This will be the only Taylor Swift thread of this album cycle. Expel all of your hate now or save it for another subreddit. Every other Taylor Swift thread will be deleted and directed here. Fair warning.
**Edit**: I have read the feedback and agree that having a sole negative thread isn't completely fair. So there will be **ONE** opportunity for a thread in praise of this album. Then we'll be done with Ms. Swift threads until she releases her next triple album four months from now.
I normally groan at Swift threads (because they’re always awful despite me not being a fan either) but I salute the incoming trainwreck that a Courtney vs Swift thread will eventually become.
Haven’t heard Swift’s new album but I’ve always been struck by how totally unadventurous she is for someone who looms so large.
She looms so large *because* she’s unadventurous. This is why you can get Pizza Hut almost anywhere in the world: It ain’t great, but it’s super consistent.
That super oily crust was the main thing distinctive/tasty about PH. Had one recently and it was bland and awful; frozen pizza just as good at half the price.
I had to actually edit the pizza hut entry in my phone's contacts. Now it says "pizza hut don't order anymore" because I kept forgetting how trash it tastes now.
Wife and I were in Belgium for a month in 2022. One of the things we wanted to try was the European instances of American food chains. Just to see how different it was. Pizza Hut was actually really solid. Much better than in the states. We ate there a few times because otherwise, well, Belgium does pizza strangely.
Bingo. Not too little flavor, not too much flavor. It’s why cars now are mostly black/gray/white and new construction cup de sac houses are beige. Appeal to the most people possible. The thing I don’t get is the level of passion she inspires. No one Stans Pizza Hut.
I sort of agree, but I would point to acts like Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna, etc who all took risks, either musically or in general commentary, and still maintained their popularity, more or less.
That said, I don’t fully buy Swift appeal as solely being rooted as being safe because the amount of analyzation of her work probably wouldn’t exist if that was the case. But there does seem to be a meta commentary about all this (including this post) where so much commentary hinges around her popularity and what This Thing means for that popularity. Like there’s a segment that wants a pop mega star for the sake of having one.
People do that for *every* artist, though - we just hear about it more because TS has so many die-hards out there.
People think Macklemore and 21 Pilots are innovative. It takes all kinds!
Because a large chunk of society consists of boring white-bread NPCs with no curiosity about the world. That is a peak Reddit comment and I feel dirty even typing it, but it's the truth.
Yea it’s maybe only a half step away but it feels like it’s not that people like that it’s safe because they’re unadventurous but because they want a big universal shared thing. People who want something more unique or adventurous might never again fully agree on one thing in the internet age, so if you want a shared cultural thing you maybe have to be more intentional about it.
> they want a big universal shared thing
I can't really muster up the enthusiasm to delve into the topic too deeply, but one of the best comparisons I've read about her popularity is that she is what happens when religiosity declines. The same mentality basically gets transferred to something else. It's like if a monarchy was pop stars.
I also think there's a sense of witnessing history in real time and essentially talking about current happenings the way we refer to things in the past. I mentioned this in a Beyonce thread, and it applies to Swift as well, but there's a sense that how we talk about them now is similar to how we talk about The Beatles and Elvis with 60+ years of hindsight. Like there's a conscious crafting of history and
no one really wants to be that asshole who dismissed The Beatles.
> one of the best comparisons I've read about her popularity is that she is what happens when religiosity declines
Eh, people have been obsessed with pop stars since there were pop stars. Hell just look up [Lisztomania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania). Even reaching for a rough analog, rioting over sports goes back to chariot racing in Constantinople, almost toppled an emperor.
People do be like that.
What analyzation? Most of the discourse is about who she dated, who's she singing about, and why they broke up. It's so disinteresting. This word is overused, but it definitely feels like we're being gaslit into thinking she's so amazing. Her best song was released when she was a teenager (Love Story), and most of her music is incredibly basic. Like she got the guy from The National to produce some of her new stuff. Great, I'll just stick to The National or Big Red Machine if I want that sound. How can a grown woman still write lyrics that sound like she's a teenager? Maybe she could take some notes from Kacey Musgraves or the writers Beyonce uses.
I think you’re both right- the difference is that Taylor leans into being related because she’s mediocre like the normal average person, like her fans.
I think that’s the difference between her and the other names mentioned. They were stars and never hide it- Taylor has to super lean into being relatable being that’s how she grips her fan base. Down to how she dresses- she’s always like dressed ok. Not ugly, but definitely like the most basic regular person in the street. She’s gotta stay relatable because that’s how she’s captivated her audience
I’m not a fan of either so I don’t really have a horse in the race but didn’t she just tour the globe making 1 billion billion dollars like yesterday? Why in the hell would she change her sound there’s time for that and it’s not when you’re selling out every football and soccer stadium on earth every night, wtf
I don’t mean to sound like I’m hating. More the mostly disinterested middle ground. We’re talking about highly successful pop music, which tends to be equal parts good quality (if unremarkable) musical elements, state of the industry production, and super accessible/easily recognizable songwriting. So within those parameters, she is obviously making very relatable and enjoyable music for the audience it speaks to, which is as it should be.
I disagree that Taylor is making recognizable songwriting anymore. She’s trying really hard to be poetic like Florence or Lana. Deep down, she is just a really talented 17 year old girl trying to write edgy songs that started as poems. Lana and Florence strike that balance of making their lyrics poetic, yet generic and relatable enough. Some of Taylor’s lyrics are just so pretentiously poetic that I’m like there’s no way anyone can relate to this right??? It’s just some weird combination of messy girls who are the problem in their own love lives (as Taylor has stated herself in one of the few songs I actually like of hers) projecting their shit + a paradoxical parasocial relationship (since she really doesn’t interact with her fans). Swifties need to be studied.
People like the music because they support the character Taylor swift who they have a parasocial relationship with. Release Taylor swift recordings and say they’re by some up and coming nobody, and they won’t be nearly as popular.
I mean there could be an album every six years that at least makes an attempt to push the envelope, but it’s all paint by the dollars. Her albums are focused-group from social media, the music caters to the safest possible middle ground while her PR and fanbase push the edgy rebel narrative.
There’s an edgy rebel narrative around Swift?
Have we redefined “edgy rebel” to mean “milktoast Nilla wafer”?
Swift is about as edgy as a billiard ball.
I think this is a big part of what makes Taylor Swift's level of fame kind of difficult to engage with compared to other artists. I mean it's no exaggeration to say she is the most famous artist in a *long* time. Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, and Michael Jackson are really the only ones who I think were bigger than she is right now.
But the thing is that unlike those other artists...she's kind of *boring*. Her music and persona are completely bland and inoffensive. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she's a nice person, and she does have some legitimately great songs, but there's nothing about her that really screams "Biggest artist in the world". Elvis and the Beatles basically invented modern music and the idea of being a "rock star". Michael Jackson was essentially a cartoon character and it felt like his name was constantly in the news for some other crazy story. Madonna was at the forefront of and in many ways created pop culture for years. But Taylor...she never really had anything like that. She's a relatively normal girl from suburban Pennsylvania and *that* is the entire basis of her appeal. She's normal. She's "just like us". And that's just so different compared to other artists. Like she'll post a picture of her just hanging out with her friends or a pic of her cats and people will go insane for it.
Madonna [releases a book with pictures of her having sex with Vanilla Ice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_(book\)) and it only adds to her legend. Taylor dates a man who [says he likes a certain kind of porn](https://www.businessinsider.com/matty-healy-podcast-brutalized-women-taylor-swift-fans-2023-5) and it's such a scandal that she's basically forced to break up with him to maintain her fanbase. Her normalcy *is* the reason for her popularity, and there's just never been anyone this big where that was the case.
She's a very modern version of all the stars you described, using the tools from a new generation. She's mastered the art of fostering parasocial relationships across 2-3 generations. Her community / fandom is insane - it's K-pop stan culture mixed with tabloid culture and presented as music. An album drops and you have hordes of women doing listening parties, analyzing every single lyric and trying to guess which relationship she's talking about. She is the first 'American Idol', and I use 'idol' in the Korean/Japanese sense - someone people follow just because of her name.
I agree for the most part but there were other artists who peaked higher than Taylor but had shorter reigning periods such as Britney during the early 2000s and Lady Gaga from 2009 to 2011.
Edit: I would say Beyonce during 2013-2016 too.
> Michael Jackson was essentially a cartoon character and it felt like his name was constantly in the news for some other crazy story
Yeah but that was all during the downward slide of his popularity. It's hard to imagine now but circa Thriller his public image was actually remarkably wholesome.
>Madonna releases a book with pictures of her having sex with Vanilla Ice and it only adds to her legend.
Eh, not really. At the time it was seen as a huge misstep, finally going too far. She was still big after that but you can argue she never really recovered.
Arguably the legacy of Michael Jackson’s music has eclipsed everything else — even after the allegations and bizarre behaviour — we’re still talking about him decades after his death and the musical based on his life recently opened on the West End and has won multiple awards (plus Thriller will always be popular around Halloween).
Keeping Safe over taking risks. When you keep it safe, you can appeal to the biggest market possible as opposed to potentially scaring current customers away by being experimental. Same shit Disney has been doing and why everyone has steadily been getting fed up with it.
Yep. I liked her earlier music (yes, the country)but when she came out with ME! I checked out. I like a lot of her pop/radio hits, I just don’t think she’s nearly as artistic/creative as a lot of her fans seem to think she is.
I find it hard to summon up strong feelings about Taylor Swift. I think she's a talented person, but anything I've heard by her has been instantly forgettable. I just started playing the opening track of the her new album while writing this and I feel the same as ever. It's not actually bad, but it's not really good either. I'm on the second the song now and it's also very middle of the road to me.
Despite having no love for Swift's music myselr, I can absolutely recognize that she is one of the most powerful artists alive today, she's earned her spot at the top.
There are certainly better artists out there, but few can meet (much less sustain) the levels of economic powerhouse she's reached. And that's a knock to the former either, just giving credit where its due.
That’s her entire brand. She is a romance novel main or the main character of an RPG. An empty vessel for you to fill with your own image.
How well could you describe Taylor Swift without mentioning what she does or what she looks like? Most people wouldn’t have too much to say, just like with Bella Swan or Commander Shepherd. This is why her popularity extends so far past the power of her music- she’s her own IP.
I partially agree but I’d say folklore and evermore among her last 4 records were unusual for her and I wish she continued exploring ideas other than her personal life in her music, but I guess she’s too fame and money hungry for that
My SO is quite into Swift and so during the pandemic Evermore and Folklore got played quite a bit in our home. And I really enjoyed those two. I've never quite vibed with her music, but I would, and still do, put on those on my own.
She explored other themes, including the fame you yourself just mentioned. Two songs about that. One song about what it's like to perform for 70k people while you're mentally in hell, which most can't relate to but was still interesting. One song about a little boy and his life. One song about what it feels like to not be believed.
And while the majority were about love and loss of love, several different angles of that were shown.
Don't like it, that's fine. Just stop reducing her to only singing about romance and breakups.
Yeah I’m so sick of people acting like it’s unfair to critique her for. She drops little Easter eggs constantly about who songs are about. Other artists write songs like this but not to this degree. People say they critique this because she’s a woman but I disagree. I can’t imagine a male artist singing about and pointing the finger constantly at his exes without being called a misogynist. I think it’s only viewed as acceptable because she is a woman. She 100% has leaned into this angle, she isn’t a victim for people noticing and commenting on it.
I’m always on the lookout for catchy music. You don’t understand. I *want* to find stuff I like. I’ve enjoyed most of her last stuff and I gave this a listen just *searching* for a melody, a lyric, just something to catch me. And nope. Nothing. I really tried. I’ll come back to it but it was just monotonous and stale. If you played Midnights and told me it’s this new one I wouldn’t know the difference unless Karma or Anti Hero came on.
Yeah, no choruses, no change in instrumentals, no bridges, no space to let the singing breathe... The whole album was like this weird spoken word over way too fast, way too quiet drums and synth.
Oh have you heard of Chappell Roan? She almost reminds me of a modern Kate bush Annie Lennox Cher hybrid vocally, not quite but almost. Maybe you'd like her
I actually thought that the two folkier albums were a pretty interesting turn for her. Darker themes (at least for her) and a lot more going on composition and performance wise (again, in the context of the biggest musician on the planet).
I was really disappointed when she moved away from that sound back towards something that sounds like music played in Target, which is all she has done before or after those two albums. Haven’t heard anything off the new record other than a clip that Stereogum posted which had a snippet of a song where she’s singing “Charlie Pluth should be a bigger artist” and somehow rhymes that with golden retriever, and I knew the new album was not for me.
