Taylor Swift is the Ultimate Professional
She rules the world not because she's talented, but because she's professional. Boy, is she.
This Substack is going out around 7:30 on Friday morning. It should have gone out last night, but I was tired, there was a lot else on my plate, and I had the feeling it wasn’t quite done. So, it’s late.
Taylor Swift would never, ever do such a thing. Which is why she’s Taylor Swift and I am … not.
I am fascinated by Taylor Swift. This week I’m going to write about her.
More specifically, I’m fascinated by how rapidly, how completely, she has literally taken over the world. I’m not going to recite the facts here –you probably already know about the packed stadiums night after night, the course about her at Harvard, the almost complete lack of any criticism, bad press, doubt or delay.
Her truck drivers are paid millions! Her boyfriend is an NFL star! She dumps men and writes about it! Her shows transform economies! Prince William comes to her show in London!
Like everyone else in the world, I like her music. She’s absolutely fantastic at writing hooky pop songs – as I write this, the melody to Love Story is in my head, with the charming counterpoint of Koda chomping on a bone in the background. Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone …
The engine of this women’s success is her ability to create an emotional environment, like Disneyland does, that people, especially young women, want to enter, and never leave. She’s just relatable enough that you can just, maybe, see yourself thinking the same things and having the same experiences. You can imagine, maybe, that it’s you up there or in there or doing that.
However, it’s also interesting, as a 62 year-old bald guy, to look at her through the lens of some of my other experiences. Business, strategy, just plain life. I did not, as my mother used to say, just fall off the turnip truck. I’ve seen some shit. And based on that, and perhaps too much time spent thinking about this, something interesting has occurred to me.
Her Real Talent Isn’t Music. It’s Professionalism.
Taylor Swift does not rule the world because she’s Mozart. She’s quite talented, but in reality, at least 80% of what she’s accomplished is due to two things:
Thing one: She was in the exact right place with the exact right stuff at the exact right time. In other words, she got very, very, very lucky.
In my career, I have been on the early-stage teams of three venture-funded startups. I’ve consulted with dozens more, from all over the world. For every single one of them, the Holy Grail is what’s called “product-market fit”. This means that what the startup provides is something that a lot of people need, and more importantly, are willing to pay for. If you hit that just right, your business is going to explode. In the case of one of mine, I remember an email from the CEO that literally said, “Stop selling.” We had grown that fast. We had product-market fit, and it was like reaching out and grabbing a live power line.
Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift because her music has perfect, awe-inspiring product-market fit. It’s impossible to know if this will happen ahead of time. Investors bet many millions of dollars on it happening, and they’re wrong all the time. But if you have it, or find it, the product doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough. That’s Taylor.
Tay-tay, first of all, is not that great a singer. She’s good, but she doesn’t have the power of someone like Whitney Houston or Linda Ronstadt, and when she sings live, she’s often off-key, or obviously straining. This is corrected using technology and a lot of backup singers, so the audience can’t tell, but she doesn’t have a big, strong stage voice. She’s also a great pop songwriter, but she’s not ever going to write something utterly brilliant and definitive like “Jolene” or “Angel from Montgomery.” She often writes with collaborators, who can provide ideas she can’t.
An Interesting Thing I Learned, by the way, is that when she’s onstage, particularly, in stadiums, she isn’t hearing the actual song she’s performing. She’s hearing enough of it to know where she is, but that’s it. Say, the drums, and a melody. The full performance is heard by the audience, but if she had all of it going into her head, it would be unacceptably easy to get confused or lose her place.
She’s not unattractive – after all, she is 5’10”, and has legs like a gazelle, blonde hair, cheekbones, all of it. However, she’s not, again, Whitney Houston or even Debbie Harry in her prime. She’s very pretty, but beautiful? No.
Also, despite sort of flirting around the edges of it, she’s not any kind of artist or social commentator. Bob Dylan was Bob Dylan because her really did capture the spirit of the social issues of his day. Same with Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, hell, even Grimes. But Taylor Swift is not someone to take creative chances, or to step off an artistic cliff. She’s really, really good at tapping into the fantasies and concerns of her audiences, but writing about breaking up with (yet another) boy is not going to revolutionize music.
