and were welcome guests at parties and pubs (honky tonks). In the early years of the 20steย century, the emerging gramophone record industry took notice of this music. Ralph Peer therefore travelled town and country to record the music. It was he who dubbed the inhabitants of the eastern and south-eastern United States ‘hillbillies’, and the name also became established for the type of music they made.

Musicians of the first hour were James Gideon ‘Gid’ Tanner (1885 – 1960), a chicken farmer who played the violin in his spare time in his band ‘the Skillet Lickers’ (‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’) and ‘Jimmie Rodgers (‘Kisses sweeter than wine’), who would be heard for many years to come. So was the Carter Family, a band in which successive generations would alternate until 1957.  Later famous guitarist Chat Atkins was also part of this band for a while. So was Johnny Cash after he married one of the members of the family.

Here, the Carter family sings ‘Wildwood Flower (1928)

The idealization of country & western life

In addition to the burgeoning record industry, the idealisation of the cowboy life captured in the growing number of westerns helped to popularise the genre. As a result, the term ‘hillbilly music’ was replaced by ‘country & western’ in the 1940s.

In the clip below, Patsy Montana sings ‘I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart’ (1939) along with the Texas Rangers.

By now, the city of Nashville had become the hub of country & western, not least because many programs were broadcasted live from the Grand Ole Opry theatre, which, as the years progressed, became an arena with more than 4,000 seats (see title photo). Performances at this theatre launched many an artist and were also intended to preserve the traditional character of country & western. As a result, the genre has long remained the music of the conservative part of the American population.ย 

Country & western could be heard in every pub in the 1930s, and because of the volume, a (old) piano was often added a to the instrumentation that consisted of fiddle, guitar, dobro (a kind of steel guitar) and banjo or mandolin. It was also often referred to as honky tonk music. Bobb Wills (‘San Antonio Rose’), Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams sr were leading artists of this era. 

Here Hank Williams senior sings ‘Hey Good looking’

Preserving the traditional image of country and western music from the 1930s to the present day was the main aim of the CMA (Country Music Association) and its temple, the Grand Ole Opry.

At the other side many artists drew inspiration from other musical genres in search of their own sound.ย ย The CMA was highly critical of this. For this reason, Billl Haley and somewhat later Elvis Presley were denied access to the theatre because of their emerging ‘rockability style’, one of these first ‘crossovers’ which laid the foundation for ‘rock ‘n roll’.

Here’s a performance by ‘rebel’ Bill Haley and his Comets: ‘Rock around the clock tonight’.

Back to โ€˜blue grass musicโ€™ of the 1940s

‘Excesses’ like this regularly led to a reappraisal of the ‘roots’ of country & western.  The ‘blue grass’ music of the 1940s, which would retain varying degrees of popularity for decades. Its founder is Bill Monroe (1911 – 1996) and his band The Blue Grass Boys, named after the nickname of the state of Kentucky, ‘Blue grass state’. This music stands out for the front singer’s high-pitched voice and perfect harmony singing with the background choir. The shrill voice initially had to compensate for the absence of a microphone. Another famous band was the Osborn Brothers (‘Rocky top’).

Here you can hear Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in ‘Blue moon of Kentucky’, a recording from 1975, the song had obviously been played for many years by then.ย 

The Nashville sound

The second crossover came from the capital of country & western itself, namely the record industry. During the 1950s, it saw with sorrow the popularity of rock ‘n roll and rhythm & blues grew. A team including Chat Atkins was hired to make country & western smoother. The steel guitar and fiddle gave way to background choirs and strings. But the great success of this approach was mainly due to the sweet-voiced Jim Reeves, Don Gibson (‘Oh Lonesome me’) and Patsy Cline.ย 

Here, Jim Reeves sings ‘He’ll have to go’. 

Soon there was talk of the “Nashville Sound”, which, at least for the moment, found favour with the country and western establishment., the Nashville sound was a great success.ย ย However, the musician Atkins, who co-founded it, was increasingly unhappy with it because any move towards a jazzier sound was taboo. When asked to describe what was so typical of the Nashville sound, he rattled the change in his pocket and said,ย “That’s what it is. It’s the sound of money”.ย ย The success came to a sudden end when Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline both died in plane crashes and music from the United Kingdom started to take the US by storm in the 1960โ€™s.

