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Post by philly on Dec 5, 2011 21:50:42 GMT -5
Top 20 Concert Tours from Pollstar By The Associated Press The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers. TOP 20 CONCERT TOURS 1. (New) "Cirque du Soleil ' Michael Jackson: The Immortal"; $1,952,236; $113.87. 2. (1) Taylor Swift; $1,402,433; $69.22. 3. (2) Sade; $1,063,114; $83.06. 4. (3) Marc Anthony; $961,805; $84.29. 5. (4) Enrique Iglesias; $806,680; $69.00. 6. (6) Foo Fighters; $644,932; $48.23. 7. (5) Journey; $641,674; $56.13. 8. (9) Keith Urban; $551,038; $60.56. 9. (8) Jason Aldean; $519,614; $34.26. 10. (10) Katy Perry; $509,146; $43.23. 11. (13) Def Leppard / Heart; $477,152; $57.10. 12. (11) "American Idols Live"; $470,045; $56.39. 13. (14) Train / Maroon 5; $423,996; $41.46. 14. (New) Santana; $422,698; $70.24. 15. (16) Tiesto; $267,138; $44.65. 16. (17) Jeff Dunham; $235,817; $45.71. 17. (18) "So You Think You Can Dance"; $206,626; $53.92. 18. (19) Widespread Panic; $172,259; $37.83. 19. (New) Ray LaMontagne; $164,002; $48.20. 20. (New) Alison Krauss + Union Station feat. Jerry Douglas; $160,476; $56.86. For free upcoming tour information, go to www.pollstar.comI see that Taylor Swift isn't hurting. Although thankfully, she won't be suffering an embarrassment of riches at the Grammy's this time  0: Number of major nominations scored by Taylor Swift for her smash Speak Now album. She did pull down three nods for Best Country Album and Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance for "Mean." |
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Post by erik on Dec 5, 2011 21:55:33 GMT -5
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Post by philly on Dec 13, 2011 2:05:45 GMT -5
The Horror  It can't just be all the Swift-bots buying her records, can it?  Taylor Swift Dominates Billboard's 2011 Country Charts As country music's reigning ACM and CMA Entertainer of the Year, as well the all-genre AMA Artist of the Year, there's really no surprise Taylor Swift is the No. 1 country artist of 2011. According to Billboard's year-end Top Country Artists chart, the 'Ours' singer, who landed at No. 8 on the all-genre artists countdown, dominated in every category of the country rankings, including album sales, radio airplay, download sales, tour revenue and ringtone sales. Rounding out the Top 10 (in order) are Jason Aldean, Lady Antebellum, Zac Brown Band, Blake Shelton, the Band Perry, Rascal Flatts, Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and Luke Bryan. Taylor also took top honors on Billboard's year-end Country Albums and Country Albums Artist charts for her triple-platinum selling CD, 'Speak Now,' which has spawned four Top 5 singles, including her most recent No. 1, 'Sparks Fly.' The collection also landed at No. 2 on Billboard's year-end, all-genre Top 200 albums chart, placing just behind soul singer Adele's '21,' which has sold more than five million copies in the United States. |
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Post by erik on Dec 13, 2011 9:57:32 GMT -5
Quote by philly:
Not by themselves it isn't, but God knows Music Row is enabling them.
It's really quite embarrassing that this "kid" with the big open-mouthed gape of hers, plus that irritating, Autotuned "voice", is getting all that glory and attention, while a lot of other really solid female vocalists of a rootsy sort, like Tift Merritt, are left on the fringes.
Swift herself, however, is really only a small part of the problem. Much of what gets played on country radio, not just T.S., is just gutless "product". If Linda thought back in 2003 that it had devolved into "mall crawler music", I think she'd feel even worse about it today.
