Band: Taylor Swift
Album: Midnights
Best song: The first three songs are all terrific. I like “Question…?” and “Bejeweled” a lot, too.
Worst song: “Vigilante Shit” is extremely not my shit.

I’ve written on this site twice about Taylor Swift, once in an overwhelmingly condescending tone and once avoiding her for most of the post. So, let me present a mea culpa for the first: I was wrong. Continue reading →

Band: Taylor Swift
Album: Red
Best song: “I Knew You Were Trouble.” is strong. Very strong.
Worst song: “Everything Has Changed” stinks.

I know it’s the least important thing in the mountains of things that women are up against, but I really don’t listen to enough female musicians. I’ve been making a concerted effort since March of this year to try and explore more female singers and female-led bands. It is not that easy.

Looking over my last.fm all-time listening profile, it’s almost entirely male. My top all-time artists have 2.5 women in the top 20: Cat Power, Chelsea Wolfe and Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell. Part of that is because men tend to dominate the types of music I like (post-rock, progressive rock, metal, classic rock, etc.), but mostly it’s because men dominate all types of music. Great rappers are almost all dudes because little girls aren’t told that they can grow up to be great rappers. Young guitar players look up to guitar gods — Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, etc. — and they’re all dudes.  Continue reading →

Band: Taylor Swift
Album: Speak Now
Best song: Every song sounds the same. It’s so very bland.
Worst song: See above.

The simplest of understandings of democracy and capitalism is, essentially, based on the wisdom of the crowd. This notion is not a terribly awful one; the “hive mind” of Wikipedia is largely based on this notion. After all, one person is not as brilliant as one hundred people. Ever. Continue reading →