Elon Musk Probably Won't Make Twitter Much Worse Than It Already Is
PLUS: A review of "Palomino" by Miranda Lambert
A few months ago, I compared Mark Zuckerberg to a Bond villain, but seriously, if there’s any billionaire on this planet in this solar system who’s a dead ringer for a Bond villain, it’s Elon Musk, the business magnate behind the spacecraft and communications company SpaceX and the electric automobile manufacturer Tesla, among other endeavors. After all, if you had to cast someone to play Musk in a movie, you’d have to pick Mads Mikkelsen, right, and Mikkelsen’s played a Bond villain! More importantly, though, Musk owns his own private rocket ship company, and he probably wanted to name it Moonraker until his henchman told him that would be a dead giveaway.
Musk also wants to use said rockets to colonize Mars. Why? Here’s one of the reasons why:
It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from earth that [in the event of a war] it’s more likely to survive than a moon base. If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages.
OK, let’s just set aside Musk’s belief that, in the event of WWIII, the moon will be too close to Earth to survive unscathed. Instead, recall Musk is the guy who wants to terraform Mars by firing a bunch of nuclear missiles at its ice caps. Who knew it could be that easy! Now just wait until some of those missiles “accidentally” set off that Third World War Musk is so worried about and he starts selling now-lucrative parcels of land on Mars to Earthlings so they can escape their irradiated planet. Auric Goldfinger would be so proud! This guy is one white Persian cat away from going the full Blofeld.
Some look at Elon Musk and see a Bond villain. Others see a visionary. That’s why there was such a strong reaction this week when Musk—the world’s richest authenticated human—announced he was going to buy Twitter for $44 billion. It’s not a done deal, but it will probably get done. This wasn’t just big news in the tech world either. Twitter is not only an enormously important political forum (or at least it scans that way) but its recent actions have riled political passions. While conservatives were elated to learn Musk was going to buy Twitter, since that presumably heralds the return of the world’s most famous Twitter user to the platform (although that may be a car the GOP dog doesn’t want to catch,) the news mostly dismayed liberals, who see it as an attempt by a billionaire to terraform the public space to his liking and democracy’s detriment. The political reaction is quantifiable: In the days after Musk announced his purchase, the number of people following conservative accounts on Twitter shot up while the number following liberal accounts (and likely ditching Twitter) plummeted. (For instance, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida picked up 205,000 new followers over the first 48 hours, while Barack Obama lost 300,000 of his 131.7 million followers.)
Both conservatives and liberals in recent years have been upset with social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. Conservatives are angry the platforms attempted to counter the spread of false information about the 2020 election and the pandemic, moves that had a tendency to flag conservative users. As alluded to earlier, those on the Right also don’t like that conservative firebrands like Don Trump have been booted from social media for spreading invective and inciting riots. On the other hand, liberals believe Twitter and Facebook, more concerned with profits and user engagement than their social obligations, took too long to crack down on disinformation to begin with, allowed bad actors to flourish online, and failed to act on studies showing the harmful effects their products had on society.
As Twitter’s new TechnoKing, Musk appears more worried about the concerns voiced by conservatives. In his statement announcing his acquisition of Twitter, Musk wrote
Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
Apparently, the big “new features” Musk wants to incorporate into Twitter are an edit button and long-form messages, which would be soooo revolutionary that they would basically turn Twitter into something more closely resembling Facebook. Maybe he has something more up his sleeve, but it’s hard to know at this point. It’s also not clear what the consequences of “making the algorithms open source” would be; if that happened, users would be able to see the formulas used to determine what appears in someone’s Twitter feed (not necessarily a bad thing) but the big questions would be if users could accept or reject components of the algorithms and if users would be able to help shape the parameters of the algorithms. For better or worse, it might also enable people to more easily manipulate Twitter to their advantage.
As for defeating spam bots and authenticating all human [users], obviously the less spam, the better, but soon enough someone’s going to say “spam bots are people, too, my friend” and we’ll be back to where we started. The problem with reining in spam bots (and this isn’t an argument against trying) is that it isn’t clear strictly from a free speech perspective why someone should be prohibited from creating (for example) social advocacy spam bot accounts to blast messages out across social media. Preventing someone from doing that would seem to run afoul of what appears to be Musk’s primary reason for acquiring Twitter, which is to make it a space in which people’s speech is nearly unregulated.
Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” You can break down his logic behind buying Twitter as a.) Free speech is essential to democracy; b.) Twitter is the most important digital forum for democratic debate in our democracy; and c.) Twitter suppresses too much speech and therefore must be reformed for the sake of democracy. Musk has indicated that, under his ownership, Twitter users would be free to say virtually anything they want on the platform.
…at least theoretically. More specifically, he’s said Twitter should have to abide by the free speech laws of the countries it operates in, but that’s a purely legal rationale that tells us very little about what Musk personally believes constitutes the conceptual parameters of free speech. Someone’s personal beliefs regarding free speech typically don’t vary depending on the country they’re operating in or whether a country one day happens to amend its free speech laws. I presume Musk’s beliefs don’t work that way, either. So, in Germany, for instance, it is illegal to claim the Holocaust did not happen. Is Musk fine with abiding by that law in Germany? Does he think it’s a bad law? He may be forced to abide by it regardless. But the more important question is if Musk might think such a rule would be good for Twitter in places like the United States, where people are free to deny the Holocaust. The question then is what lines beyond the strictly legal ones Musk might draw to shape Twitter’s free speech rules. What does he think about hate speech? Sexually-explicit speech? Intimidation? Disinformation? Incitement? What are Musk’s views on these thornier yet pressing issues?
Musk also hasn’t indicated if he believes it is Twitter’s responsibility to regulate speech on its platform; if, for example, certain kinds of speech (i.e., defamation, bullying, revenge porn, etc.) are prohibited in a country, should Twitter shut down or preempt instances of what it believes to be that kind of speech before it’s litigated in court? Instead of banning speech, would Musk be fine with applying warnings or disclaimers to speech Twitter might deem objectionable or problematic in some way? In other words, is Twitter more than merely a forum for speech but an arbiter of speech as well?
I guess what I’m saying is when I hear Musk describe himself as a “free speech absolutist” it strikes me Musk hasn’t thought very deeply about how the good of free speech might need to be balanced against other social goods. It’s not even clear to me he’s even imagined how those questions might be of relevance to the owner/savior of a social media company. What are the ethics of a social media platform like Twitter?
Which brings me to another troubling aspect of Musk buying himself this new toy to play with. In his statement, he describes Twitter as “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” So how does Musk currently use this “digital town square” to “debate” subjects “vital to the future of humanity”? Here are some examples:
Nearly 1,000,000 Americans have died of COVID in the United States. That tweet kind of cuts against Musk’s reputation as one of the visionary talents of our time. Worse, Musk spent much of 2020 downplaying the severity of the pandemic and used easily debunkable claims to defend his assertions.
Here’s how Musk responded to Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon when Wyden argued it isn’t fair that Musk as the world’s wealthiest man doesn’t pay taxes. (Musk pays little if any income tax as he can borrow against the value of his stock, which is the source of his wealth.)
And here’s how Musk engaged in civil discourse with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter.
This is who Musk in all his wisdom endorsed for president in 2020.
Four days later, Musk retracted the endorsement, stating, “We may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.”
Musk used Twitter to accuse the diver in the Thai cave rescue of being a pedophile. He eventually deleted it, but here it is below.
For a guy devoted to free speech, Musk comes down pretty hard on people for speaking freely about their gender identities.
He’ll also crudely mock people, such as this Tweet involving Bill Gates.
Yet for a guy devoted to free speech who isn’t afraid of mocking others online, Musk has pretty thin skin.
Speaking of public discourse, here’s Musk admitting he sometimes doesn’t even read the articles he retweets.
In 2018, Musk posted the following message on Twitter.
It was a joke (Musk has a thing for the number 420, which we’ll see in a bit) but the SEC sued him for misleading investors. Musk quickly settled with the SEC, and both Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million (pocket change, I guess) for his antics. He was also forced to step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years. That same year he posted the following, which the National Labor Relations Board decided in 2021 was a violation of labor laws.
He also posted this, which caused the price of Tesla stock to dive.
Sometimes Musk just acts like a juvenile on Twitter, which can amount to nothing more than silliness. But Musk spends a lot of time acting like a juvenile.
If you don’t get that last one, abbreviate. Really classy for a guy who runs numerous companies in the science and technology fields.
And finally, more juvenilia. This time, a couple themes he returns to often.
You can read more about Musk’s adventures on Twitter here, here, and here. Each is a source I used in the preceding section.
