The sheer randomness of it all is truly staggering.
Take Lana Del Rey. She keeps recording the same album time and time again, and - all of a sudden - her latest one becomes a critical success.
Or take Taylor Swift. Mocked, laughed at, never taken too seriously, she announces a surprise new album called Folklore (with a blatant black metal cover and the obligatory Bon Iver collaboration) and five star reviews are suddenly the order of the fucking day. A cynical place like Rate Your Music is filled with cynical people full of admiration for Taylor's great songwriting.
Amazing, really.
I have given it a listen, and it is not even that the album has nothing to do with folk music (after all, Queen's Jazz has little to do with jazz either) - it is that these are the very same songs she has been churning out for years. It is the same fucking thing. It is what any decent computer would come up with if you type 'write me a Taylor Swift song' into it. Slick, perfectly manufactured plastic pop - with cringe-worthy lyrics and obvious hooks.
It may not be hopeless, mind you, and I would take her over Ariana Grande (God help me) any day of the week, but what on Earth is happening to all these people who can no longer tell a good melody from derivative crap lacking in anything remotely resembling soul?
I know it was a low blow to post a Replacements song under my recent Lana Del Rey diatribe, so here goes Mirel Wagner. This, Miss Taylor, is how you do folk music:
