re: I don't get why Taylor Swift is such a big deal.

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She just hits me as Debbie Gibson but with Nashville backing. Weak voice, watered down pop. She's fortunate to be in the musical era she's in.

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Funny you say that because Debbie Gibson wrote pretty much all of her own music. While Swift usually works with co-writers, she unquestionably has a heavy hand in all of the writing. Almost all of her hits start with the basic song structure that she creates. Her third album was entirely self-written.

Truthfully, these are very hackneyed and regurgitated criticisms trotted out against all pop stars although invariably made by people who only listen to a tiny fraction of whomever they are criticizing. And sometimes it hits the mark. But sometimes it doesn't.

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This is the part I'm always deeply skeptical of. She writes them? Really? Define "writing".

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Well what would you deduce is involved in creating an album (Speak Now) in which every single song has only one credited songwriter? Unless you think there are ghost writers who decided to forego their share of copyright, I guess songwriting would be whatever you think is involved in making that happen.

She did that specifically to try to end some of the skepticism about her involvement in the writing. On her first two albums she had one co-writer, an older woman who never had anywhere near the same success with other artists. Even when this person explained that she pretty much just edited and pared down the songs Swift brought to her, people didn't believe it. So she dumped her for her third album and did it all on her own. She's even gone so far as to release audio logs of her creating the earliest version of some of her hits to show people that these things aren't just handed to her.

But it seems as long as she works with any co-writers people will think that's exactly what's happening no matter how often she gives examples of precisely what she's contributed to address the skepticism.

Someone opened up for her who was a Juilliard trained singer. He said that she couldn't sing in tune.

My oldest is now 18 and Taylor was her first musical love. I took her to see her twice when my daughter was 7-9ish. Once in Bossier and once in New Orleans, I think it was Fearless and Speak Now so still sort of country heading into pop. They were good shows, I remember a piano rose out of the stage and she played one song on and then it was gone.

After that I always kinda checked out her albums (Red and 1989) and gave them a listen but never stuck with them. When Reputation came out the singles weren't good so I didn't listen to it or Lover (also shitty singles) and then she was on NPRs Tiny Desk concert series and she played acoustic and I liked it but didn't listen to the albums still.

When the pandemic happened and she announced a surprise album produced by Aaron Desner of The National and with a Bon Iver duet I checked it out and really liked it. I went back and listened to the older albums and listened to her song writing and she's a much better writer than most give her credit for. If you've only listened to the singles I recommend checking out the album tracks.

As far as does she really write her own songs I would say she does. Some are overly produced (anything with Jack Antonof) and Aaron Desner said the writing process for her was about the same as he does with Matt Berninger from The National he creates music and beats and loops and sends them to them to listen to and they write the lyrics. For the new National album the song The Alcott features Taylor and Desner said the song had this space in it so the sent her what they had recorder and 30 minutes later she sent back her parts so she listened to it and wrote lyrics.

Yes it is bullshite that the opinion of a trained professional singer said she couldn't sing.

Her fans wanted her to take voice lessons for years but she has refused.

You don’t understand why he’s saying it sounds like bullshite.

It sounds like a false anecdote because it has the trappings of one with the appe to authority of “oh well… a gulliard vocalist says…”

It doesn’t take a graduate of a performing arts school to know whether someone can sing on key or not.

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You're so lame. So what year was it when talented songwriters and performers suddenly became extinct

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Somewhere around the turn of the century by my calculations.

It just proves you don't have to be a good singer to be popular.

I'll take the opinion of a trained singer with decades of vocal training than someone who thinks Taylor Swift can sing and gets offended when people say she doesn't.