Scroll through Musk’s Twitter feed and you’ll notice it’s mostly promotion for his companies (meaning lots of rocket footage); jabs at Twitter, the media, and those he believes are opponents of free speech; drive-by takes on…stuff; and dumb jokes, memes, and ridicule. I don’t want to get too hung up on his sophomoric sense of humor—he can be silly and joke around, that’s fine—and I can certainly appreciate a pithy take, an artform quite a few individuals in the Twitterverse have mastered. And as someone who compared Musk to a Bond villain earlier in this article, I shouldn’t work up too much outrage over a few good-humored swipes at public figures (especially if that public figure is Ted Cruz.) But again, for someone who views Twitter as “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” his actions on Twitter do little to dignify or redeem the public sphere, which in turn suggests he does not really have a deep reverence for the role the public sphere plays in a democratic society.
For Musk, the “town square” is less public square than playground and stage, just an outlet for rambunctiousness and personal expression. You can tell he enjoys Twitter’s cacophony and contentiousness (and sure, there’s a place for that), but Musk hasn’t demonstrated a sense for how free speech and media might actually serve a democracy, a system of government that allows citizens to access information and other points of view in their pursuit of the good life. Free speech could be used in a democracy to improve our decision-making, but Musk regards free speech mainly as an excuse to use a megaphone.
Musk also overrates Twitter’s place in the public sphere. To begin with, he appears to conflate the public sphere with Twitter, or at least regards Twitter as the purest distillation of the public sphere. But Twitter is just one aspect of the public sphere, not the public sphere itself. Other voices and forums are present, each with their own relationship to the concept of free speech. Musk needs to get it through his head that he is not buying the public sphere. He’s not saving free speech. He’s just buying Twitter.
Now Musk would likely respond by insisting the Internet and social media will dominate the media’s future, which is why he, as a futurist dedicated to other futuristic endeavors like electric vehicles, rocket ships, and the colonization of Mars, has bought Twitter rather than an old-fashioned medium like a newspaper or a TV channel. He’s probably not wrong. But if humans are to flourish, they will need more substantive media more conducive to intellectual sophistication and complexity than Twitter. Musk should know this: He didn’t learn rocket science by reading a bunch of tweets.
Still, it may be inevitable we end up getting the democracy Twitter has in store for us. One could argue radio gave us FDR-style politics and that television gave us JFK- and Reagan-style politics. That means we’ve probably already gotten a taste of Twitter-style politics with Donald Trump. As Marshall McLuhan wrote, “the message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” The message of a medium isn’t simply its content, but how the medium changes the way humans live and interact with one another. The message of Twitter isn’t what someone writes on Twitter. It’s how Twitter as a medium reduces complex, nuanced arguments and stories to bullet points and aphorisms. It’s how Twitter encourages content generators to communicate quickly rather than carefully and precisely while encouraging content consumers to react rather than reflect. It’s how Twitter facilitates the viral spread of information and misinformation, draws increasingly likeminded followers into flocks of people who are able to directly interact with one another, normalizes uncivil behavior, and legitimizes fringe ideas. Beyond “longer tweets,” it strikes me Musk has not thought much about Twitter as a medium and how he might refine it to account for its limitations as a medium. (Even then, if he did improve Twitter along those lines, users might drift away from Twitter to a social medium that supplied them with that old Twitter high. It may just be too late to put social media back into its box.)
If Musk did try to make a better version of Twitter, it would probably require him to exert editorial control over the medium beyond the sort of “anything goes” ethic he has indicated he would follow. It’s understandable why Musk wouldn’t want to play that role: An editor would have to decide what sort of messages made it to people’s screens, and Musk doesn’t want his editorial biases to end up censoring anyone. But it’s not as though editorial control and free speech are incompatible with one another, either: Editors in the United States have long determined what messages get to be printed or broadcast and no one argues the U.S. lacks free speech as a result. What it comes down to isn’t a question of whether or not media should have editors but what sort of editorial standards ought to be put in place. Maybe ultimately Twitter is a different sort of beast that allows for a certain freedom from editorial control that isn’t present in newspapers and television stations (which are constrained by the physical space available on a sheet of paper and the combination of frequency and time) but that shouldn’t stop Musk from exploring ways in which he might “edit” Twitter to make it better. (Here’s an idea: Why not use your wealth to fully fund a Twitter news service that adheres to high journalistic standards, partners with local news outlets to reinvigorate local news coverage, and that produces stories that pop up in users’ feeds?)
