Taylor Swiftwas caught off guard when her songwriting was questioned in an interview between Mikael Wood and Damon Albarn.
In the interview, Wood mentions Swift as an “excellent songwriter” after Albarn’s said that modern musicians are primarily relying on sound and attitude rather than writing and storytelling. Albarn responded that he is unimpressed by Swift’s songwriting abilities and even went as far to say, “she doesn’t write her own songs.”
When Wood defended Swift, Albarn said, “there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes.” While he criticized Swift for music that seems to be “endlessly upbeat,” he went on to praise Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell for their work in songwriting and producing music that is “darker” and “way more minor and odd.”
Swift rebuked the false claim by Albarn in a tweet on Monday. “I write ALL of my own songs,” the Folklore singer highlighted before slamming Albarn. “Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging,” she declared. “You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really f—ed up to try and discredit my writing.”
A follow up tweet by Swift accented the first, stating “PS. I wrote this tweet all by myself, in case you were wondering.”
Albarn apologized “unreservedly and unconditionally” to Swift on Twitter an hour later stating, “I had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait… The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting.”
Although Swift has not responded to Albarn’s apology, good friends and collaborators of Swift, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, were quick to counter Albarn’s claims with their own array of tweets.
Antonoff sarcastically tweeted that although he’s never met Albarn or had him in studio, “apparently [Albarn] knows more than the rest of us about all those songs Taylor writes and brings in.” He continued in another tweet, “If you were there … cool … go off. If not … maybe …. shut the f— up?”
Dessner made sure to endorse Swift’s songwriting on Twitter saying, “as someone who has gotten to press record around [Swift]… your statements couldn’t be further from the truth… you’re obviously completely clueless as to her actual writing and work process.”
This interview came during a time where Swift fans everywhere are speculating her next re-recorded album to be released. One of these highly anticipated albums includes Speak Now, an album originally released as a fully self-written album by Swift in 2010. In Swift’s 2019 Rolling Stone interview, she explains how a reason she wrote Speak Now completely independently was because she was criticized after the success of her sophomore album Fearless. “When I was 18, they were like, ‘she doesn’t really write those songs.’ So my third album I wrote by myself in reaction to that,” she said.
Three years from that interview, 12 years since the release of Speak Now and ten number one albums later, Swift’s songwriting is still being brought into question.
