Current Events > Taylor Swift is our generations Michael Jackson, our gens Elvis Presley, our gen

(+) Yeah! (+)

Okay, here's the real measuring stick: How many of her songs has Weird Al done?

Daremo posted...

Okay, here's the real measuring stick: How many of her songs has Weird Al done?

I know of 2

There might be more, I just am sure of at least 2

Daremo posted...

Okay, here's the real measuring stick: How many of her songs has Weird Al done?

Good point lol

this is fine

Just shows how far pop music has gone into being mass marketed gray oatmeal for the teeming masses.

wanderingshade posted...

Just shows how far pop music has gone into being mass marketed gray oatmeal for the teeming masses.

Is what people would have been posting for the last 50+ years if the internet existed.

I know the usual counter is to post pop highlights from yesteryear, but please don't forget the mountain of cheesy crap which co-existed with it.

Remember that this:

https://youtu.be/xJeWySiuq1I

Was kept off the top of the UK charts by this:

https://youtu.be/sFacWGBJ_cs

I would argue our generations Michael Jackson is Weird Al Yankovic. Yeah, he only does parody songs, but most of his songs are really good.

Its true, but Im not dealing with it very well

I just can't find it in myself to give a damn about T-Swift's music.

codey posted...

People saying "like hell she is" are really missing the point because those are the exact reactions older people had to Elvis when he came out too.

Elvis changed the way music was back then. Michael Jackson, too. Swift is just a generic artist who relies too much on love and revenge love songs that everyone has heard a million times before from other artists. There's more to songs than love and getting back at exes.

One of the biggest names in music? Sure, I guess. But she ain't never reaching the levels of Jackson or Elvis.

ai123 posted...

I know the usual counter is to post pop highlights from yesteryear, but please don't forget the mountain of cheesy crap which co-existed with it.

I'm not saying terrible music hasn't existed since the 60s and 70s that topped the charts, there was disco, disco revival, glam metal. Not just the sheer hokey pop/dance pop from 40 years ago. Now it's just mass marketed idol music with "familiar chord progressions" and on the 2 and 4 bass beats and its Queen is Taylor Swift.

wanderingshade posted...

I'm not saying terrible music hasn't existed since the 60s and 70s that topped the charts, there was disco, disco revival, glam metal. Not just the sheer hokey pop/dance pop from 40 years ago. Now it's just mass marketed idol music with "familiar chord progressions" and on the 2 and 4 bass beats and its Queen is Taylor Swift.

What's wrong with disco and glam metal now? Is Off the Wall bad? Are Ziggy Stardust and For Your Pleasure terrible albums?

Pop music (like all genres) is made up mostly of average, formulaic stuff with a few great acts/albums that stand out.

Metal, nu-metal, grunge, post-grunge, emo, indie, alt-rock, EDM, folk, country, shoegaze, prog, hip hop, punk, pop-punk, post-punk . . . whatever. All have more than their fair share of by-the-numbers mediocrity.

ai123 posted...

What's wrong with disco and glam metal now? Is Off the Wall bad? Are Ziggy Stardust and For Your Pleasure terrible albums?

Pop music (like all genres) is made up mostly of average, formulaic stuff with a few great acts/albums that stand out.

Metal, nu-metal, grunge, post-grunge, emo, indie, alt-rock, EDM, folk, country, shoegaze, prog, hip hop, punk, pop-punk, post-punk . . . whatever. All have more than their fair share of by-the-numbers mediocrity.

Feels like naming legends like MJ and David Bowie are just cherry picking legends to be like "You mean Michael Jackson is bad because 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' is a banger". I mean disco shit like Kool and the Gang, KC and the Sunshine Band, Disco Duck and some of the weak Beegees hits, considering they were better before they were a disco act. As well as disco adjacent stuff like Never Gonna Give You Up. As for Glam, I meant Hair Metal, as in Motley Crue, Ratt, Quiet Riot and Dokken, Cinderella and Warrant.

I couldn't name you a single song by name by Roxy Music, I legitimately have no idea who that is.

wanderingshade posted...

