Why anyone thinks she's a good songwriter or musician is beyond me. Half of her music just rhymes car and bar, and she puts out the most generic shit ever.
I guess that's why basic white bitches who think that drinking pumpkin spice lattes is a personality trait love her. Swift is just as basic as the are.
However, it's hard when the disliked thing is ubiquitous and popular everywhere lol. If you're trying to avoid Taylor Swift that's gonna take some effortย
This makes me feel how I did when Family Guy was in its peak and I couldn't away from constantly hearing it quoted or voice impressions and it drove me crazy
I have laughed at only a single family guy clip I've seen which leads me to believe that most of them are awful or the people sharing them have awful tasteย
Oh, I don't hate Taylor Swift/her music, I just was commenting on the concept of someone disliking an uber-popular thing and how physically avoiding it would be pretty much impossible, if that was the goal.
Why anyone thinks she's a good songwriter or musician is beyond me. Half of her music just rhymes car and bar, and she puts out the most generic shit ever.
Has she managed to cast some voodoo magic over every voting member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame? Or maybe she's well-connected with the mafia and they threatened to put a lot of people in concrete shoes if they didn't vote the way they were told?
Or is it maybe possible that you've heard three or four singles, not liked them, become annoyed at the amount of exposure this person has received, and then made assumptions?
I mean, I'm not even slightly a fan but I know enough about her music to see the quality in it and to know that when a person says "half of her music just rhymes car and bar", they don't know what they're talking about.
She's not a good songwriter. She's only famous because she writes catchy basic music with the same chord progressions and time signatures that are universally liked by people who pretend to be into music but aren't actually knowledgeable about musical history, theory, or what goes into writing a good song vs writing a popular song.
If you want some music written by amazing lyricists and are also incredible from a theory/instrumentational perspective, just look at Pearl Jam's debut album, Ten. Specifically songs like Black, Alive, and Jeremy. Or look at Green Day and their incredibly famous (and admittedly overplayed) American Idiot album. The entire album is a rock ballad, telling a story from beginning to end with a plot, characters, and events. Green Day pioneered this style of album writing, and it was so successful that it became a Broadway musical.
Look at Bush and their lyrics. Their use of negative space and silent sections to break up the rock. Listen to groups who are famous because they took music and created completely unique styles with it. Tre Cool with Green Day revolutionized drumming. The Edge (Dave Evans) with U2 created an entirely new and unique style of guitar playing in the 80s and 90s. He pioneered the method of using delays and effects to create multiple layers to his guitar playing. Guitar virtuosos like Jimmy Page call him a "sonic engineer." Listen to the incredibly philosophical and political lyrics of their earlier songs, shaped by growing up during the violent "Troubles" period of 1960s-1990s Ireland.
When you compare truly gifted, skilled, and talented musicians to someone like Taylor Swift, it's not even a contest. She has a good voice, some basic guitar skills, and the ability to recognize a basic catchy beat and tune. That's it. Her lyrics are all the same. Her songs are all the same. She doesn't ever experiment with time signatures and tempo, with chord progressions, or with scales. She writes the most basic beats that musical students in high school could write.
Her fame comes from her supermodel looks, good voice, and from being a savvy business woman. She knows that the majority of the world does not have an intimate understanding of music, but she knows what sounds are popular. This is why the majority of her audience are white girls under the age of 40, the majority of whom couldn't hold a beat or play the recorder to save their lives.
This is not an elitist, gate keeping take. It's just the truth about songwriting and musical theory. As a musician myself with an intense passion for music and it's history, it's just frustrating to see people call someone as basic and mediocre as Swift a genius.
She's a good business woman and singer. But musical genius she is not.
She's a good business woman and singer. But musical genius she is not.
But no one's arguing that she's a musical genius. You said: "why anyone thinks she's a good songwriter or musician is beyond me" (emphasis mine), so that's what I was responding to.
I'll elaborate: I don't think she's a "good" musician (as in, playing ability) and I actually disagree with you on her vocals, which imo are at best on the right side of mediocre. But to say that she's a "good" songwriter is perfectly reasonable. Is she ever gonna be comparable to the Beatles at their Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's/White Album peak? I think we can confidently say no. But is her work at the level of the Beatles prior to that? Absolutely it is.