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Post by philly on Dec 14, 2011 8:34:57 GMT -5
Just stumbled on this article... we don't have to bash her ;D But they still don't acknowledge that TS might be getting a little assistance in her, ahem, writing. I recall similar things said about Debbie Gibson's "songwriting" 20 years ago. But it seems 'ol Debbie's songwriting gift didn't last very long for some reason Taylor Swift’s Precociousness Problem By Willa PaskinToday is Taylor Swift's birthday. She turns 22. Twenty-one was a particularly good year for Swift: Not only could she finally drink legally, her third record, Speak Now, sold over 5.5 million copies, she went on a wildly successful tour, she dated Jake Gyllenhaal, made peace with Kanye, took big strides in arm dancing, won many, many more awards, and did it all without a breakdown, meltdown, or any of the otherwise alarming episodes that have beset so many of her peers. It will be a hard year to top, but it is possible. Maybe 22 is the year Taylor Swift will finally stop seeming so precocious and start seeming like an adult. Precociousness has long been one of Swift’s defining qualities. This is the person who emerged at 15, writing the kind of perfectly crafted pop songs people four times her age would be proud of. As Sasha Frere Jones wrote in a piece about Swift’s second album Fearless, while comparing her to the likes of Prince and Elvis Costello, “people who aren’t old enough to have lived the songs they’ve written nevertheless know how the song embodying that life should go.” Swift has always exhibited an uncanny knack for doing exactly this, knowing, if not how life actually goes, how we all imagine it should. Her lyrics are preternaturally attuned to people both older and younger than her, appealing to the former group's sense of nostalgia ("remember when?") and the latter's sense of hope ("Someday soon!") . Swift's precociousness is not just lyrical: Like all the best and brightest child stars, she has always been wonderfully behaved, giving interviews where nary a word is wrong, where nothing bad is said. Magazine profile writers do their best to get her to say one colorful, inappropriate thing: it never happens. While this is vastly preferably to a Britney/Lindsay/Miley type outburst, there something about Swift's presentation that is unnerving, in much the same way as hearing child actors say things like, “Any day acting is an amazing day" or “It's absolutely great to get such great material. " But saying exactly the appropriate, mature thing doesn't make one an adult: it just means one is good at mimicking adults. At 22, Taylor Swift still seems like she's faking it. The most obvious example of this, of course, is Swift's now infamous surprise face, the one she deploys every time she wins an award. The face is meant to be genuine, humble, and polite, but it comes off as affected. She has won more than 60 awards. It is getting difficult to believe it's a shock. Swift, like the good, smart stage kid she is, is obeying the letter, rather than the spirit, of graciousness. She comes across as disingenuous in the very act of being herself. Swift's fans, of course, find her relatable anyway, what with her favorite sayings scrawled on her arms in pen and all those endless stories about boys. But the joke of all of Swift's romances is they couldn't have been anything but very brief: Swift has spent the last seven years busting her ass to be a famous and successful musician — when did she have time for all these fellas? Her lyrics expose her. Take the words to “Dear John,” Swift's ode to John Mayer. As the story goes, John Mayer worked with Swift when she was 19, things got romantical, then he played head games with her, hurt her, and made her cry. In the song's major put down, Swift sings, "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with,"just about the most self-belittling insult imaginable. Sure, Swift is calling Mayer a pervert and a jerk, but she's also saying she wasn't his romantic equal. It's condescending to Mayer, but also to the young woman who liked him so much, and was just being manipulated: It's the sort of insult someone's mother, not a scorned lover, levels. Swift is just imitating the grown ups. The rest of her boy-crazy anthems voraciously pillage from our cultural store of romantic clichés and very rarely get specific: Sparks fly instantly; kisses happen in the rain; bouquets end up in the trash; hands run through hair; grooms skip out of on weddings; people have meaningful drawers at their boyfriend’s house. Swift assembles all these cliches so artfully, they become wonderfully evocative (Taylor Swift’s pop songs are like if Hallmark cards were written by an emotional genius), but none of it feels personal, lived, or unique. That's part of their power: At the concert she recently gave at Madison Square Garden, before introducing "Fifteen," she told the crowd of largely pre-teen girls about those times when you've just broken up with someone and you start to cry in the front seat of your car. All the little girls in the audience cheered, because they would cheer anything Swift says, but also because, even though none of them can drive, they already know exactly what she was talking about. Taylor Swift has a catalog of terrific songs about what it's like to be a girl, but she's a very special one, and if she wants her public persona to stay as likeable as her work, she's going to have to figure out how to acknowledge this. Swift doesn't have to go full Kanye and write a whole record about the weirdness of being famous, but in not so long, songs about her having a profound crush on a guy she saw for 10 seconds at a party — one who probably would have loved to have met her — may start to seem as bogus and immature as her surprise face. At the end of the MSG concert, during the encore, Swift was handed a guitar. She explained that this guitar may have looked like the same one she had just been playing (they were both brown) but this one had 12 strings. And then she played it. It was the most adult thing she did all night. nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/12/taylor-swifts-precociousness-problem.html?imw=Y |
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Post by erik on Dec 14, 2011 9:56:38 GMT -5
Quote by philly from article written by Willa Paskin:
Given all this, you have to wonder about at least two things about Taylor. One is whether she'll be able to grow out of these teen-girl anthems and go onto truly mature adult concerns. I think she eventually will, because, in order to stay relevant and grow as an artist, she'll have virtually no other choice. The other thing, however, is more problematic: whether the teen/young adult audience she has currently is going to accept that maturing process. Given that young people are always starving for role models in the entertainment business, Taylor is the current It Girl. Will she be able to sustain her success as she matures, and not lose the audience she has cultivated? Time, I think, will tell.