Feels like naming legends like MJ and David Bowie are just cherry picking legends to be like "You mean Michael Jackson is bad because 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' is a banger".

That's my point. Every genre has great songs, and most of the rest is mediocre.

I mean disco shit like Kool and the Gang, KC and the Sunshine Band, Disco Duck and some of the weak Beegees hits, considering they were better before they were a disco act. As well as disco adjacent stuff like Never Gonna Give You Up. As for Glam, I meant Hair Metal, as in Motley Crue, Ratt, Quiet Riot and Dokken, Cinderella and Warrent.

You think Kool and the Gang are shit?

I couldn't name you a single song by name by Roxy Music, I legitimately have no idea who that is.

Well OK then.

ai123 posted...

You think Kool and the Gang are shit?

As far as funk, I vastly prefer George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic. But yeah, Ladies' Night isn't that great and I'm not a big fan of Celebration.

I thought the current gen's "historical musician" was the certain black artist with a shoe contract that sort of went off the deep end.
TS is this generation's "white girl pop star", and she's very marketable, but her music isn't transformative.

Our gen @Vegy, really ? Arent you in your 40s ?

sull56ivan2010 posted...

Elvis changed the way music was back then. Michael Jackson, too. Swift is just a generic artist who relies too much on love and revenge love songs that everyone has heard a million times before from other artists. There's more to songs than love and getting back at exes.

One of the biggest names in music? Sure, I guess. But she ain't never reaching the levels of Jackson or Elvis.

Buddy Elvis wasn't the transformative artist you think he was. Everything he ever did was stolen. He didn't write songs and performed "new" music that black people had already been performing for years.

If you're going to act like Swift is a hack, you can't pretend Elvis was any better.

DarthWendy posted...

Our gen @Vegy, really ? Arent you in your 40s ?

A LOT of people in their 40s like Taylor Swift

lol at people who hate pop music and love to talk about how much they hate it, you arent cool

She really is. In terms of superstardom, she is the same as MJ and Elvis. Manufactured as such. As talented? No.

The_X_Dawg posted...

She really is. In terms of superstardom, she is the same as MJ and Elvis. Manufactured as such. As talented? No.

Swift is far more talented than Elvis as a songwriter (he only has a handful of co-credits on minor songs). They're probably comparable as musicians. Elvis obviously wins on voice and charisma.

Elvis was as manufactured a star as we are ever likely to see.

codey posted...

Buddy Elvis wasn't the transformative artist you think he was. Everything he ever did was stolen. He didn't write songs and performed "new" music that black people had already been performing for years.

If you're going to act like Swift is a hack, you can't pretend Elvis was any better.

Yeah, he only made rock n' roll accepted among the white audience. Which in turn led to black artists getting their due. You can be mad that it took a white artist for that to happen, but that doesn't change Elvis' impact on music and pop culture during his era.

Also, Elvis recorded over 700 songs in his career. If you think all those songs were "stolen", you may need to do some research. Having a songwriter write songs for you doesn't make those songs stolen. By that logic, many Motown hits were stolen since they were written by Holland-Dozier-Holland, not the artists who recorded them.

I dont get the craze. I took my kid and her cousin to that concert she just had in Detroit and it just didnt seem all that magical.

CirillaRiannon posted...

Yeah, he only made rock n' roll accepted among the white audience. Which in turn led to black artists getting their due. You can be mad that it took a white artist for that to happen, but that doesn't change Elvis' impact on music and pop culture during his era.

Also, Elvis recorded over 700 songs in his career. If you think all those songs were "stolen", you may need to do some research. Having a songwriter write songs for you doesn't make those songs stolen. By that logic, many Motown hits were stolen since they were written by Holland-Dozier-Holland, not the artists who recorded them.

I wont deny the impact he had, but I refuse to call Elvis a transformative artists when the only thing he added to the music he performed was being white. His songs, his style, his everything was already being done long before he did it. It's great that he got a white audience to listen to better music, but it wasn't him making that was making that music better.