What Elle Macpherson Did Next

Published Sep 4, 2024, 6:43 AM

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Elle Macpherson has been branded as "dangerously irresponsible". We unpack the headlines in your news feed.

Plus, are people asking you what you want for your next big birthday? We’ve got an idea that’s either brilliant, or absolute torture.

And, finally, women own pop music. Inside the genius selling of Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Chappell Roan.

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Hosts: Holly Wainwright, Mia Freedman & Jessie Stephens

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Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia. Out loud What women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the fourth of September.

I'm Holly Wayne Wright, I'm.

Me Friedman, and we've already done a segment where we've had an argument just while we were setting up the microphones.

That's very standard for this kind of day.

And I'm Jesse Stevens and on.

The show today, why El McPherson is being branded as dangerously irresponsible?

Also, people asking you.

What you want for your next big birthday, We've got an idea that's either genius or absolute torture. And finally, pop music is all about women inside the genius selling of Sabrina, Charlie and Chapel.

But first Jesse.

This week, much of Israel's economy was shut down due to a general strike where civilians put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netnyaho to agree to a seize fire deal in Gaza. This is seen as the biggest push by Israelis yet to force netna whose government to end this war. These strikes come after the bodies of six Israeli hostages were found in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip. They had been shot at close range. Ninety seven hostages remain and Netnya, who is widely believed to be prolonging the war rather than prioritizing their safe return.

This was so devastating because he the families of the remaining hostages and the hostages who were killed came out and people are very angry in Israel with Netna Who. They want the war over. The whole world wants the war over. They want the hostages returned, they want their family back. I don't think there's anyone who wants to prolong this war really, except for Netna Who and his supporters. Unfortunately, this what started as a protest, they tried to turn into a strike. He's still got the support of the right and he just needs to go. It's almost a year since this war started after the massacre on October seven, and too many people have died.

So far, thirty three hostages have been declared dead by Israeli authorities, with one hundred and seventy five killed on October seven. That's based on social security data, and since October seven, that is, as you say, eleven months ago. Now more than forty thousand Palestinians have been killed, according to local health authorities. Most of those are women and children. The majority of Gaza's two point three million residents have been forced to flee due to Israel's military assault and due to those living conditions. There's news out just in the last few days. We knew that disease was spreading, but this now includes the first case of polio in Gaza in twenty five years.

So now the world just paused to vaccinate two hundred and seventy thousand children in Gaza against polio. It's a humanitarian disaster. There are so many people suffering on both sides. It just has to end and for more.

We are covering this news story on our twice daily news podcast, The Quickie, as well as on Mamma Maya.

In twenty seventeen, Elle macpherson was diagnosed with breast cancer. We know this because she writes two chapters about it in her new book, which is called Elle and It's part memoir, part self help. I've read it for reasons we won't go into today. That was kept very quiet at the time. Yes, it's very much seen as a revelation, is the tabloid language we're using. At the time, she was living in Miami, she was married to her second husband, Jeff Sofer, and her two boys were in their teens. Elle was already a big devotee at this point of what we broadly call wellness, and she'd already started a supplement business called Welco in twenty fourteen. Now, like many many women before her and since, and women listening to this show right now, she was initially completely flattened by the news that the investigations into a lump in her breast had found a cancerous tumor. The advice was that she should have a mystectomy with radiation, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. She writes that her initial doctor told her this would be a two year process, and she writes that she was understandably flooded with panic, fear, and confusion. The reason that you're seeing headlines about what el macpherson did next everywhere this week is because it's not what most women do in this situation, as she details in the book, as we've said for the first time, Instead, she went into an intense research state she got opinions from more than thirty two different doctors on what they thought her treatment options were. Speaking to other people in her life too, her kids, their father, her husband, a friends, and ultimately, she writes, she decided to go a different route. I didn't believe she writes that drugs and modern pharmaceuticals were the only answer. I chose a holistic approach. It was the hardest decision I have ever made in my life. She went to a natural therapy's clinic in Arizona, where she underwent eight months of intense natural and putting that in kind of inverted commas therapies which are way too long to list here. She goes into a lot of detail about it in the book, but included everything from prayer to IV infusions and herbal therapies. Unsurprisingly, this chapter, these two chapters actually of McPherson's book, have drawn a lot of attention, and lots of people this week are branding it's shockingly irresponsible to suggest to people that they too should refuse traditional treatments, or that there is implicit in publishing this approach a level of judgment about the right and wrong ways to approach health and healing Mia. This feels like it's thrown a conversation back into the headlines that had kind of died down for a while there from that sort of peak Bell Gibson Pete Evans moment where all this sort of so called natural therapies were everywhere and being widely disproven. Often is it dangerous for a woman to seemingly just tell the truth about what she did in this situation.

