Catch the #freetaylor video on YouTube: The Problem with Taylor
There’s a lot of bad music on Taylor Swift’s new BLOCKBUSTER album. Oh, wait! A double album of teenager breakup lyrics updated with a lot of fk yous. I guess “Our little girl is all growed up,” as VV’s character would’ve said in Swingers.
Here’s the YouTube intro.
Taylor’s Dad has shown remarkable business acumen in driving his daughter’s talent to the top of the pops. It hasn’t always been easy. At one point in 2005, Mr. Swift Sr. ranted a bit about being left behind by his star.
“Bear with me. I need to vent … I know one thing. No one is going to aid you and Taylor in becoming successful more than I will.” He went on to express his frustrations about being left out of his daughter’s star-studded life. “Who gets to go to New York, New England and every cool appearance? Not dad. Can’t fix hair,” he complained. “Dad talks too much. Who pays for trips to New York? Dad.” From NikkiSwift.com
But the problem is not with Taylor’s parents, or even with TayTay herself. The problem is with the entire Taylor Swift Machine. Not content with world domination, Grammy wins, and billions of dollars, Ms. Swift and Company had unleashed twice the pain on her audience.
The reviews are in: Dead Poet’s Society, wait, I mean Tortured Poets Department is chock full of repetitive and awful songs. She’s done all of this before. Even done it with the exact same TWO producers. TIME TO MOVE ON.
Maybe Taylor should’ve given us 12 GREAT tracks (not found on this collection) and left most of the extras in the vault.
As an example, let me give you the Billboard Top 100 chart coming out in a few days.
Swift’s songs in the top 14 spots on the May 4-dated Hot 100:
- No. 1, “Fortnight,” feat. Post Malone
- No. 2, “Down Bad”
- No. 3, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”
- No. 4, “The Tortured Poets Department”
- No. 5, “So Long, London”
- No. 6, “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”
- No. 7, “But Daddy I Love Him”
- No. 8, “Florida!!!,” feat. Florence + The Machine
- No. 9, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”
- No. 10, “Guilty as Sin?”
- No. 11, “Fresh Out the Slammer”
- No. 12, “loml”
- No. 13, “The Alchemy”
- No. 14, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”
Okay, so it’s domination then. She’s overwhelmed all other music on Spotify. In the competition with Bionce for Artist of the Year and Album of the Year, I’m clear on one thing. Our music system is messed up. When they talk about blockbuster SALES for Taylor’s new album what are they even talking about? What are the KIDS buying that they can’t get off their parents’ Spotify account?
So, let me show you what I’m talking about. Here is the NUMBER ONE song from Taylor’s new album with her long-time collaborator Jack Abramoff. In this track I’ve taken Taylor’s vocal out so you can hear the music or lack of music behind Taylor’s hot track Fortnight.
Okay, so YouTube can’t ID this song without the singing. Is that normal?
First this track and the “no copyrighted content was found in this video” proof.
Next the Down Bad restriction. “Cannot be seen of monetized.”
Okay, so that’s interesting. But there’s more.
I also generated an entire album of Taylor Swift DEMOS for Tortured Poets Departement. None of them were selected to be recorded by Taylor, but I’ll tell you two things.
- Taylor Swift lyrics are predictable and easy to copy (think 17 year-old girl breakup songs)
- The collaboration with Taylor’s main collaborators has run dry (nothing to see here, folks)
- The music industry and media industry have determined Taylor’s new album to be a record-shattering success. So, here we are, with poorly written, unoriginal, tracks blanket the top FOURTEEN slots on Billboard. WTF?
- Time Magazine is just a media/marketing tool.
- The Grammy’s(tm) are also a marketing tool. (There are judges, but they are part of the problem.)
- The audience is listening to Taylor Swift’s music and getting terrible relationship advice, and even worse melodic accompaniment.
- The world is on fire with Taylor-mania (maybe we’re looking for an alt-universe from the current political and cultural pain we are in as a country.
Not a single musician other than Taylor was used on this album.
That’s part of the issue. These guys are producers. Also producers who have been making songs with Taylor for a long and successful run. BUT… They play the computer not guitar, keys, or drums. My wish is that Taylor would elevate her music a bit by using actual musicians and writing songs with others, not just computer-savants. The bed tracks are not very musical. Certainly, these fellows are not close to someone as talented as William Orbit, Madonna’s Ray of Light collaborator. Taylor needs new blood. Actual musicians, a drummer, a keyboard player, and a guitarist. That would be so “novel” these days.
It’s 100% synthetic and “in-the-box” from producers so rich and out of touch with music, they even share bed tracks like Fortnight to Taylor as inspiration for her lyrics, melodies, and songs. I’d really love to hear Abromoff’s demo for this song. Or early Taylor experiments that were left behind.
Here are my Taylor Swift Tortured Poets Department Demos on YouTube with lyrics.
The Taylor Machine has been fierce about taking down Tortured Poets Society alt versions from all artists, including me The DEMOS of Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department. (now restricted and unavailable) Check out the YouTube versions. You’ll be surprised.
What I learned.
Taylor needs to branch out with her writing collabs. Taylor needs a handler. Did we really need her to blanket us with TWICE the bad tracks? Or push “fk” into the ears of all of her pre-teen and teen fans? She needs to get her dad out of the business of managing her. And she needs to take a long break. Become human. Have a child with Kelse. See if motherhood can bring her release from being so Tortured by men.
Here’s one more demo from AI, this one on YouTube again.
Give us a rest, maybe in 2025 or 2026. Take a break. Oh, and do help Biden/Harris so we don’t go back to the dark ages as a country.
I mean, how tortured can a billionaire poet be, actually?
John McElhenney — let’s connect online
Facebook & LinkedIn & The Whole Parent
More of the Taylor Swift vs AI story: Taylorsversion.ai
few more of my creative ai motions:
- waltwhitman.ai < a book of “whitmanesque poetry” with zero AI
- Radio No Head < *ai* parsed music for you to sing and dream with
- poətic.com < my page about the ai poetry conundrum
- hyper-soul < the science fiction exploration and world-building project
- clickthis.ai < my team for *ai* marketing and sales acceleration
Please check out a few of my books on AMAZON.
