Why are there so many Taylor Swift fans here?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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

[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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I mean hell when I was in high school a lot of people even thought Blink-182 was a chick band (I still loved them though!)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Because she is one of the greatest artists of our generation? I am glad this forum is able to recognize and appreciate true talent.

Songs like "Bad Blood" and "Look What You Made Me Do" are most certainly not what I'd expect from one of the greatest artists of our generation. Those are basically unlistenable.

[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.

I think this says more about you and the people you associated with than anything else.

I'm talking about my entire high school class, not "people I associated with." You think my high school was full of male Britney Spears fans? (Tons of rap fans though.)

[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.

I think this says more about you and the people you associated with than anything else.

I'm talking about my entire high school class, not "people I associated with." You think my high school was full of male Britney Spears fans?

That was kind of my point, younger generations don't care about listening to "girly" music - they just like good singers. Most of my guy friends like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo.

I listen to "girly" music too, like Rainer Maria, That Dog, Comrades, Lemuria and older Paramore. Hell there's even an entire genre of girly music I like.

[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.

I think this says more about you and the people you associated with than anything else.

I'm talking about my entire high school class, not "people I associated with." You think my high school was full of male Britney Spears fans?

That was kind of my point, younger generations don't care about listening to "girly" music - they just like good singers. Most of my guy friends like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo.

I listen to "girly" music too, like Rainer Maria, That Dog, Lemuria and older Paramore. Hell there's even an entire genre of girly music I like.

So girly music=music by women? I wouldn’t consider those “girly music” at all

Well conversely Taking Back Sunday and Say Anything are all guys but I bet they have a majority female fanbase, (just look at the crowds in their live videos.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This might surprise a lot of you, but that screamy stuff i like was actually largely HATED and considered "sissy girly music" by "tough guys" like metalheads and those NYHC purist types back in the day. What type of macho manly man would ever listen to music that consisted of guys crying about heartache and loss and shrieking emotionally and having an emotional breakdown while playing?

Metalheads hated hated HATED this stuff 20 years ago, most were unironically saying they would indeed rather listen to pop than it. I once heard it described as "the musical equivalent of a chick flick." And for the record those type of bands actually did have largely female fanbases.

[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.

I think this says more about you and the people you associated with than anything else.

I'm talking about my entire high school class, not "people I associated with." You think my high school was full of male Britney Spears fans?

That was kind of my point, younger generations don't care about listening to "girly" music - they just like good singers. Most of my guy friends like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo.

I listen to "girly" music too, like Rainer Maria, That Dog, Lemuria and older Paramore. Hell there's even an entire genre of girly music I like.

So girly music=music by women? I wouldn’t consider those “girly music” at all

Also this song sounds vaguely like Billie Eilish.

[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.

I think this says more about you and the people you associated with than anything else.

Guys love Taylor Swift.  If a teenage male was into 1D or some other boy band, that would be a little more strange.  Then again, "Night Changes" was always a pretty good song.

See when I was in high school, pop music was basically exclusively for teenage girls, who else do you think was fawning over the Backstreet Boys and N Sync? And of course the female popstars of the era, no straight guy listened to them period, the sole exception if you consider her pop was Alanis Morissette but that's a bit of a stretch, she was really a more mainstream version of those female alt-rocker types like Liz Phair (pre-2003) and PJ Harvey.

However as I've noted before, about half the girls hated the Backstreet Boys/N Sync/Britney Spears too and prided themselves on "not being like those girls" and not listening to those pop stars even for many that actually meant like Blink-182 (who I do like) as I said, and a bunch of those quasi-goth types who were into Marilyn Manson and Tool and whatnot. But the funny thing: I actually thought that I had "feminine" taste in music because I tended to like bands that had majority-female fanbases. Like who do you think was listening to Taking Back Sunday and New Found Glory in 2002? They were basically bands with teenage girl fanbases. But not just them...I can also assure you that based on what passed for social media at the time and band site old style message boards that these bands had fanbases that were at least 60% female:

And of course I was teased (kind of jokingly and in good fun) by some people then and early college for mostly listening to "chick bands" like the above. Which kind of blows my mind, how did those go from being feminine-associated bands to Taylor Swift having a large male fanbase? This is an insane turnaround.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh and btw this was my favorite band for awhile around that time. So yeah I totally listened to female musicians (and still do):

(I love that the singer of this band was a preschool teacher, lol. Wonder if any of her kids' parents were fans.)

[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?

[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):

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Because she is one of the greatest artists of our generation? I am glad this forum is able to recognize and appreciate true talent.

Songs like "Bad Blood" and "Look What You Made Me Do" are most certainly not what I'd expect from one of the greatest artists of our generation. Those are basically unlistenable.

Sorry for you if you only seem to know about her singles. Did you ever listen to "All Too Well", "Exile", "Cruel Summer", "Enchanted" etc.?

Her music isn't hardcore or emo or some type of related "post-" or "-core" genre, and I never voluntarily listen to country or pop, so no.

[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.

Really? Even I do like at the mall. It definitely exists.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Why does one of the most popular mainstream pop musicians have fans in any random assortment of people?

Because it's not a random sample. Ten years ago there wasn't many Justin Bieber fans here, or One Direction fans five years ago.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Bad Blood isn't one of her best songs.  It only became popular because for some reason it got selected to have a Kendrick Lamar guest verse and a very expensive music video.  There were several much better Taylor Swift songs off 1989 that were on the radio at the same time as Bad Blood.

Nor would any Taylor Swift fan say that anything off reputation is among her best work.  There are some die hard fans who pretend they enjoy it, but for most people it's just her angry, upset, experimental album.  My girlfriend in 2017 and I loved 1989, and when Look What You Made Me Do dropped we listened to in the car and were like, well that really sucks.

Here would be my top 12:

1:  Back to December
2:  You Belong With Me
3:  Mean
4:  Wildest Dreams
5:  Love Story
6:  Clean
7:  Style
8:  Fifteen
9:  Never Grow Up
10:  The Archer
11:  White Horse
12:  Innocent

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.

[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.

[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 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.

[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.

[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.

[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.