Why are there so many Taylor Swift fans here?

[Хahar 🤔]

Because her music is generally high quality and she seems like a good person.

I agree that she seems like a good person but I seriously can not imagine so many teenage males listening to a female pop star when I was in high school.

There definitely has been a cultural shift since you were in high school; the term that is most commonly used here is "poptimism". Most recently (this was not the case when I was in high school), streaming algorithms have led to the loss of genre boundaries, meaning that everything just kind of sounds like pop music now; sometimes the results of this are good and sometimes they're sludge like Twenty One Pilots, but at this point if you're into contemporary rap at all (to pick one example), it doesn't make much sense to reject pop music because it's impossible to draw the line. This is especially relevant given the eclipse of rock as a viable popular genre; the "masculine" genre is rap, and rappers collaborate with big pop singers constantly because that's what the algorithm likes.

That's not to say that there aren't still real differences between what boys like and what girls like: take Beyoncé and Rihanna. They're both extremely famous and successful pop singers, but while most women in my experience will say they prefer Beyoncé, every straight man will say he likes Rihanna's music better. Ultimately the music Beyoncé makes is usually about female empowerment, which produces a real gender divide. Another example (albeit one I know less about) is country music, which is the only commercially viable form of rock music today; contemporary country radio is nearly all men, while women who make country-themed music tend to make the transition to pop radio (as Taylor Swift did herself). It appears that this is the last bastion of gender-based gatekeeping.

That's all pretty depressing, (not so much the shift itself but the reasons for it.)

I would've assumed that "masculine" music for today's teenagers would be more like Machine Gun Kelly or those "stuck in the wrong generation" types who were all about Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd when I was in high school and would be about Nirvana and Green Day now.

Yeah, streaming becoming the dominant form of music consumption has led to a lot of changes in how the music industry works and I don't really think any of them have been positive.

The first Machine Gun Kelly song I can think of offhand is a pop duet with Camila Cabello, who was at the time either still in or recently departed from a girl group; this speaks to what I was talking about with rap and pop. It doesn't feel like classic rock has shifted in the way you'd think; watching Dazed and Confused, if was striking how all the '70s rock in the movie was current at the time it was released in the '90s, considering that that process hasn't taken place with '90s rock. '90s rap is just as niche as '90s rock. I'm sure that there are kids who listen to that stuff, but it's not mainstream.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Because her music is generally high quality and she seems like a good person.

I agree that she seems like a good person but I seriously can not imagine so many teenage males listening to a female pop star when I was in high school.

There definitely has been a cultural shift since you were in high school; the term that is most commonly used here is "poptimism". Most recently (this was not the case when I was in high school), streaming algorithms have led to the loss of genre boundaries, meaning that everything just kind of sounds like pop music now; sometimes the results of this are good and sometimes they're sludge like Twenty One Pilots, but at this point if you're into contemporary rap at all (to pick one example), it doesn't make much sense to reject pop music because it's impossible to draw the line. This is especially relevant given the eclipse of rock as a viable popular genre; the "masculine" genre is rap, and rappers collaborate with big pop singers constantly because that's what the algorithm likes.

That's not to say that there aren't still real differences between what boys like and what girls like: take Beyoncé and Rihanna. They're both extremely famous and successful pop singers, but while most women in my experience will say they prefer Beyoncé, every straight man will say he likes Rihanna's music better. Ultimately the music Beyoncé makes is usually about female empowerment, which produces a real gender divide. Another example (albeit one I know less about) is country music, which is the only commercially viable form of rock music today; contemporary country radio is nearly all men, while women who make country-themed music tend to make the transition to pop radio (as Taylor Swift did herself). It appears that this is the last bastion of gender-based gatekeeping.

That's all pretty depressing, (not so much the shift itself but the reasons for it.)

I would've assumed that "masculine" music for today's teenagers would be more like Machine Gun Kelly or those "stuck in the wrong generation" types who were all about Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd when I was in high school and would be about Nirvana and Green Day now.

Yeah, streaming becoming the dominant form of music consumption has led to a lot of changes in how the music industry works and I don't really think any of them have been positive.

The first Machine Gun Kelly song I can think of offhand is a pop duet with Camila Cabello, who was at the time either still in or recently departed from a girl group; this speaks to what I was talking about with rap and pop. It doesn't feel like classic rock has shifted in the way you'd think; watching Dazed and Confused, if was striking how all the '70s rock in the movie was current at the time it was released in the '90s, considering that that process hasn't taken place with '90s rock. '90s rap is just as niche as '90s rock. I'm sure that there are kids who listen to that stuff, but it's not mainstream.

