does anyone listen to Taylor Swift? tell me what the draw is

[Liya]

What a bunch of curmudgeons! Lots of music sucked in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s. I was a huge Alan Parsons Project fan as a teen. From my vantage point today it was god awful, horrible music - just maybe, maybe interesting now from a music production/engineering perspective. Time will tell and kids will look back fondly at the 2010s and 20s as the peak of music. Taylor Swift might be in there, might not.

This is not about any music bands.
This is about current biggest pop star as compared to past biggest pop stars.

 

[Robin L]

Problem is, atm she is called the biggest pop star in the world. If I think about other pop stars from the past (Jackson, Beatles, Queen, Madonna) it looks like we are moving away from the pop territory and getting increasingly closer to the poo territory

A: You're not going far enough into the past. It more or less starts with the introduction of the microphone and Bing Crosby. Then Sinatra, then Elvis.
B: "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts" as Paul Simon once said. "Don't criticize what you can't understand" as Dylan once said. Pop artists are popular because they are popular, this applies to all generations. One shouldn't expect older folk to understand the tastes of the young. Go back to the reviews of the Beatles in High Fidelity magazine for a taste of the incomprehension that the Beatles met while changing the musical landscape.

 

[Liya]

Re The Beatles...

Give her some lsd, maybe she'll be better

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Re The Beatles...

Give her some lsd, maybe she'll be better

Hold on! Aren't "The Last Dinner Party", the new Beatles?
Also, isn't the engrossing element of this thread, still the mystery of the second sentence in the opening post?
My wife does have a theory.

 

[Joe Smith]

The only current "pop-ish" singer/songwriters I currently follow are Caroline Polachek and Phoebe Bridgers. Taylor Swift just not interesting to me.

 

[Robin L]

. . . Lady Gaga based on her work that's NOT her discography... i dont like Poker Face or...Just Dance... I mean that's all I know.

Regarding Lady Gaga:

Regarding Poker Face:

(FWIW I really like Lady Gaga's better known work. Great production and great vocal chops.)

 

[A Surfer]

Music can just be fun. It doesn't have to deep or transformative. I quite like a lot of her music actually, but I don't look into it for meaning. I do worry though that she may not be a good person, that I find I am concerned with more these days. Are the people who I listen to decent human beings. I don't do pop culture intentionally that is for sure, but I would be lying if I said I do not notice it and sometimes take a wee peek out of curiosity. I am always left thinking thankfully that is not my life.

 

[EDMoser]

I saw her perform in 2008 at the country music festival Stagecoach. Her voice was absolutely terrible. I'm talking bad drunken karaoke on a Tuesday night terrible. I left after two and a half songs to get a beer.
I would never have guessed then that she'd become one of the biggest pop stars of our time. Good for her and good for her fans - she has come a long long way.

 

[SKBubba]

The Nashville Tennessean newspaper hired a full time Taylor Swift reporter. They can barely cover state and local government.

Anyway, I admire the Taylor Swift (tm) Brand, and I even like a couple of her songs.

 

[Down South]

I drive my granddaughters around from time to time and they control the radio. I've heard Taylor Swift. I'm indifferent. She doesn't annoy me but I don't get excited. There are some other currently popular singers I enjoy, Billie Eilish and Camilla Cabello for example. I haven't noticed Swift's lyrics but on the car radio the vocals are buried in the mix. The ones I've seen quoted in print aren't going to make me forget Emily Dickinson or Memphis Minnie.

I was not quite born during the Frank Sinatra hysteria, in late grade school when Elvis appeared, and was in my first year of college when the Beatles appeared. It's a recurring phenomenon in pop music and pop culture in general. I liked the Beatles but not Sinatra or Elvis. Sinatra's pitch problems overpowered his phrasing and Elvis sounded too mannered.

Neither Elvis or Sinatra wrote their own songs, the Beatles did. For those not around in the 60s' and 70s' it was the time of the singer/songwriters, the balladiers It was the time when songs were about real life as it was being lived. For sure there were plenty who grew their hair long and wrote b/s lyrics but they didn't last long and the young saw through them.

What was different then. There were songwriters like Don McLean his American Pie LP is a classic, so simple, each song stands out. Jackson Browne sings his poetry, those words will still hold true into the future. Joni Mitchell - timeless.

I havn't read all the pages on this thread but it's important to realise that the young are programmed from birth, by parents that are themselves programmed from birth. The freaks are those who are not programmed consumer junkies because they are lucky to have parents that were determined not to let their kids be programmed. Taylor Swift and so many others like her are simply a reflection of the programmed society - check out 1984 it's all there.

Some will say I'm stuck in the past - whenever I hear a different version of the Four Seasons it always make me feel really alive. The other day I tuned into Intermezzo and heard a brilliant version and the lead instrument was - the accordion. The red monk, Vivaldi was buried in a paupers grave. Will anyone remember Taylor Swift 283 years from now?

