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It's called Google @Willie Oleson
How are we supposed to feel about Taylor Swift?
- Thread starter Snarky Oracle!
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And that's no fault of Taylor Swift. She is there to support her boyfriend like many partners do. What I detest is those booing Taylor simply because she is present. Boo those broadcasters for being fixated on her. But then I suspect the NFL is quietly rubbing their hands with glee as they watch ratings rise, advertisers desperately clamouring for a spot and The Chiefs merchandise flying off the shelves.
I don't understand the Taylor effect but it's all positive for most.
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As a country music fan, I vividly remember when she debuted in 2006. She was only 16, but she had a pleasant singer/songwriter vibe and a down to earth simplicity.
Fast forward 18 years, and she couldn't be more different. The earnest singer/songwriter has been replaced with this overproduced, commercial-friendly influencer.
I never imagined all those years ago that she would become this manufactured product with a cult-like following. I find it a bit unsettling, to be honest.
Fast forward 18 years, and she couldn't be more different. The earnest singer/songwriter has been replaced with this overproduced, commercial-friendly influencer.
I never imagined all those years ago that she would become this manufactured product with a cult-like following. I find it a bit unsettling, to be honest.
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Oh yes! The NFL got exactly what it wanted from the very first game she attended this year. It was ratings Heaven right from the start and I’m sure they’re very happy it continued all the way til the end. Do they show her on camera too much? Of course they do, and who can blame them? She’s selling their product better than even they can and she has even a wider audience than she had before to showcase her albums. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
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And here is a bizarre story. As Taylor was flying from Hawaii to Australia last night (February 14) apparently 1500 people were watching her plane on flightradar24. Go figure. That's just weird.
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I remember when the biggest arrival the week of the Super Bowl was when the teams landed. I really had to laugh this year when her journey to Las Vegas was the more reported story. Here people were tracking her plane by the hour but when the players arrived a week earlier everyone was like okay, great, but when does Taylor arrive?
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Taylor Swift is currently breaking chart records here and there with her new album. Critics have listened to her new album carefully and already know, a week after its release, which songs are among Taylor Swift's best songs ever, as Variety magazine writes here.
variety.com
Of the 10 best songs, only "You Belong With Me", "Cruel Summer" and "Getaway Car" are among my absolute favorites. I didn't particularly like the standard version of "All Too Well", and the 10 minute version - even though it reached number 1 on the Hot 100 - is no joy for me. I would have ranked "Out of the Woods", "All You Had to Do Was Stay", "Enchanted", "Shake It Off" and "I Knew You Were Trouble" higher than Variety did. It's amazing that neither "Me" nor "You Need To Calm Down" are in the top 75, because these chart toppers should have been in the top 30 at least.
Taylor Swift’s 75 Best Songs, Ranked
Variety ranks the 75 best songs of Taylor Swift's career, now updated to include selections from 'The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.'
variety.com
Of the 10 best songs, only "You Belong With Me", "Cruel Summer" and "Getaway Car" are among my absolute favorites. I didn't particularly like the standard version of "All Too Well", and the 10 minute version - even though it reached number 1 on the Hot 100 - is no joy for me. I would have ranked "Out of the Woods", "All You Had to Do Was Stay", "Enchanted", "Shake It Off" and "I Knew You Were Trouble" higher than Variety did. It's amazing that neither "Me" nor "You Need To Calm Down" are in the top 75, because these chart toppers should have been in the top 30 at least.
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I don't get why I am supposed to feel any way at all about Taylor Swift.
I don't like pop music, so I haven't ever really listened to her. Love football, but didn't mind seeing her face on my screen for 30 seconds out of a three hour game.
She's just...there...as far as I'm concerned. I don't know her music, I don't know her politics, don't know much about her love life (other than Kelce). And I don't care about any of it anyway.
I don't like pop music, so I haven't ever really listened to her. Love football, but didn't mind seeing her face on my screen for 30 seconds out of a three hour game.
She's just...there...as far as I'm concerned. I don't know her music, I don't know her politics, don't know much about her love life (other than Kelce). And I don't care about any of it anyway.
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Taylor Swift could fart on mic at this point, and it would go to number 1 within the hour.
She has one hell of a marketing team; I'll give her that. She went from an artist to a commodity. Of course, it helps to have a rich daddy who worked on Wall Street.
She has one hell of a marketing team; I'll give her that. She went from an artist to a commodity. Of course, it helps to have a rich daddy who worked on Wall Street.
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Courtney Love recently observed that the problem with modern female artists is one of sameness. “It’s great that there are so many successful women in the music industry, but lots of them are becoming a cliché,” she said. “Now, every successful woman is cloned, so there is just too much music. They’re all the same.”
