Is This a Good Time For Taylor Swift to Return to Country Music?

For the past two years I've been on a righteous quest to remind the world that Taylor Swift was a country singer three years ago.  Everyone wants to believe that she emerged fully formed as a glamorous pop star like Athena (and Kanye thinks it was from his enormous head) but I remember the other Taylor.  The girl with the bedazzled cheek and a six-string.  Recently Swift got caught in a white lie and found herself in some mildly hot water.  It's entirely possible for her to bounce back from this and continue her life as one of several queens of pop, but I think she would be better off moving forward by turning around, going back to the small pond in which she was once the biggest fish.  I've argued before that Taylor Swift should eventually return to country music but there may never be a better time than now.

First, let's recap Swift's career up to this point.  Her very first single was 2006's "Tim McGraw."  That's the title.  Her very first song was named after Nashville superstar Tim McGraw and was about McGraw's music reminding Swift and her ex of each other whenever they hear it.  "Tim McGraw" performed pretty well on the charts but her next single "Teardrops on My Guitar" was her true breakthrough.  It peaked at number two on Billboard Country and seven on Billboard Pop.  (I remember it being much bigger than that due to the passion it inspired in the female population of my rural high school.)  Those early songs from Swift's self-titled debut set the precedent for the six years that followed.  She made songs that were perhaps more pop than country but still more country than anything by the parade of tight-jeaned douche boys pandering their keyword crammed escapism that was going on at the same time and continues to this day.

Then, in 2012 Swift released her fourth album Red, the ultimate experiment in country-pop with dense production and touches of dubstep (it was 2012).  Of course, that was followed by 1989, Swift's first 100% pop album that is frankly a masterpiece.  I don't have a single bad word to say about the album itself but I also can't help but feel betrayed on behalf of her former genre, a community which inherently prizes conservative values including loyalty (and prizes Conservative values because it's Convenient).  I'm not one to stand in the way of someone's artistic growth but I have to wonder if that growth had to be in an obviously more profitable direction.  There was a time when that would have been called "selling out."

Now, less than two years after Swift gained all those new fans with a more polished style and persona her adoring public has turned on her and the discrepancy between the two Taylor's is to blame.  In April of this year Kanye West released a song with the line "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous," referencing the infamous incident when West interrupted Swift's acceptance speech on the national stage of the VMA's.  West claimed that Swift personally approved the line before its release, a claim that Swift's camp resolutely denied.  Last Sunday West's wife Kim Kardashian posted a Snapchat video of West on the phone with Swift in which she can be heard giving her unequivocal permission.  In the beginning Swift sounds enthusiastic but as it goes on it sounds like she doesn't approve at all of the implication that she owes her career to hip-hop's douchiest genius or that she owes him sex for it.  It sounds like she's just too afraid of conflict so she tries harder and harder to justify her initial consent.  Despite all the megastar bravado the sweet, sensitive country girl was too nice to start a fight.  Then, after the song came out the pop star returned and fought against the attack on her image through lies and deception.  For a few days before the Republican National Convention really heated up, the once universally beloved Taylor Swift became social media's villain of the week.

Interestingly, Kim's video begins with a stark reminder of Swift's past.  Apparently, her phone number still has a Nashville area code.  Maybe it's a sign that she should go back.  Instead of riding it out and continuing as a popstar I would like to see Taylor Swift return to her roots and then go deeper.  This is the perfect time for it because country music itself is going backwards in the best possible way.  Artists like Chris Stapleton, Kacey Musgraves, and Sturgill Simpson are leading the genre in the direction of a renaissance by making more traditional, stripped down country music instead of the flashy arena pop-rock that has dominated Nashville for years.  I'm talking about a Taylor Swift alt-country album.  The genre is fit to burst with creativity in the coming years.  When Swift was working on 1989 no one would have guessed that Simpson was about to become a superstar on the back of a cosmic spiritual concept album.

All due respect to Max Martin but if Swift dropped him in favor of Dave Cobb, the producer of Stapleton's Traveler and  Simpson's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, the results could be really fascinating.  Swift moved to Nashville to become a country star when she was 14 then devoted ten of her 26 years to the genre.  If Taylor Swift thinks that's more than enough time to give to the style and audience that actually did make her famous then I certainly can't argue, but if she wants to have a Pure Country moment and sing about the "heartland," if she wants to be part of what could be a historic artistic movement, well, I would wager that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian won't be at the CMA's any time soon.

4 Cartoons from the 2000s that Paved the Way for Nerd Domination

We're over halfway through 2016 and it's shaping up to be a hit-or-miss year for superhero movies.  Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War were both rampaging successes while Batman v Superman and X-Men: Apocalypse both fell flat on their faces.  For years critics have been predicting the genre's descent and this could be the turning point.  It seems like a good time to look at how we got here, not by examining Sam Raimi's Spider-Man or Chris Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, but at the aughts' cartoons that introduced so many viewers to a treasure trove of comic book tropes.  The cartoons that better captured the spirit of comic books better than any live-action adaptation ever could.

