A Response To Taylor Swift's Label: On Tuning, Hating, And Tearing Down

You know, normally, I wouldn't bother coming here just to go after Taylor Swift again over her disastrous performance at the Grammys on Sunday night (which Stephen and I discussed extensively during the liveblog). Everybody who watched the show knows about it, and if they care, they care. If they don't, they don't and won't.

This is a fact: Taylor Swift is a bad — or at least an unreliable — live singer. And on Sunday, people noticed. Now Scott Borchetta, the head of her label, has very foolishly decided to go on the offensive rather than just stay down and let it pass — which it would have.

Here's the performance, if you missed it.

But as much as I see the merits of dropping it, practically every word that came out of Borchetta's mouth as he defended her is so ludicrous that I cannot help myself.

Let's do this, after the jump.

 

Let's dissect some of those comments, with thanks again to The Tennessean.

The biggest message is (the critics) are not getting it. Because the facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we've got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else.

Here's what this means: If people like it, it must be good. Popularity equals quality, chain-yanking equals art, and the ability to sell something is indisputable evidence that not just something about it, but everything about it, is a success.

Nobody is denying that Swift writes some crazy-catchy country-pop songs. Nobody is denying that as they are produced in the studio and released into the wild, they are listenable and appealing to a lot of people. That has nothing to do with whether, when she opens her mouth in front of live humans, the musical performance is high in quality. You can't beat people into not mentioning it just by waving her sales figures in their faces. I'm the first person to defend massive popularity as a possible indicator that someone is onto something, but it's not always everything. And here, it's not singing.

Maybe she's not the best technical singer, but she's probably the best emotional singer because everybody else who gets up there and is technically perfect, people don't seem to want more of it.

Of all the defenses Borchetta tries here, this is the silliest. "Vocal stinking is what gives her the authenticity her fans treasure." Ridiculous, and insulting to her fans to boot.

I think (the critics) are missing the whole voice of a generation that is happening right in front of them. ... She's an extraordinary songwriter and her vocal performances are getting better.

Nobody has missed Taylor Swift. Everybody understands her commercial significance and the fact that lots and lots and lots of people love and buy her records. Her oft-praised pop songwriting, again, has nothing to do with any of this. The singing is the weak link. Everybody gets it.

Oh, wait — don't forget this part, which popped up in another version of the interview. What Borchetta actually said was ...

I think (the critics) are missing the whole voice of a generation that is happening right in front of them. Maybe they are jealous or can't understand that.

Oh, my goodness. The haters are just jealous? That's the answer? Seriously, I think critics are probably much more envious of Pink than Taylor Swift (trapeze trumps acoustic guitar, I think), and it didn't cause them to declare that she couldn't carry a tune with a handle.

Everybody is not perfect on any given day. If you pick any of those artists that performed (on the Grammy Awards) I'm sure you can go online and find something where you go, 'ew.' Maybe in that moment we didn't have the best night.

Here's where he just flat-out hopes you've had no prior exposure to Taylor Swift singing live. Here's where he hopes he might be able to pass this off as a technical problem, as he told the Associated Press something about her earpiece — you knew that was coming, right?

The problem is this: we ran a post by Marc Hirsh on this very blog in November 2008 — that's more than a year ago — called Hey, Has Anybody Noticed That Taylor Swift Can't Sing? Some of the video is gone, but this is not a new problem. The Earpiece Defense is ineligible for consideration.

The critics are missing the bigger picture. This is what always happens and is the unfortunate part of the American dream, that we build these people up to watch the critics tear them down. Well, you better have more than what you've got now if you think you're going to get in the ring and fight with us. So, get in the ring.

This is my favorite part. And not just because he just invited me (and you, and everyone we know) to point out his massively fallacious arguments. And not just because he just told you that Taylor Swift is the embodiment of the American dream, about which I can only say: way to bite off more than you can possibly expect an obscenely wealthy 20-year-old to chew.

There are times, yes, when "we" demonstrate a disheartening enthusiasm for tearing people down over things that are utterly irrelevant. If this were happening because Taylor Swift had been caught getting a skull and crossbones tattoo, I'd be the first to agree. But she is being sold as a singer. That is the basis on which she is appearing live on the Grammy Awards. Her singing ability is the one thing it is perfectly, indisputably legitimate to criticize. It is sad to "tear down" a singer for having acne; it is not sad to "tear down" a singer for bad singing.

In fact, the debate about Taylor Swift is an incredibly heartening one. The reason this matters to people is that even in the age of Auto-Tune and every other kind of robot-augmented sweetening process that makes not just lemons into lemonade but motor oil into pink champagne, and even in the age of videos that occur on six different levels of irony and involve four thousand backup dancers and a diamond-encrusted Humvee, people retain a perhaps innate expectation that if you stand on a big stage in front of a lot of people with a guitar in your hands and you open your mouth and make noise into a microphone, that noise is supposed to be pleasing. Isn't that quaint of us? Isn't that precious, that off-key singing is enough to make Grammy-watchers cringe?

There may be hope for us yet.