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The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift with Kevin Evers-esv2-96p-bg-10p · The Innovation Show

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We all know the music, but few of us have looked at the machinery of the Swift
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phenomenon, quite like today's guest.
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He's an editor at Harvard Business Review Press by day, but he has spent over two
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years acting as a Parisian tour guide for Taylor Swift's career, taking us past
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the familiar sites of stadium tourism.
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Hit singles to show us the gritty, brilliant strategy underneath.
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He admits that while Taylor might not be reading B School
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textbooks, she is instinctively perfecting the moves they teach.
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He uses his unique lens on strategy, organizational insights, innovation
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and leadership to take us on a tour through the art, psychology,
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and business of a cultural icon.
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I was thinking about this.
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He's also an editor.
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And he was producing so many other people's albums and he decided,
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actually, I'm gonna write my own.
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We welcome the author of, there's Nothing Like This, the
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Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
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Kevin Evers, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It's great to have you on the show, man.
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You've made me.
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into Taylor Swift fan.
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I.
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I've heard this, I've heard this a lot.
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I've converted a lot of people into Taylor Swift fans, not
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like she needs me to do that.
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I mean, she's, she's so popular already, but I'm glad to do it.
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Well, for my era, maybe.
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Maybe she does.
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But it's funny, man, you know, as, as we're reading it and reading the
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history and the struggles and the struggles, we all go through the
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self-doubt and all that, but it, it's told from your perspective , your
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unique perspective, as I said, an intro.
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All the people you've worked with, many people who've been on this show.
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And I think it's that, it's that objective lens.
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And then obviously your daughter is a great fan as well, and you've
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joined her at concerts and had unique dad daughter moments as
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well, and that's kind of brought you into the Taylor Swift universe.
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But I'd love to just share that unique lens.
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I mentioned in the intro all these people you've worked with and maybe you might
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mention some of them because that comes true in the book and that's what makes it.
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a very interesting read.
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Part, biography, but also a unique lens through your lens of how business works
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and psychology and indeed strategy.
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I always tell my authors, every author I work with, I always say, how is
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this a book that only you could write?
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And I ask myself that question too.
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There's a lot of books now about Taylor Swift and they tackle
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Taylor Swift from different angles.
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But since I'm an editor at Harvard Business Review, you know, I've been
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privy to a lot of great thinkers and a lot of great content about
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creativity, innovation, marketing, you know, you name it, digital disruption.
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And I really thought that I could take all of that knowledge and apply it to
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Taylor Swift's I really did see a great opportunity here to write a book that.
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both fascinating and insightful.
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I thought that I could really follow Taylor from her early days all the way up
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to current day and to follow her career in chronological order to see how the
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music industry had swirled and changed around her and see how she adapted to
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those changes and based on sort of the wants and needs of her fan base and the
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overall And I really thought that I could bring in a lot of great research, great
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thinking from other people to really sort of explain how she's become such a
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phenomenon over the course of 20 years.
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I thought we'd start a little bit differently because due to the
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book, I, like, I, I only heard of Taylor Swift with that song.
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Uh, we're never ever getting back together.
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And, and it, and I knew about the Kanye stuff, I knew about all that.
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But in your mind, when you're not actually a fan of that, and it is not
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that I wasn't a fan, I just don't.
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Play in that area, but it, it made me realize the longevity and the amount
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of hits and the reinventions she's had, and she calls them reinventions as well.
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But I thought to, in to show that to our audience, I found some footage of an
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11-year-old Taylor Swift when she sang the National Anthem at the 2002 76 ERs game.
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I thought I'd play that.
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And the reason I'd play it is to tee you up for how long she's been
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doing this and how driven she was.
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And it's that drive from a very, very young age that is just remarkable.
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That is not always supported.
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And she was hugely supported, even moving to Nashville, as you said.
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But I'm gonna play that and then maybe you'll tell us about that
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drive and the early, early time that that started in this young girl.
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Name Taylor Swift.
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. Yeah, I love that clip.
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That's actually how the book begins looking at a, in my case, it was
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a photo of Taylor, and if you watch that video, she looks like
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your average American girl, right?
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She's the blonde hair, the blue eyes.
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I doubt that a lot of people who are in that stadium, that in that
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arena thought, oh, this is gonna be the next Michael Jackson.
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This is gonna be the next Beatles.
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but at the same time, what really struck me, because I didn't know much about her
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early career, when Taylor was, her first album came out when she was 16, I was in
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my early twenties listening to Radiohead.
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Taylor Swift really wasn't on my radar and I didn't listen to country music.
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But if you look at her early career.
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You can see all the traits of a high performer.
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She was extremely driven.
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She convinced her parents to move the family to Nashville, and of course they
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had the means to be able to do that.
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she was also highly skilled too.
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She was a really great songwriter from an early age, and I put a lot
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of quotes in the book from who were around her for fellow songwriters
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who were around her at the time, and they were all pretty amazed by her
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ability, but most of all, her vision.
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She had such a clear vision for what she wanted to do.
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knew the artists that she wanted to be.
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And you know, many of us struggle with that.
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I'm in my early forties and I struggle with the person I wanna be, but
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she was just very laser focused and she wanted to write her own songs.
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She wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers.
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And she, she didn't take no for an answer.
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And that type of ambition really drove a lot of pretty decisions that she made.
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And one of the, one of the biggest ones is she had a
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development deal with RCA Records.
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RCA Records was one of the biggest labels on Nashville's Music Row.
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And they don't give out development deals very lightly.
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And Taylor was the youngest one to have a development deal.
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She was 14 at the time, she didn't feel like they really believed in her vision.
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So she walked away from that development deal after a year,
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which is a pretty extraordinary thing for a 14-year-old to do.
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Um, since those development deals are so hard to get, you would think that
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people would stick it out a little bit more, but that's not what she did.
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And she's made.
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During that period of her career, she also made a lot of other pretty brave,
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bold, and unconventional decisions, but it was all based on that very,
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very, very clear vision that she had.
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Some of the interesting things that you find in the book was you
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realize how male oriented it was.
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Now re, we'll remind our audience, it was country and
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western music essentially first.
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Yeah, this was, this was country music, so this was in the early
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two thousands and there were some pretty major shifts in country music.
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Presented a lot of challenges for Taylor.
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in the very early two thousands, the late 1990s, there was a surge
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of female artists in country music.
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You could think of the chicks, Shania Twain, faith Hill were,
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were huge acts in country music.
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But by the early two thousands into about 2004, 2005, there's a lot of
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consolidation that happened in the music industry, especially in country music.
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A lot of big conglomerates came in and bought local country music radio stations,
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and because of that, the playlist on those stations became pretty homogenized.
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They're very data-driven.
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And because of that, most of the artists who were played on
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radio were, were men, right?
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And they all kind of looked and sounded the same.
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They all had their Stetson hats or trucker caps, and it was really hard for female
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artists at that point to, to break out.
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So.
