Is Taylor Swift Punching Down?

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1:59Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm alright, yeah, I'm not too bad. How are you? Very well. Now, the big news. Uh oh, go on. Is the internet broken again? Because Taylor Swift just released a new album. Taylor Swift, who I've been googling her, she's a singer. Our first item is going to be about two people who've dominated the internet. wanted to and Nicole Kidman who didn't want to. So we're talking about how to break it and how you can break it without wanting to. Yes, we are also going to talk about musicals.

2:37Some people think musicals are becoming completely unviable on Broadway. That has a big blowback onto our West End. So we're going to look at trends in theatre land. Trends in theatre land, yes please. But we're also going to talk about live experiences which are only on the up. And I've got lots of theories as to why and I know you have too. Yeah, exactly. Theatres have essentially made so much money from musicals over the last 50 years, but only three since the pandemic have made a profit on Broadway. And we're also going to talk about... Oh, this will be fun. Well, you're going to talk about it.

3:06I'm going to listen. I've got a tight four days on Mel Gibson. He has started filming The Resurrection of the Christ, the long-awaited follow-up to The Passion of the Christ from more than two decades ago. Mel Gibson has started filming it. It's going to be bigger, more outlandish than the original, and we're going to do a deep dive on that. Superb. Now, shall we talk about Taylor Swift? Let's. So how do you become the person who everyone talks about in any given week? Taylor Swift and Nicole Kidman have managed it this week. Taylor Swift's new album came out on Friday, The Life of a Showgirl.

3:42I'm going to come off the fence and say I think it's amazing. And, you know, one of the secrets behind Taylor Swift's success is she keeps releasing really, really good music, and she releases quite a lot of it. but the way that she dominates the conversation is so extraordinary i mean it's almost impossible to think of somebody who everybody apart from maybe my mum has an opinion on even my if i went to say to my mum do you know taylor swift you go oh yeah i know taylor swift i'd say tell me about her and she'd say i i just know i've heard of her did a tour she's a singer i think she's a singer this album is uh i think it's rather wonderful she's gone back to max martin he's written the Second most amount of US number ones of anyone in history behind...

4:25Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney, yeah. But listen, there's still time. And I'm sure I've recommended this before, but The Song Machine Inside the Hit Factory is an amazing book, which is all about Max Martin and Dennis Popp and that generation of Swedish writers and who discovered Ace of Base and all that. It's a really good kind of oral history of all of that stuff, if you are interested. Now, Max Martin is the great unsung, it's not even unsung these days, is the great unsung songwriter of the last 30 years. Like so many incredible songwriters, he's Swedish. He can knock out, he did lots of Backstreet Boys stuff.

4:58He's done lots of Britney. And he did three albums with her. He did, and Shelback, who was his younger collaborator. So together they did Red, they did 1989, they did Reputation, which were her big pop albums. So she'd come from being a country star. She wants to be a pop star. Calls on Max Martin. They knock out those albums. And since then, she's done a few slightly more tortured albums, a bit more kind of introspective, a bit more indie. And now I think while she was on the tour last year. So while everyone again, this is the secret while everyone's saying, God, isn't it amazing the money she's making on this tour and the publicity she's getting?

5:35She's going, yeah, but by the way, I'm also like going to Sweden to record this incredible album. I've also written a load of songs and I'm now going to record them. So the second this finishes, I've got something else to come out. And that's how that's how you dominate, I think. but this album is absolutely wonderful. Have you spent any time listening to it? I have listened to it, yes. I don't think it's as good as those earlier ones, no. But I find it so fascinating. I mean, it's almost, I have to say that lyrically, she always delivers. Some of the music I wasn't so crazy about, but I have to say that it's, I don't want to say it's bigger than music because what should be bigger than music or art or anything?

6:17But as a concept, the her of it all is so fascinating to me now. I think things can be bigger than music. Yeah, I suppose. Things can be bigger than TV, yeah. Yes, I mean, she's such a phenomenon now. I think of her now as someone who's created their own universe where there are all these interconnecting pieces of folklore and Easter eggs and like a hyper-engaged fandom. And I realised, actually, when I was listening to it, that the thing she reminded me most of, actually, the only other entertainment property she's remotely like is Harry Potter. It's this, but you know what I mean? It's this huge thing with hyper-engaged fans.