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Post by Dianna on Dec 14, 2011 17:42:45 GMT -5
I don't know? I don't see any evidence of that. I mean like the writer says.. where is Debbie Gibson now? Her songs are pretty much have the same meaning as Taylors do- As I said, she might get a little better as a vocalist but I honestly see her at 35 or 40 still touring and performing" you belong with me" and those young kid fans now, who will then be pushing 30-35 reliving their youth will be right there singing along.
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Post by erik on Dec 14, 2011 19:33:37 GMT -5
It would intrigue me if we could see some tour figures, from, oh say, 1977 or '78, since Linda's tours during that time frame had practically every tour stop sold out, including a dozen consecutive sellouts at the Universal Amphitheatre here in L.A. at the end of the summer in 1977. I'd wager they were every bit as big a deal in that time frame as Taylor's are in this one.
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Post by philly on Dec 18, 2011 6:00:56 GMT -5
Given all this, you have to wonder about at least two things about Taylor. One is whether she'll be able to grow out of these teen-girl anthems and go onto truly mature adult concerns. I think she eventually will, because, in order to stay relevant and grow as an artist, she'll have virtually no other choice. The other thing, however, is more problematic: whether the teen/young adult audience she has currently is going to accept that maturing process. Given that young people are always starving for role models in the entertainment business, Taylor is the current It Girl. Will she be able to sustain her success as she matures, and not lose the audience she has cultivated? Time, I think, will tell. Maybe she'll just evolve (if not almost there already) into a distaff Garth Brooks, with extravaganzas of pyrothechnics, revolving stages, dancers, etc. For instance, the 60 minutes story on her showed her popping onto the stage thru a reverse trap door gizmo (to the delighted squeals of her fans, of course). She's making so much money I could see her creating a theme park "Taylorwood" or maybe a TS theatre in Branson is in her future. She's got a lot of options, but I don't know if her management would care for her to do anything that would bring in less money for the forseeable future. Recently a local radio host said he took his daughter to a TS concert, and said he had a great time. He didn't comment on TS or her talents, just said it was a great time. But the biggest threat to her may be the next big thing to come along, a new teen sensation who can actually (gasp!) sing!Maybe it depends on how much, if any, of her fan base are the true, ever loyal country fans, or if she can never appeal to fans beyond the teeny-boppers who give artists like Hilary Duff, Jessica & Ashlee Simpson, Christina, etc. short shelf lives as superstars. But as you point out Erik, she'll no doubt have to change as an artist to keep her present fans in her thrall. It would be unfortunate if TS is ever anointed the "queen of country" wouldn't it?  |
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Post by erik on Dec 18, 2011 14:07:34 GMT -5
Quote by philly:
It would really depend, in my humble opinion, on three things: how she improves as a singer, since there is a lot of room for that; how her songwriting evolves (if she can evolve into anything remotely approaching Carole King in her early 1970s peak, there's a good chance people will take notice); and just how long the "marketplace" will love her. The first two are completely hers to control; the third one is out of her hands. We'll see; and I'll make an effort not to be so hard on her in the future.
Compared to what Taylor is likely to make this year, the $12 million that Linda made in 1978, after taxes and expenses, may not seem like much now. Back then, however, that figure was enormous for a female artist in pop music; and in fact, Linda may have been the one to set the bar, as I don't think any other of her fellow female thespians before her managed to do that
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Post by Dianna on Dec 19, 2011 17:21:51 GMT -5
It would intrigue me if we could see some tour figures, from, oh say, 1977 or '78, since Linda's tours during that time frame had practically every tour stop sold out, including a dozen consecutive sellouts at the Universal Amphitheatre here in L.A. at the end of the summer in 1977. I'd wager they were every bit as big a deal in that time frame as Taylor's are in this one. |
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Post by Dianna on Dec 19, 2011 17:29:11 GMT -5
As far as rock concerts , back in 77-78 Linda was in good company. I checked it out and everyone from Queen, LedZep, Linda and Elton John, Bee Gees to the Jackson 5 were touring. That would have been an amazing time for fans. I was born just a little too late.
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