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Hold on now, I may be anxious and a political cupcake, but, uhh... What was that other thing you said?
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Taylor Swift
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I never got Taylor swift. Can anyone explain to me why she isn’t just standard pop music?
I'm by no means a TS fan but I saw the tour movie with my partner, who is a big fan, over the weekend. Overall, it's just super-well produced pop music, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it sounds very sterile and inoffensive. On the other hand though, when that much resources and manpower go into any type of music, its almost impossible for it to sound objectively bad. Taylor Swift seems like a nice enough person, too.
I dunno. I mean, I guess it’s a matter of taste. But when I hear over produced pop music, it’s very grating for me. It’s like sickeningly…I don’t know how to describe it. Sweetness tastes as close to any taste can be “objectively” good, I guess. But pop music to me—modern pop music, really anything after mid 90s/2000–sounds so hooky and scientifically melodic that it’s like putting an entire handful of refined sugar in your gullet. Like, yeah, it technically is sweet, but it’s so overpowering that it’s disgusting.
If that makes sense. When I hear that basic pop structure that is literally manufactured to all be similar, it’s like nails on a chalkboard for me. I feel it in my gut that I don’t like it. It sounds like a bucket full of sugar, in a sickening way.
It’s very hard for me to get it across, but it actually is a physical feeling in my upper stomach/shoulders. It’s a physical response, and maybe it was an adopted response from when I was a kid/teenager growing up in the 90s/2000s, but the stuff today only hits that button harder and my body actually responds.
Its definitely a matter of taste. You're absolutely allowed to not like a cake because it's too sweet. You're allowed to be sickened by it. Where the discourse gets frustrating is when people find it impossible that others don't find it sickening, and try to convince others that it is unequivocally sickening.
If you have such a visceral reaction... why are you asking people to explain it? Are you listening to the answers and reflecting, or taking the opportunity to speak past their response?
I mean, as a music fan, I have friends whose taste I otherwise respect and that intersect with mine on almost everything else swear up and down that I need to give her another shot. No one’s ever given me reasons other than the boilerplate stuff, so I wanted a bigger pool of opinions. I can find appreciation for something when I understand it better—I wanted to see if anyone had any real point to be made. I’m open to respecting the music for having quality even if it’s not my cup of tea. Everyone finds a lot of quality in her stuff, and I wanted to see if it went beyond the basic, “it’s great pop music, she writes it herself” answer I always get.
Someone elsewhere itt sort of gave me an answer that made sense; that coupled with her enormous celebrity status, the personal insight into that strata through exposing herself emotionally gives people this sense of something incredibly special, and that gave me an angle on the issue I hadn’t really considered. It makes sense. I just find a huge cross section of people who aren’t just pop fans listening to whatever is on the radio/popular/presented to them, but like true musician/musicos who hold her in high esteem. It’s curious, I’m trying to kinda parse what’s at the root of this phenomenon. It’s dumb, but I like to talk about it