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though Taylor had this clear vision of what she wanted to do, there were
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a lot of institutional and indus, you know, industry-wide challenges that
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she had to face and, and get past.
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One of the things that's interesting and I thought it was good to share,
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was again, how male do orient, how male dominated the industry was.
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But what many of us won't know is that the songs were written by
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usually older men in their fifties.
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And one of the things Taylor pushed back on, it was really interesting
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that the conversation where like these.
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Absolute legendary songwriters from Nashville, Robert Ellis
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Oral and an Angelo Pet.
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Petley Petia.
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And so they, they start writing songs and playing the for, and
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she's like, that's kind of trite.
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And like, she's a teenage girl here.
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And they're like, huh?
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And then she's like, I'm not sure my demographic would say anything like this.
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And the reason I say that was what, what you realize by reading the evolution
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of Taylor Swift is that she was talking to herself in many ways and she
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evolved the music to how she evolved.
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So she wasn't singing at a level be above her.
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She wasn't then later singing a level below her.
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She was actually really sharing her diary.
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And I thought it was interesting that you say she kept the diary
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and she shares a lot of the entries to that diary over her life.
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Yeah, it's such a, it is such a great point because I think when a lot of people
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hear, oh, she wanted to write her own songs, that may not sound extraordinary,
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but you know, popular music, whether it's pop music or country music, is.
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Is really songwriter driven, and they're usually teams of
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songwriters that write those songs.
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And so there were other teen artists that tried to make it in country music.
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Leanne Rhimes was a big one, and she did find success, but she
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had trouble finding longevity.
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And I think a big reason for that, and I think a big reason why other
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teenage artists failed, is that they were writing songs that were written
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by people who were older than them.
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And if you listen to a lot of those songs, it's, they have mature voices
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and their voices sound great, but what they're singing about seems a little
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more mature than, than their age.
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And Taylor didn't want to do that.
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She really wanted to write songs from her own perspective,
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which was unique at the time.
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And she wanted to write really personal songs about her.
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Passions, her dreams, her obsessions, her experiences.
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And you're right, I mean, I, I did start the book out with that story where she's
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in a songwriting room, I think she's 13 or 14 years old, in a room with men
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who are three to four times her age, who've been doing this for a long time.
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And they're, they're laying down a track and they're, and she's writing
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the lyrics and they're developing the melody they throw out some
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lyrics and she says, you know what?
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That's not just not quite right for my, for my audience.
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She's al she always had this idea of, write these personal songs,
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but they have to be right for.
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My audience, and this is a, a lesson for anyone who, it's a simple lesson, but it's
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one that we tend to forget or we stray from, is, know, if you have any product,
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you wanna make sure that you're meeting the demands and wants of your audience.
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And sometimes that can be hard to comprehend of what exactly that is.
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But Taylor was always really laser focused on, on what that was.
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And that's what made her different in country music in many ways.
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She followed the norms of country music.
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She wasn't someone who came in and tried to break all the rules.
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She looked like she was a country music singer.
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She looked like she was the youngest daughter of a female country singer.
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She in the traditional forms of country music.
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Her song sounded like country music early on, but I think the novelty
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here is that she decided to write from her own unique perspective and
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that within those frameworks, she was singing very personal songs that
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16-year-old girls could relate to.
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And she came from a very musical background, her name as well.
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I didn't realize this till I read the book, James Taylor, she named after the,
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the famous artist as well, and musical grandmother, et cetera, et cetera.
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But read the book to dig into those details.
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One of the things I just wanted to lean into was you mentioned
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the RCA development contract.
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It reminded me my own background is a professional rugby player, and
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I saw this so many times, Kevin, where you'll have a school, what.
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I was men.
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So schoolboy star that comes straight outta school.
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They may be the top player in the world or ranked that top in the world.
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They get into then the academy of this, the professional teams here in Ireland,
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and Ireland's one of the best, has one of the best club systems in the world.
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But then to.
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your point in the book, they're shelved and it's like, oh,
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they're not quite mature yet.
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And in that, you see, and I've seen this so many times, brilliant,
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brilliant players come in, they stagnate, or sometimes they haven't
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actually built the discipline of hard work because they were just
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talented and they weren't disciplined.
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And I found the Taylor story, incredible vision, but
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unbelievable hustle and hard work.
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But then on top of that, just a reluctance or a determination
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not to be put on the shelf.
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And that led to this huge jump for her to go then with Borchetta.
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And I'd love you to tell us that little step in the story.
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Yeah.
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I think if you had a blind test and showed someone, Hey, would you rather go with a
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major label that has a ton of resources?
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Or would you rather go with a man who just started.
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A music label and didn't have a resource headquarters or a staff at that point.
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I think most people would pick the major label.
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But in this case, Taylor picked the man who didn't really have, who just
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started his music label, and his name as you mentioned was Scott Betta.
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Now Scott Beta, he wasn't selling contracts out of the back of the Buick,
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like he was well known in the industry.
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He was a big promotional guy, had worked for Universal Label Group, and
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he found Taylor and loved her music and thought that she could be a star.
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And he did.
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He said, listen, I wanna sign you, but there's one catch.
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I'm leaving Universal Music Group to start my own label.
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But he really believed in her vision.
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He told her, I'm never gonna tell you to write someone else's songs,
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perform someone else's songs.
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I want you.
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To write and perform your own songs.
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And that was huge for Taylor.
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But I also think he had the hustle, he had that entrepreneurial mindset to really
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push her because he needed her to succeed.
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He was the third artist that he had signed to his new label.
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And back in 2004, 2006, it was a really tough time in the music
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industry, especially in country music.
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And, but he was really willing to hustle.
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He had a lot of skin in the game and I think Taylor made the right decision.
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I mean, in hindsight, obviously she made the right decision, but she ended
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up going with someone who could really hustle, not worry about bureaucracy,
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not worry about, appeasing their bosses.
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had, he needed her to succeed and he was gonna do everything that
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he could to make her succeed.
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And that ended up being one of the most fruitful relationships
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in music industry history.
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It's funny, in my notes, I have it written down her Jerry McGuire
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moment, you know, who's with me?
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You know, that whole thing.
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And it was very much one of those where she's like, he was gonna
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sign her for RCA and then it's like going, look, here's the deal.
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I'm, I'm outta here.
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I'll set you up or else you can come.
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At me and do things differently.
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And it was again, that bravery that showed up time and time again and, and
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to just, I, I'm putting it now as a dad.
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I, I mean, you're, you're a dad to a teenage girl.
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You know, if she had this moment being offered to her, you'd probably
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go, you know, you should take it.
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Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
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And the fact that her parents went, no, no.
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You make the decisions.
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Or maybe it was hers that I'm making the decisions around here.
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I just, those things come up time and time again.
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But I loved how you drew analogies between Swift and Borchetta and Marvel comics.
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I'd love you to, to riff on that for a little bit.
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Yeah, so a big reason why Taylor succeeded, and this is gonna sound
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simple, it's more complex than the way I'll describe it, but she sees
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an opportunity that other people were ignoring her and Scott Borchetta.
