Gen Xers - Do you find Taylor Swift’s music bland?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

lol no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Gen X women think hating Taylor Swift is a personality and I will never understand

One of the Gen X PPs here to clarify that I only am neutral/meh about Taylor. Now her fans…

+1

I have not posted much in the thread but I don't actually have strong feelings about Swift as a person. Like others I have tried to get into her music because she seems to be the biggest thing going, but it just never clicks with me. I do like singer-songwriters like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo so I don't think it's purely a generational thing.

But reading through the thread I am reminded that I find diehard Swifties really annoying. They take any critique of Swift so personally. I don't get it. I think there is a lot of over identification with her as a personal avatar and it's not healthy. She's just an artist and celeb.

Actually, I don’t really care whether people like her or not. I understand she is not everyone’s cup of tea. I think people mainly take issue with the criticisms that come from generalizations or ignorance, or even a dismissal of her themes as unimportant because they appeal to young women as though that is a bad thing. There’s a deeper body of work there underneath the radio hits. I understand not everyone has the time or willingness to listen to them. But many people still speak before they know.

Yep. It’s the obvious misogyny and impossible standards Taylor is held to that get some of us riled up.

Please stop with this nonsense. Critics have listed plenty of other female artists that they adore.

None them have touched Taylor’s success and impact. Or they’ve stayed in their lane and so they are acceptable.

I’m not accusing you or everyone as misogynistic but there is a lot of misogyny in some of the criticisms. And people respond to that and are accused as rabid and hysterical.

I'm not sure how you can say Beyonce and Rihanna can't touch her success. Rihanna was a billionaire 1st.

Didn’t you know? Taylor is unprecedented in every way.

Nobody is saying that and you sound crazy.

“None them have touched Taylor’s success and impact.”

Is that a reasonable statement in your mind?

Yes? It’s pretty unprecedented what she’s done in terms of her success. This is just objectively a fact.

Someone upthread mentioned rhianna and Beyoncé as comparisons in terms of success which I would agree with but they have also experienced ridiculous amounts of misogyny. I remember as soon as the news came out that Chris Brown had abused Rihanna, immediately someone on DCUM posted a thread that we should boycott all of Rihanna’s products and companies because she stayed with an abuser. And how awful of her. No mention, of course that we should boycott Brown, the actual abuser.

But yes, I guess it’s ridiculous to think that there’s any misogyny with any female artist ever. How silly of me!

To your first argument that it's fair to say no one else has "touched" Taylor's success and impact, please explain what it is about Taylor that is more successful and impactful than previous megastars. Other than sheer dollars earned-- it is the nature of the economy that new stars will always top the earnings of the last. There will be another artist whose tour makes more than Eras just like Eras topped previous tours.

But what is it about Taylor that makes you say that, for instance, Beyonce or Rhianna or Madonna or Britney or Mariah or even Cher or Tina Turner or Aretha Franklin, cannot "touch" her success and impact? Why does Taylor belong in a separate class, other than you simply liking her music more than theirs (there are going to be lots of people who prefer the music of one of those artists to Taylor as well).

Yes all female artists experience misogyny. Taylor is not the first and she also doesn't get it the worst-- much of what she's done owes a lot to paths cut by others on that list, or lessons Taylor learned from because of how other artists suffered.

Honestly, it’s like people can’t use the Google. Check out where she is as a best selling artist relative to the time she’s actually been in the business, or even alive.

But she’s not even close to the best selling artist alive.

Also not relative to the time she’s been active. The Beatles sold more records in their active career than she has.

and Rihanna has sold the most certified records.

Yes. Certified sales according to SoundScan, which started in 1991.

Before that, it’s harder to really track numbers, but the Beatles are overall the most, according to the systems in place at the time.

For older artists do they count 4x we bought the record, tape, CD, etc?

Every sale counts, yes of course. So if you bought an album in different formats, it counts as multiple sales.

That’s why it’s so impressive that Rihanna has such high sales. No one who started in 2000 or later even comes close. Eminem is next, and then Taylor Swift.

Makes sense. What about people who never buy and just stream on Spotify, I didn’t even know you could buy an album truthfully or how that works.

You don’t know how to buy an album?

iTunes
Vinyl record online or in a store
CD online or in a store

Record players are like typewriters, who owns a record player anyway - I know hipsters but really?
iTunes - why ? Why not just stream it? What happens to it when iTunes goes away?
CD? Cars don’t even have CDS.

Have you been living under a rock? Vinyl sales topped a billion last year.

What happens when iTunes goes away? You own the file. What happens when Spotify goes away? You’re screwed.