6:51So lots of stuff where you're trying to read into things and see what might come next. The idea of people making their own stuff and kind of fanning out for it in this huge kind of diaspora of fandom. And I think of her as something like that, even though she is a single person, which is quite difficult. Well, funnily enough, if you think about the singularity of this album, and by the way, lots of people don't like Taylor Swift's music. So listen, And that's absolutely fine. I do like it, but it is definitely not for everyone. But I do think she's interesting to talk about. And one of the main things she's interesting to talk about is that album, really, it's like any album would have been in 1975 or 1981.

7:28It's 12 tracks. Yes. On the vinyl, it's six tracks on each side. So this is what we've been dealing with for almost the whole of music history. It's just all it is is 12 songs. Well, the last one was incredibly long. Yes. I mean, she did that. But to take that and to branch that out into dominating culture. So the movie, which released in cinemas over the weekend, blew every single traditional Hollywood movie absolutely out of the park. And people are paying to go and see that. As you say, she puts all sort of cryptic things into her songs. It's actually romantic about Charlie XCX. I ask you. I think it is.

8:05But I could be wrong. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Is she someone who is so, who bestrides literally everything? Can she punch down? She's threaded that needle very carefully before. This is too crass to say she's sort of presented a victim narrative, but she has always felt really relatable and bad things happen to her, even though she's the most famous person in the world and the least relatable in lots of ways. Having a go at Charlie XCX, does it still feel like you're... I wonder if she can punch down in that way. So she's in a position there. She was with Travis Kelsey. She's doing that Big Ears tour, which was absolutely massive.

8:35And she says, I was just in a great place and I wanted to make a big pop album. That's the thing that I wanted to do. She wants to make a representation of who she is at any given time, which is why the Max Martin thing is fascinating. So Max Martin, because he's Swedish, he always said, like, I grew up listening to American music, but I didn't know what the words were. So I just heard the sounds of the words. And that's always, you know, hit me, baby, one more time. That's Max Martin. Because he didn't know that didn't mean ring me up again. He just thought it sounded good. And Robin, who's one of the other great pop stars that we work with, he said the thing about Max Martin, he said it's all about cracking a code.

9:06It's all about being as efficient as possible. so if you're Taylor Swift who by the way does write her own stuff but is smart enough to then collaborate with people who can make it different or make it better and you are in a great mood and you are not particularly wanting to make something that is deeply introspective or is about the state of the world but it's just about you know who you are in any given time then that's whose door you knock on I think the first time they ever worked together there's a tale I don't know if it's apocryphal but um Max Martin is there just before Taylor gets there and a guy knocks on the door and says oh i'm a old friend of taylor's can i come in and wait and max martin is his first day he goes um um yeah i guess i guess you can come in so he comes in anyway taylor comes in and it's clear he's not an old friend it's clear he's a friend of an ex-boyfriend of hers and they have to get rid of him uh anyway max martin is his first day he's working so he's incredibly apologetic and he's like i'm so sorry i shouldn't have done that i didn't i sort of because it's not my first language and i just i just got nervous i'm sorry she said don't worry about it at all and he says well tell me about this ex-boyfriend so she's talking about him and And then she says, but you know what, Max, we are never, ever, ever getting back together.

10:09And that was the start of their collaboration. I love that. I don't want it to be apocryphal. But so I think, you know, if you want a great pop album, it is a great pop album. But the way that she is, A, always on, which we've talked about. As I say, she was doing this massive tour, which is already always on. And at the same time, she was really taking care of business. In between shows, she was flying over to Sweden. She's flying over to Sweden to work with Shellback and Max Martin and write this stuff. She knew when it was coming out. It's only a year since Tortured Poets Department. Pop stars, way back when, would have waited three or four years before they had to release the next scene.

