Taylor Swift Ranks High on Star Power
Joe on December 23rd, 2009 | Filed under People
It’s a question that comes up with every new rising star, and if it were not for the legacy of Marilyn Monroe, we may not even think twice about examining a rise to fame such as Taylor Swift’s rank high on all the world’s charts. It’s not only music with her, either. Like her predecessors Britney and Christina, there is a certain charm underneath the head that writes the songs. There is always a great team of publicists trying to reign in the charm to make it hit the nerve centers of a hungry public in exactly the right way, but the real superstars always seem to let their own gifts come through.
That might be one of the most delightful parts of watching celebrity happen. There is an uncomfortable distance between what the person is doing, and what their handlers want them to do. The greater the distance, the greater the tension, and the more interesting it becomes. This is very likely because of our own tendency to root for the underdog, and there’s no greater underdog than an adolescent trying to negotiate her identity in front of a public as well as a publicity team that just understand her like we do. This is what gave Marilyn all her power, and with her, it was her ability to manipulate this power and energy in a way that reads in hindsight like true genius. But of course the sad thing is there are few true geniuses in the world, and we may not have seen it since her bright star went out.
Marilyn wasn’t the first, but she was powerful enough to make us begin to take note for the first time. Ironically, it’s a pattern that we’ve seen before in a certain young prodigy from an earlier century. Mozart was one of the few who seemed truly capable of handling fame at a young age, although the circumstances were very different. But his talent was coupled with an arrogance that helped him to imagine he could live up to the expectations. Again, hindsight is 20/20, and in his case, history has him in its books as an eternal superstar, having made permanent marks on the way we listen to the world. But the life lived in the moment the star was shining the most bright also seems to have been one plagued by the same demons that haunted Norma Jean all the way to the early finish line.
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