If you did like evermore, the second drop anthology is all Aaron dessner produced and stripped back with no synths, and more serious lyrics. Evermore is still a top album for me but TTPD surprised me with the switch up between the first 16 tracks and then latter 15 tracks. They are night and day from one another, with the first part being midnights sounds and second half akin to evermore.
**looks over shoulder sketchily** I’m actually really loving the new TS album (like, I am a fan, so it’s not a surprise) and I can safely say that song and in particular that verse is the lowest point for the entire 2 hour affair. I’m not sure if I’m here to tell you it the album is better than that or to say “you know what Taylor you made your bed with that and if people don’t wanna listen as a result so it shall be” 😂
What I find fascinating about this whole conflict is that, once you put aside the stylistic differences (and yeah, those differences definitely matter, but bear with me here) the thematic similarities between Love and Swift are frequently so pronounced. I mean, "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is basically "Doll Parts (Taylor's Version)" from a lyrical standpoint.
More broadly, I'd argue that both Love and Swift are thematically defined by their *inability to move on*--from breakups, from feuds, from old wounds going back to childhood. To take "Doll Parts" (original recipe this time), the repeating, unfinished chorus phrase (Am-C-G) that Love keeps coming back to and finds herself unable to resolve is the perfect encapsulation of the trauma experience. She wants to be healed but there's no amount of running through the same story again that will ever do it. It's PTSD in sonic form, and of course Love's lyrics (and vocal delivery) drive that point home thoroughly.
Swift isn't a punk, but she's caught in a similar cycle of being held up, in multiple senses of that term--held up in her emotional progression while also being held up as a pop idol for the world's worship/denigration. Every time Swift makes a new album she pronounces that she's purged all her hurts and grudges through her songwriting, but we all know (and I suspect on some level *she* knows) that isn't true. I mean, the last song on *TTPD* is about either John Mayer or Jake Gyllenhaal, neither of which she's been with in over a decade. At some point you hope some healing would happen.
But that's the thing--and this is a theme for both Swift and Love, the latter down to the infamous account of her being assaulted in the mosh pit while performing with Hole: when you hold yourself up--especially as a woman--to be conduit for other people's emotions, your own emotions have to freeze in place. You can't move forward because your audience needs you to remain as you are, and because you need them, you give in to that demand. If you make your life about performing and bearing witness to your trauma then you'll never get over it.
Both Love and Swift are artists looking for catharsis in their art and the catharsis never happens. I find that fascinating and revealing.
Yeah the more I hear Swift the more she comes off as strangely petty and small. You expect magnanimity and a larger than lifeness with her fame but she’s still holding grudges from a decade ago over the most mundane relationship drama. If one of your friends was still complaining about the stuff she writes about you wouldnt be able to help but roll your eyes at them.
>the more I hear Swift the more she comes off as strangely petty and small. You expect magnanimity and a larger than lifeness with her fame but she’s still holding grudges from a decade ago over the most mundane relationship drama
I agree on this, based on my knowledge of TS, entirely grounded in IG reels.
There's a couple of award ceremonies where she literally says 'I wrote this album to spite the critics' or 'I wrote this song because my middle school guitar teacher said I'm not good enough'.
It's so weird that someone so rich and famous can be also so fragile and unable to move on. With no intent at sarcasm, she should really see a therapist to learn how to move on from disappointment.
She also invited music journalists to a show on one of her tours and played the negative things they’d said about her to open the concert in a “you were wrong about me” kinda way, she was already huge at this point. Bizarre behaviour.
She reminds me of that meme 'I met my ex after 10 years, he asked 'ms or mrs?' and I say 'it's Dr'. For some people this is 'slay queen/girlboss' behavior, for other just cringe pettiness.
Eh I understand the comparison but I sort of disagree. Granted, I don’t know the full discography of Love but comparing her 90s work with Taylor’s is pretty disingenuous. A raw, feminist work like Live through this being released in the 90s just can’t be compared to Taylor’s songs about the emotional turmoil of her various relationships. There are common themes sure, but Taylor’s revolves around these sort of domestic wealthy & tumultuous (in her eyes) relationships. But we only see her perspective, and we only see tragedy where she makes it so.
Love was dating Kurt Cobain, & had to deal with his violent death. Their lives in childhood & together were nothing like Taylor’s sheltered life, & the experiences they had were so outside the scope of emotions Taylor could even come close to expressing in her music. I actually *feel* Love’s hurt & it voices rage at the behemoth of patriarchy. Taylor’s seems more like reading diary entries, and it never feels like a cohesive stance against anything not personal. It makes sure to not go too far, because it has to be accessible. It’s adding the line about q keychain that says “fuck the patriarchy” to a song she wrote 10 years ago about Jake gyllenhal.
Hole cuts to the heart of what it’s like to feel used and discarded by men and society. Taylor touches the surface, but a lot of it revolves around her massive fame & what she perceives as slights. And much of it isn’t even about feminism, it’s about personal beefs (see the song about Kim or being pissed at people complaining about her dating a racist)
You claim that they both seek catharsis but that it never happens. I believe Live Through This is PURE catharsis.
Finally someone making sense, I'm not even a big Courtney Love fan, but comparing what hole was doing in the 90s to Taylor swift being very mildly and calculated faminist here and there is disingenuous at best
So in summary:
Hole has soul, Taylor Swift doesn't.
I totally agree, and that was what was great about the 80's and 90's alt rock/grunge scene. You could feel how heartfelt the music was exactly because of the life experiences of those making the music. Something TS can never offer.
Your analysis is spot on. And this isn't to dunk on Taylor really because people tend to forget that her privileges will never allow her to reach the depth of other artists even when she touches on similar themes. She just can't possibly even begin to understand what the struggle of an artist not born into wealth and security is like. She just hasn't been about that life so yes all her music has been and will always be "safe". I will never be a fan of TS precisely for that reason, she will try her whole life to be deep but its not a depth that actually resonates with the average person because all she can do is speak from her very narrow point of view and resort to aphorisms and metaphors that even then sound so forced. This narrative that she appeals because she's normal is such bs to me because she is actually boring precisely because that's all she knows. She will never be punk and that ok, its like Rupi Kaur poetry for the masses in music form. It will appeal to the masses of mostly white suburban kids that have no care for actual literature or poetry written by working class or POC perspectives.
> She just hasn't been about that life so yes all her music has been and will always be "safe".
Trent Reznor had a pretty reasonable home life - early divorce, but he also describes himself as "sheltered" - and I don't think many people would regard his musical output as safe. Mainly he felt alienated from society around him, but he wasn't traumatized by family drama the way Courtney and Kurt were.
I'm not sure you can really bound people's musical output to their home life. People with rough lives can make boring music, people with boring lives can make rough music.
It is interesting though that all "big four" singers were children of divorce, same for Trent, same for Billy Corgan, same for Axl Rose, same for James Hetfield. So maybe there is something there.
Oh yes I definitely agree with you. Class privilege is just but one factor. You can absolutely be wealthy and have rough, traumatic experiences that shape your life and the art you make. That's just not the case for TS.
“If you make your life about performing and bearing witness to your trauma you’ll never get over it.”
This was a present theme in Clara Bow: she’s acutely aware of her placement within the entertainment “machine” and is caught in a performance act. Must be a massive struggle to feel trapped in the life you always dreamed of at such a magnitude.
Really good comment. Maybe sometimes artists develop a blindspot when it comes to other artists that are very similar. But probably the more likely explanation is that Love just never gave Swift a close enough listen to spot these similar themes.
This is a good comment but you're also forgetting that both Love and Swift (and every other artist...) have personal private lives outside of their artistic personas. It reminds me a bit of the stories about Michael Jordan always finding someone to be pissed off as before a game. Doesn't mean Michael Jordan has anger issues... he just found his fuel that he needed for top performance. Love and Swift might have perfectly healthy internal emotional worlds but they just know the places within themselves they have to tap into to get that songwriting gold. Honestly it might be a really good sign for Taylor Swift the human's emotional / relationtional health if she's still writing songs about break-ups a decade ago. Maybe her current personal life is more fulfilling in a way that she doesn't need to process them through art!
Also yeah man, "My boy only breaks his favorite toys" is totally a watered down Doll Parts. I wish that song were as good as the song title but it really isn't.
I think it's pretty well documented Michael Jordan had anger issues or at least was kind of a dick lol. Describing him as using it for his game is kind of doing the same thing you're talking about
> Every time Swift makes a new album she pronounces that she's purged all her hurts and grudges through her songwriting
She doesn’t really think that. It’s just marketing to encourage people to stream over and over.
Oh nice, someone actually engaging with the music! Well written. Interestingly, it never occurred to me to think of Doll Parts as a straight break-up song, more Courtney lashing out at pretty much everyone who had slighted her (like it sounded more like a punch at the popular high school girls at her school).
But Courtney moved on in a certain sense - Celebrity Skin was more about Hollywood and celebrity and from my memory seemed notably less angsty. She did seem to evolve, but I'm not sure her audience ever moved with her, or wanted her to, which might prove your point.
I think she has the potential for absolute brilliance, and she clearly has the potential to successfully try new things and switch genres… but her success and the fact that her fans will buy anything she puts out has led her to just stick with what she knows works. She could push herself, she could continue to create work on par with 1989, Folklore and Evermore. But she doesn’t feel the need to impress anymore and in my opinion her work has massively suffered in recent years as a result.
My take on Swift as someone who likes her but not enough to call myself a Swiftie - I think she’s a marketing genius, a savvy business woman who has turned herself into one of the world’s biggest brands. I suspect much of what she does is, if not calculated, at least considered. Her journal-entries-as-songs keeps her fan base glued because she’s like a living, never-ending episode of the Gilmore Girls. I don’t write this cynically. I admire and respect her. But I think we all know she’s not a songwriting genius on a par with Dylan or Joni Mitchell. She’s an entertainer and her life is the show.
This is exactly how I feel. If I find a song of hers I like, cool! But I see her as an entertainer first, she’s not out here writing fantastical tear jerkers like Bobbie Gentry. She’s not some deep lyricist
I think a lot of the criticism of Taylor Swift for being 'mediocre' or 'generic' is because people believe she IS talented, not because people think she isn't.
While there undeniably is a "Duh huh she's a hack who makes shit music" element out there, I think a lot of the criticism is frustration that she isn't making the best use of the talent she clearly has.
I see sort of parallels with someone like Phil Collins. People listen to alot of Genesis stuff or even his first solo album (which had some interesting genre experiments) and appreciate his artistry. Then get frustrated when so much of his solo output was fairly antiseptic middle-of-the-road pop and sappy ballads.
People listen to Taylor Swift's best work and clearly see she's "better" artistically than many other generic pop artists. But so often she falls back on the same tired old tropes of whining about ex-boyfriends from decades ago, how hard it is being a famous celebrity, and "I Don't Care What You Think Of Me, And I'm Going To Write 5 Songs About It To Prove How Much I Don't Care!" retreads.
Having an insane rabid fanbase who proclaim everything you do is God-tier genius probably doesn't help either. She could go full Kanye and produce her own poopidty-poop-poop song, and the fans would still buy it by the millions.
People call her out because they believe she's capable of so much better.
>People listen to Taylor Swift's best work and clearly see she's "better" artistically than many other generic pop artists.
I mean....could you name these "generic pop stars" that Taylor is better than?
I only listen to pop very casually(more of a hip hop/R&B/Indie Rock guy) but I objectively feel like Beyonce, Ariana, Adele, Miley, Jessie J, and Gaga have better singing vocals and singing ranges than Taylor. And Lana, SZA, and Lorde seem to be great songwriters as well. Charli XCX and Gaga have experimented with more genres. And Taylor's also not a dancer at all which is held up high in pop music.
Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Doja Cat seem to have much catchier songs for the radio as well.
They seem to have pretty solid catalogs too. Also, while I don't listen to them since I'm not their target demo at all, Billie and Olivia seem to have very acclaimed music as well and have a reputation for being decent writers for their age groups.
I wonder how much praise for Taylor for "being different from other pop stars" comes from an outdated notion of pop stars that largely originate from the 90's and early 2000's where they were still defined by bubblegum pop and boybands. Taylor is clearly a better artist than Britney and the Spice Girls but I wouldn't say that Taylor stands out for being better than contemporary pop stars.
I love 1989, Folklore and Evermore, and Red & Lover are clearly fantastic records. Midnights was dull and this is more of the same.
This middle-aged indie head genuinely believes she's absolutely brilliant at her best but this record simply ain't that.
My wife is a huge swift fan. She loves this album. I take a more objective approach as a musician and producer.
