Mike,

I think you are wonderful but people being manipulated? Yeah. For about 30 seconds. Mike Dunbar has it absoultely right. You can tweak the consumer's interest for a few minutes with anything. But they have the attention span of a gnat. And if you don't keep giving them something they are interested in, they are GONE faster than you can imagine.

I always go back to the Jessica Simpson model. A few years ago they had Jessica Simpson, BEAUTIFUL, Hollywood actress, in all the tabloids, did movies, Dukes of Hazzard, and did a country record. She had her 15 minutes. That is money and manipulation. There was nothing that KEPT attention. That is actually the RULE rather than the exception. Package a product, throw it out there and it fails. Two out of ten succeed.And that is out of the thousands shooting for that same slot.

And I keep going over this again and again, EVERY MAJOR ACT THAT IS OUT THERE HAVE THE SAME PROMOTION MONEY!

That is the difference in what Taylor Swift has done and all the others have not. She has done something that has taken it past the "flash in the pan" aspect.

What many writers have such a problem with is that it is not what they would write or think should be commerical. Gonna have to get over that. It Is what is commerical and probably what we are all doing is not. "Adapt or die" a very wise sage once said.

John, you are right. They laughed at the Beatles. And "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was not the greatest of intellectual statements.
Elvis, Garth, you name it, people always have their detractors. Taylor has her's. Unfortunately, the most detractors that I see her get are from writers and people in the music industry, angry because it didn't happen to them.

MAB