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They thought that there was a market for her music, they thought that
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there was an audience of teenage girls that would flock to her music.
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The consensus in country music is, Hey, we've done that before
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and it didn't work out, so this isn't a thing that we wanna do.
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You need to wait until you're 18, 21 years old in order to release an album.
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They didn't think that was the right thing to do.
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They wanted to put out an album as soon as possible.
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And this is something very similar to what Marvel did in the 1960s.
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Marvel in the 1960s was not the marvel that we know today.
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It was a pretty small publisher.
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It was dwarfed by DC Comics and Marvel under the tutelage of Stan Lee and
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others decided, well, you know what?
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Most comic books are aimed toward children, and we think that there's
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an audience, an overlooked audience, which in business parlance, we would
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call non-consumers who love books.
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They thought that these, that people in college, young adults in college
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would still love comic books.
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So they changed their editorial strategy.
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They started to make stories and comics that were more directed toward
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that audience that were a little more mature and those characters were really
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dealing with lots of human problems that, that fan base could relate to.
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it ended up working really well.
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And in business parlance, you'd call this a blue ocean strategy where
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they seized that opportunity that all these other publishers were ignoring.
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And then they specifically catered their product to these perceived non-consumers.
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And because of that, they experienced rapid growth in the sixties, and Taylor
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and Scott Bacheta did the same thing.
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They went after non-consumers, which was the teenage girl market in country music.
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And then they spec made sure to specifically cater
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her music to that audience.
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And then once she broke through, which was really hard to do and
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there was no certainty that she would do it, she was a category of one.
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She really didn't have much competition in country music 'cause there's
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no one else like Taylor Swift.
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I love that you brought in the blue ocean.
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I love that you brought in non-consumers.
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You're talking to exactly the right audience for that.
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This stuff, Kevin, but I thought I'd share a little something.
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When I'm promoting a book or I'm inspired by a book, I often will create like a
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cartoon or an illustration and when I read this part of the book, I was like,
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and I have to share this for Kevin, so I'll send this to you afterwards, but
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this was the idea of Borchetta and Swift.
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where it was a, what you call in the book and you cite the research of a
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psychologist called Michele Gelfand, and.
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What she called it was, this was a tight culture.
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So it was a culture that firmly held onto traditions and values, examples
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of tight culture, as you mentioned in the book, military, religious
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communities, corporations, et cetera.
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Sometimes fandoms as well that you say.
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But she had to fit in a brand new style of music through what Borschetta said was a
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Trojan horse strategy in a well in a way.
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So she had to keep onto the traditions of country music and get onto those radios
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and cars, trucks, boats and bedrooms, but try to bring a new country style there.
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And she did that in a beautiful way by releasing a song after a
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country in music, Western Tim McGraw.
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I'd love you to tell us about this little period of the story.
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the only way Taylor could achieve success in country music at the
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time, I remember this was 2006, is she needed radio to succeed.
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the only way to success in country music was through radio.
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And of course we've talked about all the challenges there because it
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was very male dominated at the time.
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So since country music was such a tight culture, which means it
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really holds onto its norms and traditions, and Taylor really couldn't
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rock the boat too much, right?
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She couldn't start out her career with a single that was really
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pop driven because I think that would alienate radio programmers.
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she had to find a way to release a song that would be familiar to country music
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fans and programmers at radio stations.
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Tim McGraw was the perfect song.
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'cause it sounds like a very traditional country music song.
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It's, it uses like a very familiar chord structure that dates back to the 1960s
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that listeners and radio programmers would really find familiar and would like.
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And, but at the same time, she had to find a way to novel too.
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She had to show what her strengths were.
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So within that traditional structure, it does sound like a different song.
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And the, and the difference is that here you have someone who
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sounds like a 16-year-old girl.
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She doesn't sound more mature than her age singing about a boyfriend
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going off to college, which is a very specific thing to her and girls her age.
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So she found a way, and you mentioned the term Trojan horse, is that was
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so familiar, it was using traditional structures, so it really pulled people in.
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It didn't alienate people yet.
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It was different enough that.
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It appealed to people too.
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Right.
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And I think that balance between familiarity and novelty is, is
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really critical in music in general.
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But I think in this case, it was really critical to her success because they
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were songs on that album that were more tailor, so to speak, where a little
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more pop driven, pop punk driven.
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But those would've been too different to start off with at first, she
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really had to start with something that was familiar, but different
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enough that it would appeal to the audience that she wanted to appeal to.
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One of the things you, learn from reading about innovation, Kevin, is that
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sometimes you, it's the way you frame it.
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And that story about Tim McGraw reminded me of like, for example, the Lion King.
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They couldn't get that made and it was until they started saying, well, it's
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just Hamlet with lions and people are going, ah, and that type of familiarity
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to get it onto the radio was just, for me, that was like the genius of
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Borchetta and Swift coming together and her willingness to do that and
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not go, no, no, I'm doing it my way.
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So this leads to her debut album and it goes on to be unbelievable, slow start,
23:40
but then ends up having 7 million physical and digital units sold eventually.
23:45
Let's share a little bit about that and then that will lead
23:47
us into the beautiful term.
23:50
And I've written a piece about this second album syndrome because second
23:54
album syndrome is exactly what happens in business All the time.
23:57
The fact that Taylor's debut album got off to a modest start,
24:02
I think worked to her advantage.
24:04
And we've seen this with other artists who just come out of
24:07
nowhere and have a huge hit.
24:10
And I think it tends to alienate people 'cause it, I think listeners feel
24:14
as if that person hasn't earned it.
24:17
Taylor really needed to hustle once the album came out on the heels of the
24:22
Tim McGraw single, I mean it did okay.
24:24
I think it was in the top 50 in country music, but she really
24:28
hustled and she used MySpace.
24:32
Yes.
24:33
But it was really a lot of on the ground hustling.
24:35
She played small venues, she played baseball stadiums, she
24:40
played in parking lots of colleges.
24:42
She played so many shows to sort of build up that fan base.
24:45
She opened for a lot of artists too.
24:48
And so she slowly but surely built up that teenage girl audience she
24:55
would stay after shows and she would sign autographs for hours.
25:00
Right.
25:00
There was, she really valued that one-on-one connection.
25:03
And is the one thing I think that really sets Taylor apart is that.
25:09
She understands what it takes to be a star.
25:12
Yes, there's a lot of luck and randomness involved, and talent is involved,
25:16
yes, but superstars aren't self-made.
25:20
They're created by fans, she has always been extremely fan obsessed.
25:25
You can see it very early on in her career.
25:27
And I think this is one of the big reasons beyond her talent and her
25:31
songwriting talent, why she found early success and why she's continued to
25:35
find success is because she continues to be as fan obsessed as possible.
25:40
And even as she's grown into the most popular, successful, and famous music
25:45
artists that we have, at least in North America, she still remains fan obsessed.