Codename: Kids Next Door

Childrens' television, especially for the past fifteen years or so, presents a magical wonderland for kids where adults barely exist.  In 2002 Cartoon Network took it a step farther by turning the adult population of the world into supervillains.  The vicious adults are the HYDRA to the benevolent S.H.I.E.L.D.-like secret organization KND.  The focus of the show is on the local branch of multicultural, though vaguely racist, children in Sector V.  KND frequently battled such foes as malevolent dentists and stingy ice cream men.  The main villain was a pipe smoking square who was constantly hidden in shadow and/or covered in fire and known only as Father.  Kids Next Door started out intense and nerdy but by the end things got really nuts with stuff like mind wipes and moon bases and a Planet of the Rainbow Monkeys.

Kim Possible

Kim Possible is another spy show that premiered the same year as KND but aimed for a slightly older demographic and swam in the deeper end of the sci-fi pool.  Kim Possible was incredibly cool, with her tech-savvy-for-2002 theme song and her surprisingly stylish cargo pants, but the show was as nerdy as any in recent memory.  Early in the first season the titular Kim faced off against a Doctor Moreau-with-Beanie-Babies type (voiced by Melissa McCarthy) and got mind swapped with her lovably goofy sidekick Ron Stoppable.  Several episodes featured a superhero family called "Team Go" that was clearly inspired by "Power Pack," a comic book reference that cuts about as deep as "Guardians of the Galaxy" did five years ago.  "Call me, beep me" sounded hilariously outdated before the show even ended in 2007 but otherwise it still holds up.  The snappy dialogue and colorful action makes it worth watching if you can catch an episode on Freeform late at night.

Jackie Chan Adventures

Whenever I get in a conversation with someone about the the cartoons we used to watch I like to bring up the 2000 to 2005 Kids' WB's Jackie Chan Adventures just to make sure it wasn't a wicked cool fever dream I had.  So far I haven't gotten a lot of clear answers but it has Wikipedia and IMDB pages.  The character based on the martial arts superstar was a straight laced archaeologist who couldn't stop stumbling into mystical misadventures that required his famous slapstick combat skills.  He was joined by his brash preteen niece Jade and a wise, grumpy sorcerer uncle.  Jackie became a member of another S.H.I.E.L.D. stand-in led by a cross between white Nick Fury and Sam Jackson Nick Fury.  Jackie also had a flirtatious relationship with a cat burglar in the vein of Catwoman or Black Cat.  Most episodes ended with real-life Jackie Chan answering questions from young fans, often mid-workout, in the most surreal part of a very bizarre show.

Danny Phantom

Fairly OddParents has its share of memorable superhero moments thanks to Adam West's recurring role as himself and the in-universe fictional character Crimson Chin, but with Danny Phantom, starting in 2004, creator Butch Hartman really let his love for comic books run wild.  The main character, Danny Fenton, is a dorky teenager with well meaning mad scientist parents who specialize in ectoplasmic research and development.  They're basically Ghostbusters.  They created a machine that allows travel to the Ghost Zone (Nickelodeon speak for the afterlife).  The Ghost Portal malfunctioned and turned Danny into a half-ghost superhero.  He's basically Spider-Man if all his villains were the lost souls of the damned.  Danny Phantom is what would happen if Stan Lee created something too dark and weird for '60s Marvel and someone dug it up and turned it into a NickToon.

Three TV Shows For Those of Us Who Can't Get Enough of Roadies

Roadies is my new favorite show.  Not just my favorite show airing now.  In just a couple of episodes it became my favorite TV show ever.  The Showtime series about life behind the scenes of a roots-rock tour was created by Cameron Crowe and perfectly captures the same spiritual fervor for music that made his magnum opus Almost Famous my favorite movie.  Unfortunately, the critics have not been impressed by the show at all.  That's okay because Roadies isn't for critics.  It's for and about fans; people who love music or anything else more than they can stand, who keep coming back to that thing that stokes their fire no matter how many times they get burned.  The enemy be damned, Roadies struck a chord with me and I would wager it did the same for a lot of other people.  If you love the show and want more, if you'll need something to fill the void after the season ends or even to get you to the next episode, I have a few suggestions for your melodic fix.

Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll

It's not as bad as it sounds.  The title of the FX series comes with a hint of irony.  Most of the characters are past-their-prime rock stars.  Their lives and careers get a boost when Heathens front man (series creator Denis Leary) Johnny Rock's daughter shows ups and takes over.  Gigi, played by Nickelodeon alumnus Elizabeth Gillies, turns the Heathens into the Assassins and inherits the lead singer position while Johnny Rock becomes the offstage songwriter.  Gigi quickly enters a relationship with Johnny's best friend and guitarist Flash (John Corbett).  Together with back up singer and Johnny's long-term girlfriend Ava (Elaine Hendrix) they make up a strange family unit that is creepily comfortable talking about sex with each other.  Meanwhile, the rhythm section, Bobby Kelly and John Ales, has quirky side adventures.  The biggest problem is that it's mostly written by old dudes like Leary who think Lady Gaga is just another pop star and don't realize she released the best rock album of 2011.  There's a fair amount of rock star debauchery but Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll is mostly about people who love music and who love each other.

