Pet Shop Boys‘ Neil Tennant has admitted that he finds Taylor Swift‘s music “disappointing” following the release of her new album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.
READ MORE: Taylor Swift – ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ review: a rare misstep
Despite Swift’s massive success in recent years, with her new double album becoming the fastest-selling of 2024, Tennant said in a Guardian Live event An Evening with Pet Shop Boys that he thought the quality of her music didn’t hold up to her popularity.
“What is Taylor Swift’s ‘Billie Jean’?” he asked. “‘Shake It Off’? I listened to that the other day and it is not ‘Billie Jean’, is it?”
Tennant added that he appreciated that Swift’s music “brings people together” but “the one disappointing thing is the music, not the lyrics”. Despite this, he also raised an eyebrow at the way she has famously taken inspiration from her previous relationships for lyrics.
“To have a successful pop career now you have to have a series of relationships, which are amazing and then break up tragically,” he said. “In the world of pop, people don’t write songs like ‘Karma Chameleon’ anymore.”
Tennant isn’t the only person recently to criticise Swift’s music. Courtney Love told The Standard in an interview that she thought Swift is “not important”.
“She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist,” the Hole singer said.
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – DECEMBER 2: English Band The Pet Shop Boys performs on stage during day 1 of the Primavera Sound Sao Paulo music festival at Autódromo José Carlos Pace on December 2, 2023, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Leandro Bernardes/PxImages/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In a three-star review of ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, NME wrote: “Swift seems to be in tireless pursuit for superstardom, yet the negative public opinion it can come with irks her, and it’s a tired theme now plaguing her discography and leaving little room for the poignant lyrical observations she excels at. It’s why the pitfalls that mire her 11th studio album are all the more disappointing — she’s proven time and time again she can do better. To a Melbourne audience of her Eras Tour, Swift said that ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ came from a “need” to write. It’s just that maybe we didn’t need to hear it.
Meanwhile, in a new interview with NME, Pet Shop Boys described their new album ‘Nonetheless’ as their “queer album” and Tennant, who came out as gay in 1994, discussed how things have changed for the queer community in pop culture since then.
“What I think now is that what you might call gay culture has become mainstream,” Tennant said. Several years ago, I went to see Jake Shears in Kinky Boots on Broadway. It was an essentially straight audience, and when the drag queens came on, they all went ballistic. I thought: ‘Wow, this whole thing’s just gone totally mainstream’ – and I think it’s ‘cause of RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“It’s like with the It’s a Sin TV series,” he continued, referencing the 2021 Olly Alexander-starring Channel 4 drama that cribbed its name from the Pet Shop Boys’ 1987 chart-topper. “You feel the straight community finally faced up to the AIDS crisis.”
In a four-star review of the album, NME wrote: ‘Nonetheless’ unfolds like a 10-song short story collection, peppered with richly-drawn characters, and esoteric cultural references. The woozily romantic ‘Feel’ – originally earmarked for a Brandon Flowers solo album – paints a picture of somebody counting down the days until they can visit their lover in prison and aches with longing. The electroclash ‘Bullet for Narcissus’, meanwhile, combines New Order guitars with the inner-monologue of a bodyguard tasked with protecting a Trump-like tyrant who’s “so banal he’s made of mainstream”.
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