25:51
And she knows how to get her fans to spread her ideas, to spread the love.
25:56
And I would argue, is probably the top reason why she's in
26:02
the position that she's today.
26:05
Maybe we'll share the concept of second album syndrome because I think it's a key
26:09
concept that's very relevant to business.
26:11
When some change in the market happens, like your customer's, your
26:15
consumer preferences change, and now you have to do something different.
26:20
And you mentioned here Zu and Alan, and the idea of, , the avoidance
26:24
of premature core abandonment.
26:26
so after the huge success, slow, but eventual huge success of her first album.
26:33
You know, Taylor, like many artists, was faced with, well, what do I, what do I do?
26:38
How do I pivot here?
26:39
Do I, how often do I change?
26:41
Or how much do I change?
26:43
Do I make a big pivot?
26:45
do I keep doing what I'm doing?
26:47
And both of those have pros and cons.
26:49
If you keep doing what you're doing well, it can't be so similar to your first
26:53
effort, if it's too similar, then fans will be disappointed and they'll feel
26:57
like you haven't grown as an artist.
26:59
But if you change too much.
27:01
may feel alienated because they may feel like your music is much different than
27:05
what it was, and the things that they fell in love with you may be avoiding.
27:09
And I think in this situation, a lot of artists do prematurely
27:13
abandon what they're really good at.
27:15
Maybe they get early success and they rebel against it.
27:18
Maybe that's not what they wanna do.
27:21
Maybe their first album was maybe the music label had too much of
27:26
a impact on their music and they didn't quite feel like it was theirs.
27:31
So then they tried to rebel against that and make a much different
27:34
album the second time around.
27:36
And I think what Taylor did her second album is she stayed in her lane.
27:42
Yes.
27:42
She moved to a more pop driven sound with Fearless, which was her second album.
27:48
But it was still Taylor.
27:49
It was, I would say it was a more amped up version of her first album.
27:53
was doing a lot of the same things, but she was doing it much better.
27:56
And I think that was also another reason why that album really found success
28:01
and why she was able to bring along her fan base from her first album to
28:05
her second album and grow that fan base is because she was really in the
28:09
in the pocket of, I'm going to make changes, I'm not going to make so many
28:15
changes that it alienates my fan base.
28:19
Include including the songwriting as well as you tell us in the book and.
28:22
In, there's a lot of details in here.
28:24
There's huge amount of detail in here.
28:25
I just wanted to say as well, Kevin, one of the big challenges for me
28:28
reading the book was I, when I get inspired by a book like this,
28:32
I start going down rabbit holes.
28:34
I was looking at YouTube videos over here.
28:36
I was even listening to the songs and for example, the Blue Ocean Strategy.
28:41
There's actually a case study on Taylor Swift as well and about
28:44
how she went for a blue ocean.
28:46
So there's so much detail behind the book, uh, and you brilliantly
28:50
bring it to life and, and it's a really enjoyable read as well.
28:53
But one of the things you start doing is, so I looked at those early footage
28:57
of her playing everywhere because she was around and she was lucky enough to
29:01
be there at the dawn of the internet, at the MySpace period, et et cetera.
29:05
But she really hustled.
29:07
But this brings us up to then.
29:09
The challenges she faced, 'cause it wasn't all princesses and fairytales.
29:13
She worked hard.
29:14
She had a lot of pushback.
29:16
And one of the ones we saw the most public one was when Kanye West did that awful
29:21
thing and she garnered a lot of sympathy.
29:23
And while it was really negative, it also was the first time many
29:27
people that her of Tyler Swift.
29:30
Taylor is, and this is true today, and it was true back in 2008, which is the
29:36
time period we're talking about, you know, she's a, she's an odd superstar.
29:42
Because she gets a lot of praise.
29:45
She gets her flowers, don't get me wrong, and always has, but
29:48
there always seems to be an equal amount of pushback and negative
29:52
criticism too, for whatever reason.
29:55
And there's a lot of reasons we could go into, but she's a, she's
29:57
a, she's, she's a hot button topic for people and she conjures a lot
30:02
of feelings in people, a lot of love and a lot of hatred at the same time.
30:05
And you know, a big reason for this, especially early on in her career,
30:09
is that she was a teenage girl singing for other teenage girls.
30:12
And I think historically artists like that have received a lot of skepticism.
30:18
You can even look back to the Beatles.
30:20
The Beatles received a lot of skepticism as too, very early on in their career,
30:23
because we've all seen the images of the, you know, teenage girls screaming the
30:30
site of them when they start playing.
30:32
And I think.
30:34
At the time, especially with the Beatles, there's this feeling
30:37
that there was a, a contagion.
30:38
We think of the term Beatlemania, which is a positive term, but it's
30:43
also not a term of endearment too.
30:45
It's, it, it, the, the word mania is in Beatlemania.
30:49
It's as if teenage girls are just with the person, but not necessarily
30:55
the music and that they're just overcome with emotion and they're not
30:58
necessarily thinking logically, right?
31:00
But of course, when we all listen to music and we all love the artists that we love,
31:04
it's a combination of logic and emotion.
31:07
so Taylor at the time, this was back in 2008, was really receiving a lot
31:11
of criticism, and she received an award at the MTV Music Awards, and
31:18
Kanye West all of a sudden appeared on stage, took her mic and said
31:24
basically, you don't belong here.
31:26
This award belongs to Beyonce.
31:29
And I think.
31:30
Most of us would probably feel humiliated if that happened to us.
31:35
at the time, this was before he sort of went off the deep end.
31:38
He was known as the most innovative rapper and producer that there was.
31:43
And so here's someone who is a, a legend in the music industry getting up on stage
31:48
and saying, you don't quite belong here.
31:52
And there was also a lot of other criticism around Taylor at the
31:55
time that she couldn't sing.
31:58
She received a Grammy award months later for Album of the Year, which
32:02
is the most prestigious award at the Grammys, and she was only 18 at the time.
32:07
She was really, really young to receive an award of that stature.
32:11
Yet she had a performance with Stevie Nicks during that ceremony.
32:14
That was not very good.
32:16
She was pitchy and it wasn't a great performance.
32:20
But since she received this award, lot of people just jumped.
32:25
To criticize her and we're pretty savage on, on Twitter and other social
32:29
media platforms and other critics too wrote think pieces about why
32:34
is it that Taylor Swift can't sing?
32:35
Why is she so popular when she's such a bad singer?
32:39
yeah, I mean, this is, this is something that's always followed her and it still
32:42
follows her to this day, is this feeling of why is it that Taylor Swift is so
32:48
popular when she doesn't necessarily have the, the physical talent that we would
32:54
think would lend itself to Superstardom.
32:56
She doesn't have the, great voice of Florence Welch or Adele.
33:01
She doesn't dance like Beyonce.
33:03
She seems relatively average in her skillset, beyond her songwriting.
33:08
And I think this confuses a lot of people.
33:11
But of course.