I'm really torn about this, and I wanted to start off by saying, we are sending our love to everybody who is feeling really upset by this story, either because they have cancer, someone they love has cancer, someone they love has been lost to cancer, because whether she meant to or not, the implication is that if people just did the right thing, I mean, everyone does what they think is the right thing. And I do believe I will always give the benefit of the doubt that el McPherson thought she's doing the right thing. And I think we also should be clear, and she's clear in the book she's not suggesting that other people do it, but it's implied. You know, she sells a book, she sells wellness products, and she also does not say that those wellness products cut her cancer, so.

She doesn't, and in the interests of fairness, she makes a big point in the book of like this was right for me. I'm not saying it was right for you. Yeah, but that's not how people feel, particularly when they're in the heat of this experience.

I spoke to one of my closest friends who's a breast physician and breast surgeon today and I sort of sent her link to this article and I said, good news for all your patients. They should just light a candle and try some prayer and it wakes in Arizona. And she just replied, this just makes me weep. It makes me weep because there's never a more vulnerable time in your life than when you are diagnosed with cancer, or it's one of the most vulnerable times, and it can be really, really confusing. And I do support anyone's right to have bodily autonomy and decide what they do and don't want to do. And it's not like we can say she shouldn't be allowed to talk about it, or we shouldn't publish her book because she's talked about something that we feel is irresponsible, because everybody can do what they want.

She's an adult if we don't think she should have included that story in her book. But we're saying we don't want to censor anyone. What was she supposed to do with that story, not necessarily el McPherson herself. But this is a big community, this wellness community, that has all kinds of different stories within it. Are we saying we don't want to hear it? It's irresponsible to even speak the words, what do you think?

It's really hard, isn't it? Because that is part of her story, and it's obviously been a life changing event for her. And if she truly does believe, which benefit of the doubt, she does, that this course of treatment was helpful to her, she would want to share that information with other people.

It would seem there are a million podcasts out there, there are a million sites and chat rooms and all those things where this kind of therapy has discussed a lot, right, And one of the things that's interesting about the way we react when it comes into the light is do we just push it further underground, which might be good in some ways but bad in others, because if you shine light on it, bring it into the mainstream, it can be more of an open discussion, whereas if you every time anyone says anything about it, you tell them to shut up. They're just going off into corners of the internet where they're like self.

Almost radicalizing it. Yeah yeah, yeah, But we talk on podcasts and write books and all of those things, and you tell stories about your own life. And often I go to tell a story. This has happened multiple times, and I have stopped myself and gone, it's actually, isn't helpful. It's gonna make someone feel like shit, Yeah, this is gonna and it's true, and it speaks to a truth that might make someone feel seen or whatever. But this isn't a private journal. This was a memoir, a book that was going to be published and read by a lot of people. And you know, she's talked about the cancer thing in the Australian Women's Weekly exclusive that was part of the promotion of it. I think you make a choice there, because a memoir isn't for l A memoir is for your audience.

But let's be clear, it's all about wellness and all these supplements. While she looks not sixty but incredibly hot and incredibly not like anyone else, I mean, she's on with first, but then she's also elmcpherson with a lot of work and a lot of self care with it, As she said, because the inference when you've got someone saying buy these products, and you market them with shots of yourself in a bikini and looking a certain way, the inference is that if you take these products, you can look like me.

When I was reading these excerpts, I wondered if the inference was if you take my products, or if you live a life, a healthy life that is somewhat like me, and you have a holistic approach to health, then perhaps you too can cure your own cancer. She does not say those words, but I am saying that that's I think a feeling that people are getting. I reckon. It's important to go back to some of the facts, right because I saw a few medical doctors saying that the bit that's being left out of a lot of this reporting is that she discovered it was cancer following a lump ectomy, which was removing the growth in twenty seventeen, and a few doctors have said, yeah, you had a lump removed. That lump may have been so lucky that that lump had most of the cancer as cells in it a mastectomy. The reason that that might be suggested or given an option by a medical professional is that it reduces your chances of getting breast cancer in the future, because we know that it can come back. There are, of course, a few lifestyle factors that would really work in el McPherson's favor. Right, she's healthy, she exercises, she eats well, blah blah blah, and those things a doctor would say are great starters when it comes to health.

