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September 07, 2009
The most successful recording artist in 2008 ... is who?
Why do I like country music? Because of songs like this -- and the performers who write and sing about how much they love and respect their parents.
Taylor Swift is a teenager who writes most of her songs -- and co-writes the rest -- making her anything but the pre-packaged, country version of Britney the Trainwreck. And Swift also seems to be a pretty nice person, as the above video and song seem to show.
She's also a tremendous success. Slate's Jody Rosen has the 411, from an article about Swift's recent concert at Madison Square Garden:
Over the past couple years, Swift has been a one-woman bulwark against the complete implosion of the record industry. In 2008, she was the biggest-selling artist in America, with combined sales of her 2006 self-titled debut album and her 2008 release Fearless topping 3.6 million. This year, Fearless has moved another 1.6 million copies; its sales totals are second only to the Michael Jackson compilation Number Ones. Swift has released eight singles, all of which have reached the country Top 10 and the Top 40 on the pop charts. She's had four No. 1 country singles; her latest hit, "You Belong with Me," climbs to No. 2 this week on the Billboard Hot 100.
There have been other milestones. No female artist has had as many hits from a debut album since Billboard began keeping an album chart in 1964. This year, Fearless held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 200 album chart for a total of 11 weeks, the longest run in a decade. Three of Swift's singles have topped two million mark in paid downloads, a first for a country artist. And so on.
Slate's weekly Culture Gabfest podcast featured a segment on Swift, with a couple of participants confessing a surprising fondness for Swift's tunes, which inspired mirth and disbelief from the other hipsters. Slate columnist Dana Stevens posted this response to the podcast, as well as her colleague's account of the concert she attended, saying that she found listening to the young singer's album to be "unexpectedly moving."
Top 10 hits by 19-year-old country-pop starlets aren’t usually high in my iPod rotation, so no one could be more surprised than I am that I now know several of Swift’s songs by heart. (Stephen Metcalf, the Gabfest’s host and resident curmudgeon, can be heard gagging in the background; he and Jody are currently engaged in a Taylor Swift smackdown over at the podcast’s Facebook page.)
It could be that I’m so far outside the age demographic for T-Swift fandom that I’ve circled back around and entered it again. Even before watching that clip of the 15,000-girl campfire singalong at the Garden (or getting sniffly at "The Best Day," her insidiously catchy tribute to her mother), I found that I was listening to Swift as a parent: touched by her youthful talent, worrying about how she’ll negotiate the transition from teen phenomenon to adult professional musician, and hoping to God that when my daughter is 15, she’ll be listening to something like Swift’s “Fifteen” and not whatever the equivalent of Britney Spears will be in 2019. Better yet, maybe my girl will be writing her own earnest ballads about freshman anxiety.
Whether you like her music or not, it's great to think that Swift's success as a singer-songwriter (as opposed to a pneumatic lip-synching doll) could inspire the next generation of girls to pick up a guitar and learn to play.
Is there a more likable performer on the hit parade? And for once, to say that she's a positive role model doesn't feel like someone's blowing smoke.
Posted by Mike Lief at September 7, 2009 10:57 AM