Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant says Taylor Swift’s music is “disappointing”

nme.com:

Pet Shop Boys‘ Neil Tennant has admitted that he finds Taylor Swift‘s music “disappointing” following the release of her new album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.

Despite Swift’s massive success in recent years, with her new double album becoming the fastest-selling of 2024, Tennant said in a Guardian Live event An Evening with Pet Shop Boys that he thought the quality of her music didn’t hold up to her popularity.“What is Taylor Swift’s ‘Billie Jean’?” he asked. “‘Shake It Off’?

I listened to that the other day and it is not ‘Billie Jean’, is it?”Tennant added that he appreciated that Swift’s music “brings people together” but “the one disappointing thing is the music, not the lyrics”.

Despite this, he also raised an eyebrow at the way she has famously taken inspiration from her previous relationships for lyrics.“To have a successful pop career now you have to have a series of relationships, which are amazing and then break up tragically,” he said. “In the world of pop, people don’t write songs like ‘Karma Chameleon’ anymore.”Tennant isn’t the only person recently to criticise Swift’s music.