And the cans are rich, he is surely yeah, and the access.

That she has to these the data suggests that there are certain things about lifestyle choices that would contribute to your risk of having cancer. However, I know people in my life who were incredibly healthy, incredibly active, ate, really well, all of those things, and they died of cancer. And that's not because of choices that they made. That was because I heard an expert say, everyone gets a different kind of cancer. You might get a Mini Cooper and you might get a truck. And maybe she had a particular type and her story is not over, As every cancer survivor will say, they don't feel like their story is over. I just wish that she didn't print this in a book that does overlap, and in the press she does, and in the marketing she does, she does talk about this supplement company. The people that she works with have really questionable relationships with health. Obviously, she dated Andrew Wakefield for a period, who was the doctor who published a fraudulent paper about the relationship between vaccines and autism. Many people who she works with and who helped formulate the supplements claim to have cured their own cancer with like a detox or a particular health regime, And I'm going to trust the studies that that's not what works for most people.

The thing that's really hard whenever this topic is brought up is that for most people that I know who find themselves in this situation, they actually do a lot of things. They will follow their doctor's advice. And the point about privilege is absolutely spot on. If I was diagnosed tomorrow, I would not have the access to thirty two different medical professionals. You go and see somebody, you do what they tell you. You trust in the doctor, but they also most people I know do try out some alternative therapies, will do different things to their diets, will try different supplements. We'll do it like people are open to this.

It's not lights are open to that too, of course they are.

It's not like there's a because we've talked about this on the show before that sometimes I get uncomfortable when we're very dismissive of wellness because for a lot of women, in a lot of different health circumstances, they have not found that's so called traditional and inverted commerce. Medicine has necessarily understood their problems, has necessarily solved their problems, has taken them seriously. Cancer is in a different bucket, and as Jesse has already expressed brilliantly with that analogy, cancer is so different for.

Everybody who gets it.

It's not the same as some of those things that women are rightly questioning the advice they're given and pursuing things. So I'll always celebrate our permission, right yeah, to explore different things that work for us and make changes to our life. And sometimes they're going to seem a bit weird to other people and they're not going to understand them. The problem with this, and this is what someone I know who's going through this said, is that by putting this out there in this aspirational way, because as you're saying me or I think your point is, is the brand here is very aspirational. Is that she and this is what my friend said to me, that it feels like she's judging all the fools who just follow the doctor's advice. And the thing is is, even though I'm sure that's not what she's doing, this is one of those moments. It's not like early motherhood, but it is in a way in that you are in such a vulnerable, confused, difficult position where the stakes are enormously high, and all this different information is coming at you, and you've made your choice based on what trained profess are telling you to do, and then you're being sort of encouraged to think that maybe you took the easy.

Way or something.

The arrogance of it is always breathtaking to me. This idea of thirty two doctors told her to do something and she decided to do something else.

I would never do that. I am such a rule.

But also I'm so if the doctor tells me to do something, I'm like, yep, okay, Like I am so.

In saying that, I know people who, for very valid and understandable reasons, said no to chemo. Chemo is not the easy way out. Chemo in itself is a risk, surgery is a risk, a mastectomy is a risk, all of those things, and every woman has every right to choose not to do those things. I find it interesting how the term holistic has been weaponized as well, because, as you say, Holly, if you do get a mastectomy or chemotherapy and maybe you take a supplement and you do yoga and you meditate and you do acupuncture, that's pretty holistic to me.

Yeah, so, and it is what a lot of women do.

Yes, And I was reading that even if you're taking a supplement or whatever, as long as you're transparent with your doctor, because sometimes it can intersect with other medicine things. So a big problem is people feeling a bit ashamed that they can't say to their doctor, I'm trying something that's a little bit left of center. I mean, people have been dealing with their health in lots of different ways for a lot of different years, and cancer is what it does to people's mental health is horrific. But there is just something in the tone and in the way that this has been presented. And I've heard her said in the same kind of breath, you know. I just want women to make a choice for themselves and all of that rhetoric. That's like, it's a hard enough decision already without feeling like someone's telling you made them.

