Storm653

The real answer is that the Country fandom adjusted to streaming over the years. That's it. They were already a huge market in terms of CD buying and concert attendance but, now, they've gotten used to streaming their faves as well. Morgan Wallen was already smashing during the Biden era so Trump plays no role. Younger Country fans are just using Spotify and Apple like everyone else.

She's going to link up with The Weeknd, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, Drake, Morgan Wallen, Justin Bieber, SZA, Bad Bunny, Blackpink, Lil Baby, Playboi Carti, and Ella Langley for the singles for her upcoming country pop-trap album "Mrs. Trudeau."

Not the biggest fan of the song but it's an undeniable hit. Drake will always make the catchiest music in hip hop(as far as male rappers). That's always been for forte.

It was a rather dry year for hits so this doesn't surprise me.

Rihanna is versatile the same way Drake is versatile. I'll leave it at that.

I highly doubt that lol. But this can be said about just about any celebrity tbh. Even Madonna probably has many people irl who view her as an "old hag" or "washed up" even with Confessions 2 out. That doesn't mean she doesn't have many supporters and fans though. Almost every famous celebrity has their share of haters or people indifferent to them. It comes with the territory. But Taylor almost objectively has the biggest fanbase in pop right now. We are past the age of artists have Beatles and pre-Dangerous era MJ level universal love regardless of the artist. Even Beyonce has her share of people who think it's "gay" to listen to her music(straight guys) and people who associate her with the occult or witchcraft(MAGA and Christian types).

Offline, Taylor is very much a well-liked artist and person. At most, people just get tired of the media exposure but that's it. Everything you just said applies to Nicki Minaj and Kanye West more than Taylor lol.

This is false. Many actual witnesses have claimed that the Carters had a strictly business/socialite relationship with Diddy just like every other celebrity.

The tricky thing with Taylor is that her "damaged reputation" and "infamy" is very much a chronically online phenomenon just like with the numerous conspiracies about Beyonce. Overall, all Taylor needs to do is put out a much better album than TLOASG and stay out of the limelight and a lot of the online negativity will dry out very fast. Stan Twitter and OTHs will continue to hate but they'll sound more delusional constantly trashing her all the time. In many ways, pop stars with "polished" images and good PR like Taylor and Beyonce are ESPECIALLY controversial in pop/stan spaces online to the degree where people have to LIE on them to manufacture controversies. Taylor has NEVER publicly supported Trump and Travis is a Liberal yet her haters will label them MAGA and Far Right. Taylor has never been exposed as an actual racist and has stood up for POC many times yet she's casually labeled a vile racist. And she gets far more hate and criticism than Rihanna for being a billionaire capitalist. There's no winning with Stan Twitter types when it comes to Taylor but they don't matter in the grand scheme of things. At the end of the day, Taylor has never flopped to the extent of Katy, Xtina, Lizzo, etc. and her controversies aren't close to being as bad as Nicki's, Chris Brown's, Justin's, Drake's, Kanye's, MIA's, Courtney Love's, Azalea Banks's etc. so there really isn't a true "PR Crisis" with Taylor outside of overexposure tbh.

Honestly, with all the extreme disrespect Madonna was getting from the Moonwalkers especially after the biopic, I can't help but have a smile on my face. Granted, I NEVER disliked Madame X like so many people did. I think people underrated it and wrote it off as a "trendy" album because of the features even though it was still Madonna in her creative zone. But I'm glad Confessions 2 is getting the props it's getting. Now, the Moonwalkers who dragged Madonna should start being honest about their messiah's pre-OTW solo albums and post 80's solo albums before coming for the Queen.

Katy and Xtina are interesting because they had a normal pop cycle of staying hot for 3-4 albums before falling off. However, their inability to hit a new stride or bounce back like many of their peers given their huge peaks is what makes their downfalls feel so tragic. They've tried soooo many times to have a comeback but nothing has worked. Xtina even tried to cling to newer Latin artists for relevance and Katy did a song with Chief Keef and that didn't work. At least Britney bowed out gracefully after Glory flopped and Lorde continued making great music for more niche music fans post Melodrama. Xtina and Katy haven't done either well.

Quiet as kept, Lizzo herself ended up admitting this by tweeting how she thrived off a radio airplay and got screwed over by streaming and algorithms. Mind you, Lizzo blew up in the streaming era and was a major celebrity when she was dominant.

Madonna. Let's not get caught up in recency bias or only using "streams" as a metric. If you take away her tons of features for other major artists like Drake, Eminem, Kanye, Jay, Calvin Harris, DJ Khaled, etc. then Madonna very clearly has the bigger solo hit catalog than Rihanna. Even rappers have made songs based on Madonna songs like Holiday Rap and that Jay naming a song "Justify My Thug." And Vogue is one of the most iconic pop songs ever and it's a soundtrack song. Rihanna or Mariah are still 2nd in command though. Don't get it twisted.

Katy actually has a pretty normal pop star career life cycle. It's not the norm for artists like Madonna, Beyonce, Taylor, Gaga, Adele, Lana, Rihanna, Janet, etc. to have 15-20+ year runs. Their careers are anomalies in the pop world. Look at Doja Cat and Dua Lipa for example. They both had 2 massive pop albums that dominated the landscape but Radical Optimism and Scarlet were falls from grace compared to the previous 2 albums. And people are still stunned with their inability to recapture the FN and Planet Her dominance today. Katy did very well for 8 years(2008-2015) but she didn't really stick out enough to have the same cult or diehard followings as certain other pop stars which lead her to having a normal pop star run where you're hot for 1-4 albums and then, as Porky Pig says, "That's all folks!"

I know there's a big "R&B vs Pop" debate but I feel Usher in 2004 should be here too.

