PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting NYT Says Taylor Swift Is Bigger Than The Beatles

This subject interests me and so I'm going to try to answer it seriously. Also, Rick Beato is one of my favorite music YouTubers, but he has an old crankypants bias when he assesses anything that came after the 90s. For the record, I'm not a Swiftie, would never go to a concert, and she's not my favorite young singer. Lorde, Billie Eilish, Lana del Rey, and Mitski are more to my taste, but I admire her craft as a songwriter. (There are many videos on YouTube spotlighting her best bridges) I recommend her albums "Folklore" and "Evermore," if you're curious to see what the fuss is about. If those albums had come out during the 60s, they would have been among my favorites.

Is Taylor Swift a bigger pop star than The Beatles ever were? Absolutely. It's not even close.

Is she "better" than The Beatles? This is such a colossally stupid question for dozens of reasons. They were a band; she's one person. Their music is undeniably more complex musically. She favors more simple chord progressions. They came out at a time when the way music was produced and listened to was totally different, as Beato lays out. For most people of my generation (71) who grew up with The Beatles, the idea of her music being "as good" as The Beatles is ridiculous. We like their music much, much, more. But to a certain degree, this is just because it's the music of our youth. My wife's father never played The Beatles in the car ever. He only liked The Great American Songbook, as sung by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and people like that. When The Beatles were big there were a lot of people Rick Beato's age who didn't listen to them. Or said they were rubbish without listening to them.

To young people today, particularly young women, Taylor Swift is the soundtrack to their youth. So for them, the idea of The Beatles being a bigger group is dumb. This is the music of their young life just as The Beatles was of ours.

The Beatles existed as a band for around eight years, from 1962 to 1970. The canon of Beatles songs is approximately 213 songs (188 originals and 25 covers). Of course the members continued to play after, but that's the core music of The Beatles. Taylor Swift released her first album in 2003. She is still going strong now, almost 22 years later. She officially has released 274 songs. (Nobody knows how much is in her "vault.") So The Beatles were tremendously more productive as songwriters in their short time of existence. But they stopped performing after a few years, while she does these massive ERAS world tours. If she lives, she'll certainly double the songs she's produced and keep touring. She needs to be number one. Which is a little sad, and she does write about it honestly and critically in some of her songs. The Beatles were the number one group in the world, but they grew ambivalent about it. I think Lennon grew to hate their success. They stopped touring. Is she bigger? Yes. They didn't want to be as big as she is driven to be. Will she stay on top of fame and popularity longer? She already has done that and may keep going on for decades. She's only 34. (The Beatles were all under 30 when they broke up).

Talking about numbers of number one hit songs is pure Beato. I guess it came from NYT piece, but it's all he seems to care about in his videos. Billboard, Billboard, Billboard. To me, Bob Dylan was big in the 60s, but he only charted a few times and never had a number one. ("Like a Rolling Stone" was #2). I loved Tim Buckley and he never really charted. The Velvet Underground? Charting is not the only metric of what matters in culture.

Beato creates a very compelling argument in his video that Swift doesn't write her songs. The first problem with that is that she has released 67 songs with herself as the sole writer. The second problem is that she is so famous that there are videos of her writing her songs all by herself. Also video of her working with her producers.In her film "Miss Americana" you can see how she co-writes a song like "Getaway Car" with Jack Antonoff, and it's not the way Beato says. You can see her in the studio with Max Martin, singing the melody of the synth track she wants to hear. It's a collaboration. She is not a tool of producers. Who do you think gets to make the final decision about every detail?

Beato gives the example of "Cardigan," which was in fact written to an Aaron Dessner track. Yes, but that was during the pandemic, when nobody could work together. She did her first vocals in her bedroom closet. If Beato has proof that she writes all her music to other people's tracks, let him show it. I admire him, but I think he pulled that out of his [*****].

He also conveniently forgets that The Beatles also had a very powerful producer, George Martin, who had a massive involvement in their tracks and development as artists.

Let me sum up by saying, "who cares?" The Beatles and Taylor Swift are musicians who have touched the hearts of millions of people. That's a nice thing.