Raymond J. de Souza: The secret to Swift and Springsteen’s success

Canada is hosting one of the greatest musical legends on the planet. And if that weren’t enough, Taylor Swift has six shows in Toronto.

Saturday night includes Bruce Springsteen at the Saddledome and Swift at the Skydome. The latter is more than a mere tour; it is a cultural moment of consumerist excess.

Swift’s concerts are sponsored by Rogers, which owns the Skydome and the Toronto Blue Jays. Cleverly, Rogers is selling season’s tickets to the Blue Jays which, if bought, entitle the purchaser to drop several grand on a luxury box for Swift. Given the dismal record of the Blue Jays this past season, she might be the team’s most valuable product.

Why would a family drop tens of thousands to see Taylor? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, many say.

Except that it’s really not. Swift is an extraordinarily talented performer, and in robust health. (Incidentally, why are football players “gassed” in the fourth quarter of a game of intermittent play of some 15 active minutes, when Springsteen and Swift do three-hour shows? They never even appear to be out of breath. I surmise that Swift is more fit than Travis Kelce.)

In 2064, it is entirely possible that Swift will be touring Canada again, at age 75. Just like Springsteen is this week.

Forty years ago, Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. tour was selling out mammoth stadiums. It was an election year, and the Reagan campaign was a geyser of patriotic feeling. They played Born in the U.S.A. at his rallies. Springsteen told them to stop, as he supported, then and now, the Democrat. He did appearances for Kamala Harris this year.

Swift endorsed Harris, too. In 2064 Swift may well be doing concerts in support of whichever Democrat is running against whichever Trump grandchild is the candidate that year.

Why did Springsteen have his cultural moment in 1984, and Swift this year? And why has he endured so long, as she likely will? The answer was given by Elton John back in 1984 too, in his song Sad Songs (Say So Much).

“There are times when we all need to share a little pain,” sang Sir Elton. “Sad songs say so much/ If someone else is suffering enough/ Oh, to write it down/ When every single word makes sense/ Then it’s easier to have those songs around.”

Swift’s concert extravaganzas are often styled as explosions of joy. The singer herself appears sincerely joyful, and her fans ecstatically so. And therein lies the magic, 40 years ago as now: to sing sad songs in a joyful spirit, to proclaim painful experiences with pulsating exuberance. Sad songs say so much when sung by singers who are not sad. It is a rare gift. Springsteen has it. So does Swift.

In 1984 Born in the U.S.A. was not an ode to America. It was an indictment. A Vietnam veteran despised upon his return home, Springsteen’s protagonist “(ended) up like a dog that’s been beat too much.”

He didn’t want it to be used as part of Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign. There were no beaten dogs in Reagan’s saccharine ads. Nevertheless, Springsteen sang it like a patriotic anthem. A multi-storey Stars and Stripes framed the stage. Americans felt good — very good — singing along with Springstreen, even if what they were singing about was not good at all.

Springsteen was the lyricist of the downtrodden working class, kept down by the man. Swift sings about the man, too, but from the perspective of the badly treated girl. Her oeuvre is male relational delinquency, as one astute observer put it.

Swift sings of pain “burrowed under my skin / In heart-stopping waves of hurt.” She doubts that “all’s well that ends well” when she is “in a new hell every time.” It’s a bit like the dog that’s been beat too much.

In her song “Happiness,” she struggles to be happy again after a breakup. And it was quite a breakup: “Past the blood and bruise/ Past the curses and cries/ Beyond the terror in the nightfall/ Haunted by the look in my eyes.”

Haunted. Beaten. It’s a bleak experience, and the singer of sad songs gives voice to it. And in giving voice somehow the pain is wrapped in joy, which is why Springsteen and Swift singing sad songs say so very much. It is the sublime gift of music — even pop music — that pain can be acknowledged, explored, healed and lifted up, all in a few minutes.

For Springsteen the pain was the ordinary man against whom circumstances cruelly conspired. For Swift, the pain is that of a generation of young women, against whom a digital world conspires to magnify their mistakes, intensify their insecurity, corrode their confidence. We know of the epidemic of mental health issues, anxiety and depression amongst those who should be in the flower of life. There are too many sad girls, and Swift has the unusual genius of offering them solace and, at least for a time, joy.

Swift and Springsteen are both in the anti-Trump camp. But there is something oddly similar they share with him.

“I am your retribution,” the once-and-future president likes to say.

He sees the grievances, the betrayals and the pain. And he offers a political anthem to those who have been beaten down like a dog, bloodied and bruised. There is a reason that Trump’s rallies are more like concerts than standard speeches. They are, often enough, joyful in an odd kind of way. There is a reason he dances, after a fashion. He, too, knows that sad songs say so much when performed by a master showman.

Springsteen and Swift offer a kind of retribution, too, against the man, against the men. And they are much better dancers.

National Post