To not get the Taylor swift hype?

[StopBeingASquare]

I have my hard hat on.
Probably going to get my arse handed to me on a plate.

I really don't get all this fuss about Taylor swift, I just find her utterly boring. All this fuss about midnight / album / preorders / codes to then try and attempt to get tickets in Scotland when you live on the cliffs of lands end. Threads and threads about it and people planning their outfits when the gig is a year away, I thought gig attire was jeans and a tour T shirt?! From various YouTube videos I've seen of her singing live I have to say I wasn't impressed at all. Mediocre voice, dodging high notes. I'm obviously a minority here as there's people willing to sell a kidney to just get a code to be in with a chance of getting a ticket.

I saw Pink in Hyde park a few weeks ago where she was singing live, doing incredible acts, dancing, acrobats etc and it was incredible. I'm not trying to compare, but I just find Taylor so average!

Can anyone tell me why there's all of this hype. I'm fully aware my username is rather fitting.

(I'll get my coat..)

@tabulahrasa and I agree single lines don't do any songs justice. Especially when you don't know the context or can't hear the music / beat behind it. I'm genuinely open to listen, hence why I asked what all the hype was about.

To everyone saying I am the below:

Im really not a TS hater, music snob, someone with no passion, nasty, and judgemental like many people are saying.

I wanted to understand as I'm merely quite a nosy person and wanted to know why this artist has got so much (good traction) as I find her vanilla, and to see if there's just something I wasn't seeing, which by the looks of it there was.

I still find her voice very vanilla but as PPs explaining she's alto etc it makes sense.

Pink is my favourite singer in the whole world. Many on here have said she is not to their taste and that's okay. I could go on and on about how she wrote a song to the president, how she's a professional gymnast and performs stunts in her shows whilst singing like upside down with no harness, how she made a speech about womens rights and she stands up for LQBTQ+, she stands up for racism, writes her own songs and plays the drums and piano. But I don't. I equally don't get offended when someone doesn't like her or asks what the hype is about.

People like different things and there is no harm in being nosy and wondering what the hype is about.

For the sneery music snobs who are trying so hard to be oh so cool on the other hand 😂….

If that's aimed at me, I'm not sneery at all. And if I ever got any ideas about being cool in my musical tastes, my kids would put me straight pdq. I appreciate that everyone has their likes and dislikes and that different music resonates with different people. There are some artists I love and think they are poets first, singers second. But I wouldn't quote their lyrics as they would sound vaguely ridiculous just floating there in the ether with no sound and no context. Well, most of them. There are a few notable exceptions, but that's rare.

@tabulahrasa thank you, I'll have a listen!

It’s not the most complex song, but quite raw emotionally.

re people being defensive about liking Taylor swift, I think... the difference is there is a lot of sneering (not from you, in general) about her supposedly not writing or her dancing (which is fairly irrelevant) or that all her songs are about break ups or that she’s only successful because of her dad or that she’s just fairly bland pop music.

Whereas with pink, people just go, yeah, not my cup of tea and stop there.

Taylor might not be your cup of tea vocally but she is mine. I've never loved big voice singers. Celine Dion was the worst for me and Adele sounds like a foghorn. Arianna and Mariah do far too much warbling.

Oh god this @NeverTalksToStrangers2 Adele. Now that is someone I don't understand the hype around. Songs are mediocre, voice is not pleasant on the ears. Arianna has an amazing voice, she can sing pretty much anything but the warbling is too much.

I don't think much of her music/image either tbh, but it doesn't bother me that others like it. I just get on with enjoying what I enjoy. 😀

Thing anyone that thinks TS is “generic” and “bland” should listen to that song.

So my quoting lyrics didn't resonate with any of you, lol. Fine. The ones that I chose, I did so because to me they all have 2 meanings or they say something on their own.

But our minds all work in different ways. You can listen and make your own minds up.

The songs were champagne problems, cruel summer, would've could've should've (think this has previously been mentioned), enchanted (very princess pop but still fabulous).

If you want to hear examples of her songwriting that touch on more sensitive topics there's also;

Happiness (about divorce, a very very stripped back song but lyrically gorgeous)
Dear John / tolerate it (both about gaslighting kind of relationships (dear John is very slow and long but lyrically very mature))
You're on your own kid (not solely about it but touches on body issues/anorexia)
Illicit affairs (about exactly that)
Renegade (a fabulous collab with big red machine which references having a partner with depression and what that does to their relationship)
Forever winter (this was written about her friend who committed suicide and her attempts to help him. It's very uptempo though, weirdly. If you didn't listen to the lyrics you'd have no idea of the topic. It's not clear if she wrote it before or after he took his own life.)

Madonna didn't have much talent to speak of. Terrible vocalist. Her success was largely due to controversy.

I'm not a massive Madonna fan but that's absolute bull. Pop stars don't maintain decades long careers purely by being controversial.

You can adore your Taylor without having to slag off every other female vocalist y'know. It makes you sound like a 12 year old even though you're apparently a 40-something.

To me, this is a hilarious defence of/tribute to the “musician”, Pink.