Despite people clowning Beyonce's streaming success, she does better than people think. People get so caught up in "Spotify Monthly Listener" stats which are heavily dependent on radio hits and autoplay that they can't see how consumed Beyonce's music actually is. She's even one of the best selling artists in singles sales. Not bad for a woman who's been active in music for 3 decades. Shakira deserves lots of props too.

Taylor is hated online more than real life. Online, she rallies all the other fanbases against her like Thanos vs The Avengers: Monsters, Army, BTS fans, Livies, Billie fans, Beliebers, Drake fans, Kanye fans, The Hive, The Navy, MJ fans, Ariana fans, Adele fans, Barbs, etc. I've seen literally all of them call a truce and tag team to drag Taylor online lol.

I mean....I guess. I'd still argue that Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and BBC have more impactful reviews than him bu as a celebrity, I suppose he's the one. But it has less to do with him being a "good critic" and more to do with him taking full advantage of Youtube and social media as a platform for building up his profile in the last 16 years. Other notable critics like Robert Christgau preferred to keep a low profile outside of their music reviews and they didn't have social media at their disposal. Fantano's actual music criticism is pretty surface level stuff though. As a Latino, I can tell you straight up that 85% of his reviews of Latin music are disposable because the guy literally couldn't even identify blatant bachata influences on different artists. Instead, calling it "Latin jazz fusion" lmao. Also, he sometimes uses a ton of word salad instead of getting his point across directly. It's like he wants to desperately be seen as a "music intellectual" instead of embracing the fact that he's closer to a Nostalgia Critic, Angry Video Game Nerd, and Jeremy Jahns than he is to an actual professional critic. I honestly enjoy Fantano more when he lets his personality shine in his livestreams instead of his usual schtick of being the pedantic, stoic critic like he does in his normal reviews. Fantano is the most relevant critic only because he was one of the first to take advantage of social media to propel himself into Internet celebrity status. You could make the same argument for Simon Cowell being the most important music critic of the 2000's, especially when American Idol actually launched stars.

Let's be real. 75% of Taylor Swift hate online is because of who she is and not due to her actual music. Showgirl was a poor album for sure but ya'll already had the pitchforks out before it even dropped. A lot of people here can't even articulate why Midnights is a "bad/poor" album that doesn't involve being upset that it's not a continuation of Folkmore. Taylor Swift is a Blonde multibillionaire capitalist who prioritizes her brand as much as her music career and lives a lavish life. That alone will give you a lot of hate online. I'm a Madonna fan so I can tell you outside of pop spaces, Madonna gets tons of hate too. I've seen people disrespect Madonna as a person and an artist. Even the "hee hee" Moonwalkers seem to resent Madonna for some reason. It is what it is.

Ya'll weren't calling Reputation a "perfect" album at all when it first dropped. I know because I was there. Both critics and a lot of pop forums at the time were criticizing it. Also, Taylor was just as vilified as she is today when that album dropped. Hence, why she essentially embraces the "villain role" for the concept of the album and even calls herself a snake. This was back when the Internet believed Kanye and Kim about the phone call situation and people started hating on Taylor a lot online, calling her a snake and pushing the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty hashtag. The revisionist history behind Reputation's reception needs to be studied. You're high off of nostalgia if you think that album is anywhere as well received as Folklore, Evermore, Red(TV), and Fearless(TV). I'd even say that Midnights is EASILY better than that album. Nostalgia and Taylor fatigue is removing all sorts of objectivity among you guys.

Love both but Into The Groove easily.

Tbh, Taylor's only "bad" albums are Lover and TLOASG. Those are the only albums where I would look at people sideways if they considered them even a top 5 Taylor album. Never understood the hate for Midnights and TTPD personally. I quite like those albums. If Taylor does keep making albums like Showgirl, then her falloff musically will be inevitable but I feel like a lot of hate on Midnights and TTPD is very forced. I get the "TTPD is bloated" argument but I still haven't heard a compelling argument against Midnights that wasn't just Folkmore stans crying about it being a pop album and not Folkmore 2.0. To each their own though. Taylor has 12 solo albums out, not even including the Taylor versions. It's not easy to have strong quality control for 12 solo albums for 20 years. Take Eminem for example. He also has 12 albums and we've seen how his quality control got out of control early on after the 8 Mile Soundtrack. Madonna has 13 albums and her quality control wasn't consistent either. Just something to think about.

Madonna honestly had many peaks in pop culture. And even eras that were once deemed her "low points" had impact too. Madonna and Janet influenced so many aspects of pop music and pop culture that are so normalized today that some people downplay them, via the "Seinfeld effect." Madonna was a very vocal advocate against homophobia, misogyny, sexual repression, AIDs, racism, the Bush administration, etc. and was willing to embrace the "villain role" for the conservative leaning media in order to get the masses to see what she was advocating for. And she did all this while still having strong quality control with her music and giving us classics. Edit: In the 1990's and 2000's, Madonna had a bigger cultural impact than MJ despite what revisionists will tell you. Obviously, MJ had the greatest overall cultural impact in the 1980's and with the Jackson 5 but Madonna eclipsed him as his music and public image declined after 1993.

Men tend to respect female artists from the 20th century more than more modern female artists on average. I noticed that first hand when some guy at my job was bashing Beyonce and telling me how Whitney Houston and Sade were "way better" than her. It's like it's deemed more respectable for men to listen to past female acts than current ones without being labeled "gay." That said, certain female artists today like Adele, Lana, Lorde, Billie, Olivia, Rihanna, Lauryn Hill, and SZA seem more respectable for straight men to listen to publicly than many other female acts.

Because she was very impactful at her peak. A lot of MPG's today in general tend to cite Gaga, Britney, Taylor, or Beyonce as influences on them. Madge gets quite a few shoutouts too despite peaking before their time.