I was actually thinking of MGK's latest album which is how I first heard of him, but it did go to #1 so it means modern kids are listening to pop-punk in some form and there is some speculation that could spawn a revival.

Anecdotally per r/poppunkers there actually are still a lot of teenagers now getting into pop-punk now but it's through literally the exact same bands that younger Millennials did, they're discovering early Fall Out Boy and Paramore via streaming and then digging deeper. Which is itself kind of depressing because they don't really have their own stuff. I know that my elder Millennial cohorts and myself liked to dump on them at the time but in reality them also getting into pop-punk via bands like Green Day, Blink-182 and MxPx like we did instead of later getting into those bands after their own mini-generation gateway would be pretty weird.

The only positive thing I can say about Gen Z musical taste is it seems that there more kids in Gen Z who actually like that screamo/emoviolence/proto-Dude Fest music than there were when I was that age...but that's still an incredibly small percentage of the total population in either generation. And of course a lot of Gen Zers do love emo but they get into it via totally different bands, no one got into emo via American Football or considered them anything but a deep cut band in 2000.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I think Poptimism wasn't a terrible phenomenon; but like all trends it was overdone. In essence it wasn't hugely different to the same "stop being so up yourselves" reaction that led to grunge and punk (people forget that early 60's girl groups were big influences on those genres that reacted against more pompous and self-important genres). Like all such tendencies it eventually crests and is beginning to hit its ow backlash.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I wouldn't mind "poptimism" too much if it was at least confined to pop stars who I'm obviously not a fan of but will admit are creative and don't just churn out algorithm-tested works like Lorde or Charli XCX. I get the impression that even Lady Gaga isn't all that big amongst Gen Z.

[GeneralMacArthur]

So this is her best?

Yeesh. Still sounds like country.

Does she have any emo or hardcore or pop-punk or whatever songs? If she does maybe I'd like those.

Yes, she was a country-pop star and then got bored of country and became a pop star, then got a little more into folk music and her latest albums have been much more folk star stuff.  But those are more personal projects that aren't quite part of the "Taylor Swift, superstar" pantheon.

[Donerail]

So this is her best?
Yeesh. Still sounds like country.

Does she have any emo or hardcore or pop-punk or whatever songs? If she does maybe I'd like those.

Try this

or

Swift has talked previously about how Fall Out Boy's songwriting "influenced her more than anyone else" and has a longstanding friendship with Hayley Williams.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Oh yeah most of RED is pop-punk.  We're getting RED (Taylor's Version) later this year too.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think Poptimism wasn't a terrible phenomenon; but like all trends it was overdone. In essence it wasn't hugely different to the same "stop being so up yourselves" reaction that led to grunge and punk (people forget that early 60's girl groups were big influences on those genres that reacted against more pompous and self-important genres). Like all such tendencies it eventually crests and is beginning to hit its ow backlash.

There is a direct genealogical line between the "don't bore us; skip to the chorus" ethos of early-60s Brill Building confections and that of the Sex Pistols or the Ramones.

The pop-crossover dominance wasn't/isn't artistically terrible, at least not inherently, but I agree with BRTD and Xahar that the reasons why it caught on are dismaying.

Most of the new music I listen to is downbeat "girly" art pop like Florence and the Machine or Phoebe Bridgers. Many such acts are technically still classified as indie rock by some people. I like Taylor Swift for generational reasons so I was really excited when she started making that kind of music a year or two ago.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

I find it really odd since this is an extremely overwhelmingly male forum to the point we make jokes and memes about it.

It's also an extremely LGBT forum...

You might be right but "extremely" is overblowing it I think.

Especially when it comes to the T part...

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Also, I like Taylor Swift.


Signed, someone whose CD collection in 2000 consisted of N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Offspring & Blink-182.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I don't see poptimism as an inherently good or bad thing, just another lens through which to view the musical landscape that can be used wisely or become excessive or patronizing. As Crabcake and Nathan point out, plenty of noted currents in less mainstream forms of music have come from adopting a "pop" ethos, even with a very different aesthetic, but when that in turn becomes part of the mainstream then there are inevitably both knockoffs and counter-reactions in its wake that run it into the ground and often obscure why the innovation became salient to begin with. I don't think that any era of popular music is inherently superior to any other, as "rockists" tend to allege with a wide range of unconvincing canards about the perceived authenticity of past movements, and while I'm not tuned in to many present developments in any form of music I have still found much to respect when I have looked.

