Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a tight end playing in the Super Bowl -- The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, April 19

*songs

Whenever I read these geezers' criticisms of Swift, it always seems rather clear they've spent little to no time listening to her. Of all the songs you could cite, "Karma Chameleon" has lyrics that look pretty similar to what Taylor was writing in her Fearless/Speak Now era:

Didn't hear your wicked words every day
And you used to be so sweet I heard you say
That my love was an addiction
When we cling our love is strong
When you go you're gone forever
You string along, you string along

(Not to mention she has a huge song called "Karma" and prominently features colors in her lyrics.)

I wouldn't call him a geezer. His comment's more of an observation -- classic PSB, really -- than cattiness.

The problem -- Tennant the former pop critic should know better -- is that American radio isn't what it was in 1983. Songs are streamable units.

Maybe his point was that we don’t know the identity of the Karma Chameleon?

Taylor is - or was - interested in writing capital P pop songs, but only as one chapter in what is very clearly her chief obsession which is to craft a body of work.

(Some of the most telling lyrics on the new album imagine her songs being played in the future; “Whose Afraid of Little Old Me” and “Clara Bow” dwell on the flipside fear of encroaching irrelevance.)

One of the interesting aspects of complaints about her not being enough of a pop star is that I feel like her most explicit attempts to chase that dream (“Me!”, “You Need To Calm Down”) also felt like the point of lowest ebb in her cultural importance. People ironically observing that her biggest radio hit this year is “Cruel Summer” overlook the fact that the conditions that made the song’s success possible were created by Folklore etc.

Also that most people who have an imperial pop phase watch it end with 10 years in the public eye (it’s now 18 for Swift)

xxp he's more than double her age. Obviously the ubiquity of a "Billie Jean" is harder to achieve in a post-radio landscape, and I agree he was making observational statements about the state of popular music, but he also criticized her songwriting: "She's got a great voice by the way, and the production is beautiful...But melodically it's almost restive...It's all sung on one or two notes going up and down...I like the fact that it brings all these people together, even multi-generational, but I think the one disappointing thing is the music, not the lyrics, the music."

It's all sung on one or two notes going up and down

Didn't posters make a similar comment last week?

I think part of the reason Taylor doesn't have a "Billie Jean" is that she was infantilized and looked down on -- by men, especially -- for so long. It wasn't until relatively recently (~Folklore) that my peers began to engage with her music seriously. I still regularly talk to men in their 40s who dismiss her music out of hand as unserious.

Whereas Please and Obviously were real feats of vocal gymnastics

Also that most people who have an imperial pop phase watch it end with 10 years in the public eye (it’s now 18 for Swift)

Wouldn’t you really start counting from 1989 (the album, not the year)? Obv she was very much in the public eye prior to that, but that’s when her pop era really kicked into gear.

Not Red?

"Love Story" was a huge hit domestically and internationally

yeah, really, she's been a top five fixture since 2008

I'm more confused by the penultimate sentence. An album that the critic finds to be a "tedious" "missed opportunity" also contains "much of the best pop music ever made"?

I think they must have edited this. The penultimate sentence currently is:

While the feelings here are melodramatic and overexpressed, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, so is some of Swift’s best work, but with far more interesting results.

The last phrase still doesn't work ("but with far more interesting results").

lol, when I think of some of the bizarre and incoherent reviews that have been up on allmusic with no amendments for twenty five years

I still remember general talk about her when "Tim McGraw" was a hit. It was like she was always already there soon enough.

Fortunately Metacritic preserved the original:

While the feelings here are melodramatic and overexpressed, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, this also has some of Swift’s best work, and much of the best pop music ever made.

Also I was being quite deliberate in how I framed the imperial phase point. Not everyone’s imperial phase (assuming they have one) starts immediately but it’s rare for it to continue much beyond a decade into their career regardless of when it started.

I’m looking at the top 25 songs in that Rolling Stone article and realized I only know two songs in there (blank space and cruel summer).

For how ubiquitous she is as a celebrity I think Tennant might have a point. For those of us not actively following her she doesn’t seem to have the sort of huge hits that non-swifties from different generations can id easily. At least outside the US that’s my perception.

So per example, let’s say: Bruno Mars, who began releasing music at pretty much the same time in the mid 00s as Taylor, has almost the same number of #1 chart hits (8 vs 11) and I guess it was my first thought because he got compared to MJ a lot. He has Uptown Funk.
Everybody knows Uptown Funk. That one is surely on the same level of massive popularity that Billie Jean had.

