Come out of nowhere
Compare/Contrast: Cindy Lee & Taylor Swift
Compare/Contrast is an occasional series where I look at two works that may, or may not, have something, or nothing, in common
Out of nowhere, an artist releases a double album, a massive amount of music, that takes the world by storm. It’s all anyone can talk about. Fans are stanning. Critics are expounding. Bloggers, God love ‘em, are blogging. Cultural consensus is back, baby.
Who is the artist, you ask? But you know already. It is, obviously, Cindy Lee.
Wait, don’t go yet! I’ll get to that other artist in a minute! Stick around for just a moment.
So, wait, who is this Cindy Lee? And why are people talking about her? The basics: Cindy Lee is the name of a project from a musician named Patrick Flegel, a Canadian indie rocker who once performed with a band called Women. Flegel takes on a persona called Cindy Lee, which sees him dressing in drag and looking like a 50s starlet, or perhaps, more like Kate Pierson from the B-52s looking like a 50s starlet. Or perhaps, like a background character from a David Lynch short film, 50s pop culture refracted through the surreal.
It’s pretty cool, if you’re into this sort of thing, which I am. Nostalgia mixed with weird, mixed with dread, mixed with genuine affection. Cindy Lee is currently the talk of the town—the town being indie rock and its fans and critics, basically the Pitchfork/Stereogum Archipelago—because she, out of the blue, released a massive double album called Diamond Jubilee. Though ‘released’ perhaps isn’t the best word. ‘Smuggled,’ maybe. ‘Pirate broadcast.’ You won’t find Diamond Jubilee on Spotify, or at record stores, or on the radio, or on Tiny Desk. You will find it in exactly two places: YouTube, where the whole album is posted as a two-hour video; and GeoCities, of all places, where you can order a physical copy of it.
The album itself is quite good—spooky pop and rock that compresses 50 years of radio into a single fever dream. But the unorthodox release strategy, and the unexpected acclaim it’s drawn so far, is perhaps even more compelling. Releasing new music without releasing it on Spotify is almost like not releasing it all. It is, if not the only game in town, certainly the biggest. And yet, by releasing her weird album in an equally weird manner, Cindy Lee has managed to attract a sizable-for-indie-rock portion of attention. She did the opposite of what creatives are supposed to do in the attention economy, and she still managed to get attention. It’s almost a miracle. It’s the feel-good-hit for music critics everywhere.
The example of Cindy Lee is one that’s particularly germane to the newsletter game, I think. Basically: don’t try to be the biggest game in town. Think smaller. Be mysterious. Attract a cult. Leave the mainstream behind.
One artist who will never the mainstream behind—who is the mainstream at this point—is, of course, Taylor Swift.
Swift, as I’m sure you’re aware, recently released a new album, called The Tortured Poets Department. And she released it in the fullest, non-Cindy Lee sense. It appeared on Spotfiy precisely at midnight. Pop-up shops, sponsored by Spotify, sported typewriters with Swift lyrics and the Spotify logo. She, and her work, are ubiquitous in a way that almost nothing else is.
I know what this looks like. It looks like I am setting up Cindy Lee as a real artist, putting in the work organically, no matter who finds it, while Taylor Swift is some corporate product with all the edges sanded off for mass consumption. It’s an easy comparison to make—too easy, which is why I’m suspicious of it.
Because here’s the thing: while the rollout for The Tortured Poets Department flexes every commercial tool Swift possesses at her considerable disposal, the album itself might be the least commercial music of her career. Listeners will search in vain for a “Cruel Summer”-style bop. There is no “Shake It Off” to be found. It’s all heartbreak and musing.
That’s not to say that Swift has put out her Metal Machine Music, an album so off-putting that it’s borderline-unlistenable. But it is certainly the closest she has ever come, and likely will ever come, to such a brush-off gesture, a release that seems almost tailor-made to alienate fairweather fans. (What, you thought I was above an easy pun? Never!) Usually that’s the sort of bold gesture that attracts me, if only out of curiosity, but I admit, I bounced off Poets when I first listened to it. I am, if not a Swiftie, certainly a Swift fan, with my favorite ‘era’ being the Folklore/Evermore phase. You’d think that would endear me to Poets, as it works similar ground, but I think I bought the hype more than I should have, and that colored my initial experience of it.
While I am a fan, I practice a vigorous form of New Criticism when it comes to her music. I focus on the songs themselves, and tune out the supposed connections to her personal life as much as I can. I simply do not care which ex-boyfriend a given song is about. I would rather not know at all. It does not enhance my enjoyment of the work; it diminishes it.
This was easier to do, in the past, before Swift became the most famous person on earth. I have no idea who “Champagne Problems” is about and I would prefer to keep it that way, thank you very much.1 But that is simply harder to do nowadays, if not impossible. Without wanting to, I am aware of who she is currently dating, and who she dated before that, and before that. There are a couple songs on the album where I can’t help but be aware that it’s about The Boyfriend Who Must Not Be Named. The lyrics, while they don’t identify boyfriends by name, do identify certain members of Swift’s inner circle. “Lucy” and “Jack,” mentioned in the title track, are pretty clearly Lucy Dacus, of boygenius, and Jack Antonoff, of bleachers and everything else.
I do not want to know this! I want some mystery please!
But I’m a good fan, and so I listened to it a couple more times, and discovered there are, like, three or four songs where the identity of the boyfriend is obvious, at least to me? And I can tune that out easily enough? Then there are the songs that don’t seem to have any sort of personal inspiration, and are instead storytelling of the fictional sort that Swift is very good at. “Florida!!!” is the highlight here, a ripped-from-Dateline story about a socialite fleeing Texas for a timeshare in the titular state. She is so good at this kind of song. The basic structure evokes country music, but the particulars involve the sort of exurban lives and people that have taken the place of rural life that country music once documented. It’s Swift’s career in miniature, from the country to the global, while still retaining an eye for the particular, for the telling detail.
And while there are moments that seem designed for serve as catnip for her most unhinged fans, there are more moments that seem designed to infuriate those same fans. She literally tells “wine moms” to go fuck off. Like, okay! It’s maybe it’s a little forced—the greatest F-bomb she’s ever dropped remains “Champagne Problems,” hate to say it but you know I’m right—but if that’s what she has to say right now, so be it.
That’s the whole read on Poets, really. It’s messy in places, some of the lines are so bad they’re funny, but it all emerges from a place of genuine emotional purging, of speaking what you feel, not what you ought to say. It’s not for everyone, and that’s the point. On that, Taylor Swift and Cindy Lee agree.
Anyone attempting to explain who, if anyone, it’s about will result in an immediate block, doxxing, and visit from the NSA strike team.