Does Taylor Swift Threaten ASEAN Solidarity?
Source: Taylor Swift's Eras Tour breaks record as highest-grossing music tour ever | Guinness World Records
Sorry I am not a Swiftie. I haven't heard a single song of hers. I listen instead to songs of my generation of oh-so-long ago.
Robert Lamm of the famed 1970s Chicago band is a never-fading star in my musical universe. So is the Russian band Leonid and Friends, which played at near-empty bars in Moscow but made it big in the United States doing covers of Chicago songs. Leonid Vorobyev is the band's founder and leader, and his son Roman is the band's entrepreneurial manager. The band has raked a fortune playing to sell-out audiences at Chicago tribute concerts all over the US for about three years.
But I digress.
Back to Taylor Swift. Her Eras tour concert is dominating social media. The musical tour began in March 2023 and is officially the highest-grossing music tour ever, surpassing US$1.04 billion in revenue as of December 2023. Tens of thousands attended her concerts and generated, on average, US$17 million per show.
Even Donald Trump is pissed at her for being more popular than he is, and maybe wealthier too. She has a much larger following on Instagram (280 million) compared to Trump's measly 24 million, not even comprising ten percent of her followers. And she may endorse Joe Biden’s candidacy as she did in 2020. Yep, Trump is genuinely pissed.
But now, Taylor Swift seems to have ruffled feathers in Singapore among some Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) leaders.
Two amusing anecdotes: First, Joey Salceda, a congressman in the Philippine lower house, quipped: "This is not how you treat good neighbors." His remark was prompted by the so-called radius clause in Swift’s Singapore contract, which restricts concerts to a specific locale, in this case, Singapore. In an interview with the Times, Congressman Salceda added: "ASEAN's core principles are solidarity and consensus. What happened? They even used their tourism board to block other nations."
Second, Thailand's Prime Minister Srettha Thaivisin claimed that the Singapore government subsidized the concert’s promoter, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), to pay Swift US$2-3 million per show (she had six sold-out shows in Singapore). Thaivisin added, with a hint of rancor, "But the Singaporean government is clever. They told [organizers] not to hold any other shows in [Southeast] Asia."
He later backpedaled his comments. Earlier this week, his spokesperson, Chai Watcharong, clarified: "Singapore's proposal was an approach that shows they dared to think and dared to do it, and that successfully made Taylor Swift's team agree to have the exclusive performance in Singapore, the only country in the region. That has benefited the country."
For his part, Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, discussed the deal in Melbourne while attending the ASEAN-Australia Annual Leaders' Meeting. He thought the deal with Taylor Swift was a "successful arrangement" and not "unfriendly" to neighboring countries. The Straits Times reported earlier this week: "Sometimes, one country makes a deal. Sometimes, another country does." The Prime Minister explained that the incentives came from a fund aimed at reviving the [tourism] industry after the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Singapore, Taylor Swift is giving her last of six concerts. She's oozing with magnetic charm not just onstage. Check Professor Eduardo Araral's Facebook page. He's a Filipino institutional economist based at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He cheerfully boasted about having had an exclusive breakfast with the pop idol and wrote, "Please send your love to political cry babies." Hmmmmmm. No solidarity with your compatriots either?
Singapore's financial windfall from the Eras Tour concert is obvious. Flights and hotels are fully booked. Tickets to the concert are in short supply. The expected financial windfall from her concerts is estimated at S$500 million (US$375 million). Not to mention the reputational gain to Singapore as a hosting venue for mega events, the kind that countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia hope to achieve by hosting World Cup events and other mega sporting events. Singapore has a distinct advantage due to its strategic location, quality infrastructure, safety, efficiency and diverse cultural offerings, wrote Camillia Dass of Marketing Interactive.
At issue here is the Singapore-going-it-alone kind of approach that flies in the face of ASEAN solidarity and longevity, long touted as a success story in the firmament of a proliferating Asian alphabet soup of multilateral relationships: APEC, BIMSTEC, BIMP-EAGA, GMS, Boao Forum, IMT-GT, SAARC, SASEC, SESCA, CAREC, SCO. If you're Asian, chances are your country is a member of one, some, or all of these acronyms. Your president/prime minister attends one of their annual meetings or dispatches the appropriate official to discuss issues affecting your country and the rest of Asia, whether tourism, trade, finance, or cross-border health.
That’s why Congressman Salceda is sulking. Whatever happened to camaraderie and good neighborliness in light of these multiple, polyamorous (that word again!) relationships? These lamentations sound like what jilted lovers would say to fellow rejects. And get this: he asked the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to formally protest her (Taylor Swift) team's alleged exclusive deal.
Putting things into a larger context, regional and subregional blocs were mobilized in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Integrated production networks, the technology revolution, and the rise of China and India as potentially large markets provided the logic for Asian economies to come together. Underpinning these arrangements were mutually shared values and interests: countries that would otherwise compete would collaborate and cooperate. But not when it comes to Taylor Swift. Countries can fend for themselves to offer her the most attractive deal.
A bit of history here might shed some light on Swift’s skipping Thailand. Yes, she did have a sold-out concert in 2014 at the Impact Arena Muang Thong Thani in Nonthaburi province. The show was abruptly canceled. It was later revealed that the military coup led by former prime minister [and former general] Prayuth Chan-ocha was the reason for the cancellation. Moral of the story: don't overthrow your duly elected government, no matter how much you detest your head of state. Concert artists apparently don’t like despots.
Despite these misgivings, ASEAN will endure. Such misunderstandings are fleeting and temporary. After all, the regional bloc is a bright light in an otherwise dismal world. None of its ten members conflict with one another. East Timor has, in principle, been admitted and will become the 11th member. Myanmar is the dark exception, but its problems are domestic. A civil war that has been raging for two years since the military coup in February 2021 has been a blot on the otherwise speckless record of ASEAN for a good five decades now.
Kishore Mahbubani, former Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Honorary Fellow at the Asia Research Institute says that ASEAN's culture of consultations and consensus generated geopolitical miracles, some so stealthy that few outside the region have noticed them. At the launch of his book The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace in 2017, Dean Mahbubani suggested that ASEAN deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for preserving peace and promoting socio-political progress for the last fifty years since its inception in 1967.
So, let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Taylor Swift will sing, dance, and prance and then leave. Repeat.
Her last concert will be in December 2024. By then, she will have added more money to her already massive US$1.1 billion empire.
The next fifty years will produce other Taylor Swifts. But ASEAN will still be around and will turn one hundred by then.
If my knees and travel chutzpah don't fail me, I might catch a Chicago/Earth Wind and Fire concert in Illinois in July. Tickets are still available online. Reserving a front-row seat takes only two minutes.
Unlike Allan Villa, who traveled four hours by boat from Masbate province in southern Philippines, then twelve hours by bus to Manila to take a four-hour flight to Singapore to catch the Eras Tour concert.
Nope.
Me? I plug my JBL Charger 5, put on my noise-canceling headphones, and listen to fifty-something Robert Lamm at a concert in New Zealand in 2005. A much more mellowed voice, unhurried and unperturbed, a far cry from his skinny, long-haired-tight-jeans-look of the 70s. His fingers deftly caressed the keyboards. Meanwhile, the lone female backup vocalist crooned rather than shrieked. Every lyric of the song “Only the Beginning” made him and his Chicago band famous, as if caviar pellets were in his mouth. I am intoxicated on YouTube. All for free.