A guy you never heard of.

I recently released this single with Pete Parada (Offspring, Saves the Day) about the Star Wars teasers and trailers. It was released the week before the theatrical release, and I was right to apologize for initially being a shitty Star Wars fan.

As long as The Force Awakens is screening, all sales will be split between the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance and the Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation.

She gets a lot of hate, especially now. Really, she kind of always has since she crossed over (I’m talking pre 1989 intentional crossover). 

I’ve never been one to defend her. Here’s why. 

Shit’s Cheap
John Mayer, who I also think makes cheap shit despite having the ability to be more of a craftsperson about songwriting, put it well: 

“I will say as a songwriter that I think it’s kind of cheap songwriting[.] I know she’s the biggest thing in the world, and I’m not trying to sink anybody’s ship, but I think it’s abusing your talent to rub your hands together and go, ‘Wait till he gets a load of this!’ That’s bullshit.”

I’m not a fan of Swift, so I have a hard time discerning what the talent is, because she so consistently leans on writing about a single topic failed relationships. Even “Shake It Off” is a branch of this subject. Before you start with the argument that a lot of great pop songs are born from and deal with that same issue, know that I agree with you. And also know that I think it’s been the case for several decades that those great pop songs about failed relationships deal with it either musically or lyrically in a much more interesting way than Swift. 

(On a not-so-side note, there shouldn’t be too much time spent on defending bringing a guy into this discussion of her work. I’ll be the first to say that women’s work in music and the arts needs to be discussed on their own terms, apart from the men in their lives personally or professionally. But there doesn’t seem to be any sense of separation between these dudes and Swift’s work.)

The reason why pop songs that use Swift’s same subject are better is typically because the artist is concerned with myriad other issues in their life, and those are reflected in the body of work or the context of an album. When a lost love song is surrounded by songs on other subjects, that makes the lost love sting a little more. The inclusion of a song like that says, “This matters as much as everything else going on that I’m writing about.” It implies a hard work. Swift’s work consistently tells me that she only has one thing to worry about: boys. Salon’s article on just how easy it was for her to “work her way up” in the music industry supports that idea, which I had way before there was ever published evidence on her having it easier than a lot of us. That same article also can’t help but talk about her work revolving around failed relationships. I’d think if you were a really competent songwriter, you’d be able to (and want to) reach beyond the same subject that got you started. There’s more to life than boys and sparking romantic relationships, especially as you get older.

Mundane subjects
This is an extension of her shit being cheap, but this needs its own heading. When I began writing songs, the content meant a lot to me, and I don’t regret writing the songs, and I’m not embarrassed by them because what the hell else could I have written? Those songs are about wanting love, thinking I knew how to get it, thinking I knew what it was in the first place, all things that you realize (if you’re lucky) can never be truly realized. 

Swift apparently finds the drive to write songs in thinking every relationship she’s had was a chance at true love. I suppose we all feel that way at some point to some degree, so I’ll focus that more on the situation of any dating scenario - You and one other person (that’s 2) find each other interesting or attractive among a room full of people (say 10-1,000 depending on where you are) that you were both in at the same time on an entire planet (of 7.125+ billion people). Or you get introduced and feel like giving it an honest shot. Still, you and one person that live in the same area are feeling each other out, and when it doesn’t work out, you each go back out into the 7+ billion people to find another interesting/attractive person. It shouldn’t be a shock when things don’t go right in the first place, let alone every time. It certainly shouldn’t be worth writing about again and again. That first time that it happens, when your view of love and romance are irreparably shaken, that’s worthy, I think, of a song. That’s a major life event. Your multiple breakups after are just par for the course. It’s boring, and when you get so specific in your lyrics about who you’re writing about, it’s alienating unless you’re a gossip and vapid. 

1 - Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?