10:42But she's aware she has to be ever-present. She's aware she constantly has to feed the machine. She's aware that the fans will do all the marketing for her. She almost is the machine now. Nobody can really keep pace with her. And she has adapted so kind of seamlessly to all the different platforms as they've come along, whether it be Insta or TikTok. What I find interesting about her is that for all of that she's such a digital native and so many of these things are actually people at home feeling connected to some wider whole as music has always been, as people sitting at home listening in their bedrooms.

11:14But she does also massively understand the communal experience that is live. So at the same time as doing the tour, to do the launch party in the cinemas, if she's ever at risk of seeming someone who just knows how to break the internet and just fully understands how to manipulate the internet in her favour, then there are always these live things and these moments where people can come together. She's quite unplayable. Yes, she is. She's absolutely unplayable. Which is why I wonder whether she can punch down anymore. There's certain people who it seems fine to go back and do a drive-by on. I mean, I think Kim and Kanye can just have it forever as far as I'm concerned.

11:52I don't know. Maybe Charlie XCX isn't very nice. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe something unpleasant happened there. we can't speculate i have just but yeah exactly i've just richard yeah and that's the thing with we you know even with the live tour so she's doing something which is a communal experience but she's making sure every gig there's a different acoustic song which means that that can be filmed and taped and then that can be on tiktok and that can be on instagram because it's a new thing yeah but it just it just shows you how old-fashioned so much of the rest of the industry still is is she worked out 10 years ago that this was a thing and has just put her foot down and you know overtaken everybody and it's just just miles ahead of everyone and the generation coming up understand it but and that she'd sell directly into movie theater chains all of that not go to a studio and say to disney would you mind putting out my concert film or anything like that all of that she's eliminated lots of people from the supply chain but talking about old school nicole kidman has also been in the um papers this week so she's divorced from her partner keith urban which is a very sad story but it seems to have been on the front page of everything if we her front pages anymore.

12:55It's really interesting. I'm interested as to why, because it hasn't imploded in some kind of dramatic way, like he's been pictured with, you know, someone completely different. Yeah. And there's some great big, you know, dramatic gotcha. Yeah, there's no cheating. There's none of them, who knows, but there's not some sort of gotcha moment. And it's really interesting if you look how obsessed people are. I think people, I think what she represents in the sort of culture, she's, there is something very mysterious about her, even though she is very much always on. I mean, she works more than, She works unbelievably hard.

13:26She does things back to back all the time, which is driven in quite an odd way. But she's had in many ways a really sad time of it because she's estranged from those two children that she adopted with Tom Cruise, which is desperately sad. And that relationship will always echo down the years for her because I think people feel that something odd happened there. Well, clearly it did. I mean, Tom Cruise is estranged from his other child who went with Katie Holmes. and so I suppose people thought she had had her happy ending with Keith Urban but what I will say about all of this never mind speculating is that it's so interesting yet again we're talking about how people report this and the way it's covered I mean the sheer number of body language experts and whatever I've seen crawl out of the woodwork this week to discuss it all you know OSINT open source intelligence I do not know OSINT you know what OSINT OSINT is open source intelligence so there are people like Bellingcat who look at things and think, now how can we prove that the Russians brought down that Malaysian Airlines plane?

14:30And there are people who will go through all these publicly available things and they manage to prove extraordinary things and they're really kind of pioneering. And they find war criminals because they did like one public photo and there's a bit of graffiti in the back and they discover exactly where that was. Like an army of investigative journalists. But half the people who now obsessively follow showbiz, and I'm talking about people who follow Taylor Swift, people follow these stories basically work in OSINT okay instead of saying now how you know how can we prove the Russians down that plane they're like now how can we discover when Keith stopped wearing his wedding ring let's go back into all these I believe that MI6 should recruit this wine time army this this army of people if only they could be harnessed in the national interest or the other way around I would say what if we actually get some of the gang at MI6 to properly look into this stuff because they'd have access to stuff that we don't have access to i feel like they are quite busy but yeah i know but listen we're all busy yeah okay but good good for pr if they go we've finally found the moment that keith unfollowed nicole's hairdresser on instagram because someone's sitting with a box of rose at home in front of a computer at 5 30 on a friday evening will do it for you you've got an army and they don't even have to be paid it's amazing it's like spare capacity yeah and you know whenever you find that in a market the only part of the british state in which we actually have capacity left yeah we need capacity we've got this army and they're global actually it's a real shame that um labor's conference just finished because this feels to me like it could have been a big announcement why don't they talk to us but you know what i mean why starman not constantly on the phone to us saying what can i announce what have we got we go i tell you what we've got we've got a surfeit of people with time on their hands he's afraid my ideas are too good yeah yeah he'd be terrified you know what you does spend half an hour star and he'd go I am actually going to quit why don't you take over because otherwise it's just going to be you telling me to do stuff just for the next four years No but stay with me because the army of people who will study tiny open source things not about the downing of Russian planes or the war criminals or whatever but about things that happen in the world of showbiz is now vast absolutely vast I mean think of every Taylor Swift album that comes out within hours people have unpicked every reference they've got like timelines, they've got everything.