“I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much. As a concept, I love it,” she said. But? “I just don’t like her music.”
Courtney's ire doesn’t end there, either. Lana del Rey influenced Love so much when she was recording that she had to stop listening, she said, but Love thinks she should “take seven years off.”
Madonna? Can we find something nice to say about her? “I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”
Of Taylor Swift, whom Love once called “aspirational huge role model for many young women” Love later opined that, “Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.”
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Beyonce's "country" record felt like a vanity project to me from the start. It's just another genre for Beyonce to conquer. It became apparent that she and her team were intentionally trying to create controversy in order to drum up interest in the album. When people rightly pointed out that country music is about more than putting on a cowboy hat, sitting on a horse, and putting Texas in your lyrics, the predictable cries of "country music is racist" started appearing in the usual publications. Does country music secretly have a large following of black women that have been banned from the genre? There's a country trio of black women called Chapel Heart. They've been around a few years, and they appear to have been accepted with open arms by the country music community. Both Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn sang their praises. The difference is Chapel Heart produces authentic country records as opposed to using the genre as a stepping stone to further an already lucrative career. That doesn't necessarily make country music diverse, but how diverse are rap and hip hop? Nobody seems to care that these genres are made up predominantly of black artists. I seem to recall Vanilla Ice, Eminem, and Kid Rock having their detractors for being alleged "culture vultures." Personally, I think the only thing that matters is the intent of the record. Is it for the love of the genre, or is it about infiltrating the genre in order to profit off of the controversy? Beyonce herself later said "this isn't a country record, it's a Beyonce record." At least that's honest.
Bingo. I feel like Taylor's target audience has always primarily been teenage girls, but at least she had a relatively earnest singer/songwriter vibe in the beginning.
Now she's just another over-produced pop star, and they're certainly a dime a dozen.
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Maybe at one point, but most of her fans have grown up with her. Broadly, it seems to me that the bulk of her fandom is the same group of middle-class, pushing middle-aged white women who think pumpkin spice is a personality trait.
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As one of Central Park Karen's detractors once said: never get between a middleclass, pseudo-progressive white woman and something she thinks she wants.
Central Park Karen being raped by her dog as she scrolls through her iphone Taylor Swift playlist:
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I must be behind the times then. I thought she was still targeting the teeny bopper demo, but it makes sense that her original fan base grew up with her.
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Based on the fans that were interviewed before her concerts in Stockholm, I would say her biggest fans are everywhere between 13 and 40+.
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My 40ish friends are all big fans of hers - of course, their kids are all growing up with her music because that's what their mom's play, so she has a lot of younger fans too.
I never was impressed. My preference in genre is country. When she first started as a teenager country singer I was intrigued. I never thought she had much of a voice, but I was impressed by her song writing skills (remember she was in her mid teens). Unfortunately, she never grew as a song writer even as she aged (at least not when she was still doing country), and once she went pop, I just completely stopped paying attention.
I honestly don't know WHY she is so popular, but she is a cultural icon for sure these days.
I never was impressed. My preference in genre is country. When she first started as a teenager country singer I was intrigued. I never thought she had much of a voice, but I was impressed by her song writing skills (remember she was in her mid teens). Unfortunately, she never grew as a song writer even as she aged (at least not when she was still doing country), and once she went pop, I just completely stopped paying attention.
I honestly don't know WHY she is so popular, but she is a cultural icon for sure these days.
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I think the exact opposite. I think she started of decently, and now she's producing great stuff. Very postmodern (or post-postmodern?) writing that has been a trend for 15 or so years. No more forced rhymes, no more full sentences. Instead adding pop cultural expressions and events as metaphors and sentences that can begin in the middle of a vers line. And rhythms changing not only in the bridge or chorus. So very postmodern, and I love it! Quite a few songwriters experiment like this nowadays and it creates something new.
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I know nothing about her songwriting after she moved away from country music. I don't listen to pop, so she could be the greatest song writer of all time by now and I would never know.
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Hmm, it sounds to me like post-modern music can get quite pretentious and esoteric. To each their own, but I don't have any interest in that.
I found Swift's initial entry into pop music to be quite banal and petty. She was a 20-something woman writing songs for her haters and exes like she was still in high school.
I haven't paid attention to her music much since then, but I still hear her referred to as the woman who writes about her breakups.
I found Swift's initial entry into pop music to be quite banal and petty. She was a 20-something woman writing songs for her haters and exes like she was still in high school.
I haven't paid attention to her music much since then, but I still hear her referred to as the woman who writes about her breakups.
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