2 - Drew walks by me, can he tell that I can’t breathe?/And there he goes, so perfectly/The kind of flawless I wish I could be

3 - And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy/Who changed his mind and we both cried

4 - She looks at life like it’s a party and she’s on the list/She looks at me like I’m a trend and she’s so over it/I think her ever-present frown is a little troubling/And she thinks I’m psycho 'cause I like to rhyme her name with things

5 - Losing him was blue like I’d never known/Missing him was dark grey all alone

6 - I want you for worse or for better/I would wait forever and ever/Broke your heart, I’ll put it back together/I would wait forever and ever

And that’s how it works/It’s how you get the girl

1 - She’s just talking directly to the subject of the song. Why anyone finds this interesting is beyond me. But again, I’m not a fan to begin with.

2 - I don’t know Drew, and it’s pitiable to not be happy with yourself and to value your self worth against how you view some guy. For someone who’s all about feminism, this is a shitty message to send to her younger audience.

3 - The rest of this song (”Fifteen”) I had hopes would not be about a guy, or reference being wrapped up in chasing some concept of love. Then there was this line.

4 - Obviously talking about someone here, someone I don’t know or care to interpret because I have better things to do (other than write this post, which I’ll justify soon)

5 - We saw some development in lyricism on Red, but it’s still about some fucking guy.

6 - This is not real life. 

White Feminism
If you want to get on my ass about talking about how Swift isn’t really a feminist, please pause your RSS feed from Huff Post and read Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes,” because that perfectly describes the problem with Swift’s perception of feminism and her supporters’ perspectives on why they think Nicki Minaj is full of shit.

The contextual tl;dr re: Swift/Minaj/Mohanty is that Swift is aggressively active about getting her money (under the guise of standing up for lower profile artists) when there’s an injustice she sees, but when someone else (unsurprisingly a black woman) points out an injustice, Swift unnecessarily defends her role in the whole thing and doesn’t find the experienced-by-someone-else injustice important enough to be as vocal about (as she was re: more money). 

Of course, I’m referring to her persuading Apple to change its policy on how and when it delivers streaming revenue to artists. Everyone applauded her for that, when really it was the music industry equivalent of corporate lobbying. There was no virtue in what she did, at least intentionally. It affects artists beneath her positively, but that wasn’t why she went in for it. That’s my opinion, obviously, since I have no link and no one in her camp would dare let that theory fly for a second in the media before issuing a statement. 

But here comes Nicki Minaj, no stranger to controversy herself about artistic integrity, and seemingly being kind of self-aggrandizing. But in that aggrandizement, she got to some hard truths that made things seem less like “Hey, me too,” and “Hey, what the fuck.” I won’t rehash the debate, because we all know it by now, I think (if not, here’s a good rundown, Minaj approved.)

Swift tried to duck her self-involvement (which, again, was very unnecessary and implied a guilty conscious to me) with the “pitting women against each other” thing that anyone who gets their feminism from Huffington Post (second zinger) would know, but Katy Perry cut that shit down really well. And believe you me, I have some significant problems with Katy Perry via feminism too.

So yeah, I think Taylor Swift makes dumb music, has a long way to go to earn the accolades she’s already received, and really stepped in it this time because how could she have not? SHE DOESN’T GET IT. Which leads to my whole reason for writing this. 

Bad Health
Listening to messages from Swift, Minaj, or Perry can be taken many ways, but overall, musically and lyrically, it’s all like exclusively drinking Pepsi when you just need a nice water detox to clear the kidney stones from your body. It’s all very simple music, which I understand it needs to be to be so successful. But is that where we find our truth? Is truth for so many millions of people so readily accessible and presented so nicely? 

I listen to pop as much as anyone else because it’s just like candy. It tastes good, it’s fun, but it should be consumed in moderation. All this pop music can rot your sensitivity to or awareness of many different things, and your health is more important than liking something because it’s easy to engage with or just because it’s on the front page of iTunes.

And when your worldview is shaped by the pop idols who claim to have your same shared experience, you’re in a vulnerable place. Swift has demonstrated that she’s only interested in two things, really: boys and money. Can young lower and middle class music fans with little exposure or accessibility to different kinds of music really find their mirror in Swift? No, but they’re certainly told they can by her and her label. Can we all look to her activism in the name of money but not recognition of women of other colors and body types as an admirable activism? No, we can’t. 

So what else does she have, really?