I just think a supermodel's view is irrelevant. It's not like I'm saying we should burn her book or ban her from being interviewed or censor what she says. I just find it incredibly unethical, not the speaking, but also the selling the products.

Steve Jobs very famously declined traditional treatment for pancreatic cancer, and he did the dietary supplements and acupuncture and stuff, and his biographer said he deeply, deeply regretted it towards the end of his life. So that's another part of the story.

There was a young woman who I knew from my time in magazine. She was diagnosed with cancer, very curable cancer early, and she was advised on a certain course of medical treatment, which she decided not to pursue. And then her mum was diagnosed with cancer. Her mom did the same thing and they both died, and she also said, towards the end, I really regret it, and my lives could have very likely been saved.

I struggle with all of these conversations because it feels like that's also blame, you.

Know what I mean. It feels like that's also blame.

It's saying that was an irresponsible choice, you shouldn't have done that.

And I do think think it's more they blamed themselves, like I can't imagine what that must have been, like I would never try, But it was more that they blamed themselves at the end.

We like al McPherson, are not medical doctor here, so in talking about these topics, we always want to make clear that obviously we don't have expertise and that you should one hundred percent consult trained medical professionals about anything to do with your health in this way. And as Mia said at the beginning, just massive love to those who feel I'm going to use the word triggered by all the headlines around al McPherson's cancer journey in Inverted Commas this week, other the hell.

Out narcissistic or a bloody good idea. I have a question about the best way to celebrate a milestone birthday when you turn twenty one or twenty five, or thirty or forty or fifty or sixty. You might remember Megan Markle. When she turned forty, she asked forty friends, activists, athletes, artists, and world leaders.

Sorry her words, she sounds like your friend, kick off a global effort by contributing forty minutes of mentorship to support women re entering the work. Okay, this is hiring you sound sassy?

You found judgement? Do you remember that? It was in lockdown? She was wearing Minolo's What did you do for your fortieth She said that I invited forty girlfriends. We had all to save the world. So that was very lofty what she asked everyone to do, which sounds like work, but was also quite confusing because it was called forty forty and it sounded a little bit like she was asking forty people to mentor forty women, but she wanted them to all give that mentorship. I actually was curious about how that went, so I went and followed a link back to the website I digressed genuous.

I was interested to see the woman who does absolutely no research.

And se for an Oh, it's a four oh four page not found on the arch webs.

Not forty anymore. She did her thing, She moved on.

Yeah, anyway. But another Meghan, Megan Vera. She's a San Francisco writer. She turned seventy in December last year, on Boxing Day, in fact, and she decided that she didn't want to throw a big party or go on holidays with her extended family. She didn't want fuss or the mental load of organizing a party and having a guest list and all of that. Also, because she is Jesse, you'll relate to this. She's born on Boxing Day, Holly, you two and December everyone's busy away, very hard to round people up.

I'll celebrate your youth day.

No, So she decided she wanted to share experiences with people who meant something to her. She said, I asked myself, what can I do to fill my memory bank? Swim seventy laps, make seventy charity donations, string a necklace with seventy heirloom beads. More than anything, I wanted to spend cherished time with loved ones. So she made a list of seventy people and she wrote them all email and it said, dear person, I love having just rolled past sixty nine. I'm thinking about the large number looming on the horizon. To honor that large number. I want to log in seventy experiences in twenty twenty three with people I love. My goal is to say yes to whatever you might propose, no matter how big or small. Anything from a cup of coffee to a trip to a national park, from a walk in the woods to a Broadway show, from a manicure to a dance party. But please, no thrill seeking, no rollercoasters or bungee jumping, and nothing that involves a shark tank. I look forward to saying yes to your proposal, to a calendar full of one of her kind events, and to fully enjoying memorable moments with you with love. Megan.

Wow, Megan, that's amazing.

I love it.

Yeah.

It was around six experiences a month exhaust and she hiked, kayaked, picnicked, rode the ferry and train, drank steaming cups of coffee and chai, dined out, listen to live music, visited museums. She did all kinds of things. Jesse, what are we doing for your fortieth Do you want to spend more time with me having a special experience?