33:12
Us in the business world know that yes, her product is important, her talent
33:16
is important, but I think it's her business decisions and her ability to
33:21
sort of build a fan base around her that it really is what sets her apart.
33:26
And Click Christensen has a great quote where he talks about his job to be
33:30
done theory, where he says, companies that have like a really great idea of
33:34
what customers are hiring them to do.
33:36
So in other words, companies that really understand the inner lives
33:39
of their consumers are able to build products that some people quite
33:44
understand, that can't be copied and can't be comprehended in many ways.
33:49
And I put Taylor Swift directly into that category.
33:51
She knows exactly what she's doing.
33:54
She knows what she's really good at.
33:55
She knows what her fans want from her.
33:57
She's able to build that community around her.
33:59
I think that's why a lot of critics are confused by her success.
34:03
But if you look at it through a business lens, it makes total
34:06
sense why she's so successful.
34:08
I love that you brought in jobs to be done as well.
34:11
Another huge part of the show that comes up on a regular basis.
34:14
I thought about that and that jobs to be done.
34:16
You mentioned here, by the way, and I'll leave people to read the book,
34:19
American Girl and Pleasant Roland to created that as a job to be done for
34:23
young girls creating these dolls.
34:26
But I loved then the quote by Rick Rubin.
34:28
You said here, this is a quote from Ruben.
34:30
"The reason that you are who you're, and the reason that you're finding
34:34
the success you're finding is because you've been true to yourself.
34:37
To get to that stage, to start changing that, to conform to someone else's idea of
34:42
what you should be doing is the problem.
34:45
That just doesn't make sense." He says, and and I love, love that quote.
34:49
And then you go on to quote an indie artist, Phoebe Bridgers, who said,
34:53
"Taylor has always told the truth.
34:55
She's written songs from exactly where she is.
34:58
I'm grateful to have grown up in a world with Taylor Swift in it,"
35:01
That's such a great point, because a lot of the criticism that she faced, it
35:05
wasn't just about her voice, it was about.
35:07
Her aesthetic.
35:08
People thought that it was too twee or too teenage, and it was
35:13
also what she was singing about.
35:14
I think people were like, what are you doing?
35:16
These songs sound too juvenile.
35:20
And Taylor could have pivoted, she could have tried to sound more mature than
35:24
she was, but I think she understood that, well, this is actually I'm good
35:29
at this from my own perspective and this is what my fans are relating to.
35:33
Obviously it's working.
35:35
So she, I wouldn't say she completely shut out the outside noise.
35:39
Obviously these, the event with Kanye and the criticism did have an effect on
35:43
her, and she's later talked about that.
35:45
But I think the lesson here is she really stood her ground.
35:49
didn't take that criticism and try to change herself.
35:51
In fact, when she was coming off of that second album and all that criticism
35:55
and praise that she received her third album, she really stuck to her guns.
36:00
She decided to write that album all by herself and a, think a lot of
36:06
it, she was touring, so she couldn't really work with other co-writers at
36:09
the time, but I think it was also a message of defiance to her critics.
36:14
She said, well, if you don't think I'm a great artist, well, I'm
36:16
just gonna do this all by myself.
36:17
I'm not gonna use any co-writers.
36:19
And then, of course, use that as part of her marketing campaign.
36:22
But I think that pivot going from our second to third album is, really
36:26
important because there was so much criticism and negativity around her.
36:30
Yet I think since she was so laser focused, she knew what
36:33
her fans were hiring her to do.
36:35
She delivered that and really doubled and tripled down on her strengths
36:39
rather than retreating from them.
36:41
I love that you used the term hiring or to do as well jobs to be done language there.
36:45
Kevin, you've obviously done your research, but I wanted
36:49
to just point a few things.
36:50
One, one thing to say that was a beautiful bit of justice was so kanye's
36:55
problem was that Beyonce had done this video, all the single ladies,
36:59
and it was the best video of all time.
37:01
She goes on to win video of the year later on, so Kanye kind of piped up
37:05
too early, but then beautifully she brings Taylor back on stage and says.
37:10
I was once this 17-year-old girl, I know what it's like.
37:14
And that made me think that, hey, the problem here is a lot of the critics are
37:19
actually just a different generation,
37:21
Yep.
37:21
and as you said, it was pre-digital landscape evolving, so they couldn't
37:26
even understand what she was doing.
37:28
And it's like us maybe criticizing how kids use emojis
37:32
or how they use TikTok today.
37:34
When we grew up, we didn't even grow up in a Facebook era.
37:37
So it's that making a decision from a different perspective and, you know, it's,
37:43
it's a killer of dreams and a killer of so many people's potential when somebody
37:49
says, you shouldn't be doing this.
37:51
And, and I just, I love that she made it and she defied those type of people.
37:55
But let's fast forward a bit here 'cause I mentioned something that's really
37:59
important and how innovative she was.
38:02
Clay, as you mentioned, clay Christensen, creator of job to be done theory, argued
38:06
when you see a product or service that no one else has successfully copied.
38:10
The product itself is rarely the source of long-term competitive advantage.
38:14
And for Swift, it wasn't just the music, it wasn't just the songwriting,
38:20
it was the package, including, as you say, she didn't just adapt
38:23
to an evolving digital landscape.
38:25
She actually helped shape it.
38:27
She was showing others how to actually use this, including the hustle of,
38:31
as you said, answering comments.
38:34
Engaging with her fans, leaving little Easter eggs throughout the digital
38:39
landscape, that would only make sense.
38:41
They were like jigsaw pieces or breadcrumbs that only made sense then
38:45
when you went to a concert and she was giving people hints to who are these
38:49
songs she's writing about, et cetera, et cetera, and it's that holistic
38:53
piece that's so hard to imitate.
38:56
Oh for sure.
38:57
And you can see it in everything that she does.
38:59
So this goes back to like what her fans are hiring her to do and like
39:01
a very simple sense, I would say her fans are really looking for a
39:04
deep personal connection with her.
39:06
They're looking for vulnerability and intimacy, and they're looking for songs
39:11
and experiences that help them connect to Taylor, but also connect with other fans.
39:16
you can look at everything that Taylor does and sometimes she strays from this.
39:19
But for the most part, when she's successful, she really stays
39:22
true to this job to be done.
39:24
And you can hear it in the way that she sings her songs.
39:28
It's very intimate.
39:30
Especially if you look at, not so much like the huge pop songs, but even in
39:33
those, she sings in a similar way.
39:34
It's very intimate.
39:35
She's singing very close to the mic, and this probably goes to like the
39:39
types of microphones that she uses.
39:42
Also, her music, the production never overwhelms the voice.
39:45
The voice is always upfront in the mix.
39:47
It's always the central part of the song.
39:49
There's other pop songs, other artists, even other country
39:52
songs where the production.
39:55
to be the of emphasis in a song.
39:58
But it's not, it's hardly ever like that in a Taylor Swift song.
40:01
Right.
40:01
So it feels like she's whispering in your ear and you can see the
40:04
way how she interacts with fans.
