Re: Taylor Swift

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Well, I'm happy that there is more and more choice.  I think I'd only
start worrying if the older music would become unavailable due to politics
or something else (e.g., algorithms or bean-counting).

I'm already sad that so many movies are on the verge of extinction.
Again, my hope is that this never happens with music.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2026 10:23:13 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > J.W. in Los Angeles, CA, writes: With regard to the question about 
 > people from Generation X and older generations who don't appreciate 
 > Taylor Swift, your answer covered a serious part of the matter. But 
 > there are a few other points to consider.
 > 
 > First, older generations never understand the music of younger 
 > generations. Some day, Swifties are not going to get whatever 
 > virtual robot singing sensation their kids are losing their minds 
 > for.
 > 
 > And maybe give the older folks some slack. Gen X and Boomers were 
 > young when rock and all its permutations exploded into popular 
 > culture. All forms of popular music were merging into different 
 > permutations where jazz, folk, blues, rock, country, and pop met to 
 > create new sounds every other day. And just among female performers, 
 > when you grew up with Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, 
 > Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Dolly Parton, Tiny Turner, Diana Ross and the 
 > Supremes, Barbara Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Karen Carpenter, if you 
 > were lucky Nina Simone, and later Chrissie Hynde, Madonna, Cyndi 
 > Lauper, and my god, Annie Lennox... you see that Swift has a tough 
 > hill to climb with older folks. May not be fair, but context helps.
 > 
 > Finally, music in the digital world is profoundly different from the 
 > pre-MySpace days just a mere 25-30 years ago. Pop songs are made 
 > differently, performance is different, delivery is different. Milli 
 > Vanilli got run out of the business for lip synching, where live 
 > concerts today are regularly lip synched and virtually every vocal 
 > is pitch corrected, even in live performance... and this isn't 
 > particularly controversial. Discovery today is an entirely different 
 > universe. Where today an algorithm figures out what you like and 
 > delivers a compilation list to your device, in the past there was a 
 > constellation of taste-makers, curators, and friends with cool older 
 > siblings who put together mix tapes. A music journalist could launch 
 > a musician's career with a review in a newspaper. There was a huge 
 > section in the newsstand devoted to music magazines. You'd hang out 
 > in record stores browsing the bins, listening to the stuff the 
 > clerks were playing.
 > 
 > Female performers face very stiff winds in the music industry still. 
 > Swift is a talented songwriter. But in the end, Swift clearly 
 > doesn't need old people in her camp. And everyone doesn't have to 
 > like everyone else's music. But we should all try to approach new 
 > music as we did in our youth. And if you want someone to really 
 > experience something that excites you, maybe deliver it in a way 
 > they understand.