Thing two: Her real talent, the thing that makes her Taylor Swift, is unbelievable professionalism. This enables her to capitalize on Thing One.
At every stage along her journey, Tay-tay has accomplished two formidable things simultaneously. She has both avoided making mistakes, and consistently made strategic moves that strengthened her. Together, these two things – not doing the dumb thing, and also doing the smart thing, are professionalism, as I define it.
Let’s begin with not doing the wrong thing. I’ve watched a video of her being interviewed by Vogue for a series called 72 Questions. The concept is to have celebrities answer 72 questions, obviously, asked one after the other after the other. Her performance is flawless, because she’s clearly extremely prepared. No mistakes, great answers, because .. wait for it .. she’s a professional.
Here’s one example: at one point in the interview, which is held in one of her absolutely beautiful homes, the interviewer says, “What’s one thing you’re really sick of?” Her answer: “Clickbait.” This is just perfect, and utterly professional, for several reasons:
First, it’s a one-word answer — simple, clear, memorable. No fumbling through long sentences. President Biden could learn from this tactic.
Second, it’s almost certainly not true. Actually revealing what she’s really sick of would open up a can of worms, probably, so she doesn’t do that.
Third, it can’t alienate anyone. She’s not sick of a person, she’s sick of a thing.
And finally, it’s absolutely relatable. Who isn’t sick of clickbait? Twelve year-old girls know what it is, and are probably sick of it, too.
I doubt very, very much this was a spontaneous answer. I’m sure, instead, that a team of well-paid PR people reviewed the questions in advance and dreamed up her answers. They also negotiated a deal with Vogue allowing her (or her publicist) to review the interview, edit and/or overhaul her responses, and approve the final version. She went through their script, and then on camera, delivered it perfectly. This is what she does. This is also what a lot of people don’t do, which is why they don’t become Taylor Swift.
Although I will probably date myself with my pop references, all kinds of people in the entertainment industry get off to fast starts, or are a big thing in the beginning. The problem, however, is that they can’t keep it up. When the big initial hurrah is over, and it’s time to deliver the goods again, they can’t, or won’t, or don’t, and they end up playing casinos in North Las Vegas.
Consider, for example, Shania Twain. She was the Taylor Swift of an earlier era, and in fact, had some advantages Swift doesn’t. For one thing, in an industry where looks matter a lot, Shania was drop-dead gorgeous where Swift is simply very pretty. Shania Twain, in her prime, was ridiculously beautiful.
She also had a terrific voice, and a similar connection with her audience. Onstage, she was very similar to Tay-tay. Her shows were fun and flawless, and a pleasure to watch. She, too, started out as a country artist who gradually crossed over into pop, and for a while, really made it work.
However, unlike Swift, Twain’s career was hampered by some serious mistakes. Some of these were not her fault, but at the point when she should have really stomped on the gas, there was a nasty, messy divorce with a guy who was also her producer. Fights with her record company. Health issues. A public sense of being kind of damaged, or fragile, or neurotic, or maybe a little crazy. At that level, you can’t make any mistakes, particularly if you’re female. And her career stalled.
This happens all the time. This is Michael Jackson and his problem with, uh, child molesting and the whole weird Neverland Ranch thing. This is J.K. Rowling saying something very stupid about trans people and tanking her career. This is Willie Nelson fighting with the IRS, Martha Stewart getting careless and ending up on prison, or any of the thousands of performers who end up in rehab. The queen of this, of course, is Amy Winehouse, who was absolutely brilliant and gifted in a way Tay-tay never will be, but whose addictions killed her. Very unprofessional.
The first part of being a professional is to manage your life so that it doesn’t screw up your career. The bigger you are, the stricter you have to be about this. Tim Cook, of Apple, is the ultimate example of this. I worked at Apple for three years, and his power was awe-inspiring. For instance, if you were an underling and he wanted to meet with you, your manager would first spend a day or two prepping you. Screwing up a meeting with Tim was thought to be a career-ender for both the offending party and their boss.