No, no, no, I was thinking about this because I was very inspired. But my next birthday is thirty four, which is one of the most nothing birthdays one can have. It is edging very so slightly to one's mid thirties, which again not exciting. But I was thinking about how I often cry on my birthday or just feel quite let down by the experience. I never have a birthday party, but if I organize something because you're a twin, yeah, but it's also because of the time of year. The thing about a birthday party is that you invite all these people you want to talk to, you don't get an opportunity to speak to any of them. Really, You've just put on something for others to enjoy, and then you walk away being like, oh now it's over, and I didn't even enjoy it. That's what I love about this, and in fact, what you want individual experiences with the people you love. I wondered if for my fortieth I might adjust it slightly and have a gift registry of experiences. So my worry is you guys, choosing the experiences you want to do with me. There's an issue that the word experiences has been conflated with jumping out of a plane, and I don't want to jump out. I take you to her boundaries exactly. She's given her boundaries. But I have things I want to do. I want to go for, you know, a certain walk I want to see.

You make the list.

I make the list. I'll do a little spreadsheet with my hero forty things I want to do. And then what I do? You go put your little name next to the little experience.

And pay for it.

Yeah, so the pay for it's interesting. A lot of it I think would be free. This is the thing, right, I don't want shit in my house from you. I don't need more shit. I don't need more gifts.

I do like a car. We don't understand about that.

But what if, like there's something that you want to do, but then someone you don't want to do it with puts their name next, but.

You wouldn't send it to anyone you don't want to do it with. This's is the tricky thing about this is that Megan is a very privileged woman because she's seventy, with seventy people in her life that she wants to spend time with.

That's a lot of people, I would say, too many.

And forty people, Like I mean, this sounds terrible, but like I think if I made a list of all the people I would love to spend time with.

How sweetie, would it be? Really? Sure?

Well, it wouldn't it be. I don't think it'd be fifty, would it? I don't think so.

I reckon that. After about twenty you're starting to clutch. And then when they put their name next to let's go for a swim at Bondi Beach, You're like, oh, I actually don't, but I love.

What I love is the idea of this, and then as you've done there like editing it to make it something you like, because the spirit of it is beautiful, like the idea of once a week if you can. And obviously the glory about being seventy is she's probably got like generalizing, generalizing time to do this stuff. She's probably not rushing to work every day looking after kids, whatever it is.

So she's got time.

And the idea of having a thing in your week every week that was an experience you'd always wanted to do, a place she wanted to go to hang out with someone you really want to hang out with is beautiful and without question, is better than all the shitty candles.

I don't know if it is, though, because I had this actually happened to me last weirdly. Yeah, my friend Paula, who's one of my closest friends. She's like, your birthday's coming up. It's in October. She says, what if we do something different. I can come and pick you up early and we can drive up to Palm Beach and we can do the Lighthouse Walk and then we can have like breakfast at baron Joey House.

Or I don't know, so goodness met you your best friend? You don't like walking outside.

All of it.

I just said to her, that's my worst night man.

See, I would like to do that.

I know she would like to do that.

Can I do it with Paula? Yes?

Because she would like to do that. And I thought, oh god, I'm a bad friend because that's essentially what she would like for her birthday. And I've never done anything. And I was like, could we just go to the same place we always go at six o'clock on like a Wednesday.

This brings us back and I think we discussed this the other day. Is a gift about you or about the person you're giving it too? Right?

Because you're right?

No, shaped Paula, who's amazing, but she would know that isn't what you want to do.

She also did she's offered that, and then she then followed it up with another the text saying, or is that your worst nightmare? And I'm like, it's my worst nightmare.

But she said, I thought that you've reminded me that a friend of mine tried to do this recently. One of my friends in my sort of core girl friend group. We were having drinks around at Penny's place and she said, I've got a birthday coming. I don't want to go out for dinner. I don't want to just have wines. I want us to do something different and we were like stumped, and then she was like, so you lot figure out what it is and we'll do it. And my Nicole friend Penny, Nicole is the person in the group who organizes things, did her best. You know they like when you paint and drink, you know, paint and sick. And she put one of those poles in our group chat. No one could find a day, nothing ever happened. My friend's birthday came went, we did absolutely so she said the bar too high.

You should have just made a booking at your regular play.

Done a nude paint sip. This is what my friends have been doing lately, and they say it's fabulous. Did you do what I haven't done it? I think I was. I'd just give berthelet all my friends went and they said.

You're not just their nude? Is that correct?

Yeah?

Their news isn't everybody nude?

No?

Not everyone's name?