For Taylor it’s less clear to me. She does have many hits that even a non-swiftie like me can recognize: “shake it off”, “i knew you were trouble”, “blank space”, “bad blood”, “style”, “never getting back together”…. So the hits are definitely there… but I don’t think any of those were as globally massive as a “Billie Jean” or “Uptown Funk”.

many xps

Red was positioned as Taylor's First Pop Album, in the sense that it deliberately pivoted away from country by enlisting Max Martin and other pop producers. But yeah, she already had big pop crossover hits before that; I sometimes forget that "You Belong with Me" is as old as it is.

xp my kid said recently that he didn’t even know “Shake It Off” was Taylor Swift (I guess it’s just a song that’s always been famous for him).

the martin era feels like a weird anomaly in her discog at this point

Not as many dubstep drops these days, true

"You Belong With Me" could be closer to what Tennant would prefer, in a literary way: a first-person story where the chorus captures the underside and the versus capture the concrete specifics of the situation, with no knowledge of who's singing it needed.

A bit odd to me to say she doesn’t have a “billie jean” since she lives in a post-radio landscape. She is, imho, extremely famous because of that post-radio landscape.

Her massive popularity is fueled by social media and the huge amount of fan support online she gets. In a pre social network era I don’t think she’d be anywhere as huge as she is.

xp *the verses

Not as many dubstep drops these days, true

― jaymc, Friday, April 26, 2024 11:31 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

her writing also contorted itself to the martin/shellback form and produced lyrics like “so don’t think it’s in the past / these kinda wounds they last and they last.” antonoff’s production, by contrast, encourages her storytelling (for the most part), and i think it’s interesting that it ultimately took over

taylor's list of #1 hits is pretty misleading, since a few are just the first songs from her albums or taylor's version albums, not standalone hits per se.

for example, i have never heard "cardigan" on the radio before.

i do think taylor's hits from speak now, red, and 1989 are the exact kind of hits that tennant seems to think she doesn't make

I think her rise to popularity in America is much different than in other parts of the world, specifically because of Country radio. From 2007-2010 or so she was as huge in Country as she later became in pop. And for younger people there was a lot of bleed over from that format. In 2008-09 I was working at a liberal arts college and every time I saw a student gathering with music, they were playing Taylor Swift. If you went to the beach, someone would be playing “Teardrops on my Guitar” or “White Horse” or “Tim McGraw” or “Love Story” or “Should’ve Said No” on a boom box.

I think she’s also at the point in her career - and has been for several years - where being a hit singles artist is beyond her. So yeah, Antonoff taking over Martin/Shellback was clearly the right move to what she was trying to accomplish (a body of work vs a collection of hit singles)

And since her fans will stream the shit out of even at the most obscure b-sides she doesn’t even need the charts.

i should amend my post from before and say fearless instead of speak now. the fearless ones were the first megahits

I guess my point re: 1989 was that's when she became seen as a true "pop star," rather than a primarily Country-identified artist (at least in the US) with big crossover hits – but it's probably tangential to Tim F's point anyway (or I straight-up missed his point, even more likely)

She was a superstar long before 1989 came out.

it does seem hard to imagine somebody being like "I like Taylor's big hits but that's it." With few exceptions I think you're either pretty heavily invested or all the way out.

“we are never getting back together” was her first big POP move I thought

Well yeah, that's when I got on board (and then bought Red, loved it)... but it was a transitional phase. I'm splitting hairs I guess!

This is the same conversation people have about Outkast, where they released a series of platinum selling albums but a lot of pop people didn’t hear about them until “Ms. Jackson” or even “Hey Ya”

For Taylor it’s less clear to me. She does have many hits that even a non-swiftie like me can recognize: “shake it off”, “i knew you were trouble”, “blank space”, “bad blood”, “style”, “never getting back together”…. So the hits are definitely there… but I don’t think any of those were as globally massive as a “Billie Jean” or “Uptown Funk”.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, April 26, 2024 10:19 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Totally hear what you're saying but comparing anyone to literally the biggest pop star of all time isn't really fair. I'd compare her career and popularity to someone like Billy Joel, perhaps.

Also "Uptown Funk" just happens to sound a lot like "Billie Jean" and we should probably be thankful that Taylor has never tried to make a funk pop record with Mark Ronson

Yeah Taylor is “career artist” in a way that hasn’t really existed since last century.

i feel like "shake it off" is as ubiquitous as any song in the 21st century as far as pop goes. up there with "uptown funk". non-fans might not know who did it, but they know it. maybe i shouldn't be speaking for the entire country though. fuck it, i'll speak for them. they know that damn song. and "all about that bass" as well.

and "seven nation army" obviously...

Yeah I guess “shake it off” is that song in her discography.

Also agree on her being closer to a Billy Joel than a Michael Jackson. She seems to be valued more (and I think she also prioritzes - as a “singer songwriter” than as a “popstar”.

She’s a little bit of that a little bit of the other but speaking in general terms I mean.

Swift could do a good cover of “New London Boy.”

or "Left To My Own Devices"

Aired on November 1st, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAhAz7JU0dg

Haha – see, that's a great pull ("Over the past month...")