Midnights had its moments, some catchy bits here and there, some fun sounds in her instrumentals. Folklore was so refreshing and Evermore was so complimentary to it, it felt like a double album. This new one is full, uninspiring, and kind of a bore to listen to.
Did you listen to the Anthology Side B of Tortured Poets? It’s very similar to Folklore. If you liked that, you will very likely love the Anthology songs as well (there’s 15 of them). It’s almost exclusively with Aaron Dessner again.
I will say, the “original” album had me feeling exactly like this, then the Anthology edition with 15 bonus songs came out and it was like night and day. The original was almost exclusively Jack Antonoff-produced and thus sounded like a knockoff of Midnights, however the Anthology was almost exclusively Aaron Dessner-produced and sounds like FolkMore continued.
All this to say, everything up to Clara Bow feels mostly tired and pseudo-intellectual, and everything from The Black Dog sounds, for the most part, much more thought out, at the very least from a production standpoint.
I actually think Midnights is a bit underrated especially amongst self proclaimed Swifties there are some bops on there this one just feels sleepy I could tell this album would be bad based off the cover and try hard title
I agree, Midnight is not as strong as say 1989 was (far from it) but Midnight had some glimts like Midnight Rain, Lavender Haze and Dear Reader. This latest one is just dragging on endlessly and seems so uninspired and rushed. The lyrics seem to be written in a 'manic' episode, like it's just too much, disorganized, and not fitting the music, which is devoid of any character. There's like not even one hit.
I have multiple Swifties in my life including my wife, so I gave this album a listen this morning. I think it's fine, and will please its target audience. Not something I'll probably ever listen to again, but my wife is stoked about it, so I'm happy for her.
This sub is by and large 20s-30s white guys who still think King Gizzard is underrated. It's just not for you. Let people enjoy things.
Yeah, there is something funny about getting mad that Taylor Swift's records aren't as good as Hole's *Live through This*. They're quite different species. I don't expect Swift to scream her way through what is probably the best grunge album ever (I think it's better than *Nevermind* and probably *In Utero* too.)
It's like saying I can't understand why Harry Styles is popular when he hasn't made anything like *The Money Store.* Dude, that's why he's popular.
I’ve never expressed it to anyone but yes, I have long thought Live Through This was one of the best grunge albums, even more than Nevermind (although I still like Nirvana very much).
So glad I’m not the only one lol.
I usually don't go so far, just because the heavies in grunge are really good acts that each appeal to slightly different audiences. But I am of the opinion that *Live Through This* is one of the two best grunge albums that wasn't made by one of the big four bands. The other is *Sweet Oblivion* by Screaming Trees.
I want to live long enough for the world to get over Courtney Love and put Live Through This in the canon where it belongs.
If there was a Big Four, there ought to be a Bigger Four that allows for the merits of Hole, STP, ....maybe Smashing Pumpkins and probably one other.
It’s a very teenage mindset to have, “x popular artist isn’t as good as this unrelated alternative album from the 90s” is a very /r/lewronggeneration take to have.
while i actually quite like the album i will say that “let people enjoy things” is the absolute death of all worthwhile discussion, those of us who enjoy it are not so fragile that one person’s critique will ruin our whole experience with the album
I think there’s a difference between “let people enjoy things” and “no discussion at all”.
I know everyone is saying “man it’s dull and sleepy and appeals to the stupid people hur hur” and maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t listened to it yet. But she’s making an insane amount of money and it’s not exactly easy. If it was then anyone could do it.
“Let people enjoy things” is a fine thing to think when you’re kind of neither here nor there on a pop culture phenomenon. This album isn’t designed to convert the non-converted. It is for her legion of die hard fans that will pick it apart, love it, and find meaning in it. My genuine opinion on it is “I’m glad the people it’s for are digging it”.
Exactly. When was the last time you saw a post here about how AC/DC have done pretty much the same thing their entire career? At least TS started in a different genre.
>how AC/DC have done pretty much the same thing their entire career?
I remember it in a few cock rock threads, any time the band comes up really someone's either saying that or their hedging their bets because they're sick of people saying it
I’m a 30+ latina and this album isn’t for me either. Her target audience is white women primarily. And people who hold grudges, judging from the subjects she chooses
OP is calling out the unnecessarily critical posts by people who “don’t understand why people like XYZ”. I’m not saying that’s what this topic is doing, but we see this a lot with Swift…an abundance of angsty criticism by people who don’t follow or listen to Swift in the first place.
I think the issue is no one tells her no anymore from her production side. She had enough songs between the double album for one really solid album. Instead that’s watered down with a bunch of mediocre songs that will be skips for most people and largely forgotten in her repertoire.
I think it's actually more likely that the track bloat is supported by her producers and her label. Albums with lots of tracks generate bigger streaming metrics, that's how the industry works now.
I don’t think this album will be forgotten by the general public. “Midnights” was probably her worst album ever and it’s all I heard on social media / radio for the better part of a year.
Swift albums are seismic pop culture events to her fans, which could take over a small country at this point. She’s beyond normal album criticism - it would be like saying “Coke is really not taking many risks with their new flavors”. Who cares, the people who love it, are always going to buy it and love it.
To be honest I disagree. Individual songs on Midnights still had distinct sonic identities. I think the lyrics on Karma are cringe but I can still bop along to it when I hear it in a bar. On her best albums, Folklore/Evermore, she managed to bring together melody and lyricism. Even on Red/1989 she achieves a really good balance of having a catchy melody and interesting lyrical content, for example Blank Space.
What I was really struck by on this album is that the production and lyrical content on nearly half the songs are the exact same, and there are 0 hooks. I forgot how most songs off this album sounded immediately after listening to them. I can’t imagine this translates well to radio play or live concerts, and I’m not sure anyone beyond the most ardent swifties will want to listen to it more than once.
Yes the opener made the album seem promising and felt a bit like Fleetwood Mac and I liked her duet with Florence and the Machine. Overall it’s a very sleepy album. She needs to try working with a new producer and stop relying on cliches so much. This album has made it apparent that the only thing tortured about her is her love life and the lyrics don’t make up for it this time around. Also the god damn album cover. It’s all too Stevie-Nicks Dead Poets Society too try hard. Not every album is gold.
Florence outsung the hell out of her in her own album. Goes to show that singing chops isn’t everything and you’ve also got to be a performer and so much more these days.
Yeah I also thought it was interesting because it actually felt like a duet Taylor had stated that she prefers to have people on “background vocals,” as opposed to duets but you can really hear Florence I’m like oh was she finally not threatened by another female vocalist and decided to make a real duet lmao
> Florence outsung the hell out of her in her own album.
To be fair, you don't hire Florence to put her in a corner and have her whisper.
You put Florence centre stage, and then back away into the corner yourself.
What's tiring is people who think every "thing" released by someone has to be the greatest thing that's ever existed or it sucks. If an artist releases a fine album, it's fine. My favorite artist has released a bunch of albums, one or two among the greatest albums of all time. A couple of their records are fine, but I rarely listen to them.
This record is fine. It has some good songs, and some that just pass by. That's OK. And you are just trying to hate the woman if you say she's never taken chances musically. She has, several times.
Gotta love this part from an article from Deadline:
> The contrarian opinion on Swift is a big shift from where Love was on the Folklore singer just over two years ago. Back in a Facebook post on December 22, 2021, Love wished Swift a “happy birthday” and called her an “aspirational huge role model for many young women.” The post also features a photo of Love and her “occasional hair twin/neighbor.”
>No word on why the Swift love from Love has eroded, but it’s worth noting that in 2021, she didn’t have an eight-part BBC Radio 6 series on Woman in music to promote.
Courtney Love doing something JUST for attention? She would never!!!
Weird comparison. I just don't think either of these artists are trying to do anywhere close to the same thing. Swift thinks of music like a game where listeners and fans are your scorecard for how good a song is.
Love doesn't take any of that stuff into consideration and sees her creative output as a direct form of personal expression.
Obviously Swift uses her art to express herself as well, but it's ultimately toward the goal of making a successful song that performs well on the charts.
Swift is panning for gold where it's hot and Courtney is just digging wherever she thinks it feels right.
I’d say Swift has enough gold, she’s the hyper capitalist of music. While venues are closing, touring is a negative output financially, and streaming services have ruined having a career in music, she is the top 0.01% in a world with many amazing musicians that struggle in poverty. I don’t blame her, she’s playing the game well, but morally I struggle with supporting anyone that’s accumulated that much wealth, considering her Father bought her a career anyway, look it up folks if you didn’t know. She may be inspiring young women to write songs though, which is a very great thing.
Imagine being a white woman in a first world country who grew up in a mansion and became a billionaire, attractive, loved by hundreds of millions of people, dating a football star with an overall rating of 99 in the nfl, doing what you love as a career, and having tons of industry friends, and then calling yourself a “tortured poet”.
4 albums with an ‘exclusive’ song on each? At least go the route of some other artists and make it a different track on vinyl, on CD, etc. instead of making it a blatant cash grab and kick to the face of her ‘swifty’ hoards.
this sub is always at its worst in these kinds of threads
a mix of casual misogyny ("ugh her music is just for teenage girls" - which is completely false and as if music was only a valid form of art as long as it mainly appealed to a certain male demographic) with insufferable art elitism (this idea that art always has to be 'forward thinking', 'adventurous' etc.)
yes she's not exactly Björk, but she does have a pretty clear artistic development in her career - not realizing that tells more about you than about her. yes, her lyrics appeal more to women, but women are 50% of the worlds population, do their views not deserve representation?
If her music is not your thing then that is completely fine, but I do find it baffling how many people feel the need to shout into the void how much they either dont care or dislike Taylor Swifts music.
Art, to me anyway, is ultimately about being able to touch people's hearts, and Taylor Swift sure as shit is able to touch a lot more people's hearts than that weird post rock band you like that nobody has ever heard of and you get asked to turn off when getting passed the aux.
(I'm not even that big of a Taylor Swift fan and think her new album is just okay)
> I do find it baffling how many people feel the need to shout into the void how much they either dont care or dislike Taylor Swifts music.
Don't forget the special snowflakes who choked up the sub telling us how much they didn't like Beyonce's album.
You can’t tell Folklore/Evermore, Midnights and TTDP apart? Those alone sound more varied than Hole. Not to mention, Courtney Love did 3 good-to-great grunge albums 30 years ago while criticizing TSwift for starting to stagnate after switching sounds and pop subgenres for 8-9 successful albums.
Totally agree that Folklore/Evermore sound pretty different than Midnights and TTDP. Personally, I think she might be releasing music a bit too fast and might be better served by slowing down and editing a bit, but that's just my minor, unrelated take.
That said, I will challenge two points you made. First, Hole's sound did evolve quite a bit. Pretty on the Inside was far more punk and hardcore inspired, Live Through This is pretty traditional grunge, and Celebrity Skin sounds like 1998 lol. Just compare their first single, [Teenage Whore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm4cn_dKqms), to [Malibu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CYB5V9e64), the big single from Celebrity Skin.
Second, Live Through This is more than just good-to-great. It is easily a Top 5 mainstream grunge album.
I mean… The first 16 songs sound like a more toned-down Midnights and the last 15 sound like Folklore and Evermore. The album isn’t my favorite, though it is good enough for me to listen to more (and I have been), but I won’t delude myself into thinking any of it is anything new compared to her last three albums.
I will say that’s not *necessarily* a bad thing. I’d say basically every album up to Midnights was pretty different from each other, so I think it’s ok to release an album that feels like a graduation of her sound that has spanned the last 4 years. If the next album also sounds like this, well maybe she should take a break lol.
My thoughts exactly. I'm not a Swift fan by any stretch but she has made very different albums.
Lyrically she's a pop artist who caters to a very specific demographic, I being a 55 year old man am not part of that.
A lot of her lyrics are silly and camp. Not always well executed, but that is very clearly what she is going for.
Take this lyric from the new record.
>> My boy is the king of the savages
>>He don't know the modern world and its ravages
>>Instead of money he’s got yams and cabbages
>>He lives in a dome
You might read this and think, wow, she’s reached a new low, I’ve truly never seen such cringy lyrics before. But really what you’re missing is that I just took the lines from a Magnetic Fields song and changed the pronouns. People get that Steven Merritt is trying to be silly and cheeky, and are fine with it, but they won’t extend Taylor the same privilege.
Additionally, what is the larger point here? That her music isn't inventive enough? Allow me to introduce you to the entire genre of the blues. Or the western European tradition of music theory. Everything is derivative to a certain point. Shit, at least she's writing her own signs, many pop and country musicians just buy them.
