Are You a Swifty?

A talented and self-aware, confident songwriter who had enough faith in her artistry to convince her conservative banker father to move to Nashville and help his daughter establish herself there. Plays the business beautifully and it’s a pleasure to watch her songwriting grow throughout the years. Compare the promise of "Tim McGraw" (2006) with 2022’s well-realized "Anti-hero".

Though not yet on a Dolly Parton level of philanthropy, she gives back to her communities and has single-handedly inspired a generation of females to dive into music and musicianship.

@gpgr4blu Madonna said she was a fan of Swift’s production skills. This says a lot seeing as how Madonna was a perfectionist when it came to her songs’ sound and space.

Her style may not be your aesthetic, but calling her "vapid and talentless" is simply ignorant.

@wesheadley I just discovered Hurray For The Riff Raff by simply browsing through Tidal's new releases in Folk/Americana. Good artist with some catchy progressions!

@erik_squires I think you’re confusing Taylor Swift with Britney Spears.  
Britney Spears was tied to a conservatorship that she got out of recently, not Taylor Swift.

@tylermunns  Shows you how much I follow current music trends!! Hahahaha

@wesheadley You say, “…the fake divide between male and female artists…” yet you also say, “For female pop artists I’d put Lana Del Rey...”  

Further, if we actually entertained such dumb sexism in this way (comparing ‘female artists’), and then took your assertion that Lana Del Rey’s oeuvre could be placed “among the best,” “in any era,” we’d still be walkin’ on reeeeaaaal thin ice.  

If we looked at the songwriting output in the era of mid-‘60s-through-mid-‘70s by the likes of Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, Cynthia Weil, Nina Simone, Dolly Parton, Valerie Simpson, Aretha Franklin, Loretta Lynn, Nico, Bobbie Gentry, Joni Mitchell, and Betty Davis, and then looked at Lana Del Rey’s oeuvre, and then said hers could be “put up there with any of them,”…um…uh…yyyyeeaahh, no.  

If we threw her oeuvre into the mix of ‘90s artists like The Breeders, Aimee Mann, Björk, Lauryn Hill, Sinead O’Connor, Liz Phair, Iris Dement, Sleater-Kinney, Gillian Welch, PJ Harvey, Lucinda Williams, and Fiona Apple…um…uh…yyyeeeaaahh, no.

Throw Lana (or Taylor for that matter) into a room with either of those eras’ artists in their primes (we could do it with other eras…mid-‘70s-through-mid-‘80s, for example…same result) and she’d likely pull a Wayne’s World-esque, bowing-on-her-knees-on-the-floor, “We are not worthy! We are not worthy!” (in this case, the ‘we’ being her two-dozen-odd different co-writers the last decade)