"You know what Addison Ray said, taste is a privilege... I thought that it was one of the most elegant self-aware things that a pop star has ever said to me in an interview."

"She was locating herself as a person who, when she was 16, 17, 18, did not have access to a lot of cultural product outside the very obvious mainstream. Didn't know how or where to dig and had this kind of life force urge to get out of the circumstance that she was in. And in moments like that, you can't necessarily be like, I want to be artful, I want to be weird, I have unusual perspective. You're just like, how do I get outta here as fast as possible? The the speediest route and for her becoming a TikTok star and kind of being very relentless about like, I'm on every trending audio, anything that's, anything that's viral I'm participating in that was her speed run through the internet and now she's like, now I can have taste."

So said Jon Caramanica on yesterday's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily," which was titled "The Summer in Culture." (Transcript and audio at Podscribe.)

Caramanica he written about that interview back in June, in "TikTok Made Addison Rae Famous. Pop Made Her Cool. The onetime social media superstar has re-emerged as the most surprising rookie pop star of the year."

Annoyingly, the word "privilege" does not appear in the article. But I am seeing "taste is a luxury":

“When I reflect back on that time,” she said, “I’ve recognized how much choice and taste is kind of a luxury. I was definitely strategic with it.... It was a lot about like, ‘How am I just going to get out of here?’ It wasn’t about like, ‘Let me show the intricacies of myself right now.’” Pursuing her own taste, whatever that might have been, wasn’t an option — “a sacrifice that had to be made,” she said.

"Luxury" and "privilege" are not synonyms, but the slippage from "luxury" to "privilege" seems to have occurred in the mind of Caramanica. What is the more interesting idea — "Taste is a privilege" or "Taste is a luxury"? "Taste is a luxury" seems more like what it looks like it means in context: She was in a hurry. "Taste is a privilege" sounds more like something they'd teach about in a fancy college, full of deep political and sociological meaning. "Taste is a privilege" is a luxury for those who are not in a hurry.

ADDED AFTERTHOUGHT: Someone in a hurry could use AI to impose taste on a musical composition.

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Also in that podcast is some "discourse" — they call it that — about shorts. My old topic: Men in shorts.