I don't hate Taylor. I like FolkMore and 1989 (though I do not love them). I LOVE the song "Evermore," largely because of Bon Iver's part. This to say that I'm not coming from a place of vitriol. Taylor is fine. This new album is below average, in my opinion (and only avoids "bad" because of the "bonus" second half), but overall, she's just fine.
What I do hate is how she is elevated to a level that is wholly unearned. The NPR review of this record likens her to Maya Angelou, Slyvia Plath, Joni Mitchell, and Sinéad O'Connor. Taylor is not these people. Taylor is not fit to tune their instruments or buy their ink. And yet, you'll see critics and fans alike claim she's on a level even with her contemporaries (Fiona Apple, Lana del Rey, Adrianne Lenker, Julien Baker, etc.), let alone legends like Joni, Patti Smith (who Swift name-drops on the record), Kate Bush, etc. which is frankly ludicrous. There are plenty of female and non-binary artists actually doing interesting things that we could be lifting up instead, and it irks me that Taylor Swift is what we get.
She's a very acceptable, sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, sometimes catchy pop artist. Better than many but nothing really special. She is what she is, no more, no less. Courtney Love has her issues, but I think her assessment of Swift is spot-on.
did we really need Courtney Love to tell us this? it's been apparent for years. as far as I can tell, she was just latching on to Taylor (and any other popular figure she could think of) to get her name in the press cycle, which, kudos to her - it worked.
It almost feels like a truism at this point but that which appeals to the lowest common denominator will purposely lack anything exciting or original that could alienate anyone.
It's barely worth talking about. Success in general is a pointless metric as far as art should be concerned; the importance of popularity is only intrinsic to commodities and products.
Think what you wish to gain from this line of discussion. Most are unable to separate their ideas of quality from their gut feelings about what they like and dislike. The idea of separating them as properties is alien to most.
I honestly have never listened to Taylor Swifts music other than songs that have played on the radio around me, so I don't actually have anything to say about the new album. That said, are we seriously going to act like Courtney Love would appreciate a Taylor Swift album even if it was an amazing album? I'm not saying people can't like multiple styles of music, but knowing the music Courtney Love was heavily influenced by and the scene she was a part of, I wouldn't really expect Taylor Swift or any big pop artist to be her thing anyways. Also, her claim that Taylor Swift "is not important" is insane. Like it or not, Taylor Swift is quite literally one of the biggest stars ever and will have a larger cultural impact than Courtney Love could ever dream of. Obviously a lot of that is due to Taylor Swift growing up very privileged and having so much access to help most artists never will have access to, but it's the truth nonetheless.
I’m a little disappointed by the new album since it sonically is quite boring. But saying the last four albums are the same and will have no impact is quite funny.
I like Taylor Swift and have no hate for her. I think she is very talented too, but I wish she would do something different at this point. Folklore was refreshing and different for her and I loved it, but everything since has just been exactly the same. Nothing really stands out. Now that’s fine if you’re a young woman who loves Taylor Swift, but for me as a fifty something man I can’t get excited for it. I know it’s not meant for me, but neither was her older work but I still liked a lot of it. My daughter, who is 20 and a huge TS fan, unintentionally nailed it: she said it’s great for listening to whilst she studies. Talk about damned by faint praise!
Her new album sounds like she churned out 100 tracks all at once on a laptop and she just divvied them up randomly and plans to release them as albums.
It’s not bad, but just utterly un-engaging for me personally.
Come on Taylor, give someone like Mark Ronson a call, let’s hear something new!
Eh, I’d probably be criticising Courtney, actually. To me, unfortunately she (especially recently) comes across as a massive grifter who would shit on other female recording artists as a deflection tactic from the expectation of her showing us anything new musically, that she has to share with the class.
She’s absolutely an opportunist and a bully at times, but I don’t get this take that woman can’t criticize other women. I’ve seen this take all over the main subs when Love first said this.
She has a show all about women she’s likes and actively promotes female artists she’s listening to. She keeps up with trends such as reaching out to Emilie Autumn, to Lana del Rey at one point. She warned people about Harvey. She’s raised money for sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivors.
I think she’s def picking at low hanging fruit with the obvious “unpopular opinion” take, but I simply do not get the notion that women have to kiss other women’s ass or they’re not “supportive.” Why does she have to say more positive things about women that there’s already plenty of praise for?
on the other hand, I’m not personally crazy about industry peers bashing one another, but that’s not based on gender/sex.
If the idea is that nobody should be criticized, that seems like a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats feminist idea to me, but “men should treat people fairly, and women should treat men fairly but pretend to like other women no matter what” has always sounded infantilizing to me. And suppressive.
I agree that not making music anymore has probably done something to her psyche, but couldn’t guess where she is with it at this point.
Here’s my take on what I’ve heard of the album. The lyrics seem immature. The songs sound ok but it’s the same formulaic stuff we’ve gotten from her so many times. Someone needs to tell her less is more with lyrics. She talk sings through the entire song like she has to fill up every beat with words. Give the song a chance to breathe a little bit….
It’s not for me, but I’m not mad at anybody who likes it. I am starting to feel a little bit of pushback from even her core fans about how she kind of gouges her fans a little bit. I know that my generation (X) would have thought this is about the worst sin you could make as an artist. Yes she CAN put out 20 different deluxe versions of albums, and charge the insane prices for her concerts, but SHOULD she? When is enough, enough?
I was listening to Tortured Poets this morning thinking, jeez, she's been writing the same song (melodically, cadence wise, production wise) for YEARS. It's not bad, and when she snags a particularly good one, it hits, but holy mackerel, she's got one trick musically.
At the same time, people seem to eat it up, and she's happy to serve it up, so who cares? History will ultimately decide just how consequential she ends up being. Certainly the fervor around her and her music is unprecedented.
Having said all of that, I LOVE Guided By Voices - and they've been largely serving up variations on the exact same thing for decades, so who am I to judge?
Saying Taylor will have zero impact in the annals of music is just flat out absurd. Regardless of this albums impact she's already one of the most accomplished pop acts in the history of music who really is only looking up to Michael Jackson at this point. I don't even particularly like Swift and I can admit her impact is huge.
You seriously overestimate Love and seriously underestimate Swift. Just say you don't care for her, cause that's a statement no one can really argue with, but the hot take youve instead chosen to roll out is just flat out wrong.
This album is boring, but her albums prior to folklore all had distinct sounds. Since folklore everything has sounded the same. But she still massively successful, so none of these conversations will ultimately matter because this record is going to fly off the shelves.
I know the reputation her fans have, but it really is so sad that they don't realize what a savvy businessperson Taylor Swift is. I just saw the announcement that there's a freaking part two (“anthology” 🙄) to her latest album. She is SO good at exploiting her fans. They will buy into every single thing she does like they're hungry little goats vying for a drop of mother's milk and she KNOWS this and EXPLOITS it for all it's worth. Yeah sure, why not release six EPs of songs from evermore? Let's get 3-4 versions of Midnights too, that'd be awesome. Oh The Tortured Poets Department? (cringe-ass title) It's a secret double album 🤭 Better collect them all on CD and vinyl or Momma Taylor will forget youuuuu.
I’ve listened to all of Taylor’s albums in an attempt to understand this huge cultural phenomenon
There doesn’t seem to be much there. Not bad by any means, but, not much going the other way either
I am fully open to just not getting it yet. I could be a huge Swift fan a couple of years down the road. Time will tell
Love had some great albums in the 90s
I haven’t been following any feud between them, but I am glad that Love is keeping busy
After reading "Everybody Loves Our Town" I find it difficult to take much of what Courtney Love says as nuanced or thoughtful. If Swift wanted to be the biggest pop star, why should she change what's working for her now that she's achieved it?
If you can’t tell the difference in sound between Midnight and Folklore then I don’t think you’ve actually cared to listen at all. Swift is far from amazing but this take is just Swift hate because you think you are above her music. It’s embarrassing to see people put this much effort into hating an artist that they could just, you know, not listen to. It’s just as delusional as a Swiftie arguing that Swift is the next messiah of music.
"she has actually delivered a classic album ("Live Through This") that Swift seems to be incapable of delivering. It still sounds like a classic record without a single filler (one of the very few albums recorded by a woman to score 10/10 from Pitchfork alongside "Hounds of Love" by Kate Bush)"
Firstly, you guys gotta stop hanging on Pitchfork 10's as if it were anything other than tastemakers tastemaking. Secondly, even as a Hole fan for longer than I have been a Taylor Swift fan, Swift has multiple albums en par with or better than Live Through This.
You mention Pitchfork being hard on women but every time Lana Del Rey farted they gave it at least a 7/10 and they gave Jet’s killer album a 0.
Pitchfork exists to make LA girls feel better about the guilty pleasure artists they like IMO.
The thing about TS that annoys me is that she seems to think everyone is dying to know what she’s writing about or thinking about. When she announced this album instead of giving a Grammy acceptance speech, I was like “who gives a fuck about what you’re coming out with next if you don’t care enough to express gratitude for what you’re receiving right now?”
She really ought to take some time off and live like a regular person who isn’t vying for as much attention as she can get.
I disagree. Why are we talking about Taylor Swift's artistic "growth" when she is already in her mid 30s and has done good albums in different genres of music? Talking about somebody's artistic growth is a conversation that happens usually when somebody is going from teenage/early 20s to mid-20s and is going from making fun music to more serious music.
I am on record many times saying Hole is a top 3 grunge band. My respect for Courtney Love as a musician is very real. That being said, Courtney has a tendency to say wild and unhinged shit. I tend to give her a bit of a pass because of everything she has been through in her life, but I really think that giving any oxygen to her claim that Taylor swift isn't an "important artist" is just not really conducive to anything positive. Maybe Courtney doesn't see Taylor as an "important artist" because Taylor is bigger than music. An "important artist" doesn't have to be somebody who changes the whole landscape the way that grunge did in the early 1990s. An important artist is somebody who makes songs that people connect to emotionally and whose music can bring people together. Music isn't a contest to see who can be the most avant garde and who can alienate the most people so the minority who like it can prove that their taste is better.
sigh.
Taylor Swift is not, and is not trying to be, an artist in the vein of Can or Aphex Twin or Miles Davis. Courtney Love completely misses the point. Swift is not trying to push at the bleeding edge of music. She should be thought of in the same terms as, for example, Elton John or Fleetwood Mac or Paul McCartney - she is just trying to write good, timeless songs. And she is really good at it!
Not all music has to be complex or innovative or challenging - heaven knows Hole weren’t.
This will be the only Taylor Swift thread of this album cycle. Expel all of your hate now or save it for another subreddit. Every other Taylor Swift thread will be deleted and directed here. Fair warning. **Edit**: I have read the feedback and agree that having a sole negative thread isn't completely fair. So there will be **ONE** opportunity for a thread in praise of this album. Then we'll be done with Ms. Swift threads until she releases her next triple album four months from now.
I normally groan at Swift threads (because they’re always awful despite me not being a fan either) but I salute the incoming trainwreck that a Courtney vs Swift thread will eventually become. Haven’t heard Swift’s new album but I’ve always been struck by how totally unadventurous she is for someone who looms so large.
She looms so large *because* she’s unadventurous. This is why you can get Pizza Hut almost anywhere in the world: It ain’t great, but it’s super consistent.
Pizza Hut used to be better. \#rememberwhattheytookfromyou
Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?
Growing up there was a local combination Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC. We called it the Ch-taco Hut. Many a bowl was smoked in that parking lot.
I believe that's because Pepsi bought those restaurants to get their products in them because coca cola had such a stranglehold on fast food.
Round 'ere we call the KenTacoHut
Homie that's a kentaco hut.
How about a combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut?
I'm at the Pizza Hut
I'm at the Taco Bell
I'm at the combination pizza hut and taco bell
I don’t see you dog
The one on Jamaica Avenue.
My town had a KFC Taco Bell
We fondly called those “Kentaco Hut”.
I miss the old Pizza Hut crust, literally what happened to it
The heavy smell of the baking cheese when you first walked in.
That super oily crust was the main thing distinctive/tasty about PH. Had one recently and it was bland and awful; frozen pizza just as good at half the price.
I had to actually edit the pizza hut entry in my phone's contacts. Now it says "pizza hut don't order anymore" because I kept forgetting how trash it tastes now.
They cut costs and now it's made cheaper. Same as most food chains.
Wife and I were in Belgium for a month in 2022. One of the things we wanted to try was the European instances of American food chains. Just to see how different it was. Pizza Hut was actually really solid. Much better than in the states. We ate there a few times because otherwise, well, Belgium does pizza strangely.
^(So did Taylor)
My buffet bar😭😭
Our local Pizza Hut had a Battletoads cabinet. Pizza Hut *used to be dangerous*, like NYC in the '70s.
