Two artists representative of different eras in music, usher in new expectations and achievements.
It’s 2010 and YouTube just came out, if you’re anything like me, you were sitting at the desktop in your kitchen in awe of the bubble gum-vibed music video of California Gurls by Katy Perry. Katy Perry ran pop music in the early 2010’s, her album Teenage Dream is a pop landmark in terms of radio hits and sleeper hits setting an incredible number of records on the Billboard chart. This album is also a huge part of pop culture and served as a soundtrack quietly playing throughout the background of my childhood. Katy Perry scored 5 #1 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 chart off of Teenage Dream, and in turn,cemented her pop and cultural legacy.
Flash forward to 2020, we’re at the beginning stages of the lockdown during the pandemic and Taylor Swift drops the news that at midnight she’d be releasing her surprise album called Folklore. Everyone was tuned in, and it truly was a cultural moment, the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Albums 200 chart, and the single Cardigan was #1 on the Hot 100. Coming off the back of the synth-pop sounds of her three previous albums, 1989, Reputation, and Lover, she took on a more indie sound and enlisted the help of indie alternative producer Aaron Dessner from the band The National.
These two albums mark an opening and closing chapter for me as a music fan, Teenage Dream was an album that had a slow build and traditional pop star rollout for the 2010s. Teenage Dream was an album that was hit after hit and garnered critical acclaim because of the performance and innovation it brought to the industry. It showed that in 2010, people listened to music that didn’t dwell too heavily on the meanings and theories of a song but rather just took it at face value.
Taylor Swift as a musician has always been riddled with theories and speculations about who her music was about. Folklore with its soft melodies and airy vibes held together by the story-like lyrics marked a moment in music where the general public woke up to the idea that an album does not need to have hit after hit to mark a moment in musical history and culture. It marked the reemergence of Taylor Swift as a pop star with less focus on the theatrics that come with it while leaning into her songwriting prowess. Folklore garnered acclaim for its storytelling being at the album’s forefront. After Folklore took the music industry by storm, I started noticing reviews, fandoms, and musicians themselves began stressing the importance of lyricism.
Taylor has always been a musician who prides herself on her writing capabilities, the Folklore writing credits included 4 people max from beginning to end. This can be compared to her pop peers who used 3-7 co-writers and had songs that were passed along to the entire industry before landing in their studio. Fans and music critics have taken Taylor Swift’s music process and placed it on other artists as a standard to achieve.
As an avid music fan, I agree that lyrics are important, however, what draws me into a song, making it a hit, is the instrumentals and the background music behind the words, otherwise it just becomes a form of poetry. Teenage Dream is an album that had 5-7 writers on average per song, and even with that many hands being involved in the process, it produced smash hits.
Both albums represent a new standard in the industry, teenage dream set the tone for pop acts needing to create smash hits, and it showed that female pop stars can absolutely dominate the charts and garner critical acclaim. Folklore shows that a complete body of work can dominate the charts and also garner acclaim for being an album that needs to be consumed as a whole body of work. Music in all its forms- whether it’s an individual process or a collaborative, can appeal to different masses and create new standards for fans and music critics.