There are ways people use Twitter constructively. As Perry Bacon Jr. at the Washington Post writes, the social medium has allowed experts and people from historically marginalized communities to gain a stronger foothold in the public sphere and more easily disseminate their messages. Bacon worries Musk will change that by restructuring Twitter to favor the interests of the kajillionaire class. Musk might do that if he concludes Twitter would help him with his other business endeavors, but I suspect he’s more interested in hosting what amounts to the human race’s comments section and making it the biggest and wildest place to be online. Unfortunately, Musk doesn’t seem to appreciate that comments sections suck (that is, until those comments are directed at him), how people tend to hold comments sections in rather low regard, and how they absolutely exhaust those who have tried to use them responsibly.
Yes, Musk could do for Twitter what he did for the electric car and rocketry. It might take someone as visionary, ambitious, and daring/crazy as Musk to pull that off. At the same time, as the world’s richest man, I’d hope he has a sense for the idea that with obscene wealth comes great responsibility. But his vision for Twitter suggests he probably won’t make it much better than it already is. It’s also possible he could make it worse, but, unless you’ve learned to use Twitter as a carefully curated news feed, it already is mostly garbage, which is to say maybe his new ownership of the company won’t change much and therefore isn’t something worth getting worked up over. If we’re lucky, we’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not banking on it.
Signals and Noise
How to beat Donald Trump? Mark Leibovich at The Atlantic says “Just Call Trump a Loser”.
By Santul Nerkar and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, for FiveThirtyEight: “Were the Stimulus Checks a Mistake?” (“As U.S. prices continue to rise by rates not seen in decades, it’s become clear that the stimulus came at a significant, unintended cost: inflation. It’s unclear whether inflation has reached its peak, but the situation is now economically and politically toxic, and it has left many of the same policymakers, advocates and economists now asking whether the stimulus checks were a mistake.”)
From ProPublica: “ProPublica has obtained a trove of internal emails and other documentation that, taken together, tell the inside story of a group of people who propagated a number of the most pervasive theories about how the election was stolen, especially that voting machines were to blame, and helped move them from the far-right fringe to the center of the Republican Party.
Those records, as well as interviews with key participants, show for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the stolen-election theory touted evidence that they knew to be disproven or that had been credibly disputed or dismissed as dubious by operatives within their own camp. Some members of the coalition presented this mix of unreliable witnesses, unconfirmed rumor and suspect analyses as fact in published reports, talking points and court documents. In several cases, their assertions became the basis for Trump’s claims that the election had been rigged.”
It’s time to get to know the country of Moldova and its breakaway region of Transnistria. Moldova, like its neighbor Ukraine, is a former Soviet republic dealing with its own Russian-back separatist territory. The government of Moldova would like to keep what has happened in Ukraine from happening to them, but the presence of 1,500 Russian soldiers on their soil not only significantly alters their ability to do so but risks extending Russia’s special operation beyond Ukraine’s borders.
From the Washington Post: “Inside the Republican Drift Away from Supporting the NATO Alliance”
Following up on my article about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s War on Disney from last week: Florida may not be able to dissolve Disney’s special status as a self-governing district because the contract establishing the district says Florida won’t do that. Disney has also told investors Florida can’t dissolve the district until the district’s $1 billion bond debt is paid off. Fitch Ratings has informed Florida dissolving the district would have adverse effects on other similar districts in the state.
By Zack Beauchamp for Vox: “Ron DeSantis is Following a Trail Blazed by a Hungarian Authoritarian” (“‘About the Don’t Say Gay law, it was in fact modeled in part on what Hungary did last summer,’ Rod Dreher, a senior editor at the American Conservative magazine, said during a panel interview in Budapest. ‘I was told this by a conservative reporter who ... said he talked to the press secretary of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and she said, ‘Oh yeah, we were watching the Hungarians, so yay Hungary.’’…It’s easy to see the connections between the bills — in both provisions and justifications. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described his country’s anti-LGBTQ law as an effort to prevent gay people from preying on children; [DeSantis’s press secretary] described Florida’s law as an ‘anti-grooming bill’ on Twitter, adding that ‘if you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer’ — meaning a person preparing children to become targets of sexual abuse, a slur targeting LGBTQ people and their supporters that’s becoming increasingly common on the right.”)
This is funny, though: “Ron DeSantis Gets Schooled for Denouncing ‘Sexuality’ in Kids’ Shows: ‘Apparently He’s Never Watched Bugs Bunny’” by Drew Taylor for The Wrap.
