Unless she was playing in your living room, I'm pretty sure you've actually never heard Taylor Swift's voice without some degree of compression. It's on all of her albums and live performances. For example, if you go on YouTube, you'll find a wonderful live solo performance she did of her song "Wildest Dreams" before a small audience at the Grammies, just her and a Fender Jaguar. It sounds great and natural, but it's loaded with compression and plate-type reverb, which has a similar sustaining effect as compression. You may not notice it, and that's a sign that it's well done, but it's all there. In fact, as I think about it, you may have noticed it more on the the Red album than on Reputation, because Red is not as completely synth based as Reputation, so the vocal compression may stand out a little more. One of the interesting things about current synth based, beats oriented music is that it is not intended to sound "real" or like anything other than what it is. So concepts like compression and DR reduction are pretty meaningless, Because, compared to what . . . ?
It may have all started out a a radio volume thing, but now it is just the sound of modern pop music. And it can, and often is, overdone, for example with many current country music releases, which are so compressed they sound like they were squeezed out of a tube. But it is always there. So much so that I would have to disagree with the previous poster who said there is nothing inherent in the music that requires it. As a factual matter, there is. The classic rock and pop recordings from the 1960's onward were all recorded through microphones, guitar amps, mixing decks and tape recorders that each furnished their own degrees and flavors of compression and saturation. They were also run through compressors and limiters like the UA 1176, Teletronix LA-2 and Fairchild, among others. All of those same devices (or more often digital emulations) are still used today. Sometimes it's not used well and it doesn't always sound so great through the fancy equipment owned by the folks on Audiogon, but from the Beatles to Taylor Swift, it's the sound of pop and rock.
It may have all started out a a radio volume thing, but now it is just the sound of modern pop music. And it can, and often is, overdone, for example with many current country music releases, which are so compressed they sound like they were squeezed out of a tube. But it is always there. So much so that I would have to disagree with the previous poster who said there is nothing inherent in the music that requires it. As a factual matter, there is. The classic rock and pop recordings from the 1960's onward were all recorded through microphones, guitar amps, mixing decks and tape recorders that each furnished their own degrees and flavors of compression and saturation. They were also run through compressors and limiters like the UA 1176, Teletronix LA-2 and Fairchild, among others. All of those same devices (or more often digital emulations) are still used today. Sometimes it's not used well and it doesn't always sound so great through the fancy equipment owned by the folks on Audiogon, but from the Beatles to Taylor Swift, it's the sound of pop and rock.