A post about Taylor Swift

It’s easy to pigeonhole Taylor Swift as a flighty teen pop star, perhaps a little bit puritanical given her country roots. She is also extremely annoying to many people who find her hero worship on the scale of Brett Favre. The difference, of course, is that Swift hasn’t really done anything to deserve scorn on herself, except to be tremendously talented and fairly attractive, thereby attracting attention.
Yes, I said it, Taylor Swift is talented. She has a a great deal of crossover appeal because she has a purer voice than most country stars, and, as some have put it, she never shuts up. That is, she never stops singing to allow instrumentals.
Still, her country roots definitely give an air of “closemindedness” to her and her career. The saccharine country lyrics still gave a sense of naivete. That is to say until she started having “friends” appear with her on tour. It started with a show in Los Angeles back in August. What do you notice about this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtTPq4dS5tM]Or this? I mean, besides Hayley Williams’ fanny pack.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUnVbamAuNg]Perhaps this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w51HmLAymug]Or finally, from last week, this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xmooPermwA]For me, there are three takeaways:
1) Taylor Swift definitely has the whole “awkward white girl” thing going for her.
2) The closemindedness perception is absolutely false. She’s willing to perform with any one, and appears to be having a blast doing so. Seriously, in her duet with Nikki Minaj, was that not the most thrilled you have ever seen a performer? She quite clearly LOVES a wider variety of music than perhaps even her own fans enjoy.
3) Swift has a an incredible amount of appeal. As I said, she has a pure voice, and works well with, and was able to successfully invite 4 people that might be about as different genres as her own as possible to perform with her.If we are out to pigeonhole her, she hasn’t noticed. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I think Swift is making a move into popular (as opposed to popular country music) music, and if these concert videos are any indication, I might actually like her work. Because country music still totally sucks.