Another step back to the โ€˜rootsโ€™

Many country & western fans felt ill-served by the slick Nashville sound on the one hand and the songs of the Beatles and their peers on the other. This again opened the way to steps back towards ‘roots’. Responsible for this were artists like Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, Bob Wills and Merle Haggard. Their so-called ‘Bakersfield sound’ (named after Bakersfield in California), was in keeping with the rawer honky tonk of the 1940s. Bakersfield is an area where countless migrants had settled who had been expelled from the Midwest, which was ravaged by dust storms (‘Dustbowl’). The Bakersfield sound would resonate into the 1970s and helped form the basis of ‘folk rock’. But more on that later.

Here, Merle Haggttt and Bob Wills sing the classic ‘San Antonio Rose’.

The Nashville sound had by no means disappeared after the slump in the 1950s. The style was now called ‘countrypolitan’ and a host of artists, such as Lynn Anderson, Charly Pride, Donna Fargo, Ray Stevens and Chystal Gayle can be counted among them.  From the 1970s onwards, to this list can be added, among others, John Denver (‘Annie’s Song’), Kenny Rogers (‘Lucille’) and, from the 1990s onwards, Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks. 

All these artists contributed to stretching the gap between traditional country & western and other styles of music ranging from rock, soul, funk and, in the 1990s, hip-hop. The country & western watchdog at the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ watched suspiciously but could not do much against the artists who also topped the exclusive country & western lists. However, the Dixie Chicks’ popularity ended abruptly when, during a performance, they criticized President George W. Bush for his attack on Iraq. Country & western radio and television stations promptly stopped playing their songs.

Here the song ‘Cowboy take me away’ by the Dixie Chicks (2006), which still has country & western influences in terms of content and instrumentation, but whose melody can hardly be classified as such anymore.

The question therefore was at which point a song no longer belongs to the country & western genre and can be banned from dedicated radio stations and charts. Enough test cases of singers who could be described as ‘country stars’ like Shania Twain, Tayler Swift, Carrie Underwood and Maren Morse presented themselves in the early 21ste century. Their genre was called ‘country pop’.

I’ll limit myself to one of Tayler Swift’s first songs ‘Tim McGray’ (2006). Country or not?

โ€˜Americanaโ€™ and other styles

Institutional pressure made a return towards more ‘traditional’ country & western music inevitable for less fortunate singers. This resulted in musical styles designated by the terms ‘folk’, ‘Americana’, ‘country folk’ and ‘country rock’. An additional feature was that some musicians who could be counted in this category also had a decidedly left-wing political stance, which did not help their popularity in country circles. Examples include Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Donovan, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. 

George Strait is still closest to the traditional country & western style, and you can hear his best-known song ‘Amarillo by morning’ here (a 2016 recording).

More along the lines of ‘country rock’ goes music by Gram Parsons, also a member of The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, also called the father of country rock. With Emmylou Harris, Gram has sung a series of duets. The Eagles also fit into this category.

An example of unadulterated ‘country rock’ is the Charlie Daniels Band, active from 1950 to 2020, the year of Charlie Daniels’ death. From this band, I showcase here its best-known song ‘The Devil went down to Georgia’ (1979).

Country & western has had a huge influence on contemporary music in the US, despite or perhaps because of the many crossovers and the fact that even the music of contemporary performers of ‘traditional’ country & western sounds very different from that of the Carter family or the Blue Grass Boys.  

Very different?  Again, not all.  There are several groups that draw full houses with their precise renditions of traditional country & western music. One such group is again a whole family with supporters: the Petersens.  They too have made their hobby their profession and with their enthusiasm they blow all the dust that may have settled on old songs. 

Here are the Petersens with Rocky Top, an authentic blue grass number from the 1940s. Incidentally, the Petersens also sing very different genres.  I have previously featured their rendition of the complete Bohemian Rhapsody on their traditional instrumental. That one also sounded like a bell.