Taylor Swift named as Time's Person of the Year - 2023

Other people have covered other aspects of Taylor Swift, but you specifically asked about her music.

You’re right in that it’s pretty standard pop music, so it won’t change any minds on that front for people who don’t like the genre as a whole, but, on the wide playing field of pop music, Swift stands high above a lot of other artists (maybe even most?).

For one, she’s a legitimately talented and dedicated songwriter. She started professionally writing music at the age of 14, and throughout her subsequent teenage years she was able to write songs that were simultaneously evocative of youth while also giving insights that felt wise beyond her years. Before she was 20, she wrote three standout albums — each better than the last. It’s through this growth that she honed her talents in pop songwriting and leveraged those to become a complete cultural powerhouse in her twenties (with four more albums) which is what has led her to be the absolute standout star she is today (another three albums since, with additional re-recordings of her entire back catalog). There are decades of skill-building behind her current success.

She can write a hook like nobody’s business, but her songs have more panache than a lot of pop music too. They’re often narrative-driven. They focus on specific memories and feelings that feel lived. They inhabit interesting perspectives and give thoughtful observations. She brought some of these country music tropes into her pop songwriting, and I think her artful use of both helped her escape some of the limitations of both genres.

A lot of other pop music tries to go abstract with its feelings as a way of having broad appeal. Those songs are almost like musical horoscopes that are intentionally vague so anyone can project their own experiences onto them and still find them resonant. Swift does the opposite. She sings with precision and clarity about specific, personal things that somehow manage to still feel universal to listeners.

She’s also a thoroughly competent wordsmith. Her writing is often thoughtful, sometimes outright clever. She’s really good with word economy, evoking myriad feelings and images in a few short lines. Her songs often have “turns” where there’s a change of perspective or something that changes the mood or the chorus that gives an interesting texture to an otherwise predictable songwriting structure.

Pop music is often criticized for feeling soulless and produced. Swift’s music, meanwhile, has an indelibly human touch. The emotional depth and range of her work is deeper and richer than nearly all other top 40 stuff out there.

Musically, she’s really great with melody and flow — almost all of her songs have an eminently singable quality. Even when she’s not going for rich emotional depth, she still lands a song just plain sounds good.

Furthermore, and this is probably the most important aspect of her talent: she’s able to do this again and again. She’s got lighting in a bottle and can make it strike exactly where she wants, over and over. She has 100+ different songs across her entire discography, and while not every one shines brightly, she hits far more than she misses. Most other artists would be astoundingly lucky if they could be as prolific and consistent as her.

Swift’s music is liked, ultimately, because she’s exceptionally skilled at making pop music. She started her career with an abundance of talent and has, over two decades, honed her skills and mastered her craft. I’m someone who listens almost exclusively to pop music. This means that I listen to (and even genuinely like) a lot of stuff that is, uh… pretty bad.

Swift isn’t pretty bad. She’s really, really good.