Nothing about her voice or musicality (except, OMG!, she can play the piano! And the drums!) Being able to play a musical instrument is a pretty low bar for a musician, surely..?

You seem to mostly value qualities that you might find in circus acts, not actual musicians. “Say what you like about Pink - you never saw Beethoven, Bowie or the Beatles doing their own stunts.”

You seem to mostly value qualities that you might find in circus acts, not actual musicians. “Say what you like about Pink - you never saw Beethoven, Bowie or the Beatles doing their own stunts.”

Yeah I agree with this - I'd be impressed by someone doing stunts but I actually don't think the emphasis on being a good dancer is a particularly good thing for musicians. Usually I find it comes at the cost of the actual vocal performance and I wish they'd find a better balance and stand a bit more still, there seems to be an expectation that female pop singers in particular basically be dancers.

People always used to criticise Dua Lipa for not being a good dancer, too, and now her performances are more about remembering choreography than anything else. I prefer it when they're free to focus on the actual song and just do a bit of simple movement, which is mainly what Taylor seems to do.

I wasn't actually defending pink 😂

I came up with points I could^^ use as everyone is listing all these things that Taylor can do just because someone thinks she's mediocre.

But when someone claps back and says they don't like pink, I don't list songs, list things she's good at, etc etc. i just accept the opinion she's not everyone's taste and don't automatically think the haters are being 'cool' and 'upmanship' and 'lacking passion'. I accept everyone is different and that's fine.

You've totally missed the point of my reply.

To be fair, I don't think you are one of those people as obviously many just aren't into her which is absolutely fair enough, but for some reason Taylor has always been a target of that kind of snobbery. For years people sneered at her just writing about breakups (even though love is by a long way the most common theme for a vast majority of artists, and actually she does have as much variety as most of them), then it was that she and her fans were airheads, silly whiny teenage white girls etc etc. The amount of criticism she's received over the years even caused her to retreat, and became an active theme in her music.

Possibly she's just at a level of fame that draws the "too cool for that, I listen to "real music"" crowd, but there's always a lot of that, too.

So I think people can be a bit defensive because of the above. I've never seen that level of derision levelled at Pink, for example. I've started to see people comment that she's the artist all white middle aged mum's like, but it's not on anywhere near the same level.

And to be fair you did ask people to list reasons they like her!

It’s never men being criticised for dancing ‘badly’ though...even when that’s what they’re there for.

Bez in happy Mondays for example.

Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen - they never got told to dance more

Even boy bands get to just sit on stools and sing.

Always women who have to look good while they’re doing something

Now there's an idea!

I love Taylor Swift, she's one of my favourite artists.

I cannot, however, begin to fathom the utter desperation and ugly scramble and fight for tickets to go to an overcrowded concert (many hundreds of miles away in some cases) on packed roads and trains all to stand several hundred feet away from the stage, crammed in with a huge crowd who are all screaming and singing so loud you can't even hear her anyway, with all of them watching through their phones (so you'll be lucky to see the stage through the sea of screens), and to pay several hundred pounds for this privilege when you can actually listen properly to her songs on Spotify without any of the above malarky.

And people on here posting about how devastated their children will be if they don't have tickets reminds me of the spoilt daughter in Willy Wonka.

Love Taylor Swift, can't stand the madness.

Ok I just played After glow. It's boring. I mean it's nice enough but I wouldn't choose to listen to it again. I've listened to a few of her songs because of this thread. They are nothing special. I really don't get the hype.

That's why I posted, I wondered about the madness and hysteria! It all just seems so OTT compared to other artists that are just as it more mainstream than her.

She’s written some fantastic songs and some cracking lyrics. I think there are quite a lot of bland songs on her albums which wash over but at her best she’s up there with Kirsty MacColl and Mary Margaret O’Hara.

Leonard Cohen knelt down a lot in his performances when he was about 78-79, I was in awe of that as it is probably not something I could manage and easily get up again. Bob Dylan hid behind his piano and popped out occasionally as expected 😀.

It is true though that females are expected to dance and be good at it but not males.

I respect this statement.

You could apply the same to any concert (bar perhaps the scramble for tickets), if you don't enjoy them you won't spend money on them which makes sense! Most people have to travel to them, spend £££s on them- I don't think that's unique to TS (plenty of the tickets are under £100 as well). I dunno I didn't have much growing up so can't really relate but I do remember things feeling like a huge deal at that age and can see why some parents want to try and get them for their children, I don't think it makes them spoilt anymore than any other children really wanting x, y or z.

Interesting comparisons, I agree though.

Ah Kirsty, gone too soon.

Aw I am a big Taylor fan and listen to all albums. Her singles are more of a novelty to be honest and while I still like most of them her best stuff is on her more recent albums. My favourites are right where you left me, ivy, the lakes, Marjorie, false god, all to well. Beautiful work. Her singles are definitely put out there to fit in with pop culture but I wouldn’t say they are a good representation of her discography at all.

I think the hype with the tour is people always want what they can’t have. And ticketmaster accidentally sold ALL her US dates in a presale so there was no general sale. So when it came to the rest of the world getting tickets, it has seemed a bit hysteric.