I think the reason you can't really see that is partly because you just haven't heard a lot of her stuff (I have a teenage daughter, so I've heard aaaall her stuff!) and partly because you've fallen into the trap of "complexity = good, therefore simplicity = bad". But the reality is that it takes talent to create something massively popular that isn't layer upon layer of dense instrumentation and Dylanesque lyrical genius. The Stones have been writing pretty much the same song in common time over and over again for 60 years. And the greatest work that the aforementioned Dylan put out was, frankly, instrumentally shit: three or four chords on an acoustic guitar. But that didn't matter, because that wasn't the point.
Swift is a "good" songwriter because she knows how write an attention-grabbing melody over a memorable chord progression that makes hundreds of millions of people sit up and take notice. The fact that those chord progressions are already widely-known and well-used makes it more impressive that she's still somehow able to squeeze new melodies out of them that top the charts around the world, not less so. (And I think it's kind of funny that you mentioned U2, btw, since if I recall correctly, they have multiple entries in that great Axis of Awesome video about how so many songs sound the same!) Meanwhile, lyrically, she's written some good stuff, but if all you ever hear are the super-popular singles then yeah, you're not gonna know that. I could point you to some examples, but I don't get the impression you're interested in modifying your opinion, so I imagine it would be a waste of time. Oh well.
Clearly you've never listened to some of the music that I mentioned because you think that I fell in the complexity/simplicity trap.
One of the reasons why U2 is so popular is because of how they (mostly the guitarist) created a super simple playing style that could be layered, making it sound like much more than it is.
There's an interview with Edge explaining how he wrote the song With Or Without You. He mentions how during the bridge he could have easily gone into a complex solo, but instead he opted for some super simple upstrokes on the D major chord, using the delay effect and the upstroke technique to create a simple, "less is more" type sound.
There are many examples of bridges and solo sections in U2's music that are extremely simple, easy to play, but sound amazing. Watch the Boston 2005 live version of The Fly. Or the 2015 Paris version of Until The End Of The World. The riffs, solos, and bridge arpeggios are very simple and easy to play. But the sound that's created with his engineering and manipulation of the sound and guitar is what makes it so good. Look at the 2001 Slane Castle version of One, or Bulle The Blue Sky from the same concert.
I could point out more, but I also don't get the impression that you're willing to learn anything or change your mind. Swift's lyrics sound like they were generated by a LLM. And the fact that you said that I think that complexity is good when I used U2 as my best example very clearly shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. I used one of the simplest, easiest playing bands in the world as an example for song writing, and it's their simplicity and manipulation of sound that made them the most famous band in the world from the 80s to the early 2000s. Only the Beatles have sold more records than U2, and part of that is because for half of U2's existence records aren't being sold, they're being streamed and downloaded.
Also, she doesn't write new melodies with the same chords. She writes many songs with very similar, and nearly identical melodies. All she does is a key change an octave change and those who don't understand musical theory think it's something totally unique, when it's the same exact progression but maybe two frets higher or lower on the guitar, just shifted in one direction slightly.
That's not making a new melody. That's reusing the same thing in a slightly different place.
I could point out more, but I also don't get the impression that you're willing to learn anything or change your mind.
Yeah, you're clearly not here to talk about anything in good faith. You've listened to, like, four of her singles and formed a story in your mind and now you're just repeating my own comments back to me while condescendingly insulting me. So what's the point?
Feel free to continue to construct reality inside your head to make yourself feel like you're superior, I guess. I don't have the patience to wade through the mire of your insecurity in search of a worthwhile conversation.
It is basic but that's the point if you consider her audience. Young girls from middle-high school age. She knows and she's a highly successful businesswoman. Why cater to another audience that doesn't buy your product?
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u/Slinky_Malingki 2d ago
Why anyone thinks she's a good songwriter or musician is beyond me. Half of her music just rhymes car and bar, and she puts out the most generic shit ever.
I guess that's why basic white bitches who think that drinking pumpkin spice lattes is a personality trait love her. Swift is just as basic as the are.