I remember when Tool released an album that briefly outsold Taylor Swift’s latest release. The Swifties were not having it. There was hysteria and conspiracy theories to rival the Biden Trump election.
Jeez, someone tie up that drummer.
Yours is a great answer, thank you. It’s been very thought-provoking, seeing all the varied responses. I’ve learned a lot about Taylor Swift without even having listened to any more of her music! Some things I’ve learned about TS:
- She’s extremely prolific.
- She writes personal lyrics that really resonate with fans.
- She writes and sings some catchy pop tunes.
- She integrates “Easter egg-like” pieces of memorabilia (I don’t know what else to call them) into her music, appearance, etc., that fans look for, and communicate back to her. A unique, wholesome way to communicate with fans. (this was the most intriguing, and completely unbeknownst to me, characteristic of her)
- She has a very magnetic, charismatic personality.
- She’s admired for her beauty and appearance, in addition to her devotion to her career and fanbase.
- She’s very smart and clearly a very, very skilled businesswoman.
Thanks to all for the informative responses (and even the uninformative hostile responses; I got a few chuckles). Really, honestly. TS is an impressive artist, in many ways, and perhaps it’s the sum of these “ways” that make her so special to her fans. I’m in no more hurry to go listen to her music now than I was before, but at least now I have some more things to keep in mind if/when I do. Thank you.
And a treat for anyone who’s made it this far…
Ryan Adams covered an entire album of Taylor Swift’s (“1989”). It really gave me an appreciation for her lyricism.
Here’s the song that hooked me … live on the Daily Show!
(Or, here’s the studio version of Blank Space.)
This thread inspired me to listen to some of her music again. Last night was 1989, and listening more closely to “Style”, I see why you both say this (and I agree) - it’s a good example of a lot of the things she excels at as a songwriter and performer. So for those who can be bothered to listen to the music, here’s a little dive into the weeds of why people like her.
Lyrically, the song is about something that almost everyone can relate to: being in a relationship that you know is bad but you just can’t quit. So the song connects with people at a deeper level than “I like the music.” She also uses good imagery to tell the story:
Midnight
You come and pick me up, no headlights
Long drive
Could end in burning flames or paradise
But there’s nuance: in the second verse, it comes out that she’s also to blame for their dynamic, which subverts expectations for a listener who thought it was simply a song about a guy who did her wrong:
I say, I heard, oh
That you’ve been out and about with some other girl, some other girl
He says, what you heard is true, but I
Can’t stop thinkin’ 'bout you and I
I said, I’ve been there too a few times
And there’s ambiguity: in the bridge, she sings “Take me home, just take me home.” Is that take me home, I’m done with this? Or take me home so we can jump into bed? This further connects listeners to the song as they try to figure it out or read their own biases into it.
In addition to decent rhymes, she also pays attention to the rhythm of the lyrics. In the sample lyrics above she rhymes “…is true” and “'…bout you”, but also appends a staccato “but I / and I” to each line. This links the lines together and gives a better flow to the song. In the chorus, she alternates running the words together (“And-I-got-that”) with extra spacing (“red—lip—cla—ssic—thing that you like”) on the downbeat, switching to off the beat for the last line “out - of - style.” That variation provides interest and makes the song stick in your brain better.
The lyrics (and title) are also an easter egg for fans, who speculate it’s about her former relationship with Harry Styles. Solving the “mystery” makes the fans feel more of a connection to her, like they know some secret of hers.
Musically, it has a classic pop beat and the basics like harmonies are spot-on. But less common for a pop song, it starts in a minor key (B minor), which coupled with the faster beat causes tension. It then relieves the tension by shifting to the key of D major for the chorus. These keys share two notes, so it maintains continuity while shifting the feel of the song. She does this build tension/release tension in a lot of her songs. “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” shifts between minor and major chords within the chorus in a call-and-response type format. There’s a study that showed a high correlation between song rank on Billboard charts with what it calls “harmonic surprise,” where the chord shifts are unexpected.
The bridge in “Style” does this in an even more extreme fashion. After the second chorus, the expectation is that it will return to a minor key verse, but instead it stays in the major key and jumps an octave for an even bigger buildup. Taylor is somewhat famous for her song bridges; you can find rankings of the bridges of her songs alone.
