Taylor Swift and Everything Else That's Bugging Me

This is a music review blog. It's not supposed to be for pop music, but I have to make an exception here and talk about T-Swift.

She released 1989 just the other day, and, so far, I have been able to avoid it. If I may be candid, back in the day I was quite the Taylor Swift fan, when she was still a country singer. But I have watched her abandon her talented singer/songwriter roots and devolve into a less-than-appealing cookie cutter pop artist, releasing only songs that I can't stand. But, alas, I figured I'd give her one more chance.

The song I've seen most quoted on the internet so far is Out of the Woods. The title sounds thought out, and like it might have some substance. So I sat down and listened to it with a full open and non-judgmental mind.

It was so bad. :(

The chorus is just clusters of words repeated over and over in monotone, with a lot of synth and drums to make it dance-able. The verses are lacking in substance and all traces of the Taylor Swift that first graced the music scene are completely gone. It sounded so fake and over produced and, not that I was expecting a miracle, I was pretty let down.

And that's what's bugging me. I spend so much time writing myself, and I know how much effort it takes to write a song that's good, verses any song on 1989. (I listened to nearly all the rest in hopes I might find a diamond in the rough. I did not.)  All of the good music is being pushed off the radio in favor of this grossly mass-produced pop garbage that is only appealing to teenage girls. And this is a very common complaint about music these days. But good music is still being made! I hear it all the time in some of my favorite artists and on Pandora. If the demand is high and the content is there, why isn't the good stuff on the radio? Why do record labels think they can push this stuff onto the world without retaliation? Because they already are, and they have been doing it for years.

As an indie artist, this is sad, and disheartening. But the upside? Record labels are losing their power thanks to the rise of the internet. An artists can do everything on their own now, with enough work. So, there will never be a lack of bad pop music on the radio, because record labels can still sell it, for now. But their is a back door to this horrendous onslaught of crap, thanks to the advances of music technology. Thanks to YouTube and Spotify and Bandcamp and SoundCloud and Reverbnation and every other site that is used by independent musicians, good music is still out there and available to the world, no matter what is playing on the radio.

And I think (or fervently hope) that in time, record labels will embrace this shift, and bring back the kind of musicians that deserve to be in the spotlight, rather than just industrializing the one thing that isn't supposed to be made generic.

Music isn't for selling, it's an art form, damn it.