 

[bluefuzz]

I don't think I have ever knowingly heard a Taylor Swift song. If I have heard one on the rare occasions when I can't avoid being inflicted with daytime radio then it went in one ear and out the other. I don't believe I have ever heard anything by Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande or Lady Gaga either (even though I am perfectly well aware of them), and it's probably 30 years or more since Madonna did anything that impinged on my consciousness. (I do have Holiday and Into the Groove on 12" vinyl so I really am a pop-tart at heart.) What am I trying to say with this? Perhaps that the insidious reach of popular culture is not all-pervasive and can be selectively avoided if you try hard enough.

To those who seek reasons as to why Taylor Swift is so popular, I doubt there is any easy answer. Ascribing her success to talent and hard work seems to me the least likely explanation. There are hordes of talented and hard working individuals from all walks of life who have neither achieved success, fame nor wealth. On the contrary, talent or even any enviable personal quality seems singularly lacking in the bulk of the rich and famous.

The cynical explanation is that shit always floats to the top. But that's a bit glib. And there are definitely examples of popular and successful artists who posess both creative talent and artistic worth.

A more likely explanation is simply luck, chance, serendipity, a random fluctuation of the space-time continuum. Just like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in Kabul can cause a hurricane in Kansas the gusts and gales of popular taste can arbitrarily propel some random nonentity into the stratosphere of fame and fortune for no apparent reason.

Personally, I'm a big believer in the meme theory of cultural evolution as proposed by Richard Dawkins in the final chapter of The Selfish Gene in the mid 70s and later expanded upon by the likes of Sue Blackmore and Dan Dennett. Just as a successful gene is a sequence of nucleotides that is good at getting copied by the machinery of DNA replication, a successful meme is a thought, an idea or symbol that's good at getting copied though human social interaction, e.g. imitation.

Taylor Swift is a successful meme, or perhaps rather a collection of memes, that simply happens to be successful in infesting the collective grey-matter of humanity ...

 

[wunderkind]

Now go stand in the corner and think about what you did!

Ahh I wondered how many caught on.

 

[krabapple]

I don't hate Taylor swift or even particularly dislike, just don't understand the hype.

Have you always understood the hype? Has it ever bothered you enough to start a thread about it?

I've never had a facebook account and I've never listened to Taylor Swift.

Those things have nought to do with each other. Kids don't use Facebook; it's for old people like us.

 

[krabapple]

I've decided Taylor Swift explains the mystery of the vinyl renaissance. NOW I can hate on her.

 

[gsp1971]

my wife and my girlfriend and my wife's boyfriend (aka my son) asked me to get some taylor swift for them

Read this bit 15 times and I still cannot sketch a family tree from that sentence.

... and, no, I don't listen to Taylor Swift - I am not in that age group.

 

[RayDunzl]

Does anyone listen to Taylor Swift?

Apparently yes.

More Than Half Of U.S. Adults Say They’re Taylor Swift Fans, Survey Finds

Most of the star’s fans tend to be white, suburban, millennial and Democrat, Morning Consult found.

www.forbes.com

Not me, though I may have heard some by accident.

My local DJs at WMNF are generally into more obscure things.

 

[RickS]

Apparently yes.

More Than Half Of U.S. Adults Say They’re Taylor Swift Fans, Survey Finds

Most of the star’s fans tend to be white, suburban, millennial and Democrat, Morning Consult found.

www.forbes.com

Not me, though I may have heard some by accident.

My local DJs at WMNF are generally into more obscure things.

Can I be a fan and really not listen to much of her music too?

 

[Anton D]

The red monk, Vivaldi was buried in a paupers grave. Will anyone remember Taylor Swift 283 years from now?

I think if you did "man on the street" polls, around 1% could tell you who Antonio Vivaldi was or be able to recognize any of his music.

We are the minority on this, I think!

In 283 years, it will take a dedicated archaeologist to recognize either!

 

[Vacceo]

Music can just be fun. It doesn't have to deep or transformative. I quite like a lot of her music actually, but I don't look into it for meaning. I do worry though that she may not be a good person, that I find I am concerned with more these days. Are the people who I listen to decent human beings. I don't do pop culture intentionally that is for sure, but I would be lying if I said I do not notice it and sometimes take a wee peek out of curiosity. I am always left thinking thankfully that is not my life.

Many of the people I listen to are terrible beings. That also applies to painters, writers, architects and many other art creators whose work I like. And probably there are despicable engineers whose creations I enjoy on a daily basis. Interesting art is often times separated from human quality.

I think if you did "man on the street" polls, around 1% could tell you who Antonio Vivaldi was or be able to recognize any of his music.

We are the minority on this, I think!

In 283 years, it will take a dedicated archaeologist to recognize either!

We still know about Plato. You never know...

For Swift, my guess is probably yes. She´s a sociological phenomenon, appreciate her or her music or not; and that, typically leaves marks.

 

[Anton D]

Many of the people I listen to are terrible beings. That also applies to painters, writers, architects and many other art creators whose work I like. And probably there are despicable engineers whose creations I enjoy on a daily basis. Interesting art is often times separated from human quality.


We still know about Plato. You never know...

For Swift, my guess is probably yes. She´s a sociological phenomenon, like her or her music or not, and that, typically leaves marks.

That made me wonder how Plato would do on "man on the street" polls, too!

I bet we'd get 85% or more saying, "Mickey Mouse's Dog," or "It's like modeling clay."

Cheers, amigo!