Let's settle this bugging thing first before we proceed: Music as an
industry is always a battleground for recognition and popularity. Artists and
bands always strife to put up impressive music records, hoping that not only
those albums will impress the people, but also as the source of their income
besides concert tickets and merchandise. But some bands tend to care more about
the music rather than popularity, as they thought that the fans are doing it
for them.
This musical feud between the Pop sensation Taylor Swift and the
legendary Progressive Metal band Tool began when the 29 year-old Swift released
her seventh album titled Lover on
August 23. The album debuted at number 1 at the Billboard 200 chart at its
first week of release. One week later, Maynard James Keenan and co. released
their first album in 13 years dubbed Fear
Inoculum. And since the music experts forecasted that the release of the
album would jeopardize Taylor's position on the charts (eventually, they
unseated her for the top spot of the chart), the fans, called Swifties took to Twitter to express
their frustrations, while some of them ignorantly said that Tool is a
relatively new band. At that point, Tool had already booted Taylor for the
number 1 spot in the iTunes chart and forced her to the number 3 spot, with
Lana del Rey's offering entitled Norman
F--king Rockwell separating them at number 2. For the record, Tool is an
American Progressive metal band formed in 1995, with its current lineup of
vocalist Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor
and drummer Danny Carey. In the span of their career, these four musicians has
spawned 5 albums, the two latest albums they produced being Fear Inoculum and 10.000 Days, with the latter being released 13 years before the
former. While Taylor began her career
as a Country singer when she released her self-titled album in 2006, around the
same year as Tool's 10.000 Days. By
the release of her fourth album Red
in 2014, Taylor switched to mostly pop songs, earning her the recognition as
one of the most popular female musicians today. But the fans that raged about
Tool's insurgence on the Billboard charts only discovered Tool via the
mainstream news, assuming that they are a new band that flies under the radar.
As evidenced by a fan that tweeted along the lines of "there is a chance
of debuting at no. 2 due to a new band called Tool."
The recent revelations on this one-sided fan war (since most Tool fans
don't give a single care about the charts) stated that most Taylor Swift fans,
mostly teenagers between the ages of 14 to 18 don't have a clue what Tool as a
band is, while most Tool fans simply laughed at their ignorance. One of them
even tweeted "16 year old Taylor Swift fans who have no clue what Tool is
freaking out that they're gonna surpass her in sales (they will) is
hilarious." Maynard James Keenan even jumped into the feud by posting a
meme that referenced the decimation scene called "the snap" from Avengers: Infinity War movie. The meme
depicts Keenan as Thanos holding the Infinity Gauntlet, and Taylor Swift
reducing to ashes. What many people don't realize is Keenan is known to be a
bit of a troll when it comes to the Internet. As a result, his tweet was
bombarded with replies from the Swifties fanbase,
mostly criticize Keenan about the meme, even mentioning his alleged sexual
abuse case and dubbed Taylor as a 'survivor'. There is no secret that not only
the Swifties think of Tool as a
relatively new and unknown Band, the metal community also had some not-so-kind
words about the 29 year-old popstar. Some dubbing her as overrated,
overproduced, lip syncing singer who relies too much from her supposedly
"heartbreaking" stories as the inspiration for most of her songs. She
did write songs about her exes, and during an instance of another feud with
Katy Perry back in 2015, she released the single Bad Blood from her 1989 album.
The song allegedly was Taylor's implicit dislike of Katy at that time. On the
other end of the spectrum, Tool has always being praised for their musicianship
and the complexity of their songs. Those songs, excluding the instrumental
tracks vary in length, between 5 to about 10 minutes long. They even once write
the song Lateralus from the 2001
album of the same name based on the Fibonacci sequence.
When it comes to chart battles, there are two instances, including this
one, where a metal band managed to steal the number 1 spot from a pop artist in
the past couple of months, the previous occurrence was when Slipknot's We Are not Your Kind dislodged Ed
Sheeran's No. 6 Collaboration Project
from the number 1 spot in the UK album charts, but there was no fan war that
erupted as the result of the occurrence. But in this case with Taylor and Tool,
chart position and record sales are the most important things for a fan's
perspective. The marketing aspect of this feud is also worth to mention. Before
both albums even released, Taylor had already released four singles on the road
to drop the full album. Those singles are Me!
Featuring PANIC! At the Disco frontman Brendon Urie on April 29, You Need To Calm Down on June 14, The Archer on June 23 as a promotional
single for the album, and the title track on August 16. Tool only released the
sole single Fear Inoculum on August
7, roughly 4 weeks before the namesake album was launched on August 30. When
releasing Lover, Taylor offered many
different versions of the physical album, including 4 different versions of the
deluxe edition dubbed the Collectible
Editions, as well as bundle packages including concert tickets and plenty
of merchandises. For the marketing of the album itself, Taylor collaborated
with Target as a retailer to sell those copies. For the retailing price, Lover was charged for only US$ 13. Tool
on the other hand, charged a heftier price of US$ 45, but with that price
alone, the fans are able to obtain the limited edition CD of Fear Inoculum with a package consist of
a 36-paged booklet, a 4" HD video screen with exclusive video footage, a
speaker and a charging chord, beside their digital release version of the
album. Even with that price tag, those copies sold out in minutes. Prior to
releasing their latest effort, the band had already released their entire
discography for various streaming platforms. With that much value over prize,
no wonder Tool scored 270.000 equivalent album units with 248.000 being total
album sales on its first week of release, as opposite to Taylor's dismal
178.000 equivalent album units on her second week, which is significantly lower
by 79% than the staggering 867.000 units from its first week. According to
Billboard, this is a now-rare instance where an artist (solo effort or a group)
managed to score a number 1 album without the assistance of concert tickets/album
sale redemption offer, some sort of pre-sale/pre-order access code promotion,
or even a single merchandise or album bundles.
When it comes to the quality of the songs, both Taylor Swift and the four
guys collectively known as Tool delivered their best efforts for enjoyable
music, with Taylor's upbeat take on pop music or the cohesiveness of Tool's
complex musicianship. Apart from the obvious, the music industry is always
looking for the hottest artists, albums and songs. And we can only hope that
behind this feud and all the things that surround it, both artists can continue
making the best tunes for the masses to enjoy.
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