Taylor Swift, your person of the year?

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1:01Hop onto Carvana.com to get a real offer for your car in seconds. All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over. They even offer same-day pickup in many cities. Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to... Carvana! Pickup times vary. These may apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina High And me Richard Osman Week 3, this week we're talking about Taylor Swift Taylor Swift has been named Time's Person of the Year so we're going to talk about that I'm going to talk about Christmas number 1 which for the first time in about 20 years is going to be exciting You're going to take us on a thrill ride with that Oh, it's going to be like a rollercoaster but with Christmas music That sounds like a great rollercoaster I would certainly go, have you been to Winter Wonderland?

1:57Every time I walk past it, I cross myself and thank the Lord for saving me from it. It's actually much better if you go early in the morning, which is what I do. We digress. Then we're going to do a little catch up on The Weeknd's TV. There's a show called I'm a Celebrity. I don't know if you've heard of it. We'll do the mop up on that. We'll do a mop up on that. And also we're going to be recommending books for Christmas. Great gifts you can give pretty much everybody. Shall we get started? Let's get started with Taylor Swift, shall we? Taylor Swift has been named Time Magazine Person of the Year.

2:25Now, if you're one of our younger listeners and thinking, what is Time Magazine? Exactly. Taylor Swift is now much more famous than it. But every year that since I think the 1920s, they've made somebody person of the year. Actually, it was man of the year until 1999. And I think only 11 women have actually ever had this thing. You know, it's often it's politicians or sort of peacemakers or kind of international figures. Last year it was Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. This year it is Taylor Swift. Did he hand over the baton at a ceremony? I mean, it would have been great. They don't actually do that.

3:02But they have basked in the reflected glory of Taylor Swift being named their person of the year, which is a sort of reflection in some ways as to what she's doing all over the place. Now when they think that her tour, her era's tour, passes through somewhere like e.g. the great state of Missouri, it will provide an economic bump because of all the consumer spending that there's a sort of uplift around it. Weren't they saying, didn't the banks in America say it's genuinely had an impact on the GDP of the entire country? Yes. That's a lot of pressure. Yes. But what I find quite annoying about it, I have noticed that people have started talking about Taylor Swift now as an economic story and they call it Swiftonomics.

3:39And it's sort of like now she's making, now she's an economic story, we can pay attention to her and write about her. And there are a lot of these really kind of repressed people who, I hope we never do that on this podcast, is talk about things because they make money in entertainment. It's this kind of awful financial fig leaf that thinks, oh, now because she makes a lot of money, that will give us a gravitas to be able to talk about this. Well, I think that's just a load of bollocks, OK? Because we talk about these things, I hope, in entertainment on this podcast because they matter to people, because they make people laugh or cry or because they reflect their love back to them or anything.

4:14Maybe they make them despair. But it doesn't matter because something is economically successful in and of itself. Money can be a useful metric and a lens to look at some of the things we look at. But I do think that people who can only talk about Taylor Swift because she is, you know, kind of providing some sort of economic bump now are kind of desiccated and beaten. I think that's right. I mean, I don't talk about Chico because he makes money. I talk about Chico because I love Chico. Am I right? I can't wait for your Christmas number one section. You're right. It's become an economic story and actually it's a cultural story.

4:45She's become an extraordinary phenomenon. So she's made an extraordinary amount of money through various business dealings this year, which I'm sure you'll get on to. But really what she is, she's sort of a colossus who is in charge of the entirety of world culture currently. Well, it's funny. First of all, she gives an interview to Time, which is so unusual because the interview is great. We'll come on to that. But which is so unusual because she no longer really gives interviews. She doesn't actually need to give interviews any longer. She's a sort of unmediated figure in a way. I mean, even recently, the New York Times profiled her.