The relation of pop to more "serious" forms of music is particularly evident to me as a conservatory student with high and avant-garde tastes in the Western Art Music Canon™. Since the 1950s especially the academic world has been very split between those who want to engage with the broader world and those who such as Babbitt or Boulez who have sought an ivory tower of music-as-science, in many cases the former emerging as a reaction to the latter. The emergence of minimalism in the following decade was for many a very refreshing experience, with its incorporation of various popular and global musics and lack of pretensions, but with popularity and exposure it eventually bifurcated itself from its origins into the two streams I alluded to above: the watered-down lowest-common-denominator fare typical of late Glass, and the academic reuptake into the tremendous pretentious boredom of post-minimalists like Adams. All the while, the academic music that it reacted against continued in its own spheres, alternately beautiful and unbearable. Ultimately, all movements in art are bound to lose their steam and sacrifice their fire to capitalist forces for eternal life, but most will make a worthwhile impact before then.

I try to find the value in all approaches, even when their philosophies jar with mine.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

take Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Rihanna is considerably better than Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.  Kanye is better than all of them.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

take Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Rihanna is considerably better than Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.  Kanye is better than all of them.

Kanye hasn't been good since Yeezus.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

take Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Rihanna is considerably better than Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.  Kanye is better than all of them.

Kanye hasn't been good since Yeezus.

Wrong, he has had 3 good albums since then.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

take Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Rihanna is considerably better than Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.  Kanye is better than all of them.

Kanye hasn't been good since Yeezus ever.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So anyway...do any of you own any Taylor Swift shirts or am I actually a bigger fan of any band I have a shirt of?

Taylor Swift is an artist, not a band. I don't think I've ever seen anyone wearing Taylor Swift apparel.

Bizarrely, I saw a girl in a Taylor Swift shirt at Furnace Fest. I did a double take in shock. She also seemed to be about 20, which is perhaps even stranger because 20-year olds that listen to Furnace Fest bands are pretty much exclusively those "I'm born in the wrong generation" types who constantly bemoan about how their generation's music is trash and all the people their age like terrible music and how they wish they were around for the "golden age" of music around 2000 or so. Or at least that's how all the ones on Facebook groups and Reddit act.

But yeah, pretty bizarre sighting at that of all things.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hey don't take it from me, take it from teenagers who post at r/emo or in certain emo Facebook groups.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Hey don't take it from me, take it from teenagers who post at r/emo or in certain emo Facebook groups.

Honesty, given how moralistic, toxic, and pretentious mainstream teen media culture is right now, I can't really blame them, and I'm saying this as a Taylor Swift fan.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hey don't take it from me, take it from teenagers who post at r/emo or in certain emo Facebook groups.

Honesty, given how moralistic, toxic, and pretentious mainstream teen media culture is right now, I can't really blame them, and I'm saying this as a Taylor Swift fan.

You mean like Teen Vogue? I'll grant you that Taylor at least seems like a far better person than anyone involved in that dumpster fire.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Hey don't take it from me, take it from teenagers who post at r/emo or in certain emo Facebook groups.

Honesty, given how moralistic, toxic, and pretentious mainstream teen media culture is right now, I can't really blame them, and I'm saying this as a Taylor Swift fan.

You mean like Teen Vogue? I'll grant you that Taylor at least seems like a far better person than anyone involved in that dumpster fire.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing that I mean. The transformation of smorgasbord intersectional social liberalism from a liberatory movement to one focused on moral imperative and a sense of "mission" in at least as exclusivist a way as any mainstream religion. This is what normally gets called "cancel culture" but really "canceling", a practice that in one form or another has been around for millennia, is the least of the things actually the matter with it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Because her music is generally high quality and she seems like a good person.

I agree that she seems like a good person but I seriously can not imagine so many teenage males listening to a female pop star when I was in high school.

The breakdown of the gender tribalism enforced by consumer culture is a good thing. Celebrate it, BRTD.

Not in this case because I think the music is sh!t.

Man who foists his christian emo rock on literally everyone else against their will despite being told repeatedly that nobody gives a flying crap feels entitled to bash a widely popular artist.

Can't make this stuff up.

LOL most people who like my music have been bashing widely popular artists since I've been into it. What do you think they said about Limp Bizkit or the Backstreet Boys back in the day?

Also the idea that no one except me listens to it has always struck me as quite odd and blatantly false. See (Facebook group):

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