TEMPEST IN A POP SONG
Internet abuzz with rumours that Kacey Musgraves took a musical shot at Taylor Swift,
The scuttlebutt on Kacey Musgraves’ “Good Ol’ Boys’ Club,” a down-homey number about stickin’ to your guns and bein’ your own gal from the Texas country sweetheart’s new album Pageant Material, is that it takes a veiled shot at Taylor Swift. The speculation that’s had the Internet aflutter for the past few days derives from the couplet “Another gear in a big machine / Don’t sound like fun to me,” which many people with too much time to burn feel could be a reference to Swift’s record label, Big Machine. Musgraves herself sort of denied but sort of didn’t deny the connection in a recent interview with the Fader, wherein she claimed the song wasn’t about anyone particular yet coyly added: “But, yeah, there is a wink.” We’re not sure if this counts as a bona fide “diss” track — it’s certainly not operating on the same level as, say, 2-Pac’s “Hit ’Em Up,” a nasty dig at Notorious B.I.G. that may have resulted in Pac being shot dead three months later — but it did get us thinking about some notable musical moments when pop stars have taken the gloves off, all rap style, and aired beef in public. Taylor Swift, “Bad Blood” http://bit.ly/1UdWWwg Taylor takes aim at estranged gal pal Katy Perry — “We’re just straight-up enemies,” Swift told Rolling Stone last year — in an uncharacteristically menacing track bolstered by guest verses from Kendrick Lamar and an all-star chop-socky action video. In truth, Kendrick does most of the dissing on Taylor’s behalf here, but the title and the chorus say it all: “You made a really deep cut / And now we got bad blood.” Take that, Katy! Katy Perry, “Circle the Drain” http://bit.ly/1gdi7ih Taylor Swift has infamously made a career of skewering her exes in song, but her arch-rival got in the game and took former boyfriend Travie McCoy of Gym Class Heroes down hard with 2011’s “Circle the Drain.” “You fall asleep during foreplay / ’Cause the pills you take are more your forte.”
“Wanna be your lover / not your f---in’ mother.” “You think you’re so rock ’n’ roll / But you’re really just a joke.” Wouldn’t wanna be that guy. Justin Timberlake, “Cry Me a River” http://bit.ly/1JD3LkY “You don’t have to say what you did,” says an unsympathetic Timberlake to a former lover come crawling back on this barbed slow jam from 2009. “I already know, I found out from him.”
It was no secret at the time that Justin was publicly purging himself of a relationship with Britney Spears gone bad and by the sounds of things, the purging was final. “Your bridges were burned and now it’s your turn / To cry, cry me a river.” Rufus Wainwright, “Dinner at Eight” http://bit.ly/1RUr8bT Not only is this plaintive piano ballad from 2003’s Want Oneabout another pop star, it’s about another pop star (well, kind of a pop star) who happens to be his father. Reportedly about a particularly rancorous argument Rufus had over, yes, dinner with dad Loudon Wainwright III, “Dinner at Eight” shows that the scars left by Wainwright’s parents’ divorce when he was a kid still run deep. “In fact you were the one long ago / Actually in the drifting white snow / You left me,” sings Rufus. “Daddy, don’t be surprised / If I wanna see the tears in your eyes.”
Sister Martha wrote her own song for dad, too, by the way. It was called “Bloody Mother F---ing Asshole.” Foo Fighters, “I’ll Stick Around” http://bit.ly/1CObXKq One of the more scorching cuts from the first Foo Fighters album in 1995, “I’ll Stick Around” can trace its emphatic refrain of “I DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING / I DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING” to sometime Hole frontwoman Courtney Love. She was already making life miserable for former husband Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana bandmates in the form of disputed royalties and copyright claims a year after his suicide in 1994 and — despite this song’s declaration that “One day this all will fade, I’m sure” — she would continue to make life miserable for Grohl and Krist Novoselic for a good 15 years more.
No wonder Grohl still sings it so forcefully. John Lennon, “How Do You Sleep” http://bit.ly/1HA5biS Legend has it that Ringo Starr, alarmed at how nasty this 1971 track from Lennon’s Imagine album was getting toward John’s former Beatles songwriting partner Paul McCartney, actually cautioned him during recording, “That’s enough, John.” “The only thing you done was yesterday,” seethes Lennon in a statement rife with dual meaning.
“And since you’ve gone it’s just another day . . . The sound you make is Muzak to my ears.”
Ouchy-wouchy.