Taylor Swift Sweden | Sweden's Largest Fansite Dedicated To Taylor Swift

Äntligen någon som verkligen försvarar Taylor, även om jag inte håller med att det är okej att de skriver skit om Lady Gaga mfl. Om det inte är okej att skriva dåliga saker om Taylor, ska man inte göra det om någon - bara min åsikt. 

March 25, 2010

By Joel Rubinoff

To jump into the middle of the ongoing debate among pop music pundits, let me get this straight: Taylor Swift, the defiantly wholesome country-pop superstar who sold more albums last year than any other artist, is the subject of a massive backlash because she hit a few bum notes during a Grammy Awards duet with Fleetwood Mac chanteuse Stevie Nicks?

And while this is going on, no one is commenting on the fact Ke$ha — the defiantly sleazy electro-trash princess whose party anthem Tik Tok became an in-your-face smash — staggered around in her underwear on last week’s American Idol as if she were on Quaaludes?

Or, for that matter, Lady Gaga’s use of pornographic imagery in her videos? Or Beyonce’s booty-shaking bump and grind?

Are you kidding me?

To sum up the outrage: Taylor Swift sucks because (a) she’s too young, (b) she’s too pretty, (c) she’s too successful, (d) she can’t sing, (d) she adheres to some mythical bland white suburban stereotype and (e) she just, well, sucks.

To which I must respond, have any of these people actually listened to her album, Fearless? I have, not that my tastes normally run to music geared to pre-adolescent girls.

But intrigued by the disconnect between her massive popularity and the hatred directed at her not only from online bloggers, but fellow celebrities like Kanye West — who hijacked her acceptance speech for best female video at the MTV video awards — and Wynonna Judd — who slammed her for being the youngest performer to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award — I decided to go out and buy her album.

And what a shock I got. Taylor Swift, it seems, has been “swift-boated,” to borrow the phrase coined for the smear tactics that derailed John Kerry’s ‘04 U.S. presidential bid.

Fearless, released in 2008 and still topping the pop charts, is — despite the protestations of haters — a jarringly literate, freakishly consistent album that should put to rest any doubts about the 20-year-old songwriting prodigy, a beacon of shining integrity in a sea of sexploitation and the best role model your pre-teen daughter (or son) could ask for.

Confessional in tone and universal in spirit, it avoids clichés — or playfully toys with them — in a way I haven’t seen since the heyday of Carole King and Carly Simon 40 years ago.

Take the song Fifteen, a wistful reflection on early adolescence that, arguably, rivals coming-of-age classics like Night Moves (Bob Seger), At Seventeen (Janis Ian) and I’m Eighteen (Alice Cooper).

“Cause when you’re 15 and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them,” croons Swift, taking a benevolent, big sisterly tone. “And when you’re fifteen, feeling like there’s nothing to figure out. Well, count to ten, take it in, this is life before you know who you’re gonna be . . . fifteen.”

I don’t mean to rave, but compared to Miley Cyrus anthems like Party in The U.S.A. and Ke$ha tunes like Blah, Blah, Blah, this is Leo Tolstoy — delicately performed pop music with a sensitivity and intelligence most adults couldn’t muster, let alone a mere 18-year-old (when the song was written).

As I write this, I should point out, I’m being bombarded with heated emails from a deejay pal who considers Swift an archaic throwback to the pie-in-the-sky days of Sandra Dee and Olivia Newton-John and is outraged — outraged — by my support for what he considers a corporate-controlled mannequin who boasts no semblance of envelope-pushing originality.

He hasn’t, as far as I know, actually listened to her album — and this, perhaps, is exactly the point.

The outrage that has greeted Swift’s success, it has been argued, is the outrage of a generation about to be displaced — musically and otherwise — by a happier, better-adjusted demographic for whom the angst and aggression of Gen-X slackers seems misplaced and irrelevant.

A brave new world is on our doorstep, they argue, and Taylor Swift is leading the way.

Me? I’m just happy to have a chart-topping CD I can play without cringing.

http://news.therecord.com/arts/article/688786


Har nog inte sett någon som försvarat henne så bra, förutom vi fans! Tror ni det är sant att vissa inte tycker om henne, bara för att de inte har gett henne en enda liten chans? Jag vet flera av mina vänner som inte har en anledning till varför de inte gillar henne. Gör mig sååååå arg, att de inte tar en minut av sin tid för att lyssna på henne och låta henne visa dem vad hon har gjort för miljontals av människor. Det är mäktigt vad Taylor har gjort genom dessa åren. Inte bara för mig, utan för just så många andra. [ryser...]


Love Love Love