Taylor Swift: In "The King, The Mice and The Cheese"

Friday, 5 February 2010 , 0 Comments

The King made the finest cheese in the land and oooohhhh, the heavenly smell which reached throughout the land. It caught the attention of the mice. Soon they took over the joint. How to rid the kingdom the mice? Bring in the cats. Oh no! The cats are worse than the mice. Bring in the dogs. Of course each attempted solution brings on a bigger problem than the last one. How does it all end? Well, I hate to give away the ending to such a thriller, but read the end of this post and you’ll have the answer to this cliff hanger.

Perhaps Taylor Swift and her “people” should have read the book before agreeing to do a duet with Stevie Nicks live on the Grammy’s. After all, Taylor has a great thing going. Not performing live at the event wouldn’t have impacted her Grammy’s for Album of The Year, Best Country Album, Best Country Song and “ahem”, Best Female Country Vocal Performance. But Taylor had to have the cheese, too. She went for the live performance.

Without benefit of Auto-Tune, the little studio gadget used to correct for that scratching on the blackboard sensation known as pitch, Swift droned on to the horror of all who heard it. That brought out the mice. Butchered is the word imparted on many posts to describe Swift’s performance of “Rhiannon”. Just as squeaky clean golfers get called out for keeping a harem of HOs on the side, Best Vocal Performers might draw some comments about not being able to stay in tune performing on the industry’s biggest night. Not comfortable letting the mice at his meal ticket, the cat in this story, Scott Borchetta, CEO of Swift’s label Big Machine Records goes meowing to the Tennessean in her defense stating that “Maybe she’s not the best technical singer, but she’s probably the best emotional singer because everybody else who gets up there and is technically perfect, people don’t seem to want more of it.” Wow Scotty! Way to stick up for your prized client. And to prove further Borchetta has Swift’s back, he later told the AP “This is not American Idol. This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator. It’s not about that technically perfect performance.”

Now the latter comments were just enough to bring on the dogs to rid the kingdom of its cat problem. Rottweiler in Shitzu’s clothing, Kelly Clarkson, American Idol’s Season One champion, immediately responded in an open letter on her “I Am Kelly” blog. “Thank you for that ‘Captain Obvious’ sense of humor because you know what, we not only hit the high notes, you forgot to mention we generally hit the ‘right’ notes as well,” Clarkson wrote. She signed her post “One of those contestants from American Idol who only made it because of her high notes.” Clarkson has two Grammy wins under her belt, and songwriting credits on some of her biggest hits, including “Because of You” and “Already Gone.”

This story still needs a lion to rid the kingdom of the dogs and an elephant to send the lions packing. And let’s not forget the King is ultimately advised to bring back the mice to push out the elephants. So in the end, he learns to live with the mice. We’ll have to stay tuned to see if Team Taylor Swift learns to sit tight as the mice blog about shaky performances or other future mis-steps and in the end let the body of work stand for itself.

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