You really seem ignorant.

Thank you to all the hoarders for keeping vinyls from going in landfills .

Vinyls are like TS a passing fancy ;-).

You download the iTunes file? And put it where?

I don’t buy albums so when Spotify goes away I use the next streaming service to stream it.

Are VHS sales up too?

You have to be a troll. No one is this stupid.

Sorry I stepped away to go buy some VHS tapes, they are the new craze.

[Anonymous]

Personally, some of my favorite Taylor Swift songs to listen to are the acoustic versions.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m curious as to what TS has done that’s unprecedented. This seems to be a claim by a lot of Swifties. There’s this notion that she is uniquely successful, influential, etc.

It’s not record sales. Among artists that started in the 2000s, Rihanna beats her. If you take Eminem (1999 start), he does too.

It’s not cultural impact. Madonna and MJ were enormous in their heyday.

It’s not impact on the music industry. The Beatles arguably began the notion of the rock band, had the first concept album, first major merchandising contracts, first stadium tour.

So what is it?

I disagree on cultural impact. A couple of months ago my husband and I who are both in our late 40s were telling our daughters about the night Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk. And what a different time it was because the next day all of our classmates and teachers were talking about it.

It’s just so much harder in today’s pop cultural landscape, with kids maybe looking at TikTok and having their own streaming profile, and parents being on a totally different social media platform and a totally different streaming profile. We are all watching different shows, listening to different music more on our own little devices.

You can get on a plane and watch whatever you want, versus years ago it was one movie being shown. So I think it’s not just Taylor but the general landscape, it’s kind of crazy all the generations seem to know her and how much attention she gets.

Taylor’s vinyl album sales are also pretty insane for this day and age. Yes 30 years ago you would not have blinked, but the fact that there are so many young kids actually buying vinyl records because of her is pretty impressive.

Clearly there’s lots of other artists and pop culture figures who’ve had a huge impact and maybe even the same or similar or more, but she is definitely up there with them.

Vinyl sales went up before she started to really hit it big. Yes, she has had good vinyl sales, but part of that is because she puts out so many editions of her albums.

I think of her as a contemporary version of Madonna or another diva. I simply don’t see where she’s breaking new ground.

I love Madonna, and have been to some of her concerts. I just don’t see people talking about or reacting to Madonna concerts the same way they react to Taylor’s. The Eras tour seems a little unprecedented to me. Of course other artists have had hugely successful tours, I’m not trying to say they haven’t, but I guess I just don’t understand what we’re arguing about. Taylor is big and popular. I don’t understand why that’s controversial or even subjective.

When you say you've been to a Madonna concert do you mean in the last 10-15 years or do you mean you saw The Blonde Ambition or Girlie Show tours in the early 90s? Because those are the tours that would have been more comparable to Eras in terms of feeling culturally groundbreaking and being just the hottest thing going. Madonna's image from Blonde Ambition -- the Gautier conical corset in gold or champagne with the short curly blonde bob and the headset mic -- is so iconic that many of Taylor's looks from Eras offer references to that tour and to the Madonna's overall approach to touring and performance. A lot of what people now consider standard for a major pop star doing an arena or stadium tour was fairly original when Madonna was at her peak in her career. She was also pushing boundaries in a way Taylor doesn't -- her Sex book and the documentary that went with it (which also came out early 90s) was part of Madonna actively moving the culture in ways that went beyond music (greater acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality and more frankness in talking about sexuality outside of traditional heterosexual sex in marriage). Whether you like that or not is beside the point (I'm actually a bit of a prude and kind of roll my eyes at some of it) -- it was culturally influential in a major way.

That's not me saying that Madonna is better than Taylor Swift or that Swift is not culturally influential. I don't even have strong feelings about Madonna and while I enjoy a lot of her early music in a nostalgic way because it was part of the soundtrack of my youth. But when someone tells me that Swift is just way more culturally important than Madonna was because they are comparing Eras to one of Madonna's more recent tours that she has done in her 50s and 60s it just sounds uneducated to me. Taylor Swift is culturally huge and her current tour is unquestionably the biggest thing going in pop music. But the idea that she is somehow unprecedented and is bigger and more important than any pop star that came before her? If you are Gen X or older you know that's not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

I’m the PP who first made this suggestion. I never played these bands for my kids and neither did their dad. We are more into alt country now (which they hate because they are way too cool).

Maybe your kids imitate you all the time but that is far from universal.

After 12/13 they really stop listening to whatever you play for them and develop their own taste.

I never played 90s rock for them because it’s too profane for the under 10 set IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

lol no.

