Meghan Murphy, Courtney Love, and numerous people of both sexes in between have reiterated how dull and boring and bland and uninspired Swift is....
...and yet people can't seem to stop themselves from beating this dead horse. They are moved to write whole articles about just how little substance she has.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I find someone bland and boring, they can't keep my interest no matter what.
What I've heard of her music - which is admittedly very little, since I don't listen to the radio, don't watch much tv, nor check out popular music out of curiosity on Youtube - it does seem to have little substance. I couldn't name three songs if you held a loaded gun to my head. The one I've heard and I did like was
that song with The Civil Wars. Every critique seems to be a greater critique that could easily be made about what popular music I have heard, regardless of the sex of the artist. It is an industry problem, and has been for decades. But it's always more convenient to pick on whatever rich, blonde pop star is the name at the time. Debbie Gibson, Britney Spears, even males with huge female followings like Justin Bieber got it. But Taylor hasn't crashed and burned, which makes people all the angrier.
insanely overpriced concert tickets which hit the wallets of young girls the most, and she's mostly just the pretty cover for a money-grubbing machine operated almost entirely by greedy men who are siphoning cash away from the middle and lower classes into the pockets of the already rich.
This is a greater critique of the industry at large. Yes, huge pop stars overcharge for their slop. Beyonce, boomer acts like The Rolling Stones, and many others do it too. It is also the fault of monopolized shit like Livenation/Ticketmaster, which price gouges horribly. Even tickets for a Livenation
club show cost 60 bucks or more, I had to deal with it when seeing bands like Kreator and GWAR. It wouldn't bother me so much if all that money actually went to Kreator and GWAR, but at least $12 of that was
just parking. Livenation venues also take cuts from bands actual fucking merch booths now, something that is the very lifeline of a touring band that plays in clubs (which is 99% of the music I listen to). Livenation/Ticketmaster needs to die in a fucking fire, or at least be broken up, badly. Singling out one woman won't fix the deeply entrenched issues of the industry. Yes, she is a symptom of everything that sucks. People should maybe learn to focus on the cause.
Today's young women and girls should have their own Lilith Fair
Sarah McLachlan tried it in 2010. In 2011, she declared it dead.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/sarah-mclachlan-says-lilith-fair-is-over/article569791/
I wish the age of the touring festival would return, but it won't, at least not in the US. The recession fucked over Lillith Fairs revival (she also cites changing tastes in music as well) and it hasn't improved. Gas is too pricey for all of that, there's too much overhead, Livenation is even worse than it was in the 2000s. I paid 38 bucks to see Ozzfest in 2001. You won't see all day festival prices like that again, especially not in arenas. Can it be done? Maybe, if artists fight Livenation. The Cure seem to be
trying to fight the good fight. But Lollpalooza stopped touring. Ozzfest eventually stopped, and it was probably the most popular one of all. Warped Tour is talking about doing a three location tour in 2025, we'll see how it goes. All female events are, saddest of all, dead too it seems, and with trannies screeching, I don't see a RETVRN TO TRADITION happening.
The model has switched to Woodstock/European festival multiple day events in one location where you have to travel, the bands don't travel to you.
You probably won't see an era like the 90s again, where a band like Primus can go mainstream, or where a bunch of female punk and metal bands get play on MTV. It is, sadly, fucking dead, Jim. So I go to the shows I do like, and support the bands I do like instead of complaining about the ones I don't.
Who the fuck is Megan Murphy to decide what music is good and what isn't? What music are women allowed to enjoy without judgement and without being called brainlets who are being manipulated? Just let people, and especially women, enjoy artists without being a prick about it. I don't get it. If you don't like Taylor Swift then don't listen to her music, simple as.
And that's basically the core of it. Most music fans went through their hating on popular shit phase when they were 14. Some grew up.
As an aside, the weirdest Swift thing remains 4chan scrotoids deluding themselves into think she was their TRAD WHITE ARYAN WIFE who posted on /b/. All because she didn't dress like a stripper, was blonde and attractive, and at the time, apolitical. Then she took a lukewarm political stance, and they got mad.
She also donated to Hurricane Helene help, which I know was pocket change to her and was a tax write-off. But that puts her a mark above the people who didn't, in my eyes.