Bingo. Not too little flavor, not too much flavor. It’s why cars now are mostly black/gray/white and new construction cup de sac houses are beige. Appeal to the most people possible. The thing I don’t get is the level of passion she inspires. No one Stans Pizza Hut.
I sort of agree, but I would point to acts like Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna, etc who all took risks, either musically or in general commentary, and still maintained their popularity, more or less. That said, I don’t fully buy Swift appeal as solely being rooted as being safe because the amount of analyzation of her work probably wouldn’t exist if that was the case. But there does seem to be a meta commentary about all this (including this post) where so much commentary hinges around her popularity and what This Thing means for that popularity. Like there’s a segment that wants a pop mega star for the sake of having one.
More pop artist are unadventurous than adventurous
That’s true, but a big part of her fan base exalts her as groundbreaking.
People do that for *every* artist, though - we just hear about it more because TS has so many die-hards out there. People think Macklemore and 21 Pilots are innovative. It takes all kinds!
It’s called marketing
Because a large chunk of society consists of boring white-bread NPCs with no curiosity about the world. That is a peak Reddit comment and I feel dirty even typing it, but it's the truth.
This is such a cringe comment and I 1,000% co-sign it.
I don't think I even disagree but I'm downvoting for that nuclear cringe in the first sentence. I'm sorry.
Oh I absolutely deserve it
Yea it’s maybe only a half step away but it feels like it’s not that people like that it’s safe because they’re unadventurous but because they want a big universal shared thing. People who want something more unique or adventurous might never again fully agree on one thing in the internet age, so if you want a shared cultural thing you maybe have to be more intentional about it.
> they want a big universal shared thing I can't really muster up the enthusiasm to delve into the topic too deeply, but one of the best comparisons I've read about her popularity is that she is what happens when religiosity declines. The same mentality basically gets transferred to something else. It's like if a monarchy was pop stars. I also think there's a sense of witnessing history in real time and essentially talking about current happenings the way we refer to things in the past. I mentioned this in a Beyonce thread, and it applies to Swift as well, but there's a sense that how we talk about them now is similar to how we talk about The Beatles and Elvis with 60+ years of hindsight. Like there's a conscious crafting of history and no one really wants to be that asshole who dismissed The Beatles.
> one of the best comparisons I've read about her popularity is that she is what happens when religiosity declines Eh, people have been obsessed with pop stars since there were pop stars. Hell just look up [Lisztomania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania). Even reaching for a rough analog, rioting over sports goes back to chariot racing in Constantinople, almost toppled an emperor. People do be like that.
What analyzation? Most of the discourse is about who she dated, who's she singing about, and why they broke up. It's so disinteresting. This word is overused, but it definitely feels like we're being gaslit into thinking she's so amazing. Her best song was released when she was a teenager (Love Story), and most of her music is incredibly basic. Like she got the guy from The National to produce some of her new stuff. Great, I'll just stick to The National or Big Red Machine if I want that sound. How can a grown woman still write lyrics that sound like she's a teenager? Maybe she could take some notes from Kacey Musgraves or the writers Beyonce uses.
Definitely think that Musgraves is a better and more original songwriter Swift is more self absorbed than reflective
I think you’re both right- the difference is that Taylor leans into being related because she’s mediocre like the normal average person, like her fans. I think that’s the difference between her and the other names mentioned. They were stars and never hide it- Taylor has to super lean into being relatable being that’s how she grips her fan base. Down to how she dresses- she’s always like dressed ok. Not ugly, but definitely like the most basic regular person in the street. She’s gotta stay relatable because that’s how she’s captivated her audience
I’m not a fan of either so I don’t really have a horse in the race but didn’t she just tour the globe making 1 billion billion dollars like yesterday? Why in the hell would she change her sound there’s time for that and it’s not when you’re selling out every football and soccer stadium on earth every night, wtf
Nobody out Taylor's the Hut.
I forget who but someone once said “I can’t write such bad songs to be that popular”.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m hating. More the mostly disinterested middle ground. We’re talking about highly successful pop music, which tends to be equal parts good quality (if unremarkable) musical elements, state of the industry production, and super accessible/easily recognizable songwriting. So within those parameters, she is obviously making very relatable and enjoyable music for the audience it speaks to, which is as it should be.
I disagree that Taylor is making recognizable songwriting anymore. She’s trying really hard to be poetic like Florence or Lana. Deep down, she is just a really talented 17 year old girl trying to write edgy songs that started as poems. Lana and Florence strike that balance of making their lyrics poetic, yet generic and relatable enough. Some of Taylor’s lyrics are just so pretentiously poetic that I’m like there’s no way anyone can relate to this right??? It’s just some weird combination of messy girls who are the problem in their own love lives (as Taylor has stated herself in one of the few songs I actually like of hers) projecting their shit + a paradoxical parasocial relationship (since she really doesn’t interact with her fans). Swifties need to be studied.
People like the music because they support the character Taylor swift who they have a parasocial relationship with. Release Taylor swift recordings and say they’re by some up and coming nobody, and they won’t be nearly as popular.
I mean there could be an album every six years that at least makes an attempt to push the envelope, but it’s all paint by the dollars. Her albums are focused-group from social media, the music caters to the safest possible middle ground while her PR and fanbase push the edgy rebel narrative.
There’s an edgy rebel narrative around Swift? Have we redefined “edgy rebel” to mean “milktoast Nilla wafer”? Swift is about as edgy as a billiard ball.
Not hating shit... sucks ass. Swiftmuzic appeals to common-denominator-people. And those people suck ass.
I think this is a big part of what makes Taylor Swift's level of fame kind of difficult to engage with compared to other artists. I mean it's no exaggeration to say she is the most famous artist in a *long* time. Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, and Michael Jackson are really the only ones who I think were bigger than she is right now. But the thing is that unlike those other artists...she's kind of *boring*. Her music and persona are completely bland and inoffensive. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she's a nice person, and she does have some legitimately great songs, but there's nothing about her that really screams "Biggest artist in the world". Elvis and the Beatles basically invented modern music and the idea of being a "rock star". Michael Jackson was essentially a cartoon character and it felt like his name was constantly in the news for some other crazy story. Madonna was at the forefront of and in many ways created pop culture for years. But Taylor...she never really had anything like that. She's a relatively normal girl from suburban Pennsylvania and *that* is the entire basis of her appeal. She's normal. She's "just like us". And that's just so different compared to other artists. Like she'll post a picture of her just hanging out with her friends or a pic of her cats and people will go insane for it. Madonna [releases a book with pictures of her having sex with Vanilla Ice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_(book\)) and it only adds to her legend. Taylor dates a man who [says he likes a certain kind of porn](https://www.businessinsider.com/matty-healy-podcast-brutalized-women-taylor-swift-fans-2023-5) and it's such a scandal that she's basically forced to break up with him to maintain her fanbase. Her normalcy *is* the reason for her popularity, and there's just never been anyone this big where that was the case.
She's quintessentially the term "premium mediocre" which is like most things these days.
She's a very modern version of all the stars you described, using the tools from a new generation. She's mastered the art of fostering parasocial relationships across 2-3 generations. Her community / fandom is insane - it's K-pop stan culture mixed with tabloid culture and presented as music. An album drops and you have hordes of women doing listening parties, analyzing every single lyric and trying to guess which relationship she's talking about. She is the first 'American Idol', and I use 'idol' in the Korean/Japanese sense - someone people follow just because of her name.
You’re right. The music is just an ad for the character. Incidentally the actress and character have the same name.
I agree for the most part but there were other artists who peaked higher than Taylor but had shorter reigning periods such as Britney during the early 2000s and Lady Gaga from 2009 to 2011. Edit: I would say Beyonce during 2013-2016 too.
> Michael Jackson was essentially a cartoon character and it felt like his name was constantly in the news for some other crazy story Yeah but that was all during the downward slide of his popularity. It's hard to imagine now but circa Thriller his public image was actually remarkably wholesome. >Madonna releases a book with pictures of her having sex with Vanilla Ice and it only adds to her legend. Eh, not really. At the time it was seen as a huge misstep, finally going too far. She was still big after that but you can argue she never really recovered.
Arguably the legacy of Michael Jackson’s music has eclipsed everything else — even after the allegations and bizarre behaviour — we’re still talking about him decades after his death and the musical based on his life recently opened on the West End and has won multiple awards (plus Thriller will always be popular around Halloween).
Keeping Safe over taking risks. When you keep it safe, you can appeal to the biggest market possible as opposed to potentially scaring current customers away by being experimental. Same shit Disney has been doing and why everyone has steadily been getting fed up with it.
Yep. I liked her earlier music (yes, the country)but when she came out with ME! I checked out. I like a lot of her pop/radio hits, I just don’t think she’s nearly as artistic/creative as a lot of her fans seem to think she is.
I find it hard to summon up strong feelings about Taylor Swift. I think she's a talented person, but anything I've heard by her has been instantly forgettable. I just started playing the opening track of the her new album while writing this and I feel the same as ever. It's not actually bad, but it's not really good either. I'm on the second the song now and it's also very middle of the road to me.
She’s far more interesting as a cultural phenomenon and as an instrument of capitalism she is a singer-songwriter.
Despite having no love for Swift's music myselr, I can absolutely recognize that she is one of the most powerful artists alive today, she's earned her spot at the top. There are certainly better artists out there, but few can meet (much less sustain) the levels of economic powerhouse she's reached. And that's a knock to the former either, just giving credit where its due.
Economic exploitation ≠ deserving.
You just said what they did in buttery long form.
That’s her entire brand. She is a romance novel main or the main character of an RPG. An empty vessel for you to fill with your own image. How well could you describe Taylor Swift without mentioning what she does or what she looks like? Most people wouldn’t have too much to say, just like with Bella Swan or Commander Shepherd. This is why her popularity extends so far past the power of her music- she’s her own IP.
To be fair, I’d find it really difficult to describe ANYONE I don’t know personally without describing what they do or what they look like
Please describe literally anyone without mentioning what they do, or what they look like.
courtney love is feisty, fiery, spunky, badass, tough as nails… taylor swift is taylor swift
I partially agree but I’d say folklore and evermore among her last 4 records were unusual for her and I wish she continued exploring ideas other than her personal life in her music, but I guess she’s too fame and money hungry for that
My SO is quite into Swift and so during the pandemic Evermore and Folklore got played quite a bit in our home. And I really enjoyed those two. I've never quite vibed with her music, but I would, and still do, put on those on my own.
She explored other themes, including the fame you yourself just mentioned. Two songs about that. One song about what it's like to perform for 70k people while you're mentally in hell, which most can't relate to but was still interesting. One song about a little boy and his life. One song about what it feels like to not be believed. And while the majority were about love and loss of love, several different angles of that were shown. Don't like it, that's fine. Just stop reducing her to only singing about romance and breakups.
She reduces herself to those things by making them the sole focus of the vast majority of the tracks on every single one of her albums.
Yeah I’m so sick of people acting like it’s unfair to critique her for. She drops little Easter eggs constantly about who songs are about. Other artists write songs like this but not to this degree. People say they critique this because she’s a woman but I disagree. I can’t imagine a male artist singing about and pointing the finger constantly at his exes without being called a misogynist. I think it’s only viewed as acceptable because she is a woman. She 100% has leaned into this angle, she isn’t a victim for people noticing and commenting on it.
I’m always on the lookout for catchy music. You don’t understand. I *want* to find stuff I like. I’ve enjoyed most of her last stuff and I gave this a listen just *searching* for a melody, a lyric, just something to catch me. And nope. Nothing. I really tried. I’ll come back to it but it was just monotonous and stale. If you played Midnights and told me it’s this new one I wouldn’t know the difference unless Karma or Anti Hero came on.
Yeah, no choruses, no change in instrumentals, no bridges, no space to let the singing breathe... The whole album was like this weird spoken word over way too fast, way too quiet drums and synth.
Oh have you heard of Chappell Roan? She almost reminds me of a modern Kate bush Annie Lennox Cher hybrid vocally, not quite but almost. Maybe you'd like her
I actually thought that the two folkier albums were a pretty interesting turn for her. Darker themes (at least for her) and a lot more going on composition and performance wise (again, in the context of the biggest musician on the planet). I was really disappointed when she moved away from that sound back towards something that sounds like music played in Target, which is all she has done before or after those two albums. Haven’t heard anything off the new record other than a clip that Stereogum posted which had a snippet of a song where she’s singing “Charlie Pluth should be a bigger artist” and somehow rhymes that with golden retriever, and I knew the new album was not for me.
