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Originally Posted by troutman
I mean no disrespect to Jay or Macker. I recently read those comments about Swift by Noel and Dan and they were fresh in my mind. Noel is always good for a laugh.
It is interesting how powerful Swift has become as a person and brand. I think she gets treated with kid gloves because of her importance in the music industry. Did she make a great "pop" record"? Sure, if by "pop" we mean popular. If "pop" is defined as something else (light, catchy, danceable music), her songs sound really average and derivative to me.
Is she a great song writer? That is hard to judge, because she works extensively with other producers and writers (at least 11 on 1989). I know she plays some guitar, but I don't know what level of musician she is. A great female song writer that I like is Courtney Barnett (about the same age).
Would she sell so many records if she didn't have the expert production, promotion and super-model looks?
There was a special interview show with Swift on TV last night. In 30 minutes, they talked about music for 30 seconds.
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Probably not, but production is a huge part of any record, the same could be said of many artist, particularly rappers.
And look, she writes with Max Martin, who has 3 the third most #1 singles of any songwriter (behind lennon and mccartney) so obviously she's paired with a hit maker. She's young and she's trying, there was a time when Justin Timberlake was just a guy in a boy band, but as he started to mature creatively you could see NSync starting to more thoughtful and creative pop music. Now as a solo artist he's considered to be pretty brilliant.
I think the thing I respect most about Taylor Swift is that she actually seems to want to be a better artist but for now, I think she's pretty great at what she does.