16:45It's extraordinary. Actually, that's something I noticed on the morning that it come out. These incredibly detailed timelines of the feud or where they think the genesis of a feud between Taylor and Charlie XCXers have already been unravelled by people, by fans, I should say, and in Reddit threads and things like that. God, it's enormously impressive, isn't it? But it reminds me, it's like supporting a football team. I mean, anyone who supports a football team will be very, very aware of how this all works. You know, whoever your third Troy Stryker is and he's on loan at Macclesfield but some of the Macclesfield manager won't play him for some reason so it's all oh I know why that will be and but yeah it's like it's like that but for we should get a few of them on staff don't you think yeah they're tyler's intelligence yeah open source gossip yeah Oscos Oscos oh my god open source gossip Oscos lovely I'm going to set up the Oscos office nobody is going out and doing journalism in the same way that they used to by trying to, I don't know, talk to doorman or make up people and try and get them on the payroll and try and get stories funneled out that way.

17:50They're just watching what happens in people's digital footprints and trying to make sense of it that way. Well, funnily enough, they used to go through your bins, but now we display the contents of our bins online at almost all times. Quite right. These people are phenomenal, the investigators. People are phenomenal investigators. They are working in OSINT, whether or not they realise it it's just that they're doing it they're working in Oscars and also if we don't weaponise them shall I tell you who will? is it Russia? yeah but of course he will you know that's probably what they're up to at the moment you know he's probably he's probably on a Taylor Swift message board recruiting people so we probably should absolutely we should recruit all these people at Oscars I'm going to I want people in the office three days a week because I think it just I think it fosters like an environment where people collaborate you know so you have an open plan and people are chatting and people can talk through their methods and things like that two days a week you're at home and absolutely just head down uh and we'll have like a bar on the top floor like you know spotify and netflix and all those people just a nice bar bit of rosé anyone who fancies it let us know sassel putin as so often in our culture it is either goal hanger productions or vladimir putin he takes your pick but they were in love Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman.

19:07But in conclusion, I'm sorry, Nicole, but I just think... I don't think she's listening. You don't think Nicole is listening to this? Oh my goodness, you're very wrong. But in a world of trouble and AI and bad news, I just think for the time being, at the very least, Taylor Swift does good things and does them well. And her new album, if you like that sort of thing, you're really, really going to like it. And how nice to talk about something like that. Life of a Showgirl out right now. It's weird, that thing, isn't it? You can't go to the shops and I mean, some people go to the shops and buy it, but you just listen to it somewhere.

19:39But it's terrific. I'd strongly recommend it. Shall we go to some adverts? And after that, we're going to talk about Mel Gibson. Let's do that now.

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22:31Welcome back, everyone. Before we talk about Mel Gibson, exciting bonus episode news. We have a free bonus episode this week. We had to make it free, so for members but also for non-members as well. If I tell you when it's coming out, you might guess what it's about. It will be coming out on Wednesday evening, and it will be coming out one minute after the end of the first episode of the new Celebrity Traitors. We will be live reacting to Celebrity Traitors, that first episode. I am so excited. It looks so great. This is huge, Richard. It's huge. It's huge. I don't even need to put a cherry on this.

