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Post by rick on Oct 18, 2022 23:07:49 GMT -5
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Post by erik on Oct 19, 2022 9:30:48 GMT -5
As Mikael Wood points out in the article, Taylor put out Folklore and Evermore as quickly as she did because she needed to keep herself busy and active at a time when the world had truly shut down. And although I am speculating about this, maybe the pandemic forced her to really think about making the kinds of improvements she needed to make, both as a singer and as a songwriter, if she not only wanted to have a long-lasting career but also wanted to be taken seriously as something more than just a mere "brand".
In the past, I thought I heard some indication that she was going in the direction of early 1970's Joni Mitchell, and even Linda, with songs like "Back To December" and "Begin Again", although I also thought she was still somewhat mentally stuck back in high school, and her voice simply didn't have the kind of emotional inflections or the heft that were part-and-parcel of what we like and remember about Linda. And I'd rather not get started again about the first six or seven years of her recording career, when I thought that the voice was just irritating. possibly because of Autotune or some other studio gimmickry.
Do I think she should be compared to "The Greats" that got mentioned? No--at least, not yet. Releasing several albums of new material over a short period of time as Taylor has done as of late doesn't necessarily make one "great"; and I'm not sure the people mentioned here ever thought of themselves as "great" (although some would snarkily say that Joni was narcissistic enough to think that she did). If, on the other hand, she goes on continuing to make improvements in her singing and her songwriting, then we can say she's on that road.
As I've said many times, no artist is above criticism--not even Linda, and certainly not Taylor Swift. But there is informed criticism based on stark analysis, and then there's just criticism for the sake of criticism and faux cleverness. A lot of the latter has been leveled at Taylor during her sixteen years in the game simply because she became such a huge hit right out of the gate at 16--as though that's never happened in American pop music before; and the level of invective has been so over-the-top that it's gotten easier over time for even someone as critical of her as I have been to defend her. She just needs to keep working at it, and at some point, then we can maybe start talking about her as a great artist.
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