Oh I thought everyone's new drawing. Sorry, I've got you've got to be nude and you're painting and you're sipping. I thought that was my worst nightmare. Jesus, But I think, Okay, So who's nude?

So you go and do a nude painting of someone who's like posing up the.

Front life drawing, which is fine.

You can keep your clothes on.

You can keep your clothes on. I guess you could take them off if you want.

I love this because they are friends you like to walk with. They are friends you like to eat with. They are friends you like to you know, like, I've got a friend in the city who likes She and I have very similar taste in restaurants, Like we always want to go and try somewhere cool. So that's what we do together. You know, other friends. I like going for a walk on the beach in the morning with et cetera. So that's I like the idea of like curating. But also the other thing about this is that it does feel like a lot, a lot, a lot, doesn't it?

Finding time for it all?

We got out of our comfort zone and went on a date night this week.

We did we didn't have pastor, we didn't have a glass of wine.

We've never done that before.

No, we've never been to the movies together.

And that was my idea.

Look at us changing and growing. Oh my goodness, look at you changing and growing.

Out Louders Milestone birthdays. Do you think this is a good idea or is it your worst night mare? And if it is, have you got better ideas for milestone birthdays?

Out Louders. If you have ever thought about becoming a mum mea subscriber, then now is the time to do so. We are giving away so many prizes as part of our Lazy Girl giveaways. You might have heard recently about a trip to Turkey that we gave away thousand dollars Uber eats voucher i robots. Right now, all subscribers are in the running to win one of five GHD styling tools. If you want to go into the running for these prizes and all future prizes, and all you have to do is become a subscriber. You can use the code lazy Hair for twenty percent off a yearly subscription. Link is in the show notes. And if you want to hear what it feels like to win a trip to Turkey, listen to one of our favorite.

Subscribers, Jesse and Claire and all the team at Mama Mia. I've just been listening to yesterday's episode and there's the ad about becoming subscriber and that you can win stuff, and there's some check won the Turkey holiday, and it was me, Oh my god, I could not believe it when I got that email. Just ecstatic my family.

It's like, what is going on? Who's died?

I don't know while we respond like that if someone died, but anyway, it was just brilliant. We've booked the trip, we're just waiting to book the flas and so stoked. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The names absolutely dominating the music charts at the moment include Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Charlie, XCX, Chapel R. I could go on Carpenter in particular, has just released Short and Sweet. It's her new album which has established her as a major pop icon. Interestingly, the whole album only runs for about thirty six minutes, which we'll get to. But there's a few things happening at once in music that I wanted to unpack with you both. The first is that the solo female artist is having a moment like never before. We have a Doja Cat, we have a zar Sa No Sissa, we have a Scissa. I was just thinking, look, I'm reading phonetically.

Some of you, the youngest one on this podcast.

We have a Megan Thee Stallion. We have a Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Beyonce I Spice. I don't know what I Spice is, but she's one of them. There are dozens and dozens. The second thing you might have noticed is a disappearance of bands. They virtually don't exist in the charts anymore. And the third thing is the TikTok off of music. It's changed how we listen to music, the distribution model, the way a song is structured, and certainly the length. Holly is pop music totally different to what it was even a decade ago.

Yes, yes, it is a bloody love the fact that all the hottest music artists at the moment are women. I know it's not entirely true. There's a lot of country artist, there's a lot of rap artists, as a lot of who and there's all the red sharings and all the kind of versions of them.

There's a post.

Milne, the guy with the guitars. There's like all those guys too. I know that, but we're not interested in them, and the young women aren't interested in them. And the thing that makes me particularly excited about this is that when I was young, and I've always loved music, but everybody call was a bloke. There were the outliers, there's your Madonnas and whatever, but that was pop music, music that was taken seriously. Anyone who was considered a serious songwriter was almost entirely a male scene years ago. But Catly Moran writes a lot about this because she started as a music journalist and she would be the only woman in those rooms. Female musicians were seen as silly and frivolous, and even ten years ago, I'd argue, yes, of course there are the big iconic names, but now It's like, if you look at the charts at the moment, there's like a female, very mainstream singer for all kinds of different versions of sexuality and being female. Because you're Sabrina Carpenter looks very traditional, like this little blondie thing, but they've kind of turned up the edge on it.

Polypocket.

