Are You a Swifty?

@erik_squires I think you’re confusing Taylor Swift with Britney Spears.  
Britney Spears was tied to a conservatorship that she got out of recently, not Taylor Swift.

@tylermunns  Shows you how much I follow current music trends!! Hahahaha

@wesheadley You say, “…the fake divide between male and female artists…” yet you also say, “For female pop artists I’d put Lana Del Rey...”  

Further, if we actually entertained such dumb sexism in this way (comparing ‘female artists’), and then took your assertion that Lana Del Rey’s oeuvre could be placed “among the best,” “in any era,” we’d still be walkin’ on reeeeaaaal thin ice.  

If we looked at the songwriting output in the era of mid-‘60s-through-mid-‘70s by the likes of Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, Cynthia Weil, Nina Simone, Dolly Parton, Valerie Simpson, Aretha Franklin, Loretta Lynn, Nico, Bobbie Gentry, Joni Mitchell, and Betty Davis, and then looked at Lana Del Rey’s oeuvre, and then said hers could be “put up there with any of them,”…um…uh…yyyyeeaahh, no.  

If we threw her oeuvre into the mix of ‘90s artists like The Breeders, Aimee Mann, Björk, Lauryn Hill, Sinead O’Connor, Liz Phair, Iris Dement, Sleater-Kinney, Gillian Welch, PJ Harvey, Lucinda Williams, and Fiona Apple…um…uh…yyyeeeaaahh, no.

Throw Lana (or Taylor for that matter) into a room with either of those eras’ artists in their primes (we could do it with other eras…mid-‘70s-through-mid-‘80s, for example…same result) and she’d likely pull a Wayne’s World-esque, bowing-on-her-knees-on-the-floor, “We are not worthy! We are not worthy!” (in this case, the ‘we’ being her two-dozen-odd different co-writers the last decade)

@tylermunns 

Ha! You're right! I should not make that distinction unless asked to.

Regarding Lana Del Rey -- have you listed to her album "Norman Fucking Rockwell"? She's an exceptional songwriter. She does not write by committee like say, Beyonce'. Check it out here. 

I will say that there is nowhere near the volume of exceptional work being released these past couple of decades like there was during the 60's or 70's, or even the 80's - 90's. Especially when you consider the lyrics, which usually range from the trite to the unbearably bad (with exceptions!).

Not a swifty, but I’m a schwifty.