Borkowski Media Trends: Taylor Swift, Coachella, Liz Truss

The Tortured Swifties Department

If you have any millennial woman in your life today, be kind to them. It is of course, Taylor Swift release day. Her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department dropped at midnight amidst a frenzy that is incredible when you consider the only promo has been a series of cryptic clues scattered across social media and streaming platforms. Hours of content on Tik Tok analysed every detail of imagery shared by Swift in the lead up, decoding surprise words from songs written a decade or more ago to get just a glimpse of what was to come.

But if you have the ubiquitous power of Swift, you don’t need to rely on the traditional media to bring in listeners. Much the opposite – Swift is scattered across quite a few front pages this morning, promising track by track breakdowns of “TTPD.” Pretty impressive considering the album only landed at 5am BST. One can only feel sympathy for the journalists who realised two hours later that the many fan theories were true and it was in fact a double album, with fifteen additional songs landing in the delighted laps of the internet. No doubt, editors were content to burn the midnight oil in an attempt to lure in Swiftie eyeballs. A quick scroll through Instagram reveals a similar energy across global titles and brands keen to ride the Taylor Tsunami. 

Whether or not the album is good is kind of beside the point at this stage – reviews are glowing, with four and five star ratings across the board, barring the Evening Standard who’s El Hunt gives it a measly two. For the moment, Swift is achieving the near impossible task of remaining the internet’s darling, despite her omnipresence. If recent rumbles about her carbon footprint are any indication, Taylor may be tiptoeing on the knife edge of fame, when acclaim turns to disdain. This trends writer might recommend that after her TTPD triumph, Swift could consider putting her feet up for a bit, and hunkering down away from the hot lights the world’s scrutiny. Otherwise, she could risk cancellation from sheer over exposure. Luckily, she’s already got an album for that: enter, Reputation (Taylor’s Version). 

Coachella 2024: Winners & Losers so far

As one of the world’s biggest festivals, Coachella is a rare cultural event with the ability to exert a genuine influence on the career trajectory of artists in its lineup and this year has been no different.

And of course, individual performances have an impact on the festival’s own reputation, which is in an interesting state of flux. Ever an unashamed shrine to consumerism, influencer culture and the much maligned ‘festival fashion’, the omnipresence of ultra-capitalist sponsors like Coca Cola and Heineken fueled perennial accusations of a kind of plastic inauthenticity among the music purists, and reportedly sluggish sales of the $500 tickets might have suggested that for certain consumers this criticism was beginning to stick.

However, a killer line-up can cover all manner of sins and critically acclaimed performances by the likes of Lana Del Rey, Peggy Gou and Justice have underlined Coachella’s credentials as a forum for legendary moments in live music.

However the snapshot offered by the headlines in the UK has painted a picture of slight malaise by focusing on the acts whose reputations have not been burnished by their Coachella performances, namely Grimes, whose DJ set was replete with mishaps, and Blur - a weird booking that suggests a clash between organisers’ innately Gen Z-commercialist sensibilities and perhaps a reverence for the quite different tradition of UK music festivals. Blur’s churlish response to their tepid audience reaction spoke of a failure to heed the lesson of fellow rockers Royal Blood’s embarrassing antics at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend last year and will have done little to win over a new generation of fans.

Liz-terary Genius?

Liz Truss’s new ultraconservative, ultra fame hungry reinvention continues with the release of her memoir-manifesto ‘Ten Years to save the West’. It’s fair to say that its release has been the most Liz Truss event possible.

From rumours of a miserly advance compared to previous prime ministers, to suspicion that the cover quote was fabricated, via reports that she broke parliamentary rules by revealing details of conversations with the late Queen, the Liz Truss circus has become a reliable generator of mocking but ultimately trivial headlines.

Given the litany of column inches generated by the book’s launch, it appears that actual content from the book is thin on the ground, limited to an apparent attempt by Truss to make the Queen’s death about her.

If the memoir fell flat then the media rounds did little to add substance to Truss’ attempts to position herself as a Conservative firebrand-cum-British Political Grandee; one of the more notable headlines centered on an apparent attempt to settle scores with the Daily Star for their infamous lettuce stunt, which only succeeded in provoking another gleefully derisive front page from the tabloid.

As the Truss Circus readied to move on once more, the BBC’s Chris Mason undertook an honest but ultimately futile search for some political substance, or at least some news lines in the copy of the book, before damning Truss with the least welcome of endorsements:

“Labour are delighted she is out and about again - they think her very appearance in a whole load of interviews is hugely helpful to their cause.”

As entertaining as Liz Truss headlines are, it’s a scathing assessment of the ex-Prime Minister’s supposed magnum opus that its only political impact has been for her enemies to jubilantly welcome it as a fillip to their cause.