AIBU to say Taylor Swift is a once in a generation songwriter?

[HomeatRoseCottage]

I’ve had 1989 TV on all day and she’s just magic 🥰

😂I don't think there was such a thing as meta in the 90s

Shes a pleasant white girl who co-writes cheesy pop songs for teen girls.

Oh my GOD

Ronan - about a 3 year old boy dying of neuroblastoma
Marjorie - about her Grandmother passing away
Soon You'll Get Better - about her mother's cancer
Bigger Than The Whole Sky - about miscarriage
The Man - about sexism, misogyny and patriarchy

But there is never any credit

It's always how wonderful and talented she is, and maybe that's so. But she's not doing it all on her own which is the implication.

Is that list just album sales? If so need to factor in that nobody buys albums any more, and you would have to consider streaming figures too. Folklore for instance has over 5 billion streams on Spotify (though I don’t know how you might go about translating streams into equivalent album sales)

Christ - why all the angst about it OP? I said she was good. The ONLY people I know going to Taylor Swift concerts ARE parents bringing their 9-16 year olds. That’s MY experience of it. I did not collect ages of everyone going - sorry! The songs that I know are about guys or an EX - nothing wrong with that - I like them! Why is it that TS fans can’t accept that the world doesn’t revolve around just her?! I LIKE TS- I thinks she’s good. Has some good songs. I just won’t pay over £1k to see her that’s all.

You've raised her well if you dont mind me saying so.

Legends all of then.

Benny and Bjorn, now that's generational songwriting.

What do you mean never any credit? She credits all of her co-writers on her albums and actually also talks about them constantly on social media and when she wins awards etc.

if you mean other people don’t talk about her co-writers - that’s also nonsense. If you check out forums like Reddit or even twitter etc people talk a lot about her relationship with writers like arron dessner and Jack antonoff.

Shit that's me told.

Generally though, fair yes?

Because if you’re going to present these statements as though they’re facts then you should expect to be told youre mistaken, especially when it’s cheap misogyny

I couldn't name any but it wouldn't surprise me if I recognised one or two

Though, to be fair, I wallow in nostalgia now and only listen to the music of my youth

Ok OP, Taylor Swift is a once in a generation type of singer/songwriter.

Yanbu :)

Most people don’t get the references in her lyrics.

Like @PlusOneTwoThree above who said “Her songs are easy to sing along to and usually have some kind of catchy hook
However I don’t rate her as an amazing songwriter no. I think the reason she appeals to so many teenage girls is because she writes like one “I mean - “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on the hill” … what?! 🤦🏻‍♀️”

Ok so a “a sexy baby” is slang, it refers to the type of woman who infantalises herself and act like a preschooler in order to impress and control men. 30Rock did a whole episode on the ‘sexy baby’ new employee. So here Taylor is saying she feels alone in teying to be a strong adult woman while she’s surrounded by women acting like little girls to manipulate men.

The same song had references to a family betrayals in recent movie (not Glass Onion, the other one er) etc etc

”Midnights become my afternoons” is one of the best ways to sum up the directionless time-wasting of depression I’ve heard. <eyes the time>

Yeah, my problem was you not agreeing with my opinion, nothing to do with your boring sexism 🙄

I can't imagine how Mean / All Too Well / Anti-hero could sound remotely similar. They aren't even the same genres.
I love the country stuff myself.
Also love Morrisette, and think they have something of the same vibe at times.

I love her and think she’s an amazing songwriter but not once in a generation. LDR is the same generation for one thing.

Best songwriter? Which song? Haters gonna hate, hate, hate...fakers gonna fake, fake, fake..shake it off

I don't find her that impressive. I don't really understand why fans worship Beyonce and Taylor Swift like they do.
Something to do with carefully crafted personas by their marketing teams appealing to the younger audience.

@HomeatRoseCottage genuinely asking as I don’t understand, why do you keep saying people at being misogynistic? Eg someone says the to fans are generally younger girls… even if that statement is untrue, how is it misogynistic?

also, what are your favourite lyrics and why? They don’t stand out to me as especially meaningful so I’m interested to hear what resonates strongly with you. For me, I love the poetry of lyrics in music and my favourite songs are those where the lyrics stand out. So I get it, I get that excellent lyrics can make a song stand out above the rest.

Speaking as a non-fan I'm not going to be reading all that. And all I ever hear is how wonderful she is. You've gone on about how marvellous she is and how great her lyrics are. Which ones were collaborations?

Streaming is included in sales though, and still she hasn't impacted the charts.

She's a strange one. Largely on the periphery over here for over a decade (certainly nowhere near Adele, Sheeran, One Direction, Rihanna etc.) and yet the last two/three years she started to take off.

I've seen the articles of her being this cultural behemoth, and while this tour certainly is, the rest of her stuff isn't.

The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, David Bowie...she's nowhere near this level in popular culture.

I wasn’t a big fan until DD3 became a Swiftie and played random songs in the car which I got quite into. Suddenly im playing ‘all too well’ 10 minute version on repeat and we all have tickets for her show in Edinburgh!
Her stuff isn’t all deep and meaningful but she writes a damn good pop song and it’s very relatable. You don’t get to her level without talent.
YANBU

Well you could pick out whatever backs up your argument here couldn't you - Freddie Mercury didn't win any best albums, but Bowie, the Police, U2, Simon and Garfunkel all did.
And yes, Styles, Sheeran and Kanye West have won too.

Okay. I've found one that I know and like. Mean. But only because I heard it on Glee and really liked it there. I also like Taylor's version now too.

She likes to write with other people, experiment with sound etc. That doesn't mean she's not the main force behind it. Her strength is her lyrics. If you were familiar with her work you'd know the Taylor stamp/presence on every song. Her life, her words, her themes.

She wrote Clean with Imogen heap and Imogen went on to blog about the experience. It's worth reading.

Not only does she write her own songs but she pretty much only ever performs her own too. She would never record a song that she didn't write (the only examples I can think that are the exception here are Christmas songs). She has performed some covers for the live lounge etc, been in cats and done duets with other artists in recent years but hasn't added a random cover into her tour in a long time, because she doesn't need to. Her back catalogue is huge.

She hasn't got the strongest voice, there are technically better singers, but I happen to love it, particularly when she's singing in a lower register. In contrast, Adele's voice goes straight through me (plus I don't think she's a nice human).

'The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, David Bowie...she's nowhere near this level in popular culture.'

They all have one thing in common that Taylor Swift doesn't have...

They’re all British.