The recent statements that Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant said about Taylor Swift were positioned as a controversy in the world of music and the show.
In conversation with The Mirror, the British singer questioned the scope and influence of the American artist’s works.
More specifically, he stated: “Today I was looking at the chart and it was all Taylor Swift. She fascinates me as a phenomenon, because she is very popular. But then I listen to the records and think: Where are the famous songs? What is Taylor Swift’s ‘Billie Jean’? ‘Shake It Off’? I heard it the other day and it’s not ‘Billie Jean’TRUE?”.
Faced with the debate that he sparked with his statements, The linguist and academic at the Diego Portales University, Ricardo Martínez, stood up to the “swifties” and responded to Tennant in a column he published in baroque.
What the academic said about Taylor Swift and Neil Tennant’s comments
He is also the author of Classics AM: a history of the Latin American Romantic Ballad (Planet, 2019) He first recalled that the “Shake It Off” artist, only on Spotify, is currently listened to by more than 107 million people around the world..
That places her in second place after The Weeknd, who appears with 112 million of listeners in the application ranking.
In this sense, gave a historical review of how measurements have been made in this area, in addition to naming some songs by artists who have surpassed 1,000 million of reproductions.
“In the past, listeners were counted, until almost the end of the 19th century by librarians who kept a record of how many times the scores of the popular songs kept by the libraries were requested; then there were the albums sold; and since 1955 the registry was kept in the United States by the Billboardrecording the best-selling songs among other combined measures and giving rise to the rankings and the Number 1 (Top 1) week by week.”
Under these points, the academic specified that The Pet Shop Boys, in England alone, managed to position 22 songs in the Top 10 since 1985.
Although he valued those successes, he said that “Today audiences are more fragmented” than in the 20th century.
And within this scenario, there is the “swiftie” fan base, like others like K-Pop that stand out for being highly active.
“Is this new? Not at all, in the sixties there were also the ‘Beatlemaniacs’. The difference is that now, as I said above, the audiences, although they number tens of millions of people, have become atomized. and Taylor Swift has never been heard by perhaps billions of people on the planet, unlike the Beatles or the Pet Shop Boys themselves. that in an era of radio, TV, and Wurlitzers on the beaches, were known by ‘everyone’.”
Under this line, he questioned in his column for the aforementioned medium: “Does Taylor Swift finally have a ‘Billie Jean’? “Not for the entire planet, but for the tens of millions of her followers.”.
In the same way, he emphasized: “Taylor Swift may never have a song of the global relevance of ‘Billie Jean’, but given how consumption and popularity works today (atomized, although with millions of followers, a product of the Internet), Yeah It has extraordinarily popular songs and, if I am pressed to give a personal opinion of a man over fifty years old, they will last the same over time.”.
You can read his full analysis by clicking click on this link.