Tim is the consummate professional. He’s unbelievably controlled, and despite his power and visibility, almost nothing is known about him that he doesn’t want known. There are no mistakes, there are no skeletons in his closet, nothing sloshing around down in the bilge that could make him enemies he doesn’t need, embarrass him or distract him. Making personal mistakes is kicking your own ass, and Taylor Swift has not done this, despite all kinds of opportunities.
The second part of being a professional is being strategic. This means making moves that help prevent issues you see coming, or that help you move into new markets or exploit opportunities that you want to capitalize on. Taylor Swift has been absolutely brilliant at that.
For one thing, she collaborates with a lot of other artists in a very strategic way. She’s done at least two songs with The National – “Coney Island” and “Alcott”. They’re both terrific, and expose her to an audience that largely consists of middle-aged men, which she otherwise wouldn’t get near. She collaborated with Florence + The Machine on “Florida!!” which resulted in a much more dramatic, edgy song than normal for her, and opened up another dimension for her brand. I mean, lyrics like these aren’t what she’s been traditionally known for:
So I did my best to lay to rest
All of the bodies that have ever been on my body
And in my mind, they sink into the swamp
Is that a bad thing to say in a song?
And this goes on and on and on. Dating men, breaking up with them and writing songs about it speaks powerfully to her young, female audience, who would love to do the same thing. Anticipating that some paparazzi would eventually bag a shot of her in a bikini, Swift pre-empted that by releasing one of her own, both draining all the impact from a second image of the same thing, and keeping control of the picture herself.
The ultimate example of her strategic brilliance was a battle with her record company over the masters of her first six albums. Although she owned the rights to the music, the company owned the rights to the actual recordings of the songs, and did not want to sell them back. I wouldn’t, either. So what did she do?
She recorded them again. Exact same song, exact same sound, exact same singer, but branded as “Taylor’s version” instead of the original. Nobody had ever done anything like this before. It instantly vacuumed much of the value out of the originals, gave Swift complete control over a copy of her music, made the record company look like the Evil Empire and utterly eliminated the entire issue.
Everyone loves Keith Richards. The entire world is charmed by the handsome, intoxicated musician who’s a genuine Bad Boy. This is the guy who literally invented the role of Rock Star. He gets into all kinds of scrapes, and because he is so talented, always lands on his feet. Mr. Rock Star, the Riffmaster, Captain Jack Sparrow’s father, the guy who will never die or be uncool, no matter how many drugs he takes, bottles of whiskey he puts down, cars he wrecks, cigarettes he smokes or outrageous things he does.
Bullshit.
Keith Richards is a poster child for unprofessionalism. If he was on his own, the band would have lasted about twenty minutes. What made the Rolling Stones The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band was Mick Jagger, the guy with the degree from the London School of Economics, who worked out religiously to stay in shape for touring, didn’t smoke, wasn’t kidding and understood professionalism in a way Richards never did, and still can’t.
As charming and talented as Richards was, someone has to make sure the trains run on time. That was Jagger. It must, by the way, have been unbelievably difficult and frustrating for Jagger to have to sit there for years while his partner in the band, in songwriting, and in his career, kept messing things up by, say, being arrested again for heroin possession.
Taylor Swift, in other words, is the Mick Jagger of this era. More than her looks, more than her talent, more than her creativity, she’s attained this position by being absolutely professional from, as far as I can tell, the very beginning. Smart, consistent, relentless, and endlessly disciplined. And by doing this, Taylor Swift has adroitly, relentlessly, made herself into the biggest thing the world has ever seen, with so sign (yet) of stopping.
Eventually, of course, she’ll have to stop. She may decide to do a Julia Roberts, and take her money and her mate, move into an estate somewhere, and enjoy the rest of her life quietly. She may age out of performing, or do an R.E.M. and quit at the top. However, given her track record, regardless of the trajectory she takes, I don’t think she’s going to make any mistakes.
It will be fascinating to see.