5:16And for my money, the best writer in all Anglophone newspapers is someone called Taffy Brodus at Acne, who does the profiles for the New York Times. She is incredible. And normally her profiles will involve thinking a lot about the celebrity in question and also spending time with an interview. But Taylor Swift didn't even need to do that. Nevertheless, the resultant profile is absolutely extraordinary. But she has given an interview to Time, which is very unusual. But yeah, I think you're right. She is a sort of person of one. In this kind of fragmented world of culture that we live in now, we didn't think necessarily that you could have celebrities of the size and the pop stars of the scale that you had, say, back in the 80s, like Madonna, Michael Jackson.

5:56But she, age 33, is up there. They call her, in this interview, the main character of the world, which I think is a really good line. And they also call her the master storyteller. It's a tad much, isn't it? Well, I don't know. I mean, who would you say? Maybe like J.K. Rowling might be up there. You might have Marvel might be up there. Stephen King. Stephen King. Okay, but I think what they're referring to there, and they talk about it in that article, which is very interesting, is that thing that the stories we tell now are the stories of ourselves. Yes. You know, that's who we are. We present ourselves in a certain way.

6:27And they conclude there that the thing about Taylor is she's just better at that than anybody else. There's a lovely quote from one of her fans saying, look, she writes all about herself, but I'm not interested in her. I'm interested in what it means about me. you know so she uses her story to tell other people's story that's absolutely what she does and I suppose that's her sort of message never feel ashamed of yourself in any era in which you're going through that's just her era's tour which is um take control of your own life take back what people took from you this is an important point we'll come back to admit and tell your own story so she's a master storyteller in the way that if you're Stephen King if if I'm sitting at home as an 18 year old I'm probably not going to meet a clown in a drain whereas I probably am I'm going to have a breakup with somebody and then get back together with them and then break up again.

7:12So it has more relevance to me than perhaps, I was going to say it has more relevance than a writer being murdered by an obsessed fan. But then I thought, oh, that could actually happen to me. But the clown in the drain I stick by, that's probably not going to happen. If you were murdered by a clown in a drain. Oh, no, this would be played forever. It would be. Me laughing. I'd be retrospectively cancelled for laughing. No, but the money you'd make from it. Yeah, you're right. If you've got the rights bit where I talk about not being murdered by a clown in a drain, I am then murdered by a clown in a drain.

7:43World's greatest true crime podcast. You are going to be richer than Taylor. You're right. Okay. So it's not, I mean, maybe both outcomes are fine. And by Taylor, I mean Taylor Swift, not Dennis Taylor. You'd be even richer than Taylor Swift. So they say she's the first ever music billionaire. The single tour is going to make more than a billion. And it's obviously rolled out around the world. These incredible things happen. You know, when the ticket mastered for that tour, there was some sort of failing with it. They had a Senate hearing about it. There are multiple, multiple fan lawsuits against the ticket master because they weren't able to get tickets.

8:17I mean, everything is this kind of extraordinary heightened thing. It must be so hard to be her and to essentially have no peer group. People who, I mean, her squad, all these famous women who she hangs around with a lot. You know, she came all the way over to Beyonce's Renaissance tour movie that opened in London just very recently, the last couple of weeks. She flew over and presented at the premiere. You know, she raises people up and she has all her girlfriends. But it is nonetheless hard to be, I mean, really in a sort of culture of one, I think. Yeah, hard to be Taylor. Hard to be Taylor.

8:49But you're right. And she talks about the money is interesting in the context that the money that she has made and that Beyonce has made. She said, the lovely thing is once people realise that women's art makes money, then women are allowed to make more art. And that's the point. The money to her is an end to make more art. She sees money as keeping score. And as you say, of getting a group of people who wouldn't have previously been interested in what it is she does or would have dismissed it as a frippery to take it seriously. Another female artist, a former American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson, was the person who gave her the idea.