Mozart in the Jungle

Mozart in the Jungle could almost have the title Sex&Drugs&Baroque.  Amazon's Coppola Family Production centers on New York's cutthroat, hard partying classical music scene.  Remember the lunch room scene in Mean Girls when the defining trait of the band geeks is that they're oversexed?  Mozart in the Jungle is about those grown up horny nerds.  The first episode features a montage of Saffron Burrows' cellist sleeping her way through the different sections of the orchestra.  The main character is Hailey Rutledge, an oboist played by Lola Kirke who joins the ensemble after a last-minute hungover audition.  She only gets the chance after a new wunderkind conductor, Golden Globe winner Gael Garcia Bernal, starts shaking things up after taking over from his jealous older predecessor played by the iconic Malcolm McDowell.  I'm still not convinced Mozart deserved the Best Comedy Golden Globe over Transparent but it's a really good show about people who care about making music.

Sonic Highways

Dave Grohl is just annoyingly talented and he's too likable to blame him for it.  The drummer for the iconic, world changing band Nirvana turned front man for America's best and most consistent rock band of the past two decades, the Foo Fighters, proved himself to be a good director with his 2013 rockumentary Sound City.  The film about a legendary music studio in Los Angeles was followed up by an HBO series.  Sonic Highways follows the Foo Fighters on the great American road trip as they record eight different songs in eight different studios, each track an attempt to capture the soul of the city it was recorded in.  The result is a concept album that might be the Foo Fighters' best work ever.  The accompanying series is a marvelous journey through the history of music in the United States.  In spirit Sonic Highways is the closest thing to Roadies next to Almost Famous.  It's for fans, by fans.  It's rock and roll and it's divine.

A Few Questions About Harry Potter's America's School System

Less than a week before the Fourth of July J.K. Rowling debuted a wealth of information about magic in the United States (and Canada).  She released a new story on the Harry Potter website Pottermore about the founding of Ilvermorny, the American equivalent of Britain's magical school Hogwarts.  This is something American Harry Potter fans have been waiting for a long time, some of them their entire lives.  Frankly, Americans just aren't used to things not being about us.  It's especially frustrating to be cut off from the adventures at a fancy exclusive boarding school across the ocean.  Confirmation that there is an American wizarding school and the ability to be sorted into an official Ilvermorny house (Wampus, Pukwudgie, Horned Serpent and Thunderbird) comes as great relief.  However, this new information raises a few questions that are worth asking.

Is there more than one magic school in the U.S.?

A lot of Americans struggle to comprehend just how large their country is, so J.K. Rowling can certainly be forgiven for making the same mistake, but it seems very unlikely that there could be only one wizarding school in North America.  Canada is geographically the second largest country in the world after Russia.  The U.S. is the third largest and has the second largest population in the geographical top five after China.  The entire United Kingdom could fit inside Texas twice and Alaska seven times.  America has almost five times the population of the U.K.  Even considering that magic people are a minority worldwide and the U.S. could have considerably less of them than the U.K. it would still make sense for there to be at least four or five separate magic schools.

How do students get there?

If, somehow, Ilvermorny is the only magic school in the United States getting there is probably a pain in the neck for a lot of students and not just because it's at the top of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts.  The Harry Potter universe offers a number of ways for people to get from one place to another in an instant but no one uses them to leave Britain, which doesn't say much about their range limitations.  If any exist at all then the transit from Los Angeles to Massachusetts is most definitely too far.  A single train like the Hogwarts express wouldn't be able to get to all fifty states.  Ilvermorny would need an entire network of railways.  Even if there are multiple magical schools getting to any one of them would present a challenge.

Do the schools compete against each other?

Harry Potter's participation in the fictional sport Quidditch is a major plot point in the book series.  Hogwarts students compete against each other based on which house they're in.  The whole school comes out to watch the games.  The whole school!  From an American perspective that's just adorable.  Student athletics are a bigger deal in the U.S. than they are pretty much anywhere else in the world.  In certain parts of America entire towns shut down every Friday for the local high school football game.  (Do you think J.K. Rowling has seen Friday Night Lights?)  In 2014 the National Collegiate Athletic Association brought in nearly a billion dollars.  Not bad for a non-profit.  It stands to reason that the culture surrounding non-magic sports would extend to Quodpot.  Oh, by the way, Americans aren't so into Quidditch. They prefer a variant called Quodpot which features an exploding Quod ball.  Assuming there are several U.S. magic schools Americans are most assuredly going to want to see them compete against each other.  One can only hope Quodpot games also have all the fanfare of a football game with a marching band and cheerleaders and so on.  Does Ilvermorny have pep rallies?  A homecoming court?  Jocks and band geeks?  Burnouts and mean girls?  What are magical pep rallies like?