She doesn’t use fancy techy gear, she doesn’t use fancy chords, she doesn’t do fancy grooves or sing fancy riffs. is undeniably impressive, and downright inspiring to me. for someone like Taylor Swift to be the mega success that she is. but with everything put together, mayyyybe you would be able to become a little bit of something.”Īnd for me, to see someone like Taylor Swift do so well in this world, someone who doesn’t belt like Beyoncé, doesn’t shred on the guitar like John Mayer, doesn’t play keys like Alicia Keys, doesn’t riff like Ariana Grande. Very, very early on in my career, before R&K, one producer once said to me, “you’re not the best singer, you’re not really a great guitar player, piano you’re a little better but still not that great.
In that format, she somehow still managed to find a dominant spot in the mainstream and manufactured pop world - and that was so reassuring for me because that’s how I have written a TON of my songs. In between songs, she shared thoughts and her creative process so openly and vulnerably, and how she wrote her songs as self-therapy, usually with just one instrument, in her pajamas, in the middle of the night. I admit I even got a tad bit emotional after watching it, not because of anything else but the fact that I can resonated with so so much the stuff she said about songwriting and her creative process, and I enjoyed how she picked the songs and played completely alone, stripped down and raw, in the songs’ demo versions. But this was a surprising one, and so I clicked. It was a surprise to see Taylor Swift there, because it usually features up-and-coming artists or jazz musicians, performances of which I enjoy thoroughly also. It takes what happens on a big stage into your average office work space. I love the rawness of it, the realness of it, and the closeness of it. I recently watched her NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and if you don’t know about Tiny Desk, perhaps you could check it out and be inspired - it’s a YouTube channel where artists and musicians perform in a tiny cramped space behind a work desk - and it’s brilliant. 🤷🏻♀️ So who am I to diss it? I actually really admire her, and definitely count her as one of my previously unspoken inspirations. But if I’m honest, fewer and fewer people treat the whole Cantopop market as “real music” as well, so perhaps we kinda do share that in common. I know liking her music is sometimes seen as “uncool”- how dare any serious musician say they like her stuff, it’s only for silly teenage girls. I know she gets a lot of hate, and a lot of people don’t necessarily see her music as “real music”, whatever that means.
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