I agree on QOTSA.
We can certainly agree to disagree. She is certainly a Grade A marketer. Songwriter - lyrically? Her stuff certainly must resonate with teenage females. Musically? Nah. Steely Dan or PFloyd would laugh at her while handing her a crayon. She sails, surrounded in a sea of mediocrity. There is NO competition. There is no actual comparison for her to pale to in comparison. She is the one eyed woman in the land of the blind. The 70's or 80's would not be the best era to drop her into. Too many sighted. JMHO.
Steely Dan and Pink Floyd would run circles around a pop star? No shit? They ran circles musically around the pop stars of the 70s too.
Its weird because the 70s wasn't the era of solo female vocalists, so it's another moot point to make. If Taylor Swift was popular in the 70s, it's unlikely that she's doing it alone. Abba, Fleetwood Mac, etc would have been the required route. In the same way Stevie depended on Lindsey to make the music fit her lyrics, solo pop artist now collaborate with producers.
All indications point to TS writing her own music and lyrics in an era where you just don't see that anymore. Her competition walks into the studio to prepared music. It's hyper commercialized and the fact that TS (originally) wasn't so prepackaged was likely something that initially attracted fans to her. And, as a parent to a daughter, the fact that she didn't immediately decide to try to sell her body rather than her music was a nice change of pace.
Having had to listen to more TS than I care to admit, I preferred her singer/songwriter/country phase over the more bubblegum pop stuff she has done of late. But none of it is revolutionary.
She's not a better artist than Stevie, but she is dominating a period in time when ears can listen to nearly anything they want with a simple click of a button and that is remarkable.
Which brings me to another point. Music is more diluted than it's ever been. I the 70s you listened to the radio. It was likely the sole source of new music for a ton of fans. It was infinitely harder to be heard and make it then, but there seemed to be a lot less competition for attention once you got through that initial barrier. If there's an artist that can perform and create music better than TS, all they need is a PC and social media to get started.
So while the competition isnt as stiff, the pure number of artists TS competes with is much larger.