9:18One of the things that Taylor Swift is doing currently, which you may or may not be aware of, but I'm sure you will be, is the masters of her first six albums were sold against her will. She was trying to buy them back herself. but they were sold anyway and she was so angry and so distressed about this because she felt like she wanted to control her story and you know her own music and it was Kelly Clarkson who said to her why don't you just like record them all over again do new artwork do them almost exactly the same but do new artwork and maybe a couple of other little things and that is what she is actually doing she is going through every single one of those albums and she is recording the Taylors versions of them so this is really taking back what life took from you yeah a guy called Scooter Braun who's Justin Bieber's manager he essentially owns the rights to the original recordings but all he owns is the rights to the recordings essentially the tapes he's literally got those physical tapes that's what he owns and yes, so she has called his bluff and another thing she's done this year she's put the film of the era's tour, the concert tour instead of getting it sort of distributed to package it up and then sell it to the movie theatres she sold it direct into movie theatres so much about what she is about is cutting out the middle man and it is often a man, let's face it and that opened bigger than a Marvel movie.

10:29And I suspect it's what's going to happen more and more and more is stars are going to take control of their own narrative and their own IP and the stuff that they own and the stuff that they write and the stuff that they make. Now, the key thing for Taylor, listen, you can be as smart a business brain as you want. She makes great music, continues to make great music, is a brilliant songwriter herself, collaborates with brilliant people, Phoebe Bridges, you know, the guys from The National. It's always around brilliant people and that's what you have to have. It doesn't matter how smart you are or what story you tell about yourself.

10:56The content has to work. You have to keep releasing great stuff, which she does. But in the interview, she settles a few scores, right? Well, which I love, by the way. And I have seen some people saying, oh, why she got brought up this old beef in Time magazine? It's like, OK, Hitler was Time magazine's person of the year in 1938. He had a lot of beef, OK? People, I mean... He was all beef, wasn't he? I mean, 100 % beef. Having said that, this is the Wagyu beef, what Taylor brings up in this interview, because what she does is she resurrects this whole drama with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, which I'm going to put the bare bones on it for those who don't know it because it does actually date back, I think, about 14 years.

11:35The barest, barest bones are Taylor is getting her award for best video at the VMA, the MTV Video Awards, and Kanye gets on stage and grabs the microphone off her and says, sorry, sorry, I'm going to let you finish in a minute. I just want to say that Beyonce had a, essentially Beyonce had a better music video this year. it was so unbelievably sort of horrific. And she was really young and it was a, you know, she was basically 19 and it was kind of a terrible thing to happen. Anyway, sometime later, he released a song about her, Kenny, called Famous, saying that they might end up having sex together and saying, I made that bitch famous.

12:12And he said that Taylor had approved the lyrics. Now, Taylor said she hadn't approved them all. And then Kim Kardashian released a covert phone recording, which turned out to have been edited, although people didn't know that at the time, implying that she had approved all this. And then so the internet called Taylor a snake. And as she's really clear in this interview, it completely broke her. She moved to another country, which is widely assumed to be the UK. She said she didn't really come out of her rental house for a year. She was afraid to take phone calls. She honestly believed that everything she'd worked for had been taken away from her.

12:45Yes, and in the interview, she has one thing to say about Kim and Kanye. Yeah, she doesn't say it directly in the bit she's talking about Kim and Kanye because I think that would be too sledgehammer for her. But it's really classy. It comes out later and she says, Trash takes itself out every single time. That's nice, isn't it? I mean, that's why it's not about money. Yeah, it's not about money. It's about getting your own back on now. She's very good about not liking to be compared to Beyonce because she's like, just because we're both women, we get compared all the time. But I do feel, given the context here, I am going to compare her to Kim Kardashian because I think that's really interesting.

13:19They're two very different kinds of kind of extreme female fame at this time in our culture. So he once said to Kim, are you a feminist? And she said, I don't think I am. I just want to do what makes me happy. And to me, she is just like a pure expression of individualism. She can't really conceive of any kind of collectivism. And Taylor Swift is sort of all about collectivism. There are people like Taylor, Lady Gaga, who've got their little monsters, their Swifties. You know, why doesn't Kim have a name for her fans? I think she just thinks of all women as kind of atomized consumers. Fascinating that they're both insanely successful, have both worked out how to use the media, but I honestly think the difference between the two is Taylor produces something.