You've got obviously all the brilliant, angsty songwriter of our friend Taylor. If you're a thinky girl, you've got Charlie XCX, who just wants to party hard. You've got Chapel, who is just like an explosion in an excitement factory and is a brilliant songwriter, as Adele pointed out this week, and I feel like we've never had so many exciting versions.

It's great, yeah of femininity.

And there is Adele and Taylor's kind of more commercial. Adele's more commercial. But this is like a new generation and what I love. And to quote Catla Mareni when she was talking about how there was a time sort of ten twenty years probably less now, when every female artist had to look the same way, which was a very hot, skinny, sexy, white, very sexualized, very male, gaysy version of what it meant to be woman, and she's like, it's fine to have that, but men get all different kinds. There's Keith Urban and there's a Shecherin, and there's post Malone, and there's exactly and she said it would be lovely. And now we're at that point that there are, as you say, whole quite smartly, lots of different versions of it. It really is a different generation and a completely different aesthetic because if you look at Charlie XCX and Chapel Roone and even Sabrina Carpenter a little bit I can understand, particularly with the first two and Billie Eilish, it's a different version of female sexuality. It still might be not wearing many clothes, which you know is a trigger for me, but it's also like kind of scary. It's not pans in any way. Like Chaplan talks about her inspiration being drag queens, and Charlie XCX is like, and even Sabrina Carpenter. It's all about like blood and just all things that aren't traditionally. It's not demure, it's the opposite of demure. These women.

I have a question, which is obviously social media TikTok in particular, has changed the music industry. Do we think that the music industry living on social has also given way to all of these women, right? Because women go better on social they just do. They cultivate bigger followings. They're the biggest influencers in the world. They know what they're doing. Charlie XCX, that album and Brat, I mean, the way that she mastered that was incredible. Men are not able to do that in nearly the same way.

It's interesting to look at quite simply.

Yeah, do we think that that's another thing that the TikTok age.

That everything's about video now, Yeah, and that it's.

Going to basically lift women up.

But also it's kind of great that what's happened is that it used to be assumed that young girls and young women only wanted to put pictures of boys on their walls. I know, no one's putting pictures on their walls anymore, but the equivalent, right, look at obsess over, get really deep into the fandom of and that still exists. You know, the biggest artists in the world are actually all K pop artists, and that's a whole other world. But the fact that women, as you rightly point out, Jesse own social media in a way, and young women in particular, and that the people they're obsessing over are versions of themselves in different ways. I find that like culturally deeply satisfying. That when I was young, and you know, I don't want to be all like oh back in the day, but you know, I had my pictures of Duran Duran all over the wall, right, and I used to be like, I'm going to marry Simon Lebon. One day. I wasn't thinking I'm going to make that music, I'm going to be them. I was like, I'm going to marry them and be next to them, you know what I mean. You know, maybe a little bit more evolved idea. I'm going to be in music journal and I'm going to get to meet them, you know what I mean. And I think that now you can't be it can people are very much And the interesting thing about the tiktokification because she brought up the point about how songs have gotten shorter and how Sabrina Carpenter's album is Manu. I guess that's in the title, right, the short and sweet title. All of this explosion of female excellence looks organic, but it's actually very carefully marketed. Like I'm obsessed with the fact I've read about it lots of times now that the Brat green of Charlie XCX that looked like the most low five shit that someone put together on their phone. She went through sixty three different shades of green to perfectly market research brat green and exactly what it was. And there's a whole thesis about like why it's that particular color and not that one, and how there was but Tago green, and we don't want that, but we want this one. It's a bit scary, it's a bit like it's just as manufactured really as pop music has ever been. But it's just that now women are much more involved in it rather than being the product. So if you think about, like, even in the naughdies, Jessica Simpson is making music because some yep, but the strings are largely being pulled by male corporations. May they still are in lots of ways, but the women seem much more involved in it. But the thing about the tiktokification of music, I think it's easy to roll your eyes about it because if there isn't a catchy hook, catchy bridge, it's over. But great pop music has always been that, not great music full stop. There's lots of music out there that's much more complicated and would never work for you on TikTok. But the great pop songs of our time have always been about short, tight, catchy get into your head and you can't get them out, and TikTok just rewards that and rewards that and rewards that.