40:06
I think she understands that fans want something more from her than just music.
40:12
And this was a big shift in sort of the early two thousands, the mid
40:15
two thousands into about 2010 where the internet did change Fandom.
40:19
Fandom used to happen, and it used to be isolated, right?
40:23
You'd have to opt into fandom, you'd have to find other fans.
40:25
But of course social media changed a lot of that And then
40:30
Tumblr of course was huge.
40:31
And then now Instagram and TikTok and Taylor has always tried to
40:36
build experiences around her music.
40:39
You mentioned how she would drop clues in her liner notes.
40:43
So if you're a fan, you would look at some of the capitalized words
40:47
and you would try to figure out what she was trying to talk about.
40:49
And some cases it was.
40:51
The name of the person who the song was about, right, which, which would lead
40:56
fans, one to feel like she was speaking a secret language to them, but then
41:00
also as a way to relate to other fans.
41:02
And then of course, her concerts are these huge extravaganzas where the
41:07
Arista is a little bit different, but, but normally she'd release an album
41:11
and instead of playing, you know, her greatest hits and then sprinkling in some
41:14
new songs, the whole entire concert was built around the concept of each album.
41:20
you know, it's just a way to really build.
41:24
Community.
41:25
And what's really interesting these days is if you're not a Taylor Swift
41:29
fan and you go on TikTok and you go on Instagram and you see all these
41:32
videos of Taylor Swift, you'd probably be very, very confused because a lot
41:36
of her marketing now isn't really directed toward a mass audience.
41:41
It's really, really super consumer focused.
41:44
It's really focused on her fans, and a lot of these hints and clues
41:47
that she drops are things that only her fans would quite understand.
41:52
Yet that news spreads, their enthusiasm spreads across the internet, across
41:58
TikTok, across Instagram, and it brings in sort of casual and non-fans as well.
42:03
But I think this is like a, this is a. would say this is a
42:06
differentiator for Taylor, even though she's this huge artist.
42:10
I think she's always taken a very fan first attitude and she's more
42:16
focused on building this community with her fans, building the secret
42:19
language with her fans, building the strong bond with her fans, and then
42:23
the rest comes, comes after, that's her first priority is always her fans.
42:29
You mentioned a beautiful father daughter moment with your daughter
42:33
Maisie, at one of the concerts as well, and particularly a song called
42:36
Dear John, which you described as a gamified experience for the audience.
42:42
And, you know, I was looking For it and I found it.
42:44
I found, footage of that live performance and I stumbled upon another video then.
42:50
And it was a comedian, and Taylor Swift was in the audience.
42:53
He's like going, Hey guys, don't ever go out with Taylor Swift.
42:56
'cause she'll write a song about you.
42:59
And that shows up time and time again.
43:01
But in this song, dear John, it was one of the first kind of times it was
43:06
quite obvious that she was talking about one of her previous boyfriends.
43:10
For sure, and this is another point of criticism that she's, that she gets a lot
43:15
is that, you know, she just writes about her exes or she puts her exes on blast.
43:20
I think that's a exaggeration.
43:22
I think it's an unfortunate criticism because that's what songwriters do,
43:27
but I also think it's a good strategy.
43:30
Now she has in the past, she's had different opinions about this.
43:34
She has said, yeah, of course, like I'm talking about my exes and
43:40
you know, that's the way that the internet works and that's my strategy.
43:43
And then she's sort of walked back that in recent years and said, you know what?
43:47
That's, you know, these songs are for everybody.
43:50
And I think she says that because she's received a lot of criticism in my mind.
43:54
I think it's a great strategy.
43:56
I think it's a great songwriting strategy, and I think it's
43:58
a great business strategy.
43:59
It's a great songwriting strategy because our songs.
44:02
For the most part seem really personal.
44:05
I think the, lot of artists try to make their music as general as
44:11
possible 'cause they think they'll, it'll reach the widest audience.
44:13
And Taylor doesn't do that.
44:15
They sound like they're ripped from her diaries.
44:18
She uses very specific details and I think that brings her fans closer to her.
44:23
I think it makes their songs more intimate.
44:25
And then they can sort of relate those experiences to their own lives.
44:29
But I think the connection with her fans is really important.
44:31
And the fact that her songs are so hyper-specific, I think is a positive.
44:36
But I also think it plays into how the internet works and how fandom works.
44:41
Fans are always gonna speculate, And she has a choice.
44:46
She could generalize her songs so they won't speculate or she could
44:50
give hyper-specific examples.
44:51
And I think the fact that her songs are so hyper-specific, it does
44:55
lead to a lot of chatter online.
44:58
And her fans dissect her songs like Scholars Dissect
45:04
Ts, Elliot's The Wasteland.
45:06
I mean, the fandom is really smart.
45:08
It is really literary and they like to dissect songs.
45:11
And you mentioned Dear John, I mean she does a lot of really
45:13
clever things in that song.
45:16
There's callbacks to John Mayer's music, the guitar in that song, very subtly.
45:22
Sounds like John Mayer's It sounds like a John Mayer performance, but I think
45:29
what's really interesting about that song is that you think that the guitar is gonna
45:33
build up to this crescendo and this great solo, but it never quite happens, right?
45:38
So it's a really clever way of showing how that relationship fizzled out.
45:42
And really smart fans are gonna dissect that music inch by
45:46
inch, every sound, every lyric.
45:49
And they do.
45:50
And that continues to this day.
45:52
And I also think that's a reason why her fans are so.
45:55
Devoted because they're able to really deep dive into her music, which is
45:59
stuff that scholars do to poets, other scholars do with a literary text.
46:05
And Taylor Swift's music is no different.
46:08
I was telling you before we came on air, I'm just after finishing correcting a
46:12
hundred student essays and I always tell the students every year, like, write
46:18
from yourself, from your own perspective about, so I usually ask 'em to write
46:22
about the impact of AI on society through the lens of the module that I give.
46:26
And they connect the dots through the module, but I asked 'em to include
46:29
some personal anecdote or something.
46:31
And otherwise it's just, it just feels so bland.
46:34
And you told me before you came on air as a, an acquiring editor, you're looking
46:39
for a book that only you can write.
46:42
And that's what I felt reading.
46:45
This book, your book was a only, you could write this book, but only
46:50
Taylor could write her own music.
46:52
Now, later on, she leaned into different producers and she had
46:55
co-authored some of the earlier songs, but she was at the heart of it, as
46:59
you said, reflecting an inner mirror like what's going on inside her life.
47:05
So of course she's gonna tell, tell stories about the relationships because
47:09
she was authentic to those relationships.
47:11
That's such a great point.
47:13
And you know, we think that a lot of artists are at the center of
47:16
everything that they do, that they're in full control of what they do.
47:19
But they're a product, they're working for major labels who, and there's a
47:23
and r reps who are trying to push them in different directions and in some
47:26
cases in really positive directions.
47:29
But I think what sets Taylor apart, and there's some other artists that do this
47:32
too, she's not the only one is that she's.
