Last night I watched the musical movie 'Taylor Swift - The Era's Tour' with my two granddaughters, ages 7 and 14.
I have heard my grandchildren rave about this great pop icon for months - singing her songs, praising her like a divine diva, and yearning to attend her concerts in person. I am told that she is considered a "phenomenon" and might rank as the world's top singer now or perhaps ever until now.
The movie was certainly glitzy like any great Hollywood or Bollywood production. My grandchildren, especially the 7-year-old, were jumping, dancing and singing along with Taylor Swift in the movie theater throughout the three-hour show.
But I found myself struggling to understand the lyrics and the words of the songs. I must confess none of the songs or the lyrics and the background music really touched my heart.
Although my English vocabulary and comprehension were much poorer in the 1960s and 70s, I recall thoroughly enjoying the music and songs of The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel; Peter, Paul and Mary; John Denver; Bob Dylan; even Ottis Redding, not to speak of the top Nepali and Hindi singers of that era that touched my heart & sensibilities in a very profound manner. I understood their words and meaning which often made me quite emotional.
Overpowered by the loud background music, I could only hear about 20 % of the words of Taylor Swifts' songs and maybe understood 5% of the full sentences and their meaning. None touched my heartstrings.
But my granddaughters could hear and recite most of the words and loved the lyrics.
Having heard from connoisseurs that Taylor Swift writes her own songs and many of them contain deep meanings and messages, I came to the conclusion that I must be thoroughly outdated. There could be no greater generation gap than my 7-year-old "Swiftie" reveling as if in a trance, and poor me failing to appreciate one of the greatest contemporary singers of our times.
Not to disappoint my little Swiftie, I pretended to enjoy the film, and we all had a grand time!
I await my next incarnation to be able to really appreciate the likes of Taylor Swift - just like many other movies with exaggerated special effects, and AI-generated virtual realities that simply bewilder me.
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Kul Chandra Gautam
Ah Kul, what to say other than welcome. You are in good company. Most of us haven't understood anything sung or spoken by the last generation, let alone the current.
ReplyDeleteBut likely that is what is intended -tribal dialects unintelligible to us oldies.