I didn't actually twig that was referring to me, possibly I suppose because I didn't consider it a 'threat' as such and I thought someone else had mentioned her too.
For what it's worth had I gone there I'd have nominated one of the two she did during lockdown with Aaron Dessner.
Ultimately the nature of her fame and the response of her fans is more interesting than her music imo.
Chatting to my niece last night about her comment that we should listen to Taylor's version was really revealing. At one level she, and as far as I can tell most of her fans, pore over her songs at a forensic level that puts what we do on here to shame; but they do it in a very specific fashion.
She spoke in some detail about how the song Dear John has different meaning on the later version because of quite subtle changes in the way it's sung. If I'm being honest I was quite surprised that she was making a nuanced argument. But then I said I thought what was most interesting about Dear John was the fact you could already see she knew how to write a bridge and how it's probably her strongest skill as a songwriter. She replied with "what's a bridge?" . I was slightly taken aback but thought fair enough and explained and then used the song Illicit Affairs off another album to illustrate how far Swift sometimes goes to make the bridge the core of the song. She nodded and immediately went back to explaining how the meaning of another song was slightly altered by the passage of time and Swift's experiences in the interim.
The bleeding obvious then hit me like a truck, the reason Swift can, if she wants, use formulaic Antanoff computer generated pap to accompany her words is because her fans aren't actually listening to the music anyway. They are focused almost entirely on the lyrics and how she delivers them, and if not her voice as such, then the phrasing and intonation etc. They are so invested in those elements that the rest of it is if not irrelevant then a very distant second. As long as it's basically danceable or you can wave your hands to it, it's acceptable because it's not the thing they came for.
If an alien arrived and listened to my niece they might conclude that she was describing acting or monologuing to background sounds rather than music. Despite the focus on melody rather than rhythm it's got as much in common with rap as it has traditional pop music. This storytelling focus arguably explains how she harnesses the parasocial dimension of her fame to such massive commercial effect too.
Swift clearly views herself at least in part as a traditional musician and though this album backs that up, with hindsight you can see already the seeds for where her approach ultimately led her and her fan base. I left the conversation with my niece thinking that whenever Swift does do something interesting musically, like the lockdown albums, she probably does it for herself to stay sane rather than any commercial need.