Well what are yours listening to? I’m reporting from the trenches, having two teen boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

I’m the PP who first made this suggestion. I never played these bands for my kids and neither did their dad. We are more into alt country now (which they hate because they are way too cool).

Maybe your kids imitate you all the time but that is far from universal.

After 12/13 they really stop listening to whatever you play for them and develop their own taste.

I never played 90s rock for them because it’s too profane for the under 10 set IMO.

90s rock is too profane? I mean, it has its moments, but it’s not even close to the most profane music out there.

What do you consider appropriate for kids under 10?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

I’m the PP who first made this suggestion. I never played these bands for my kids and neither did their dad. We are more into alt country now (which they hate because they are way too cool).

Maybe your kids imitate you all the time but that is far from universal.

After 12/13 they really stop listening to whatever you play for them and develop their own taste.

I never played 90s rock for them because it’s too profane for the under 10 set IMO.

90s rock is too profane? I mean, it has its moments, but it’s not even close to the most profane music out there.

What do you consider appropriate for kids under 10?

I don’t let under 10s listen to “the most profane music out there” either.

We played alt country and lots of 70s rock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

I’m the PP who first made this suggestion. I never played these bands for my kids and neither did their dad. We are more into alt country now (which they hate because they are way too cool).

Maybe your kids imitate you all the time but that is far from universal.

After 12/13 they really stop listening to whatever you play for them and develop their own taste.

I never played 90s rock for them because it’s too profane for the under 10 set IMO.

90s rock is too profane? I mean, it has its moments, but it’s not even close to the most profane music out there.

What do you consider appropriate for kids under 10?

I don’t let under 10s listen to “the most profane music out there” either.

We played alt country and lots of 70s rock.

You think 70s rock isn’t profane? LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the young boys listening to these days?

90s rock. Foo Fighters, Green Day, Offspring, Nirvana, The Smiths etc for mine.

My daughter likes 90s rock too! Random songs, really, and part of it might be because her dad and I are in a 90s rock cover band, so she hears it a lot.

^^^ this

your kids listen to what you play for them, it's not what they are "into".

It's both. Kids will often mimic the musical tastes of those around them (their parents or their friends) but they can also develop interests and taste on their own. Sometimes kids hear something in a movie or TV show (or in a commercial or on the radio) and latch onto it. If they have ways to access it on their own (which streaming offers in a way that kids never had before) they absolutely can get "into" things that that their parents and friends didn't introduce them to. That's one of the joys of music when you're a kid -- it can open doors beyond what they would otherwise be exposed to. So if your parent is really into 90s grunge you might hear some Taylor Swift and be like "wow this speaks to me in a way my parents' music doesn't." Or if all your friends are obsessed with Swift but then you get your hands on some old school country or a copy of Nevermind you might thing "whoa why isn't everyone I know listening to THIS instead?" People including kids can develop taste organically without having it dictated to them by others.

Which is the point of this thread. For some people they hear TS and love it and the fact that it's everywhere is great because cool -- more of a thing I love. But other people -- even if they approach it with an open mind -- will just never click with it and will wonder what the hype is about. Neither is wrong. It's cool so many people get joy from Swift's music but also it's totally fine if you don't like it and it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you.

[Anonymous]

PP won’t play 90s rock for their kids but 70s rock is fine. Hmm:

Well I'm upper-upper class high society
God's gift to ballroom notoriety
And I always fill my ballroom
The event is never small
The social pages say I've got
The biggest balls of all

I've got big balls
I've got big balls
They're such big balls
And they're dirty big balls
And he's got big balls
And she's got big balls
(But we've got the biggest balls of them all)
And my balls are always bouncing
My ballroom always full
And everybody comes and comes again
If your name is on the guest list
No one can take you higher
Everybody says I've got
Great balls of fire

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have to say that I find Taylor Swift’s extreme popularity to be one of the great mysteries of the 21st century. I find her voice and songs to be the epitome of the most boring and bland of pop songs.

Is this basically a generational thing? Is she popular among Millenials because they grew up hearing about her life and romances and just took more of an interest in what she had to say in her supposed “genius” song lyrics? I honestly don’t even know if her lyrics even are that great because I find the melodies and her voice so boring I don’t even care to put that much thought into what she’s saying

And yes, I realize she has gotten better in recent years. I actually do like Folklore, but she was insanely popular for practically two decades prior, so I don’t think it really counts.

Poor Taylor. You and Trump are so jealous that you void green urine. Whereas, Taylor laughs all the way to the bank where she deposits her billions.