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Originally Posted by POed-poster
I agree with you that no amount of money can make people like you as an artist and yes, people like Taylor. But her fan base consists of mainly pre-teen girls, the same kinds of fans that Leif Garrett and David Cassidy had. Those fans tend to grow out of their obsessions. But being popular doesn't mean that you have any talent. He singing is average and her songs are mainly written by professional song writers. That is how it's done in Nashville. Sure she gets lots of co-writes, but that doesn't mean she contributed more to the song than ideas. A lot of it is also business. Artists demand and usually get co-writes when they didn't write any of the song. Rob Thomas didn't write 'Smooth' and John Denver didn't writer 'Country Roads'. There are also cases of outright theft. I know a guy who had a song stolen by Brooks and Dunn. He sued and ended up settling for 45K when he realized that all the musicologists in town were going to side with the label (because the label had deep pockets). The music industry is as crooked as any industry out there, outright thieves.
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For sure the music industry is crooked. If you haven't read it you should read a book called Hit Men. It is about the music business and some of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on. In one part there is a story about an artist going to his label and demanding to be paid his royalties. The label head says instead of paying him what he was owed ( I think it was about 5K) he would give him this new Cadillac that was downstairs. He threw the guys the keys, the guy was happy as could be and left. The label head then got on the phone and told security to never let that guy back in the building. The car he had just given him was a rental car so he would be finding out real soon he didn't get to keep it and would be pissed.
I would disagree with you about her level of talent. I don't know enough about her to know how much she has written and how much she hasn't written. I think there are always two sides to every story. Like Avril Lavigne saying she wrote about 90% her hit song Complicated and the song writers that got co-credit say she only contributed one line to it. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
To me part of talent is being able to connect with an audience and make the song real. While kids are more impressionable than adults for some things, they don't really fake who they like when it comes to music and movies and stuff like that. If you can get 40,000 people to pay to watch you sing live in concert, you have some talent in my book.
And I think she has a good voice. It isn't technically great, but it is honest and kind of raw. Then again I love Dylan, Neil Young and Tom Waits. I would rather hear a singer that isn't too great vocally sing something to me that is real than hear a technically perfect singer sing some kind of stuff you can't connect with.
Maybe she has too many young fans for her to last. Maybe she doesn't, but most acts have their core audience and eventually most of that audience leaves you and you have to find a new one.
Here is a great example. Hootie and the Blowfish. The were a small band, then had a huge record and exploded. Their fans weren't kids, they were mostly adults. That record sold like crazy and they toured the world and were one of the biggest bands on the planet for a few years. Then 5 years later they were nowhere to be seen. The audience is fickle and most acts don't hold on to fans,young or old, for very long.