14:02Taylor has something that will endure. Yeah, more than shapewear. More than shapewear. They will endure even more than that. So I'm glad they both exist, and I'm glad they both find a way to express themselves. but Taylor is the one who's producing and creating and will have a legacy and will be talking about in 50 years and 100 years time. I'm glad Kim Winkas is because I think there need to be monsters in the culture. There need to be villains so that there can be heroines. But that is how I see how they fall on that side of the divide. I think it's great. I think she's amazing and I think if you were growing up now as a teenager what an incredible role model to have somewhere in the middle of culture.

14:38I think she's a force for good. I think she's incredibly talented and it's very nice that she's making the money and not a series of faceless men who would have made the money in the 80s and 90s. I couldn't agree more. Talking of a series of faceless men making money in the 80s and 90s. So that's why I get the big bucks, Marina. Segways. Segways is what I do. Christmas number one. Great. I want to talk about it because it's been boring for about 20 years, Christmas number one, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the reality shows, X Factor and what have you, which had a stranglehold on it. And for the last five years, Lad Baby.

15:10Please explain Lad Baby for people who somehow don't know. Lad Baby, they're a married couple, and every year they do a Christmas song. All the money goes to Trussell Trust, so that's fine. But it's always, you know, I love sausage rolls. They're always food related. Yeah, instead of I love rock and roll, it would be I love sausage rolls. Yeah, there's a sort of non-brand Greg's theme to it all. There is a non-brand Greg's theme. Greg's not an official partner, but arguably should have been. Anyhow. We should be sponsored by non-brand Greg's. Why can't we be sponsored by Greg's? I would be very happy.

15:42Just sausage rolls as a concept You're listening, I consume I hear Taylor is doing their work now So for the last five years they've been Christmas number one which is a record by an absolute mile but the reason I want to talk about Christmas number one this year is this year they have pulled out of the race and I confidently predict that one of four songs is going to be Christmas number one and whichever one it is is going to make history I'm going to predict who it is later Now Christmas number one wasn't really a thing until 1973 which is when Slade did Merry Christmas Everybody there'd been a couple of Christmas number ones in the 50s there'd be Mary's Boy Child and Christmas Alphabet but I think after Phil Spector's Christmas album everyone went oh we can do this so Slade and Wizard went head to head in in 73 Slade won it Wizard had I wish it could be Christmas every day which didn't get to number one and then you have the sort of glory days of Christmas number ones and you had Cliff and you've got Wham and you know the Pogues and all these things.

16:38Am I right in thinking that this is a really uk phenomenon actually and that they're not obsessed with this particular spot in the charts for that one week in the us in the same way yes they're obsessed with christmas songs yeah so gene autry who had some of the biggest selling songs of all times he did rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and he did frosty the snowman and these were you forget that somebody sat down and wrote those songs right and they sold like millions and millions and millions and virtually every one of those christmas songs white christmas all that they they were all when you look into them they were all written in like half an hour in la in june like like all of them uh respect it yeah exactly and but and uh become these huge hits but in the uk the christmas number one has sort of gone out of fashion there's only been seven songs ever to be christmas number one with the word christmas in the title and that's where if we're including slade which is xmas but i am including it the last christmas number one the last actual christmasy song was nearly 20 years ago.

17:33It was 2004 and it was Band-Aid 20. Oh, yes. Do They Know It's Christmas? Which, by the way, Tom York's only ever number one single. There you go. There's a fact for you. That is quite a fact. There's some unusual people on that Band-Aid. Tom York's on it. The guys from Supergrass are on it. Neil Hannan from Divine Comedy is on it. I must go back and look at the group shot. Whereas the previous one is like Big Fun. Yeah, that was the Nadir. And people like that. But, so this year, who's going to win? Because always there's some unlikely contenders. You know, there's always a no one quite like Grandma.