But pop music is, as you say, it's always been shaped by the medium. So it was a vinyl record could only hold so much, so then that affected the length of songs, and then on radio you can't go over three and a half minutes because you've got to play an act, right. I saw this graph of like how long songs are, and they're just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Which one thing is TikTok. The other thing that's impacting it that I didn't know was Spotify. So artists earn royalties only if a listener stays engaged for at least thirty seconds. So that is why songs have much shorter intros, so you know how the good stuff get to the good stuff straight away. I don't have time for a song that takes a while to get going that builds, and.

You've got to have the chorus in that thirty seconds.

Yes, it's a pay per play model which incentivizes artists to create shorter songs because that encourages more replays and more replays and more revenue. So we cut the bridge, we put the chorus in, We get the bit I recognized from TikTok in the first eight seconds, and then listen. In fact, after the thirty seconds, it doesn't matter if they go back and replay it, because I've already got my money.

You can see that as very depressing. Yeah, that can definitely be seen by musical purists as extremely depressing, or it can be seen as a challenge how to write a great song that works for that. I mean, I chapel Rown songs are bloody brilliant. It wouldn't matter to me if I'd never seen her face. Like those songs are great. There's a song on the album called Coffee. You would love it, Jesse. Yeah, that is all about I can't go for coffee with you because it's never just coffee. That is one of the best written songs I've heard in one hundred years.

But it ticks all those But then I suppose as well. Right, I'm thinking about you know, the songs we might love from forty years ago or whatever, or your Fleetwood Mac or whatever that tell a story, that take their time, that provide context. Now there is no such thing as context, because your please Please Please, Sabrina Carpenter is a SoundBite on TikTok needs to make sense on its own.

But not everybody's on TikTok.

So I think that that's just a particular kind of market. Look at me, as friend Taylor all her songs.

But Taylor like I'm the problem, it's me or whatever, like that's designed for TikTok. And when you say not everyone's on TikTok, the billboard charts are directly influenced by TikTok. Is just definding interesting.

Because artists don't make money from that. So a lot of the record companies tried to pull all their artists from TikTok, and Taylor You laterally went back before she released Tortured Poets because she knew that if your music can't be used on TikTok, it's very hard to break an album.

That's true, but I think it's always been thus that the music industry just like movies and TV.

There's prestige, there's pop.

There's always going to be room, but they're not going to make as much money for the songs that But there is also a massive movement of men with guitars, and country music is enormous and rap music is enormous, So we're.

Talking about a very specific part.

Yet this came up at the the Logi's actually, and you've heard every Australian musician talk about this, that there has never been a harder time to be a musician and to make money from and to make money because what you've got is the Sabrina Carpenter's and the Taylor Swifts and the Charli XCX have such domination over the market that the only way for other people to seemingly get discovered is TikTok. And you will see that any Australian artist who releases a song, go find them on TikTok and look at how many videos they've had to make to try and make that sound go viral. And they've expressed enormous frustration that there is no A and R, there's no publicity strategy anymore. It's just get big on TikTok. And you shrug each other.

So live music, which is a way that smaller fans used to get seen, Like we love a big event gig where everyone has to queue up for forty million hours on the internet to buy tickets, but it's very hard for younger, smaller artists to fill rooms. Anyway, that's all we've got time for on the show today. Out louder Is, thank you for listening. But before we go, we did something special this week which we're hoping to keep doing if you like it, of course, which is we did a US election special with Amelia Lesti. You might remember Amelia from the show that she and Mea used to do.

Called tell Me It's going to be Okay.

They had to stop doing it because.

It wasn't exactly And Amelia is a very experienced of wise, an esteemed journalist who's actually spent twenty years living in the US, including five in DC. She is the deputy headit of a magazine call Foreign Policy, so she is so smart on this stuff. Here is a little bit of the episode we recorded for subscribers about.

The American election.

I am obsessed with JD Fance.

To me, he just seems like if you ask chat gpt to create the least likable person ever. He is so unlikable that I cannot look away. He is like a character from the office. Has everyone seen the video in the donuts shop from last week? No, So basically he went into a donut shop in Georgia.

He has never ordered a donut or any kind of beats good in his life.

He asks her to put whatever donuts makes sense in the box, whatever donuts makes sense?

And how good is that conversation? And I'm allowed to say it well because it's mostly Amelia talking and she the best thing about it. If you want to listen to the rest of this episode, we will put a link in a show notes.

Bye bye bye.

Shout out to any Mum and Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to MoMA MAA is the very best way to do so. There's a link in the episode description.

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