By Nick Miroff for the Washington Post: “The Border Wall Trump Called Unclimbable is Taking a Grim Toll” (“Since 2019, when the barrier’s height was raised to 30 feet along much of the border in California, the number of patients arriving at the UC San Diego Medical Center’s trauma ward after falling off the structure has jumped fivefold, to 375, the physicians found. Falling deaths at the barrier went from zero to 16 during that time, according to the report, citing records maintained by the San Diego county medical examiner.”)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, commenting on efforts led by Christian organizations in the United States to settle undocumented immigrants and refugees: “What it is, is Satan’s controlling the church. The church is not doing its job, and it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ, and it’s not adhering to what the word of God says we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live.” The conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called her a “disgrace.” Makes me think she worked as an innkeeper before becoming a member of Congress.
GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone is a joke but cannot be treated as a joke. This week he claimed a “satanic portal” has opened over the White House. “We who believe, we can close the portal, but we can only close it through prayer. Massive prayer, millions of Christians praying to close the portal.” He added, “It’s like a swirling cauldron. I’ve tried to find some natural explanation: a reflection or an aerostat balloon for weather. No. I sent a personal friend down there—he thought I was crazy—I said, ‘Do me a favor, go down there, use a regular digital camera and see what you see.’”
“There you can see it. It’s very, very clear. It doesn’t move, day or night. It’s harder to see during the day, but you see it at night. And I’m absolutely convinced about the inherent evil of what’s going on in the White House, what’s going on in the country, and I think it’s imperative that people know about this, that people of good faith and Christians know about this, and we begin a national, essentially a prayer assault to close the portal. We were born for this moment. I’ve been preparing for this moment for my entire life without even knowing it. I just thought I was a political warrior. But this is no longer a war in the political realm, and I do know how it comes out because I know how the Bible comes out. I don’t know exactly what the plan is, but I do know that closing this portal is crucial to victory. I want others to talk about it. I want others to see it. … This is not some practical joke. This isn’t some conspiracy theory. I’m absolutely convinced that this is demonic. It is a satanic portal. It is access to this Earth by those who are evil, and only by closing it will we be successful in saving this nation under God.”
What’s the deal with Tennessee lawmakers? Asked what he would do with books the state found inappropriate for libraries, Tennessee State Rep. Jerry Sexton said, “I don’t have a clue, but I would burn them.”
Minnesota State Senate candidate Erin Maye Quade delivered a speech at a DFL convention while in active labor, at one point pausing her speech as she experienced a contraction. She withdrew her candidacy after the first ballot deadlocked and she concluded she needed to go to the hospital. Numerous Democrats in Minnesota have wondered why the DFL didn’t suspend the convention.
Top 5 Records Music Review: Palomino by Miranda Lambert
Americans have spent a lot of time cooped up in their homes the past two years. A lot of us are probably itching to hit the road this summer. Maybe we’re looking for a fresh start and new opportunities somewhere up the road. Or maybe we just want to explore this big country of ours, get lost in it, take in the sights, spend a warm and friendly evening somewhere mingling with the locals and our fellow wanderers. If those are your plans, Miranda Lambert’s latest album, Palomino, would be an excellent travelling companion.
Palomino plays like a travelogue. Songs take us from Arizona to South Dakota, Reno, and Santa Monica, all around Texas and Louisiana, and from Maine and New York to Carolina and California. On some songs, like “Scenes”, Lambert keeps moving to forget someone; stay in one place too long and the memories catch up. In the very next song, “In These Arms”, she hopes to cross paths with a lover and wonders if maybe he’s out there looking for her. There’s almost no settling down on this album. Runnin’ and rolling are in her nature. (“I’ll never be a number in a population sign” Lambert sings on “Tourist”.) She titles one song in which she name drops the American Dream “Pursuit of Happiness”, but that doesn’t quite get it right. It’s more like the happiness of pursuit.
Maybe it’s ambition or foolishness or restlessness that keeps her moving, but when destinations come and go, one inevitably begins searching for meaning in all the motion. Her rollicking cover of Mick Jagger’s “Wandering Spirit”, which references the apostles, Angkor, the pyramids, and the Mona Lisa, implies she is on a spiritual or artistic quest. The lyric “‘Cause there’s always been a stranger in my soul/ Who loves a good goodbye and a good hello” from the contemplative “Tourist” can be interpreted to mean she is both a stranger to others and to herself and that she is on a journey of self-discovery. Stay in one place too long and the things that make you a distinct individual end up blending in with your surroundings. You lose sense of yourself. But as any seasoned tourist would tell you, the things that make you ‘you’ stand out in stark relief as you pass through unfamiliar places.
