Forget Taylor Swift, Barbra Streisand Is the Diva the World Deserves Right Now

This manifesto in miniature will begin with a nod to Björk and end with an overdue obeisance to Barbra Streisand. See how easy it is to write a story about Taylor Swift that doesn’t even mention the pop supernova’s name in the first sentence?In that spirit do I continue, because in must be reined the national obsession with this century’s most lucratively middlebrow, flabbergastingly over-hyped entertainer. A whole nation’s notions of what today constitutes a worthy mix of art and entertainment — in other words, what makes for good pop music —is at stake. It wasn’t Harvard’s latest curricular frippery that inspired this column but rather the suggestion of Peggy Noonan, who is usually on the mark, that Ms. Swift is “the best thing happening in America.” I concur these are bleak times and that Ms. Swift’s oeuvre is a perky one.Shake it off, though. Ms. Swift’s concerts are so anodyne that grown-ups take their pre-teen offspring along like they were going to Disneyland? So the empress of averageness writes her own tunes — how wonderful, but hardly unusual. So Ms. Swift inserts literary references into some of her songs — fantastic.Nobody, though, is going to tell this correspondent that “Look What You Made Me Do” or “You Need to Calm Down” can hold half a candle to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” or even — and I mean this — Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends.”Ms. Swift’s flimsy “Karma” is no match, not even by a long shot, for the enduring hummable charm of Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.” If only there were a once-a-day pill one could take to convince oneself that Ms. Swift’s songs are actually bearable — wait, maybe there already is?At risk of sounding like an old pop culture codger, allow me to remind America of the Icelandic singer and international musical oddity Björk, who can deftly break a few eggs whether in a video with a frying pan or on a movie screen with Catherine Deneuve, and who until recently called Brooklyn home. In 2001 I attended a press conference for the launch of Björk’s ethereal album Vespertine. It was held at the headquarters of the French communist party in the gritty southern stretches of Paris (presumably the Théâtre du Châtelet was already booked). That summer, before everything in the world changed, the pop world was at peak Björk. Her fame was never going to be at the level of a more commercially-savvy entertainer like Taylor Swift, but her music videos were cutting edge, her fashion choices memorable and bizarre, and her concerts from Paris to New York sold out fast. Journalists from all over Europe descended on the Oscar Niemeyer-designed French commie lair not because Björk rocked the sex appeal of late 1980s Madonna or because she knew how to write and sing good songs (which she does) but because she represented coolness incarnate.Nobody could quite figure her out — she looked different and sounded different. She literally marched to her own tune, even if it involved draping a fake swan’s neck around her shoulders on the red carpet at Cannes.Lady Gaga in her heyday channeled some of that Björkian eccentricity; outlandish outfits, powerful voice, and Manhattan swagger made her, for a time, the pop sensation that with good reason swept the nation. Like Björk, Ms. Gaga is an original in an industry defined by instant commodification and cheap clones.Taylor Swift is many things on a lot of levels — but interesting? Her stage presence is more about the glamor the audience projects onto her rather than any perfume of enchantment she exudes herself. The costumes dazzle but never provoke and the sounds may be polished but overall they come off like a pastiche of 1980s teen phenomena Tiffany and Debbie Gibson with a stab at the 1990s-era’s hamfisted alt-grunge relevance of the Cranberries. Add to that a dash of Sir Elton John-ish cockiness and anyone who really loves music should be running for the nearest exit. With Ms. Swift, there is little guesswork and no intrigue, just gallons of empty shine. As for the pathologically over-chronicled romance with the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, Travis Kelce, what can one say? The acute shortage of love in the world right now might keep one from waxing cynical, but next to Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, or even Sean Penn and Madonna, this interstate love-in is simply soporific.The other day I heard Barbra Streisand’s version of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” from her 1977 album Superman. Possibly a paean to New York is more poignant when you hear it a few thousand miles away from Fifth Avenue, but still: a voice like a slab of Normandy butter melting over a rousing orchestration for a moment of genuine acoustic elation.

Forget Taylor Swift, Barbra Streisand Is the Diva the World Deserves Right Now

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