My Two Cents: The Grammys

The 2010 Grammy Awards were admittedly heavy on country music this year, claiming in the first half of the ceremony "never in history has country music been so popular." The Grammy's went on to suggest before Taylor Swift's performance that this sudden surge in popularity is due in part to her grand arrival to the musical scene. True or not, I think it is about time that we admit something to ourselves: Taylor Swift is not a country singer. I've heard more Taylor Swift music than I'd like to admit and I can confidently state that her country music falls far within the boundaries of pop. I have mentioned this sentiment to others and I've gotten a good amount of agreement, but I'm going to go one step further and make the claim that Taylor Swift's music is not only not country music, it is not creative at all.

Of her 56 tunes I've come up with this count: The number of songs about being alone, four. The number of songs about love lost: 15. Seventeen songs are about regular old love, while nine are about love of the unrequited kind. Taylor Swift rounds off her collection with three songs about boys who cheated on her, one about her dad, six holiday selections, and one comedic rap song about being a thug. In between the "doo doos" and "da das" that pepper her lyrics, Swift writes with very little poetic form, even claiming in one song to be a "Scarlet Letter," a badge of dishonor representing adultery worn by the protagonist in Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous novel. I have to ask if this is the imagery she was really trying to invoke.

It's time we face up. Taylor Swift, as cute and likable as she is, as catchy as her music can be, is not something out of the ordinary, but the opposite: a very emotional, and sometimes vindictive, young woman with a pretty voice and an acoustic guitar.