So on the one hand, “Style” is a pretty standard synth pop song. But it’s all the little things that you don’t really notice, but are done so well that it takes that standard format and make it great. It might not stand out as unique or innovative, but it’s no less an accomplishment.
Thank you for all of that musical information. Explanations like that are why I watch “Why is this song great” and “Professional musician listens for the first time to…” type videos. I get technical explanations (which I only understand a bit) about what it is that makes some particular song unique.
There is music I like, and music I don’t like, and I have a very difficult time putting into words what it is about either one that drives my feelings. Technical explanations about the music can go a long way to helping me understand what attracts or repels me from certain artists, songs, or genres.
For what it’s worth, I feel the same way. After listening to the lyrics too. I don’t care for pop music as a genre, a personal air of just folks doesn’t move me, and she’s no Bob Dylan. I’m aware I’m an outlier. I don’t ask what people see in entertainments I don’t like though, except as a general wailing at the universe. I just get what you got: waves of angry rebuttal which explain nothing.
B minor is the relative minor of D, so they actually share all their notes. It’s the same scale, with a difference of where the “home” (or tonic) is. You can think of the whole song as being in D if you want to, just hanging on the minor chords in the key in the verses.
This is part of why describing music isn’t meaningful for me personally. You might as well have said “Gobbledy snobbeldy gabble gee” for how much of it I understood.
Yes, it’s not meaningful to non-musicians.
I’m a former musician, and it’s borderline for me. The terms are familiar but major/minor is about as much as I could come up with on my own. Thanks for the details.
I would say presence.
I don’t follow her or purposely listen to her, but I remember seeing her in Hannah Montana: The Movie with my friend and she made an impact on both of us. As we left the movie, we talked how much of a better singer she was than Miley. Granted, that’s not necessarily high praise, but I still remember her in the movie decades later.
Basically, it means that it’s not a huge change at all.
Moving from a minor key to its relative major, or the other way around, is maybe the most standard, cliché transition you can think of. It can been done in a very tasteful way, though.
Think of it as seeing a light green painting, then seeing the exact same painting in dark green. Same object, but a very different feel. Depending on how it’s done, it could be either boring or satisfying.
Hey, gang. I’m a non-musician and I learned some basic music theory in a half hour. It’s 99%* math.
*and the 1% that I’m missing… hearing it: “Oh, cool, Taylor just threw in a D#, so now it’s a B Major chord. I’ll keep listening to see if it’s going to be a key change or just a Picardy Third…”
A simple non musical way to describe it is she created tension by contrasting the verse and chorus with different moods. The verse is tense and brooding and “darker”, the chorus has release that is “bright.” I don’t think it’s that particularly unusual in pop songs — it’s one of the ways to created differentiation between verses and choruses. She’s not jumping to a completely unrelated key or anything like that, but she effectively delineates the sections of her songs, creates interest, emotional build, etc.
She’s just a damn good songwriter. P.E.R.I.O.D.
…and my two daughters are obsessed with her.
And then there was this alto-suprano who was using frictive palatial glottal stops! (Two more holes in my education, knowing what those voice-description and phomene-description terms I see mean.)
Yep. She can write the hell out of a catchy and poignant pop song, which is not as easy to do as one may think.
This exactly. She’s not blazing new ground in pop. All the things that I pointed out from “Style” can be found in most other pop songs (and other musical genres). She just does it so damn well.
Like her use of the bridge - there’s a reason most songs have a bridge, to create interest and differentiation. But there are bad bridges that don’t fit the rest of the song, or are too similar to main verses, or are too jarring. Hers are almost never like that.
I’m not Taylor Swift’s target audience and can’t speak to her entire catalogue, but a lot of her songs are pretty catchy. Yes, 99% of her songs are about relationships (presumably hers). But there is a personal nature to her lyrics that I imagine resonates well with young women and girls.
Taylor Swift has also had a lot of success crossing genres from country-pop to power-pop to indie pop to synth pop. There aren’t a lot of artists who can crank out decent collaborations with Tim McGraw, Kendrick Lamar, Panic at the Disco!, Pete Davidson, Ed Sheeran and The National (which actually is one of my favorite bands).