If you had asked me five years ago, I would have jumped up to sing along to “Fearless” or “Our Song” or “Picture To Burn” by Taylor Swift. Her first two albums were adolescent Emily’s jam.
But, we grow up. Music tastes change. People change. I certainly did.
And Taylor Swift’s transition from pop country to just pop happened quickly and smoothly, and so swiftly (no pun intended) did my obsession with her fade. I was over it before I really knew that I even liked her that much. And while I could still jam out in the car to some of her more popular songs, when she came on the radio, I would change the station. All her songs started sounding the same.
Then, she started to copy other people’s ideas. Not too many ideas, but enough to make me notice. But it seemed that everyone else was still obsessed with her. Not just her music, but her as a whole. “Oh did you see that T-Swift did…” “Oh, Taylor is doing this…” And it seemed like all my friends were paying out the wazoo to see her in concert. It seemed like everyone couldn’t get enough from her.
But I wasn’t having it. Instead of obsessing over her, I carefully collected evidence that Taylor Swift has little to no original ideas (which I think we can see in most of her music that basically is about the same subject and sounds mostly the same, but that’s another article entirely).
Here is a definitive list of proof that shows that Taylor Swift copies other artists.
First of all, she was (mostly understandably) upset about streaming rights. So she took all her music off streaming services, something Garth Brooks had done long ago. And everyone cheered for her – “thanks for sticking up for artists’ rights,” regular people wrote to her, while they were also secretly upset that they had to pay for all of her music.
But no one took notice of Garth Brooks quietly standing up for artists’ rights because Taylor was overshadowing him.
Next, she goes mysteriously quiet on social media, which made people go crazier. Now, she didn’t make an announcement about it, but this is something Ed Sheeran did – as we all remember. He very politely made a statement that he was taking a year off of social media, and he did. And this move generated a whole lot of buzz for him because his fans (including me) wanted his funny snaps and awkward Instas back. Taylor Swift goes silent on social media, and there’s an uproar, which she knew would happen because Ed is a good friend of hers and she probably saw what happened when he went off social media sites.
Then, she mysteriously messes with her social media. Like Ed Sheeran changing his profile picture to blue, and then posting GIFs of lyrics and the album cover right before his (AMazing) album release, Taylor starts posting GIFs of the snake and everyone goes, excuse my language, batshit crazy about it. Copying Ed again, Taylor, really?
And finally, and some people might find this the worst of all, she (mostly) out of the blue announces a single and subsequent album drop after secretly making it. Sound like Beyonce, anyone? Yep, me too.
Now obviously, this is just one writer’s opinion, but in my opinion, we need to start holding Taylor Swift accountable for everything that she says she’s going to do and make her actually do it. If she’s going to be this famous and this popular among people, she needs to have her own ideas.
Featured image via “Taylor Swift” by Eva Rinaldi Celebrity Photographer / CC BY-SA
Apparently everyone could agree with you about the fact that Taylor followed the steps of some artists during the last years, that she used the same “strategies” as we could call them. Instead, in my opinion, Taylor is just doing what she believes in and she is potentiate the armies of music industries.
About the streaming platforms: Taylor took a position against Apple because the company wouldn’t have paid emerging artists for three months because of the Apple Music offer to be free for the same amount of time; Taylor just wanted to express her disappointment about this measure taken by a company that hasn’t budget issues and that would have damaged the work of young artists who without the incomes for their firsts projects can’t go far. Apple answered Taylor deciding to pay these young artists and making an agreement with the singer which also lead to the filming of her 1989 Tour.
About social media: Taylor maybe did what Ed also did, but it doesn’t mean she’s coping his strategy. She took a break from social media at the time in which the scandal with Kanye West exploded and she decided to take a step back in order to avoid the situation to worsen. Then she just took advantage of this silence to have a bigger return: nobody expected her to suddenly release an album and that way the expectation today are way bigger because nobody knows what Taylor has in store for us. And this links to the Beyonce’s strategy during the release of her last album: Taylor did the same? Good for her! There’s not the copyright for the way artists release albums and Taylor just chose the most powerful one.
Maybe Taylor is not original but maybe to be is not her goal: she just wants to be sure to express her music in the most powerful way and to give her fans a great “show”. I applaude her for that.