47:36
the CEO of what she's doing.
47:38
And this goes back to her vision.
47:39
She has a really clear vision of, of who she is and what she should be doing.
47:43
And because of that, you know, she's able to surround herself with people who
47:47
are really, really good at what they do.
47:50
But it's her vision, her really clear vision that's that's
47:53
driving everything that she does.
47:55
And there's a new docuseries that's out about the making of the
47:58
ERAS tour that's on Disney Plus.
48:01
And you can see it's a behind the scenes documentary, and you can see
48:06
how clear her vision is there and how she's able to get her dancers, her
48:11
choreographer, everyone that works for her to everything in her image, right?
48:17
And it's all crystal clear.
48:19
And when you go to the concert, you can feel that vision.
48:23
And it's a really, really critical skill to have.
48:28
And she definitely has it in spades.
48:32
As you say, it's, it's a north star.
48:34
and when you have one of those, when you have your vision, when you have your
48:37
North star, it helps, makes decisions.
48:39
So you compare them to the that future version of yourself, and that's.
48:43
in terms of like a leadership, when you watch this docuseries, you'll
48:47
see, yes, she has a very clear vision of what she wants to do.
48:52
She's also a very humble leader.
48:54
She surrounds herself with people who are really great at what she does.
48:58
So she has the vision, but then she lets them do what they need to do, right?
49:01
I mean, she's gonna fine tune and tweak, but she doesn't seem
49:03
to be like a crazy micromanager.
49:05
And I think a big reason for that is like, if you have such a clear
49:08
vision, then people will be able to give you what you want, but also
49:10
throw in their own creativity and their own input to what you do.
49:14
And that's another great trait that she has.
49:18
And it was great to see it in action because I hadn't seen it before.
49:22
There's never video of her sort of leading other people.
49:25
But it's, it's pretty extraordinary.
49:27
She does seem to have the traits of a great leader.
49:30
Yes, she has great vision, but she's also humble enough to realize that
49:34
she's not going about this alone, and that it's really important to
49:37
rely on the expertise of others too.
49:41
There's, a guest We.
49:42
Had on the show a few times, Bob Johansson, and he was the former
49:46
director of Institute for the Future.
49:47
He has a great line.
49:48
He says, you have to be extremely clear on your vision as an
49:52
organization, as a leader, but very flexible about how you achieve that
49:56
Yep.
49:56
and what you said.
49:58
Right back to when she was a kid, she used to, this is her speaking, you quote
50:02
her, she's like, I used to lie awake at night dreaming about that future.
50:07
But then I think very carefully about how to achieve it.
50:09
And I thought that that's the difference.
50:11
I tell my kids like, I have two young boys and they both have dreams and it's
50:15
like going have the vision, think about it regularly, dream it, imagine it's
50:19
already happened, but then do the work.
50:21
'cause that's what people don't do and she totally did the work.
50:25
For sure.
50:25
Oh yeah.
50:26
And she continues to do that work.
50:28
I look at the ERAS tour where the demand for that concert was so high.
50:32
Ticketmaster said that she would've had to play 900 shows in the US
50:36
alone to meet the demand for that tour, and she hadn't toured in years.
50:42
So the enthusiasm was so high.
50:43
She played a two hour greatest hit style show, and I think her fans would've
50:47
walked away and they would've been joyous.
50:49
But instead, she plays three and a half hour shows, a set list that spans
50:53
40 plus songs, and she's doing it in some cases, three nights in a row
50:57
that had to come at a great emotional and physical toll for her, but also
51:02
her dancers, her band, her crew.
51:05
Yet she did it anyway.
51:07
And that's just the type of artist that she is, where she's really trying to
51:12
go above and beyond for her fans And.
51:16
more so than what her fans would expect her to do or could reasonably
51:21
want her to do, yet she continually exceeds those expectations, sets high
51:26
expectations, but then exceeds those high expectations, which is another reason
51:31
why she's in the position that she is.
51:33
I always credit people like that.
51:35
Like they, they've worked for that success.
51:38
They've made massive sacrifices for that success.
51:40
They can't walk down the street because of that success.
51:43
And Yeah.
51:44
yes, they've wanted that life, but they, there's a price you pay for that kind
51:48
of success, and she totally deserves it.
51:50
So at this stage, she's only 22 and she's leaned into what you
51:55
called po positive paranoia.
51:57
In the book, we are very familiar with Andy Grove and only the paranoid survive
52:02
she's launching into a fourth album.
52:04
And we talked about this regularly on the show, the concept of exploit and explore.
52:09
James March was the original scholar who talked about that.
52:11
Then Tushman and O'Reilly built on it.
52:14
Wendy Smith, who you, you likely know from Harvard Business Review press.
52:18
She wrote about this with Marianne Lewis.
52:19
The idea of both/And strategies and here when you zoom out, as you do in the book,
52:26
you go, up until now, three albums down.
52:28
All massive success.
52:30
She's used an incremental exploit strategy.
52:33
She's exploited what she had incrementally increasing as she's grown.
52:38
But now came the time to explore.
52:41
And you talk about the challenges she has of that.
52:43
First , she's worked with this guy, Nathan Chapman, longtime
52:46
producer, longtime collaborator.
52:48
Now she has to break away from that.
52:51
And you talk about this term, sudden breaks and how this is a, an important
52:57
thing that most companies or most people have to go through at a
53:00
certain point in their development.
53:02
Yeah, she needed a positive shock.
53:05
At least she thought that she did, because many artists that find
53:09
success as teenagers, have a hard time transitioning into their twenties.
53:14
I think the consensus is normally their fan base mature is much more
53:19
quickly than the artist does, right?
53:21
The music doesn't catch up to the maturity of the fans.
53:25
They grow up, they mature, and then they just move on to other music.
53:28
So Taylor was in this really interesting situation where she did need to
53:35
evolve, and the only way to do that is.
53:39
She needed a positive shock.
53:41
She needed to work with other collaborators.
53:43
As tough as that was because she really had such a close relationship with Nathan
53:47
Chapman, who produced her first three albums, and she found that positive shock
53:52
by working with a producer Max Martin.
53:57
Now, max Martin, if listeners aren't familiar with him, is the most prolific
54:02
producer and songwriter in history.
54:04
I think only behind Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
54:08
He has nearly as many number one hits as a producer and songwriter as those two do.
54:14
And but there was a challenge here because Taylor had built herself a DIY
54:22
songwriter, all the marketing around her, all the videos on social that they showed
54:27
of her, that her and her team showed.
54:28
It's her writing her songs in the studio.
54:31
A lot of the narrative around her is that she writes her own songs.
54:35
Here she is working with a pop producer who really became famous
54:39
by working with the likes of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys who
54:43
was really working in commercial pop.
54:46
And that was, there was a perception issue there because you would think that
54:52
those two don't, that working with Max Martin would run counter to everything
54:56
that she had built her career on.
54:59
Yet she still needed that positive shock.