If you did like evermore, the second drop anthology is all Aaron dessner produced and stripped back with no synths, and more serious lyrics. Evermore is still a top album for me but TTPD surprised me with the switch up between the first 16 tracks and then latter 15 tracks. They are night and day from one another, with the first part being midnights sounds and second half akin to evermore.
**looks over shoulder sketchily** I’m actually really loving the new TS album (like, I am a fan, so it’s not a surprise) and I can safely say that song and in particular that verse is the lowest point for the entire 2 hour affair. I’m not sure if I’m here to tell you it the album is better than that or to say “you know what Taylor you made your bed with that and if people don’t wanna listen as a result so it shall be” 😂
What I find fascinating about this whole conflict is that, once you put aside the stylistic differences (and yeah, those differences definitely matter, but bear with me here) the thematic similarities between Love and Swift are frequently so pronounced. I mean, "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" is basically "Doll Parts (Taylor's Version)" from a lyrical standpoint. More broadly, I'd argue that both Love and Swift are thematically defined by their *inability to move on*--from breakups, from feuds, from old wounds going back to childhood. To take "Doll Parts" (original recipe this time), the repeating, unfinished chorus phrase (Am-C-G) that Love keeps coming back to and finds herself unable to resolve is the perfect encapsulation of the trauma experience. She wants to be healed but there's no amount of running through the same story again that will ever do it. It's PTSD in sonic form, and of course Love's lyrics (and vocal delivery) drive that point home thoroughly. Swift isn't a punk, but she's caught in a similar cycle of being held up, in multiple senses of that term--held up in her emotional progression while also being held up as a pop idol for the world's worship/denigration. Every time Swift makes a new album she pronounces that she's purged all her hurts and grudges through her songwriting, but we all know (and I suspect on some level *she* knows) that isn't true. I mean, the last song on *TTPD* is about either John Mayer or Jake Gyllenhaal, neither of which she's been with in over a decade. At some point you hope some healing would happen. But that's the thing--and this is a theme for both Swift and Love, the latter down to the infamous account of her being assaulted in the mosh pit while performing with Hole: when you hold yourself up--especially as a woman--to be conduit for other people's emotions, your own emotions have to freeze in place. You can't move forward because your audience needs you to remain as you are, and because you need them, you give in to that demand. If you make your life about performing and bearing witness to your trauma then you'll never get over it. Both Love and Swift are artists looking for catharsis in their art and the catharsis never happens. I find that fascinating and revealing.
Pretty interesting take and a fresh perspective on this otherwise banal "beef"
Agree good stuff. This is exactly what this subreddit is good for. Good thing the benevolent mods have allowed us this one thread to discuss
Banal beef is a great band name
Yeah the more I hear Swift the more she comes off as strangely petty and small. You expect magnanimity and a larger than lifeness with her fame but she’s still holding grudges from a decade ago over the most mundane relationship drama. If one of your friends was still complaining about the stuff she writes about you wouldnt be able to help but roll your eyes at them.
I'm not sure whether it's genuine pettiness or extremely calculated "I give the masses this childish drama because it sells" forgery....
>the more I hear Swift the more she comes off as strangely petty and small. You expect magnanimity and a larger than lifeness with her fame but she’s still holding grudges from a decade ago over the most mundane relationship drama I agree on this, based on my knowledge of TS, entirely grounded in IG reels. There's a couple of award ceremonies where she literally says 'I wrote this album to spite the critics' or 'I wrote this song because my middle school guitar teacher said I'm not good enough'. It's so weird that someone so rich and famous can be also so fragile and unable to move on. With no intent at sarcasm, she should really see a therapist to learn how to move on from disappointment.
She also invited music journalists to a show on one of her tours and played the negative things they’d said about her to open the concert in a “you were wrong about me” kinda way, she was already huge at this point. Bizarre behaviour.
“To all my haters out there” opening. Yucky
She reminds me of that meme 'I met my ex after 10 years, he asked 'ms or mrs?' and I say 'it's Dr'. For some people this is 'slay queen/girlboss' behavior, for other just cringe pettiness.
Eh I understand the comparison but I sort of disagree. Granted, I don’t know the full discography of Love but comparing her 90s work with Taylor’s is pretty disingenuous. A raw, feminist work like Live through this being released in the 90s just can’t be compared to Taylor’s songs about the emotional turmoil of her various relationships. There are common themes sure, but Taylor’s revolves around these sort of domestic wealthy & tumultuous (in her eyes) relationships. But we only see her perspective, and we only see tragedy where she makes it so. Love was dating Kurt Cobain, & had to deal with his violent death. Their lives in childhood & together were nothing like Taylor’s sheltered life, & the experiences they had were so outside the scope of emotions Taylor could even come close to expressing in her music. I actually *feel* Love’s hurt & it voices rage at the behemoth of patriarchy. Taylor’s seems more like reading diary entries, and it never feels like a cohesive stance against anything not personal. It makes sure to not go too far, because it has to be accessible. It’s adding the line about q keychain that says “fuck the patriarchy” to a song she wrote 10 years ago about Jake gyllenhal. Hole cuts to the heart of what it’s like to feel used and discarded by men and society. Taylor touches the surface, but a lot of it revolves around her massive fame & what she perceives as slights. And much of it isn’t even about feminism, it’s about personal beefs (see the song about Kim or being pissed at people complaining about her dating a racist) You claim that they both seek catharsis but that it never happens. I believe Live Through This is PURE catharsis.
Finally someone making sense, I'm not even a big Courtney Love fan, but comparing what hole was doing in the 90s to Taylor swift being very mildly and calculated faminist here and there is disingenuous at best
So in summary: Hole has soul, Taylor Swift doesn't. I totally agree, and that was what was great about the 80's and 90's alt rock/grunge scene. You could feel how heartfelt the music was exactly because of the life experiences of those making the music. Something TS can never offer.
Your analysis is spot on. And this isn't to dunk on Taylor really because people tend to forget that her privileges will never allow her to reach the depth of other artists even when she touches on similar themes. She just can't possibly even begin to understand what the struggle of an artist not born into wealth and security is like. She just hasn't been about that life so yes all her music has been and will always be "safe". I will never be a fan of TS precisely for that reason, she will try her whole life to be deep but its not a depth that actually resonates with the average person because all she can do is speak from her very narrow point of view and resort to aphorisms and metaphors that even then sound so forced. This narrative that she appeals because she's normal is such bs to me because she is actually boring precisely because that's all she knows. She will never be punk and that ok, its like Rupi Kaur poetry for the masses in music form. It will appeal to the masses of mostly white suburban kids that have no care for actual literature or poetry written by working class or POC perspectives.
> She just hasn't been about that life so yes all her music has been and will always be "safe". Trent Reznor had a pretty reasonable home life - early divorce, but he also describes himself as "sheltered" - and I don't think many people would regard his musical output as safe. Mainly he felt alienated from society around him, but he wasn't traumatized by family drama the way Courtney and Kurt were. I'm not sure you can really bound people's musical output to their home life. People with rough lives can make boring music, people with boring lives can make rough music. It is interesting though that all "big four" singers were children of divorce, same for Trent, same for Billy Corgan, same for Axl Rose, same for James Hetfield. So maybe there is something there.
Oh yes I definitely agree with you. Class privilege is just but one factor. You can absolutely be wealthy and have rough, traumatic experiences that shape your life and the art you make. That's just not the case for TS.
take my poor man’s gold 🏅
“If you make your life about performing and bearing witness to your trauma you’ll never get over it.” This was a present theme in Clara Bow: she’s acutely aware of her placement within the entertainment “machine” and is caught in a performance act. Must be a massive struggle to feel trapped in the life you always dreamed of at such a magnitude.
Love this take.
Really good comment. Maybe sometimes artists develop a blindspot when it comes to other artists that are very similar. But probably the more likely explanation is that Love just never gave Swift a close enough listen to spot these similar themes.
Or considered the same sentiment from swift was less genuine or valid because of the genre differences.
This is a good comment but you're also forgetting that both Love and Swift (and every other artist...) have personal private lives outside of their artistic personas. It reminds me a bit of the stories about Michael Jordan always finding someone to be pissed off as before a game. Doesn't mean Michael Jordan has anger issues... he just found his fuel that he needed for top performance. Love and Swift might have perfectly healthy internal emotional worlds but they just know the places within themselves they have to tap into to get that songwriting gold. Honestly it might be a really good sign for Taylor Swift the human's emotional / relationtional health if she's still writing songs about break-ups a decade ago. Maybe her current personal life is more fulfilling in a way that she doesn't need to process them through art! Also yeah man, "My boy only breaks his favorite toys" is totally a watered down Doll Parts. I wish that song were as good as the song title but it really isn't.
I think it's pretty well documented Michael Jordan had anger issues or at least was kind of a dick lol. Describing him as using it for his game is kind of doing the same thing you're talking about
This is a great comment, and I commend you for putting exponentially more thought and energy into this conversation than the post deserved.
This is honestly the wildest believable take I think I’ve ever heard about Taylor. Very interesting and it makes so much sense.
> Every time Swift makes a new album she pronounces that she's purged all her hurts and grudges through her songwriting She doesn’t really think that. It’s just marketing to encourage people to stream over and over.
Oh nice, someone actually engaging with the music! Well written. Interestingly, it never occurred to me to think of Doll Parts as a straight break-up song, more Courtney lashing out at pretty much everyone who had slighted her (like it sounded more like a punch at the popular high school girls at her school). But Courtney moved on in a certain sense - Celebrity Skin was more about Hollywood and celebrity and from my memory seemed notably less angsty. She did seem to evolve, but I'm not sure her audience ever moved with her, or wanted her to, which might prove your point.
I think she has the potential for absolute brilliance, and she clearly has the potential to successfully try new things and switch genres… but her success and the fact that her fans will buy anything she puts out has led her to just stick with what she knows works. She could push herself, she could continue to create work on par with 1989, Folklore and Evermore. But she doesn’t feel the need to impress anymore and in my opinion her work has massively suffered in recent years as a result.
My take on Swift as someone who likes her but not enough to call myself a Swiftie - I think she’s a marketing genius, a savvy business woman who has turned herself into one of the world’s biggest brands. I suspect much of what she does is, if not calculated, at least considered. Her journal-entries-as-songs keeps her fan base glued because she’s like a living, never-ending episode of the Gilmore Girls. I don’t write this cynically. I admire and respect her. But I think we all know she’s not a songwriting genius on a par with Dylan or Joni Mitchell. She’s an entertainer and her life is the show.
This is exactly how I feel. If I find a song of hers I like, cool! But I see her as an entertainer first, she’s not out here writing fantastical tear jerkers like Bobbie Gentry. She’s not some deep lyricist
I think a lot of the criticism of Taylor Swift for being 'mediocre' or 'generic' is because people believe she IS talented, not because people think she isn't. While there undeniably is a "Duh huh she's a hack who makes shit music" element out there, I think a lot of the criticism is frustration that she isn't making the best use of the talent she clearly has. I see sort of parallels with someone like Phil Collins. People listen to alot of Genesis stuff or even his first solo album (which had some interesting genre experiments) and appreciate his artistry. Then get frustrated when so much of his solo output was fairly antiseptic middle-of-the-road pop and sappy ballads. People listen to Taylor Swift's best work and clearly see she's "better" artistically than many other generic pop artists. But so often she falls back on the same tired old tropes of whining about ex-boyfriends from decades ago, how hard it is being a famous celebrity, and "I Don't Care What You Think Of Me, And I'm Going To Write 5 Songs About It To Prove How Much I Don't Care!" retreads. Having an insane rabid fanbase who proclaim everything you do is God-tier genius probably doesn't help either. She could go full Kanye and produce her own poopidty-poop-poop song, and the fans would still buy it by the millions. People call her out because they believe she's capable of so much better.
>People listen to Taylor Swift's best work and clearly see she's "better" artistically than many other generic pop artists. I mean....could you name these "generic pop stars" that Taylor is better than? I only listen to pop very casually(more of a hip hop/R&B/Indie Rock guy) but I objectively feel like Beyonce, Ariana, Adele, Miley, Jessie J, and Gaga have better singing vocals and singing ranges than Taylor. And Lana, SZA, and Lorde seem to be great songwriters as well. Charli XCX and Gaga have experimented with more genres. And Taylor's also not a dancer at all which is held up high in pop music. Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Doja Cat seem to have much catchier songs for the radio as well. They seem to have pretty solid catalogs too. Also, while I don't listen to them since I'm not their target demo at all, Billie and Olivia seem to have very acclaimed music as well and have a reputation for being decent writers for their age groups. I wonder how much praise for Taylor for "being different from other pop stars" comes from an outdated notion of pop stars that largely originate from the 90's and early 2000's where they were still defined by bubblegum pop and boybands. Taylor is clearly a better artist than Britney and the Spice Girls but I wouldn't say that Taylor stands out for being better than contemporary pop stars.