23:09This is enormous. that will be coming as i as we say i think about 12 minutes past 10 on the on the on that wednesday night yeah we will dive straight into that opening show yeah so it'll be spoilers aplenty so do not listen to it until you've watched that first episode but if you have watched that first episode then please join us on wednesday for that special bonus mel gibson mel gibson talk us through oh you know i will because filming is now underway on the resurrection of the christ which is the going to be the long-awaited follow-up to mel gibson's the passion of the christ christ to the resurrection yeah currently shooting it at cinecita studios in rome and they're going to shoot the locations in southern italy you get some pretty great tax credits let's go back to the og the passion of the christ which came out in 2004 now um that was self-financed by mel gibson for 30 million dollars which was massive, a massive amount of money at the time.

24:07Quite a lot of money now. It's quite a lot of money now. It's nothing on what they're spending on this. Everybody thought he'd lost his mind. Okay, jury's still out. Everyone thought he'd lost his mind because he was doing it in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin and they just thought Mel has completely lost his mind and he's self-financing. It became the highest-grossing indie film of all time. It took 600 million worldwide in cinemas which is 20 years ago is absolutely enormous. For a long time it was the highest-grossing R-rated film. And R-rated is sort of R equivalent of a 15. A lot of people thought it was anti-Semitic and Frank Rich who was at the time the sort of big New York Times critics brought up the fact that Mel Gibson's father was a Holocaust denier.

24:55Mel Gibson's quote about that was I want to kill him, I want his intestines on a stick, I want to kill his dog. Frank Rich or his dad? Frank Rich. Oh, OK, OK. No, Hutton Gibson, I think Mel always revered. Well, so far so. Jesus, so he wanted his intestines to stick. So when you hear that quote, you're probably thinking to yourself how to put this, is Mel quite well? And the answer Richard, as we discovered alongside the Pacific Coast Highway two years later, was, I don't know. I mean, not to clinicalise it, because he said some stuff, and I don't know if it is a medical condition. Bear in mind, his wife, he always said really cheerfully in interviews, It's so sad.

25:31My wife's so wonderful. But no, I do believe she's going to hell because she's an Episcopalian. So, yeah, anyway, the day after that incident, they separated. And I mean, I think he felt very sort of judged, even in his own church, because he's got his own church. Has he? He's got his own church up in the hills in Malibu, which although he lost his house in the recent past, he didn't lose the church. The last time they looked, this church had$42 million worth of assets. I wouldn't say he immediately got himself back on an even keel. But you know what? Eventually, Mal Gibson did enough to redeem himself in that moment.

26:07I don't know quite what. Yeah, what? What did he do? So unclear. He got sober. He did some light sozing. I don't think he was very sorry. I think people tried to get him back into work. Jodie Foster, who he was in Maverick with, she put him in a film where he played a depressed alcoholic. Too much of a leap for audiences, didn't do well. He directed Hacksaw Ridge. He got a Best Director Oscar nomination for that. Sorry, everyone can do everything now. Yeah, he settled with his wife. I think that was the biggest divorce in Hollywood history at the time. Oh, no. I think that was regarded as... He'd settled with his wife.

26:41Yeah, I think that was factored beyond repair. So what do we know about this film? Because, I mean, it's slightly nuts. It's not really nuts because the first one made a lot of money. Can I say my absolutely favourite thing about this new film, which genuinely I think is amazing. So he split it into two parts. Oh, yeah, of course. And that's the Resurrection of the Christ. It's split into two parts. And the first part is being released on Good Friday. This is 2027. Then the next part is being released 40 days later on Ascension Day. That feels like good marketing, right? He's writing it with his brother and someone called Randall Wallace.

27:15He revealed the title on Joe Rogan. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus, is back. Now, during the original one, he was scourged twice. Now, scourging is whipping, which I never... Yeah. He was accidentally scourged twice. He's still got the scars. Oh, like really scourged? No, no, he really was. He was also struck by lightning. Read nothing into it, Richard. Wow. He was struck by lightning. How on earth did Mel Gibson's church not catch fire? It's incredible, isn't it? Because it's the resurrection. He says there's a lot of supernatural stuff. It's a non-linear narrative. He said it's like an acid trip.