55:01
So she did decide to go at Max Martin, but it ended up being a
55:04
great partnership because even though they're really different.
55:08
Their musical tastes are very similar.
55:10
They're both essentialist.
55:11
They both like to work in traditional forms.
55:14
They both like to create songs that are a addictively familiar, yet different enough
55:22
to like really catch your attention.
55:23
And Max Martin was the master at this.
55:25
Even though he grew up as a pure pop producer, his music
55:31
wasn't that much different than Taylor Swift's country music.
55:34
So I mean, this was a challenge because he's not only replacing the mandolins with
55:39
pop beats, it's, it was a, it was an issue of authenticity and you would think that
55:45
some of her fans may rebel against that.
55:49
So she ended up writing three pure pop songs with Max Martin.
55:53
Those ended up being her first number one hits on the billboard charts.
55:57
Yet at the same time, they sounded very.
56:00
Of her age, they sounded very tailored.
56:02
They were ri, they were co-written by her.
56:04
So the lyrics are sharp.
56:06
but it, she did receive some pushback from some fans, I think she decided
56:12
that she had to take that risk at that point, that she had to grow as an
56:16
artist because not many artists make that transition into their twenties.
56:20
And I think it also goes to show how competitive she is.
56:24
I don't think she ever shies away from trying to get bigger
56:26
and bigger and more popular.
56:28
And I think a big way to do that was to move slowly into pop music.
56:36
that, of course, it ended up being good move for her because she
56:40
did get those number one hits.
56:41
And she did end up expanding her fan base.
56:44
And one of her fears that she had talked about at the time was, I'm afraid that my
56:47
songs are gonna start sounding the same.
56:50
And she had already conquered country music and she wanted to
56:54
change things up, and her own musical tastes were changing too.
56:57
Um, so that's what she ended up following.
57:00
She ended up following her, her muse that was telling her to transition
57:03
a little bit more into pop.
57:05
And I guess the rest is history, right?
57:08
There's a great line I have to share from the book.
57:11
You say eventually the stability.
57:12
So think here, she's three albums.
57:14
She has a formula that works and just replace an album with
57:18
a business or a business model.
57:20
Eventually the stability creates cognitive and social rigidity.
57:23
You stop thinking in new ways.
57:25
You stop hearing new ideas from outside your network
57:28
And it stifles creativity.
57:30
But if you venture outside your network a shock, this positive shock enables
57:35
creators to accrue the advantages provided by open network structures
57:39
and heterogeneous content that's
57:42
management speak, as you say, for staying relevant by changing.
57:46
But I just wanted to quote this bit and I'd love you to maybe expand on it.
57:50
And here again, I'm asking people who are still with us.
57:54
Just replace music with a business or a business model, or if you're a
57:59
wannabe author, A book "Since 2000, only 16 solo written songs have gone to
58:05
number one on the billboard, hot 100.
58:08
In the 1970s, the average of songwriters per track was 1.7.
58:12
These days, it's more than four.
58:14
So innovation is growing more difficult because of the growth
58:17
of technology and the base of knowledge you need to innovate.
58:21
It takes teams, not lone geniuses to succeed." And that was
58:26
one of the key things she did here, however difficult it was.
58:29
And before I hand over to you, you said here, and I love this quote and
58:33
this quote, as a person, anyone going through change, "personal growth
58:38
requires us to commit to learning.
58:41
Learning requires us to acquire new skills, styles, behaviors,
58:45
and acquiring new skill styles and behaviors requires us to endure a
58:49
painstaking period of discomfort.
58:52
The whole process can make us feel calculating and ungenuine."
58:56
And that was the challenge.
58:58
She had been so genuine that, and sticking to her guns of writing the songs, going
59:03
through that period of, oh, I'm gonna totally write it to prove you guys
59:06
wrong, have criticized me, and now she has to go through this persona change.
59:10
And I felt inauthentic.
59:12
And I thought that was the, you encapsulated, that was
59:15
the challenge so much For her.
59:17
For sure.
59:17
And it was a, it was a big challenge 'cause as I mentioned, she had
59:21
really built that fan base up on that intimacy and that connection.
59:25
And pop music necessarily have that same connection.
59:29
And I think, and I do talk about this in the book, some fans did
59:32
rebel, hate her move into pop music.
59:39
But I think Taylor had the, the long term in mind, right, even though there's gonna
59:44
be some short term pain and even though possibly some of her fans may not like
59:50
what she's doing, it was really important for her to, to lean into the discomfort,
59:57
work with someone who she might not have worked for or with, with in the
1:00:02
past, to really push her music forward.
1:00:05
And then she realized that in, in the music industry, you really need to.
1:00:10
Especially once you've established your career, it's important to and change,
1:00:16
and that's what she's, from this point forward, that's what she does with,
1:00:20
that's what she's done with every album essentially, , is to really try to change,
1:00:27
but yet at the same time, try to remain true to what her fans love about her.
1:00:33
And we're gonna come back.
1:00:35
Kevin, I has kindly agreed to come back and we're gonna talk about that
1:00:37
reinvention, which is using parts of your old self in order to create yourself.
1:00:42
The last thing I'd love you to share, though, because I hadn't heard this
1:00:45
term before, and it was so relevant for her because for the first time
1:00:49
in her career, she was navigating what LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault
1:00:54
calls the paradox of star brands.
1:00:57
And that idea of evolving and staying relevant, but in a way that reminds you
1:01:02
of why people love you in the first place.
1:01:05
Yeah, which is really, really, really, really hard to do.
1:01:09
Like how do you stay edgy enough?
1:01:11
How do you stay different enough to keep people around and keep people interested?
1:01:15
Yet, do you still remain true to the classic things that attract
1:01:22
people in the first place.
1:01:23
And these are things that Hermes deals with Chanel, just these huge luxury
1:01:27
brands that have a history behind them.
1:01:30
And I would put Taylor in that category too.
1:01:32
Right?
1:01:32
And the reason why she was so successful from an early age is that
1:01:35
clear vision, that relatability, that songwriting that was really personal.
1:01:42
Yet she still needs to change.
1:01:45
She still needs to pivot.
1:01:46
And that challenge of changing yet remaining true to the very values
1:01:54
and norms and aesthetic that fans love so much is a huge challenge.
1:02:00
And it becomes a challenge for every new album that she
1:02:03
releases at this point, right?
1:02:05
It's always this question of how do I make something that's different
1:02:08
that my fans will love, yet doesn't stray so far from the things that
1:02:13
make Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift.
1:02:17
For people in the meantime who want to find you, where's the
1:02:20
best place to find out more about?
1:02:22
There's nothing like this
1:02:23
You can find me at nothing like this book.com or on LinkedIn.
1:02:27
I'm very active on LinkedIn or you can follow me on Instagram
1:02:31
at, there's nothing like this.
1:02:34
author of, there's nothing like this.
1:02:35
The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.
1:02:38
Kevin Evers, Thank you for joining us.
1:02:40
Thank you so much.
1:02:41
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