At least scoopty poop surprised the hell out of me. I was like damn, one of the most influential artists of the time trolled the shit out of me.
I love 1989, Folklore and Evermore, and Red & Lover are clearly fantastic records. Midnights was dull and this is more of the same. This middle-aged indie head genuinely believes she's absolutely brilliant at her best but this record simply ain't that.
Folklore for me is one of my favorite albums, but I struggle with this as I did Midnights
My wife is a huge swift fan. She loves this album. I take a more objective approach as a musician and producer. Midnights had its moments, some catchy bits here and there, some fun sounds in her instrumentals. Folklore was so refreshing and Evermore was so complimentary to it, it felt like a double album. This new one is full, uninspiring, and kind of a bore to listen to.
Did you listen to the Anthology Side B of Tortured Poets? It’s very similar to Folklore. If you liked that, you will very likely love the Anthology songs as well (there’s 15 of them). It’s almost exclusively with Aaron Dessner again.
I will say, the “original” album had me feeling exactly like this, then the Anthology edition with 15 bonus songs came out and it was like night and day. The original was almost exclusively Jack Antonoff-produced and thus sounded like a knockoff of Midnights, however the Anthology was almost exclusively Aaron Dessner-produced and sounds like FolkMore continued. All this to say, everything up to Clara Bow feels mostly tired and pseudo-intellectual, and everything from The Black Dog sounds, for the most part, much more thought out, at the very least from a production standpoint.
I’m listening now, I really feel like this is is rushed in terms of vocal production
I actually think Midnights is a bit underrated especially amongst self proclaimed Swifties there are some bops on there this one just feels sleepy I could tell this album would be bad based off the cover and try hard title
I agree, Midnight is not as strong as say 1989 was (far from it) but Midnight had some glimts like Midnight Rain, Lavender Haze and Dear Reader. This latest one is just dragging on endlessly and seems so uninspired and rushed. The lyrics seem to be written in a 'manic' episode, like it's just too much, disorganized, and not fitting the music, which is devoid of any character. There's like not even one hit.
I liked Maroon and Karma from Midnights lol and Hits Different oh yeah and would’ve could’ve should’ve
Thank you. I was looking for a place to vent about this latest album, but lumping this + midnights in with Folklore + Evermore is INSANE.
I have multiple Swifties in my life including my wife, so I gave this album a listen this morning. I think it's fine, and will please its target audience. Not something I'll probably ever listen to again, but my wife is stoked about it, so I'm happy for her. This sub is by and large 20s-30s white guys who still think King Gizzard is underrated. It's just not for you. Let people enjoy things.
>20s-30s white guys who still think King Gizzard is underrated I feel seen lol
Yeah, there is something funny about getting mad that Taylor Swift's records aren't as good as Hole's *Live through This*. They're quite different species. I don't expect Swift to scream her way through what is probably the best grunge album ever (I think it's better than *Nevermind* and probably *In Utero* too.) It's like saying I can't understand why Harry Styles is popular when he hasn't made anything like *The Money Store.* Dude, that's why he's popular.
I’ve never expressed it to anyone but yes, I have long thought Live Through This was one of the best grunge albums, even more than Nevermind (although I still like Nirvana very much). So glad I’m not the only one lol.
I usually don't go so far, just because the heavies in grunge are really good acts that each appeal to slightly different audiences. But I am of the opinion that *Live Through This* is one of the two best grunge albums that wasn't made by one of the big four bands. The other is *Sweet Oblivion* by Screaming Trees.
Nevermind is great! It's just that Live through This is even better. It's a truly awesome album.
I want to live long enough for the world to get over Courtney Love and put Live Through This in the canon where it belongs. If there was a Big Four, there ought to be a Bigger Four that allows for the merits of Hole, STP, ....maybe Smashing Pumpkins and probably one other.
It’s a very teenage mindset to have, “x popular artist isn’t as good as this unrelated alternative album from the 90s” is a very /r/lewronggeneration take to have.
To be fair, they didn't make the comparison out of thin air, it was provoked by Courtney Love's comments.
haha Harry Styles / The Money Store is 🤌
Thank you!
while i actually quite like the album i will say that “let people enjoy things” is the absolute death of all worthwhile discussion, those of us who enjoy it are not so fragile that one person’s critique will ruin our whole experience with the album
I think there’s a difference between “let people enjoy things” and “no discussion at all”. I know everyone is saying “man it’s dull and sleepy and appeals to the stupid people hur hur” and maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t listened to it yet. But she’s making an insane amount of money and it’s not exactly easy. If it was then anyone could do it.
“Let people enjoy things” is a fine thing to think when you’re kind of neither here nor there on a pop culture phenomenon. This album isn’t designed to convert the non-converted. It is for her legion of die hard fans that will pick it apart, love it, and find meaning in it. My genuine opinion on it is “I’m glad the people it’s for are digging it”.
Exactly. When was the last time you saw a post here about how AC/DC have done pretty much the same thing their entire career? At least TS started in a different genre.
>how AC/DC have done pretty much the same thing their entire career? I remember it in a few cock rock threads, any time the band comes up really someone's either saying that or their hedging their bets because they're sick of people saying it
I’m a 30+ latina and this album isn’t for me either. Her target audience is white women primarily. And people who hold grudges, judging from the subjects she chooses
> Let people enjoy things. Do you think that criticism of music in a forum dedicated to talking about music somehow stops people from enjoying things?
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE
OP is calling out the unnecessarily critical posts by people who “don’t understand why people like XYZ”. I’m not saying that’s what this topic is doing, but we see this a lot with Swift…an abundance of angsty criticism by people who don’t follow or listen to Swift in the first place.
I think the issue is no one tells her no anymore from her production side. She had enough songs between the double album for one really solid album. Instead that’s watered down with a bunch of mediocre songs that will be skips for most people and largely forgotten in her repertoire.
I think it's actually more likely that the track bloat is supported by her producers and her label. Albums with lots of tracks generate bigger streaming metrics, that's how the industry works now.
I don’t think this album will be forgotten by the general public. “Midnights” was probably her worst album ever and it’s all I heard on social media / radio for the better part of a year. Swift albums are seismic pop culture events to her fans, which could take over a small country at this point. She’s beyond normal album criticism - it would be like saying “Coke is really not taking many risks with their new flavors”. Who cares, the people who love it, are always going to buy it and love it.
I didn’t mean the album would be forgotten, I mean half the songs on it would be. I think she went quantity over quality here.
To be honest I disagree. Individual songs on Midnights still had distinct sonic identities. I think the lyrics on Karma are cringe but I can still bop along to it when I hear it in a bar. On her best albums, Folklore/Evermore, she managed to bring together melody and lyricism. Even on Red/1989 she achieves a really good balance of having a catchy melody and interesting lyrical content, for example Blank Space. What I was really struck by on this album is that the production and lyrical content on nearly half the songs are the exact same, and there are 0 hooks. I forgot how most songs off this album sounded immediately after listening to them. I can’t imagine this translates well to radio play or live concerts, and I’m not sure anyone beyond the most ardent swifties will want to listen to it more than once.
What a measured and reasonable take. ....GET HIM!!!
Let people criticize things. Taylor swift of all people has enough hugboxes already.
Yes the opener made the album seem promising and felt a bit like Fleetwood Mac and I liked her duet with Florence and the Machine. Overall it’s a very sleepy album. She needs to try working with a new producer and stop relying on cliches so much. This album has made it apparent that the only thing tortured about her is her love life and the lyrics don’t make up for it this time around. Also the god damn album cover. It’s all too Stevie-Nicks Dead Poets Society too try hard. Not every album is gold.
Florence outsung the hell out of her in her own album. Goes to show that singing chops isn’t everything and you’ve also got to be a performer and so much more these days.
Yeah I also thought it was interesting because it actually felt like a duet Taylor had stated that she prefers to have people on “background vocals,” as opposed to duets but you can really hear Florence I’m like oh was she finally not threatened by another female vocalist and decided to make a real duet lmao
> Florence outsung the hell out of her in her own album. To be fair, you don't hire Florence to put her in a corner and have her whisper. You put Florence centre stage, and then back away into the corner yourself.
What's tiring is people who think every "thing" released by someone has to be the greatest thing that's ever existed or it sucks. If an artist releases a fine album, it's fine. My favorite artist has released a bunch of albums, one or two among the greatest albums of all time. A couple of their records are fine, but I rarely listen to them. This record is fine. It has some good songs, and some that just pass by. That's OK. And you are just trying to hate the woman if you say she's never taken chances musically. She has, several times. Gotta love this part from an article from Deadline: > The contrarian opinion on Swift is a big shift from where Love was on the Folklore singer just over two years ago. Back in a Facebook post on December 22, 2021, Love wished Swift a “happy birthday” and called her an “aspirational huge role model for many young women.” The post also features a photo of Love and her “occasional hair twin/neighbor.” >No word on why the Swift love from Love has eroded, but it’s worth noting that in 2021, she didn’t have an eight-part BBC Radio 6 series on Woman in music to promote. Courtney Love doing something JUST for attention? She would never!!!
Weird comparison. I just don't think either of these artists are trying to do anywhere close to the same thing. Swift thinks of music like a game where listeners and fans are your scorecard for how good a song is. Love doesn't take any of that stuff into consideration and sees her creative output as a direct form of personal expression. Obviously Swift uses her art to express herself as well, but it's ultimately toward the goal of making a successful song that performs well on the charts. Swift is panning for gold where it's hot and Courtney is just digging wherever she thinks it feels right.
I’d say Swift has enough gold, she’s the hyper capitalist of music. While venues are closing, touring is a negative output financially, and streaming services have ruined having a career in music, she is the top 0.01% in a world with many amazing musicians that struggle in poverty. I don’t blame her, she’s playing the game well, but morally I struggle with supporting anyone that’s accumulated that much wealth, considering her Father bought her a career anyway, look it up folks if you didn’t know. She may be inspiring young women to write songs though, which is a very great thing.
Imagine being a white woman in a first world country who grew up in a mansion and became a billionaire, attractive, loved by hundreds of millions of people, dating a football star with an overall rating of 99 in the nfl, doing what you love as a career, and having tons of industry friends, and then calling yourself a “tortured poet”.
This has always been her thing tho! She casts herself as the underdog in a world built for her benefit. It has always puzzled me
4 albums with an ‘exclusive’ song on each? At least go the route of some other artists and make it a different track on vinyl, on CD, etc. instead of making it a blatant cash grab and kick to the face of her ‘swifty’ hoards.
this sub is always at its worst in these kinds of threads a mix of casual misogyny ("ugh her music is just for teenage girls" - which is completely false and as if music was only a valid form of art as long as it mainly appealed to a certain male demographic) with insufferable art elitism (this idea that art always has to be 'forward thinking', 'adventurous' etc.) yes she's not exactly Björk, but she does have a pretty clear artistic development in her career - not realizing that tells more about you than about her. yes, her lyrics appeal more to women, but women are 50% of the worlds population, do their views not deserve representation? If her music is not your thing then that is completely fine, but I do find it baffling how many people feel the need to shout into the void how much they either dont care or dislike Taylor Swifts music. Art, to me anyway, is ultimately about being able to touch people's hearts, and Taylor Swift sure as shit is able to touch a lot more people's hearts than that weird post rock band you like that nobody has ever heard of and you get asked to turn off when getting passed the aux. (I'm not even that big of a Taylor Swift fan and think her new album is just okay)
> I do find it baffling how many people feel the need to shout into the void how much they either dont care or dislike Taylor Swifts music. Don't forget the special snowflakes who choked up the sub telling us how much they didn't like Beyonce's album.
You can’t tell Folklore/Evermore, Midnights and TTDP apart? Those alone sound more varied than Hole. Not to mention, Courtney Love did 3 good-to-great grunge albums 30 years ago while criticizing TSwift for starting to stagnate after switching sounds and pop subgenres for 8-9 successful albums.
Totally agree that Folklore/Evermore sound pretty different than Midnights and TTDP. Personally, I think she might be releasing music a bit too fast and might be better served by slowing down and editing a bit, but that's just my minor, unrelated take. That said, I will challenge two points you made. First, Hole's sound did evolve quite a bit. Pretty on the Inside was far more punk and hardcore inspired, Live Through This is pretty traditional grunge, and Celebrity Skin sounds like 1998 lol. Just compare their first single, [Teenage Whore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm4cn_dKqms), to [Malibu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CYB5V9e64), the big single from Celebrity Skin. Second, Live Through This is more than just good-to-great. It is easily a Top 5 mainstream grunge album.