18:10St. Wilford School Choir, that was number one. Save Your Love, Renny and Renato. Mr. Blobby had a number one. By the way, anyone, any detectives at home, I was looking into who wrote various Christmas songs, which is always quite interesting. Mr. Blobby, I can't work out who wrote it. Sia? hold on she writes some more doesn't she I'm being told it's Taylor Swift you can't work out it's got a name on the label but that doesn't seem to be someone who actually exists amazing I literally can't put my name to this I will kill you if you put my name to this on exactly it's one of those ones that no one's claiming it's probably Noel because he'll want the money for it Bob the Builder, all the X Factor stuff Rage Against the Machine, that was the last funny Christmas number one I really wanted to talk about that because I loved it.

18:57This was in 2009 when we were in the... Simon Cowell bestrode entertainment like a colossal. The karaoke Sauron, his eye was staring down at us at all moments. And his artist that year, you know, was a guy called Joe McEldry. And it sort of just got to the end of the saturation of Cowell having this number one every single year with the X Factor winner. And so some people just started a Facebook campaign to get Rage Against the Machines killing in the name of to be Christmas number one. and first of all, he couldn't even buy it. It's the first download only, number one, I believe. And Cowell was so affronted that this was happening.

19:34Two things are interesting about this. Well, first of all, he kept saying, you're not doing this to me. They're not hurting me. They're hurting this poor young man, Joe McEldry, who, by the way, Simon Cowell would drop from the record label in 15 months. So, you know, yes, I agree, poor young man, but for different reasons. And also, but they were on the same record label. Cowell and Rage Against the Machine. And Rage Against the Machine say that the record label were really angry about it. They kept trying to call their record label to say, this is amazing. What's happening with our song? And the record company just didn't call them back.

20:05Obviously didn't issue, reissue this It Is A Single. So it had to be download only. But the campaign was successful. And, you know, Simon Cowell was overthrown in a, I mean, truly heartwarming, not quite up there with It's A Wonderful Life, but kind of like the next tear down of Christmas miracles. I'd love to write a Christmas movie and that's what I'm going to write a Christmas movie about is the destruction of Simon Cowell's Christmas number one hopes for Joe McEldry. Joe McEldry, by the way, who I've met is absolutely lovely. This is such a digression. Yeah, sorry. I once went to a festival in Spain with my brother's band, Suede, and you're driving up around the Pyrenees in this coach and it's really terrifying, like hairpin bends.

20:47But then I was thinking, listen, it's okay because these drivers do it all day, every day. And then the next day, Rage Against the Machine's coach went down the mountain. They were fine, but it went off the road. So anyway, that's all I have to say about that. So Rage Against the Machine was the last funny one. This year, there's a few unlikely contenders. There's Nala, the Stevenage Station cat. She's done a song called Check Me Out, which is a Christmas song which I've listened to so you don't have to. Like Rage Against the Machine, a lot of realness. Talking of realness, Sleaford Mods have got a Christmas number one contender.

21:15They cover a version of West End Girls. Have they? Yeah. I mean, listen, it's fine. A song which I love. Sooty has done a version of the Nolans I'm in the mood for dancing Can you guess what he's called it? No I can't But I'd like you to tell me I'm in the mood for Christmas I'll sweep and sue on it They are But they do not get As always They do not get top bidding EMF have teamed up with Stephen Fry Oh my god I know To do a song called Hello People But that's all That's for Shelter I think as well Anyway look Those are the unlikely contenders But there's four that are going to win it Before I go on to them my three favourites Christmas number one facts if you can bear it I will love this this first one this rather realise you know like how you get old yes and you suddenly realise that other people don't know your references yes and you talk to young people I'm going to tell a story now about Thora Heard amazing okay that's the podcast I'm looking around anybody thanks for joining us everyone there's some youngsters Tony knows Thora Heard there he is the Christmas song Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire was written by Thora Heard's son-in-law No.

22:20Yeah, how about that? Mel Torme, written in half an hour, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, and stupidly called a Christmas song because they have to constantly put brackets, you know, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, because otherwise no one knows the one they're talking about. Talking of people who write Christmas songs, Mistletoe and Wine. Cliff Richard. This was number one, Cliff Richard. That was written by the same man who wrote the theme tune to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Really? Yeah, it made absolutely millions. Keith Strachan wrote the millionaire theme with his son. I'd like to talk to him about a couple of the couplets in that, which are not acceptable, not the millionaire theme.