But there are times when we need to travel to familiar environs to reground ourselves. That’s why Lambert journeys near the end of the album to “Waxahachie”, a town that is an all-night drive from New Orleans, the city where the last thing she did before leaving was write a “lipstick letter on the mirror with a bourbon buzz.” When the road gets to be too much, it’s sometimes best to take the road back home, especially when your demons are chasing you. “Freedom’s overrated,” she sings, “guess I underestimated the truth/ And you.”
Despite a number of forays into country rock, the music on Palomino won’t blast your boots off. Lambert is at the stage of her career where she shouldn’t need to do that to merit your respect. Having established her Nashville songwriting and recording chops in the 00s, Lambert emerged from the era of bro-country as the mainstream country artist with both the broadest commercial and critical appeal. Her 2014 album Platinum is a showcase for her pop country instincts. Its follow-up, The Weight of These Wings (2017), is a fully-realized work of art and one of the best albums of the last decade. Additionally, her work with Pistol Annies, particularly Interstate Gospel (2018), demonstrates her ability to write finely-detailed character studies. Those who can’t see she’s the most accomplished country musician of the past fifteen years have blinders on.
So instead of proving herself, Lambert is simply going to claim her throne, which is the other purpose Palomino serves. On “Geraldene”, she tells a woman with “truck stop red lips” she sees “coming all the way from Amarillo” that “You’re trailer park pretty, but you’re never gonna be Jolene”. Lambert knows this on her own authority. She’s been enough places to have seen it all before and she can tell immediately Geraldene is no rival. It’s not even a competition. Lambert has decided she no longer needs to go out of her way to convince people to like her music. She knows she’s got the goods, and it’s obvious. If you can’t figure that out by now, shame on you. As she sings on “Actin’ Up”, “I’m a really good trip, don’t you wanna go on it?”
Lambert’s moved on from feeling as though she needs to win an audience. She’s earned that. Actually, she’s owed that. She’s the one who graces us with her presence now, and she does it without being a diva. The cool “Rock On” attitude of “Actin’ Up” is Lambert at the peak of her effortless powers (“Lookin’ for the lightnin’/ When I find it then I rhyme it”). On the album, she associates herself with luminaries like Jagger and Beyonce (whose song “If I Were a Boy” is re-conceptualized here as “If I Was a Cowboy”. It seems like lazy songwriting for Lambert to long to be a cowboy “wild and free”, but this is one of those songs that changes on a dime when, recalling the legendary Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, she sings, “So mamas if your daughters grow up/ To be cowboys, so what?” It also completely changes the meaning of the line “Wanted by the law but the laws don’t apply to me” from earlier in the song.)
And of course, Lambert references the Queen of Country Dolly Parton at least twice on the album, first when she tells Geraldene she’s no Jolene and then again on “Music City Queen” (featuring the B-52s), an ode to an aging “fish net fancy” “flashy and trashy” “kinda purty” riverboat. (The song’s subject also gives her the chance to name drop another icon, Tina Turner.) The song is a hoot (“Had the same red carpet since 79/ She was (ha ha) Staying Alive”) and a funny way of saying she can see time catching up with her.
In fact, as the album wears on, Lambert comes to realize she is not only travelling from place to place but through time as well. On “Strange”, she acknowledges how odd our current moment feels. (The song contains the first contemporary reference I’ve heard to inflation: “Couple hundred dollars feels more like change, yeah”.)
But it’s on the poignant final track, “Carousel” (see Exit Music), where this theme hits hardest. “Carousel” is the story of Elaina, a high-wire circus performer who once upon a time fell in love with a trapeze artist named Harlan Giovanni. One day, however, Harlan “left her heart suspended/ In a cotton candy sky”. After years of touring, Elaina retired to Nacogdoches, only remembering Harlan whenever the circus came to town and she heard the sound of the carousel. It takes her out of the moment and back in time. A shift from the third-person to the first-person at the end of the song suggests Lambert is acutely aware life’s journeys cover more than space. Sometimes the circus takes you from town to town. Sometimes the circus comes to your home. But whether you hit the road or settle down, time marches on.
Lambert is still young (38). It’s scary to hear an artist in her prime contemplating retirement. That sort of sensitivity and creative awareness, however, is what makes Miranda Lambert one of the most essential artists of our time.