Her singing is no better than a karaoke regular. Her songs could be knocked out by any halfway competent 12-year-old. I don't get it.
We've always had pop trash, and that's fine. But people are writing about this rather unspectacular woman like she's some kind of towering, generational talent to stand alongside Kate Bush or Stevie Nicks. And her deranged cult of "swifties" are truly unbearable.
I've been wondering the same thing. I didn't care about her until she kept popping up in NFL discussions, so I tried listening to one of her music videos. Not impressed, and the comments under the video were crazy cult-like stuff.
shareThere’s literally no competition. The music industry has been nonexistent for 20 years.
shareFans are not in love with the music, they're in love with the girl next door success story brand she's created. She herself says it at like every concert apparently, that she's not that talented, because that reads as humble, and that plays into her "gee gosh I'm just a nice country girl who made it through hard work and despite bad boyfriends" image. That's why, the worse she sings, the more she's defended, because she admitted she's bad okay? That said, let people like what they like, taste always changes. I'm sure there were artists you liked as a kid that you'd not listen to once today.
share(Reply in 2 parts for length)
It's a combination of circumstances, I would say. She's pretty, can sing moderately well, and has good publicity, and it today's environment, that's enough. She never would have made it to the big time in the '60s, '70s, or '80s, and possibly not in the '90s.
What changed things to open the way? Probably a lot of little things, but there were two major ones, I think. The first was the rise of the internet, and the ability to download music for free. This alone cut the legs out from under the music industry. You might think that "getting the money out of music" would free up artists, but it's actually the opposite. When studios could make lots of money promoting a great talent, they had an incentive to invest in, and cultivate those talents. They were willing to gamble. When music can be downloaded for free, record sales plummet, studios don't make money, and they become more conservative. They won't take a chance on an unknown artist, and turn to established hit making writers. The great majority of top 40 hits of the last two decades have been written by 2 men: Lukasz Gottwald and Max Martin. They churn out songs for a bunch of different artists, but they write the songs. That's a big difference from the era when classic rock dominated, and every successful band wrote their own hits. But studios were willing to take chances on different artists then, because a great one could make them loads of money. When there is not much money in music anymore, they play it safe, and turn to reliable hit makers. But the result is music is now all too similar. It's like Joe Walsh said: it's all made to a recipe. It's formulaic now, and it's just not as creative.
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The second reason is that Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which changed the law to allow an individual or company to own as many radio stations as it could afford; previously there had been a limit to the number one could own. As a result, a couple of big companies, like iHeartRadio, have bought up all the radio stations in the U.S., and now, instead of programming being decided by local station owners, it’s all dictated by corporate headquarters in New York City. Once again, they play it safe, turning to the reliable hitmakers, and playing only the chart-topping songs. That’s a change from the days when a local station can fall in love with a new artist, promote their material, and introduce it to a wider audience, the way the Canadian rock group Rush was struggling, until a Cleveland radio station, WMMS (100.7 FM), started giving them a lot of air play. That got enough listeners interested, and buying their records, so that their success rippled out from that starting point. That just wouldn’t happen in today’s music landscape.
So I think these two things have made both music studios, and radio stations extremely risk-averse, and only willing to back sure-fire popular artists, and as a result, mainstream music today is mediocre. The creativity and originality is gone.
Thanks for your response. Makes a lot of sense.
shareRUSH is probably in my Top 5 of all time Great Rock & Roll.. Ahhhhh, the song "The TREES".. That's good stuff folks!!
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BlackMass, well said, I couldn't have put it better.
I'm distinctly not in her target audience but I like her songs and voice. She has great vocals (listen to her pure voice without background music) and control and her songs are really catchy and fun to listen to.
I don't care what others think. I don't typically go out of my way to listen to her songs but I have heard many of her songs on radio or Spotify and she is good.
Good music is good music and it all depends on the listener. I don't have to justify why I like what I like to anyone nor do I care about other people's opinions or that they dislike her or her singing. I just don't give a shit if people have diff opinion on her singing or my taste.
Her vocal ability is not the best. Here's a video of her attempting to sing the Keith Whitley song "When You Say Nothing At All" before Alison Krauss (who covered it years ago) comes out to sing it. Listen to the difference. Alison Krauss is a world-class singer and musician. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrG-WFBs-iU
Taylor Swift is an expert at promoting an image that really has nothing to do with vocal talent, and that's the current state of the music industry pretty much across the board.