22:51Mistleturned wine. Yeah. Mistleturned wine, Christian rhyme, unacceptable as a couplet. Do you think? Nobody has ever said the phrase Christian rhyme at all. So if you've had to do that, you've had to make it go. And I think you should have come up with something else. Every Christmas Eve, I think Christmas Eve, Mistleturned Steve. And I don't know why I can never get that out of my head. So now I can put it in your head as well. But Merry Christmas, Everyone by Shaky, which is a classic. They were supposed to release in the same year as Band-Aid, but they realised Band Aid was coming out. They thought this song is too good.

23:18So they held it back for an entire year. Anyway, that was written by Bob Heatley who wrote the theme tune to Pat Sharp's Funhouse. Again, thank you for the references. Absolute pleasure. My final one is Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses. So that's the song Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, which the Spice Girls did a cover version of. And it's a great song. And the guy who wrote Christmas Wrapping, Chris Butler, made some money out of the Spice Girls cover version of Christmas Wrapping. so bought a house in Ohio was shown around this house it was much cheaper than he thought it was going to be because it was big so he bought this house with Christmas wrapping money and the reason it was so cheap he found out later it was Geoffrey Dahmer's house so the money that the Spice Girls made him was spent on Geoffrey Dahmer's house most of us would pull out of the purchase that took me somewhere unexpected he went I know right you did not think I was going to go from Pat Sharp's Fun House to Geoffrey Dahmer quite that quickly it's quite a lot of levels below it's a wonderful life in terms of Christmas spirit.

24:16Yes, that is quite a few. Good fact, though. Spice Girls have had a few. They've had three, I think. They had three in a row, yeah. Exactly. Beatles did three in a row, Spice Girls did three in a row, and then Lad Baby came along with five in a row. They got involved in the culture. They were sort of taken up in the culture wars, like everything. Nothing can be not in the culture wars. People thought that they think that they voted Conservative in 2019 and that therefore the fact that all the records were always in support of the Trussell Trust, they say, you know, by doing things in aid of food banks, essentially you're legitimising food banks which is quite a leap and it's not at all clear that they voted Conservative in the 2019 general election but anyway this poor couple who had done quite a lot for charity seemed to have got completely caught up in the culture war.

24:55I don't know if it was legitimate or not but anyway perhaps that's why they pulled that. They thought they'd have a good run and they don't want to do it anymore. That's the thing the thing that's really changed now is streaming counts towards Christmas number one. Okay so all the old Christmas songs are back so last week's top ten, eight of the top 10 of Christmas songs, including the four that I'm going to talk about, Shaky, Bobby Helms' Jingle Bell Rock, which is in the top 10, Buble, has got, yeah, beginning to look a lot like Christmas, biggest selling Christmas song of the 21st century, Buble, and also Ed Sheeran's Christmas song is there.

25:2815 of the top 20 are Christmas songs, including Underneath the Tree, which I think is the best of the 21st century Christmas songs, Kelly Clarkson, and Snowman by Sia, which I think is the other one, both written by the same person but anyway i digress some of the classics are not anywhere slade merry christmas to everybody it's like the 28th best-selling christmas song at the moment uh stop the cavalry it's 37th and east 17 53rd okay we'll stay another day so there's gonna be four songs that it could be between fairy tale of new york of course okay never been christmas number one shane mcgown's obviously just died shane mcgown passed away so that's the bookie's favorite fairy fairy tale of new york last christmas has never been christmas number one it's been number one but never christmas number one okay so this year could be the first time all i want for christmas is you has never been christmas number one was kept off number one in its original time by stay another day by east 17 so it's going to be between those three fairy tale of new york last christmas all i want for christmas is you all of which i'd be happy with but at the last minute although the Lad Baby have pulled out.