Kansas City Playlist: Maybe Celeb Beef With Taylor Swift?!?

Recently, Taylor Swift garnered MILLIONS worth of sales for her latest drop so she's free to continue her good life as one of the biggest CO2 polluters in the world by way of her private jet fleet. 

The reviews weren't great but Tay-tay's music has never really been critically acclaimed and our biggest complaint is how few of the tracks are dance-worthy . . . Yet not really ballads either.  MAYBE background music For middle-class white women is one of the many things about generational wealth that we'll never understand.

But I digress . . . 

We mention Taylor Swift beef because her Kansas City "context" seems to be evolving . . . 

She no longer dominates cutaways for the Chiefs and unless things turnaround quickly, this season isn't exactly going to be a storybook lead-up to a celeb wedding. 

And so . . . 

Here's a pop star nobody taking her best shot by way of the historic diva connected to our cowtown . . .  

Charli XCX wore a shirt that read “Max’s Kansas City,” which fans are taking as a hit at Taylor, who spends a lot of her time in Kansas City with fiancé Travis Kelce. 

Ugh . . . What AI slop and newbie writers probably don't know is that Max's Kansas City is an iconic NYC club that's kinda having a nostalgic moment this week.  

Still . . . 

That's no reason to try and diffuse a beef . . ..  

Fans theorized that Taylor‘s new song “Actually Romantic” from her album The Life of a Showgirl is about Charli, and the “Opalite” singer explained the true meaning of the song. 

Context . . . 

“‘Actually Romantic’ is a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about,” Taylor said in an Amazon Music track-by-track chat. 

If you didn’t know, Charli just got married to George Daniel, who is a The 1975 bandmate of Taylor‘s ex Matty Healy.

And so . . . 

All of this chatter is much less inconsequential than than how many angels can dance on the head of a pin yet NEVERTHELESS provides us with inspiration for our  www.TonysKansasCity.com playlist tonight on the topic of rivalry . . . Double bonus, we won't be including any Taylor Swift or Charlie Nobody songs on tonight's list .  . . 

Let's start with a bit of American classic rock history . . . 

Neil Young had a very dim view of the American South. He wrote two songs - Southern Man and Alabama - which criticised white citizens for building their wealth on the back of slave labour, asking: "When will you pay them back?"

Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant was incensed. "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," he said, pointing out that many people had opposed racism and segregation.

His riposte came in Sweet Home Alabama, where he sang: "Well, I hope Neil Young will remember / A Southern Man don't need him around."

The song became a huge hit, and even Young loved it.

Sometimes a rivalry is so one sided that most people forget the context completely . . . In one of the first hip-hop tracks to find widespread success, radio play and mainstream adoption . . . Most don't remember that LL COOL J directed his ire at both Run-DMC & Kool Moe Dee with 1990's "Mama Said Knock You Out" as pop culture has mostly forgotten his rivals but LL still shows up on network TV from time to time more than 30 years later.

A fun fact that is often lost on cinema lovers . . . 

The intense rivalry portrayed in the film Amadeus is largely a work of fiction; in reality, Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were professional competitors, not bitter enemies. While they did compete for positions and commissions in Vienna, there is no historical evidence of Salieri poisoning Mozart or sabotaging him out of jealousy. Their real relationship was cordial, with some mutual respect between them. And this brings us to the unrivaled Falco and his 1985 Euro-trash hit "Rock Me Amadeus" . . . AND . . . Just for close readers . . . The funniest bit comedian Paul Rodriguez ever performed on screen.

For the bridge, a bit of context . . . We tend to think of rivalries as petty pop music endeavors but even they're fun for even the greatest songwriters as John Lennon's diss track directed toward Paul McCartney was surprisingly scathing for the 1970s and took apart a great deal of the Beatles legacy.

Finally, classic rock fans knew we were going this direction . . . T

he Eagles we're exactly rivals with the members of Steely Dan but they weren't best friends either . . . In the coke-fueled 70s, there were probably more than words exchanged. The line "They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast . . . ” before an iconic guitar solo is likely one of the best burns in Rock N' Roll history . . .  And it secured the lifetime win for Don Henley and Glenn Frey.

As always, thanks for reading this week and have a safe & fun Saturday night.