The most compelling character in the newish documentary One to One: John & Yoko isn’t either John or Yoko. It’s one A.J. Weberman, inventor of ‘Dylanology’ and ‘garbology’. He’s shown practising both in the film, rummaging through Bob Dylan’s bins for clues to the thought process of genius.
Fifty years on, two things struck me. The first is how odd it is that Lennon and Dylan would let someone as obviously potty as Weberman anywhere near them. The second is that everyone is now Weberman. Think of the Swifties who decode every missive from Taylor; the fanatics who obsess over the sexual antics of boy bands based on convoluted readings of song lyrics; and people like me who spend wintry Saturdays driving around the Jersey shore visiting Springsteen locations.
Pop songs are acts of mythic self-creation. And we pop fans are always ultimately trying to get to the bottom of it all. The myths pop stars write these days, however, aren’t the same as they used to be. Take Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who performs as Self Esteem. Though she has nothing in common with the Stones, or Leonard Cohen, or any of the men who spent decades writing about women, you can view her work entirely through a rockist lens if you wish.
Her songs could almost be replies to those caricatures of women: muse, mother, sex object, betrayer, saint. ‘I am not your mother, and nor should you want me to be,’ she sang. ‘I am not your therapist, you don’t pay me enough for this.’
Taylor’s second solo album, Prioritise Pleasure – a hymn to empowerment – became a breakout hit, causing her to find that none of her problems had been solved. The run of theatre shows to launch her third record, A Complicated Woman, suggested unsolved problems had not thwarted her creativity. It was a visual treat – low on effects, high on impact – with a troupe of dancers moving through roles from Gilead handmaids to school-disco ravers. And there were nods to the permanently online – during ‘Cheers To Me’ the screen behind the stage flashed up: ‘Please do the dance on TikTok I want to buy Janet and Andy a caravan.’
At the start of the tour for the last album, crowds greeted Taylor cheerfully. Now they’re receiving her ecstatically. Lines from ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ were shouted back at her by women feeling her rage (when I talk to women about Self Esteem, they all marvel at her anger). Taylor is 38 and plenty old enough to know that pop music tends to make its listeners promises that can’t be kept. Her own grand statement, from the song that concluded this triumphant show, was rather more downbeat: ‘Who really gets it right?’ she sang on ‘The Deep Blue Okay’.
What a world in which two such astounding shows could take place on consecutive days
Josh Tillman, who records as Father John Misty, has an equally compelling but rather different autobiographical conceit: let me lay my charismatic assholedom before you over music so cushiony it resembles a Victoria sponge. The apogee of that strain of his writing is ‘Mr Tillman’, a song so perfect in its unfurling it could be the work of a watchmaker. The verses depict a hotel manager talking nervily to our hero, while the chorus has Tillman floating away in his own narcotised mind. The exquisite nature of his phrasing recalls not the 1970s artists Tillman is compared to – Elton John, Randy Newman, Todd Rundgren – but Dr Seuss. Not The Cat in the Hat so much as The Weird with the Beard.
Three of the first six songs featured Tillman’s name in the title – as if he were a crooning Bo Diddley – but after that it settled, and it was perfection. If irony was never quite out of sight, Tillman knows how to pull the strings of his artistry, so the raised eyebrows can be lowered and the hands raised in supplication. On ‘Screamland’, where sonic modernity crashed into his otherwise velvety music, the effect was entirely thrilling.
What a world in which two such astounding shows could take place on consecutive days.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.