I don’t get it. Her music is sometimes catchy but otherwise unremarkable, from the songs I’ve heard. How does she break all these records and accumulate so much fame and wealth?
She’s pretty, but a lot of singer songwriters are, especially those with makeup and costume people, a support staff.
Is there something else to her that people like?
I’m confused about what makes her so apparently uniquel or phenomenal.
The music industry has been a racket for nearly 100 years. Music doesn’t get popular because people like it, it gets popular because it’s promoted. Way back when, promoters would pay radio stations to play their music to encourage sales. The methods are slightly different now, but it’s still the same kind of old boy’s club telling people what they like.
Taylor Swift understood the industry she was getting into, and was very adept at exploiting it.
This is true, but not everything that gets promoted gets popular. A lot also flunks.
Taylor Swift just happens to hit a sweet spot that appeals to a lot of people.
And music has a self-reinforcing spiral. People listen to music from artists that they like, and which their peers like.
So a popular artist could theoretically release an album without any promotion and it would still become popular, just because people will be curious to listen to the new songs from an artist that they already like (of course, record labels will always heavily promote work from their popular artists to make them even more popular).
She appeals to a lot of people because she followed the script of what has been established as appealing to a lot of people, what people have been trained to like. It’s the same manufactured crap that has always been promoted, the difference is she’s an artist that knows what that is, rather than the artist being directed that way.