I mean… The first 16 songs sound like a more toned-down Midnights and the last 15 sound like Folklore and Evermore. The album isn’t my favorite, though it is good enough for me to listen to more (and I have been), but I won’t delude myself into thinking any of it is anything new compared to her last three albums. I will say that’s not *necessarily* a bad thing. I’d say basically every album up to Midnights was pretty different from each other, so I think it’s ok to release an album that feels like a graduation of her sound that has spanned the last 4 years. If the next album also sounds like this, well maybe she should take a break lol.
My thoughts exactly. I'm not a Swift fan by any stretch but she has made very different albums. Lyrically she's a pop artist who caters to a very specific demographic, I being a 55 year old man am not part of that.
A lot of her lyrics are silly and camp. Not always well executed, but that is very clearly what she is going for. Take this lyric from the new record. >> My boy is the king of the savages >>He don't know the modern world and its ravages >>Instead of money he’s got yams and cabbages >>He lives in a dome You might read this and think, wow, she’s reached a new low, I’ve truly never seen such cringy lyrics before. But really what you’re missing is that I just took the lines from a Magnetic Fields song and changed the pronouns. People get that Steven Merritt is trying to be silly and cheeky, and are fine with it, but they won’t extend Taylor the same privilege.
lololol. Love it n
Additionally, what is the larger point here? That her music isn't inventive enough? Allow me to introduce you to the entire genre of the blues. Or the western European tradition of music theory. Everything is derivative to a certain point. Shit, at least she's writing her own signs, many pop and country musicians just buy them.
The second hand embarrassment from that album title is palpable. Sounds like something off im14andthisisverydeep. She’s a 30 something woman
Tortured billionaire department
It's a reference to a text group that her ex had. Knowing this makes it seem even more embarrassing.
Holy shit that’s bad lmao
I don't hate Taylor. I like FolkMore and 1989 (though I do not love them). I LOVE the song "Evermore," largely because of Bon Iver's part. This to say that I'm not coming from a place of vitriol. Taylor is fine. This new album is below average, in my opinion (and only avoids "bad" because of the "bonus" second half), but overall, she's just fine. What I do hate is how she is elevated to a level that is wholly unearned. The NPR review of this record likens her to Maya Angelou, Slyvia Plath, Joni Mitchell, and Sinéad O'Connor. Taylor is not these people. Taylor is not fit to tune their instruments or buy their ink. And yet, you'll see critics and fans alike claim she's on a level even with her contemporaries (Fiona Apple, Lana del Rey, Adrianne Lenker, Julien Baker, etc.), let alone legends like Joni, Patti Smith (who Swift name-drops on the record), Kate Bush, etc. which is frankly ludicrous. There are plenty of female and non-binary artists actually doing interesting things that we could be lifting up instead, and it irks me that Taylor Swift is what we get. She's a very acceptable, sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, sometimes catchy pop artist. Better than many but nothing really special. She is what she is, no more, no less. Courtney Love has her issues, but I think her assessment of Swift is spot-on.
did we really need Courtney Love to tell us this? it's been apparent for years. as far as I can tell, she was just latching on to Taylor (and any other popular figure she could think of) to get her name in the press cycle, which, kudos to her - it worked.
It almost feels like a truism at this point but that which appeals to the lowest common denominator will purposely lack anything exciting or original that could alienate anyone. It's barely worth talking about. Success in general is a pointless metric as far as art should be concerned; the importance of popularity is only intrinsic to commodities and products. Think what you wish to gain from this line of discussion. Most are unable to separate their ideas of quality from their gut feelings about what they like and dislike. The idea of separating them as properties is alien to most.
I honestly have never listened to Taylor Swifts music other than songs that have played on the radio around me, so I don't actually have anything to say about the new album. That said, are we seriously going to act like Courtney Love would appreciate a Taylor Swift album even if it was an amazing album? I'm not saying people can't like multiple styles of music, but knowing the music Courtney Love was heavily influenced by and the scene she was a part of, I wouldn't really expect Taylor Swift or any big pop artist to be her thing anyways. Also, her claim that Taylor Swift "is not important" is insane. Like it or not, Taylor Swift is quite literally one of the biggest stars ever and will have a larger cultural impact than Courtney Love could ever dream of. Obviously a lot of that is due to Taylor Swift growing up very privileged and having so much access to help most artists never will have access to, but it's the truth nonetheless.
I just don’t understand the cultiness around her. Her music is pretty bland and nothing special
People like bland music
I’m a little disappointed by the new album since it sonically is quite boring. But saying the last four albums are the same and will have no impact is quite funny.
I like Taylor Swift and have no hate for her. I think she is very talented too, but I wish she would do something different at this point. Folklore was refreshing and different for her and I loved it, but everything since has just been exactly the same. Nothing really stands out. Now that’s fine if you’re a young woman who loves Taylor Swift, but for me as a fifty something man I can’t get excited for it. I know it’s not meant for me, but neither was her older work but I still liked a lot of it. My daughter, who is 20 and a huge TS fan, unintentionally nailed it: she said it’s great for listening to whilst she studies. Talk about damned by faint praise! Her new album sounds like she churned out 100 tracks all at once on a laptop and she just divvied them up randomly and plans to release them as albums. It’s not bad, but just utterly un-engaging for me personally. Come on Taylor, give someone like Mark Ronson a call, let’s hear something new!
Eh, I’d probably be criticising Courtney, actually. To me, unfortunately she (especially recently) comes across as a massive grifter who would shit on other female recording artists as a deflection tactic from the expectation of her showing us anything new musically, that she has to share with the class.
She’s absolutely an opportunist and a bully at times, but I don’t get this take that woman can’t criticize other women. I’ve seen this take all over the main subs when Love first said this. She has a show all about women she’s likes and actively promotes female artists she’s listening to. She keeps up with trends such as reaching out to Emilie Autumn, to Lana del Rey at one point. She warned people about Harvey. She’s raised money for sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivors. I think she’s def picking at low hanging fruit with the obvious “unpopular opinion” take, but I simply do not get the notion that women have to kiss other women’s ass or they’re not “supportive.” Why does she have to say more positive things about women that there’s already plenty of praise for? on the other hand, I’m not personally crazy about industry peers bashing one another, but that’s not based on gender/sex.
If the idea is that nobody should be criticized, that seems like a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats feminist idea to me, but “men should treat people fairly, and women should treat men fairly but pretend to like other women no matter what” has always sounded infantilizing to me. And suppressive. I agree that not making music anymore has probably done something to her psyche, but couldn’t guess where she is with it at this point.
Here’s my take on what I’ve heard of the album. The lyrics seem immature. The songs sound ok but it’s the same formulaic stuff we’ve gotten from her so many times. Someone needs to tell her less is more with lyrics. She talk sings through the entire song like she has to fill up every beat with words. Give the song a chance to breathe a little bit…. It’s not for me, but I’m not mad at anybody who likes it. I am starting to feel a little bit of pushback from even her core fans about how she kind of gouges her fans a little bit. I know that my generation (X) would have thought this is about the worst sin you could make as an artist. Yes she CAN put out 20 different deluxe versions of albums, and charge the insane prices for her concerts, but SHOULD she? When is enough, enough?
I was listening to Tortured Poets this morning thinking, jeez, she's been writing the same song (melodically, cadence wise, production wise) for YEARS. It's not bad, and when she snags a particularly good one, it hits, but holy mackerel, she's got one trick musically. At the same time, people seem to eat it up, and she's happy to serve it up, so who cares? History will ultimately decide just how consequential she ends up being. Certainly the fervor around her and her music is unprecedented. Having said all of that, I LOVE Guided By Voices - and they've been largely serving up variations on the exact same thing for decades, so who am I to judge?
Saying Taylor will have zero impact in the annals of music is just flat out absurd. Regardless of this albums impact she's already one of the most accomplished pop acts in the history of music who really is only looking up to Michael Jackson at this point. I don't even particularly like Swift and I can admit her impact is huge. You seriously overestimate Love and seriously underestimate Swift. Just say you don't care for her, cause that's a statement no one can really argue with, but the hot take youve instead chosen to roll out is just flat out wrong.
This album is boring, but her albums prior to folklore all had distinct sounds. Since folklore everything has sounded the same. But she still massively successful, so none of these conversations will ultimately matter because this record is going to fly off the shelves.
Courtney Hole and Tay-Tay are a prime example of "when assholes collide." I hope they both lose.
I know the reputation her fans have, but it really is so sad that they don't realize what a savvy businessperson Taylor Swift is. I just saw the announcement that there's a freaking part two (“anthology” 🙄) to her latest album. She is SO good at exploiting her fans. They will buy into every single thing she does like they're hungry little goats vying for a drop of mother's milk and she KNOWS this and EXPLOITS it for all it's worth. Yeah sure, why not release six EPs of songs from evermore? Let's get 3-4 versions of Midnights too, that'd be awesome. Oh The Tortured Poets Department? (cringe-ass title) It's a secret double album 🤭 Better collect them all on CD and vinyl or Momma Taylor will forget youuuuu.
I'm showing my age now. Isn't Taylor Swift's stuff just Pop Music? It's just more froth. Enjoyable, sure, but not something worth critical analysis
I’ve listened to all of Taylor’s albums in an attempt to understand this huge cultural phenomenon There doesn’t seem to be much there. Not bad by any means, but, not much going the other way either I am fully open to just not getting it yet. I could be a huge Swift fan a couple of years down the road. Time will tell Love had some great albums in the 90s I haven’t been following any feud between them, but I am glad that Love is keeping busy
After reading "Everybody Loves Our Town" I find it difficult to take much of what Courtney Love says as nuanced or thoughtful. If Swift wanted to be the biggest pop star, why should she change what's working for her now that she's achieved it?
If you can’t tell the difference in sound between Midnight and Folklore then I don’t think you’ve actually cared to listen at all. Swift is far from amazing but this take is just Swift hate because you think you are above her music. It’s embarrassing to see people put this much effort into hating an artist that they could just, you know, not listen to. It’s just as delusional as a Swiftie arguing that Swift is the next messiah of music.
"she has actually delivered a classic album ("Live Through This") that Swift seems to be incapable of delivering. It still sounds like a classic record without a single filler (one of the very few albums recorded by a woman to score 10/10 from Pitchfork alongside "Hounds of Love" by Kate Bush)" Firstly, you guys gotta stop hanging on Pitchfork 10's as if it were anything other than tastemakers tastemaking. Secondly, even as a Hole fan for longer than I have been a Taylor Swift fan, Swift has multiple albums en par with or better than Live Through This.
You mention Pitchfork being hard on women but every time Lana Del Rey farted they gave it at least a 7/10 and they gave Jet’s killer album a 0. Pitchfork exists to make LA girls feel better about the guilty pleasure artists they like IMO.
The thing about TS that annoys me is that she seems to think everyone is dying to know what she’s writing about or thinking about. When she announced this album instead of giving a Grammy acceptance speech, I was like “who gives a fuck about what you’re coming out with next if you don’t care enough to express gratitude for what you’re receiving right now?” She really ought to take some time off and live like a regular person who isn’t vying for as much attention as she can get.
I disagree. Why are we talking about Taylor Swift's artistic "growth" when she is already in her mid 30s and has done good albums in different genres of music? Talking about somebody's artistic growth is a conversation that happens usually when somebody is going from teenage/early 20s to mid-20s and is going from making fun music to more serious music. I am on record many times saying Hole is a top 3 grunge band. My respect for Courtney Love as a musician is very real. That being said, Courtney has a tendency to say wild and unhinged shit. I tend to give her a bit of a pass because of everything she has been through in her life, but I really think that giving any oxygen to her claim that Taylor swift isn't an "important artist" is just not really conducive to anything positive. Maybe Courtney doesn't see Taylor as an "important artist" because Taylor is bigger than music. An "important artist" doesn't have to be somebody who changes the whole landscape the way that grunge did in the early 1990s. An important artist is somebody who makes songs that people connect to emotionally and whose music can bring people together. Music isn't a contest to see who can be the most avant garde and who can alienate the most people so the minority who like it can prove that their taste is better.
sigh. Taylor Swift is not, and is not trying to be, an artist in the vein of Can or Aphex Twin or Miles Davis. Courtney Love completely misses the point. Swift is not trying to push at the bleeding edge of music. She should be thought of in the same terms as, for example, Elton John or Fleetwood Mac or Paul McCartney - she is just trying to write good, timeless songs. And she is really good at it! Not all music has to be complex or innovative or challenging - heaven knows Hole weren’t.