{"id":68120,"date":"2015-10-06T10:33:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68120"},"modified":"2015-10-06T12:31:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T17:31:17","slug":"ryan-adams-v-taylor-swift-who-wore-it-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/10\/06\/ryan-adams-v-taylor-swift-who-wore-it-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is it so hard to give Taylor Swift credit for 1989?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Musician Ryan Adams<\/a> recently released an album cover. A cover, that is, of an entire album written and performed by\u00a0Taylor Swift<\/a>. Both albums are titled 1989.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"7\"<\/a>via TheVine.com.<\/p>\n

Critical praise for Adams’ version was immediate, turning quickly to a comparison of the two. At There’s Research on That!<\/a>, Jacqui Frost explained that there was…<\/p>\n

…a media frenzy about which album is \u201cbetter\u201d and who deserves credit for the \u201cdepth and complexity\u201d that many say<\/a> Adams brought to Swift\u2019s poppier original. Some reviews argue Adams \u201cvindicated\u201d<\/a> Taylor Swift as an artist; others argue that emotional depth was already present<\/a> in Swift\u2019s songwriting…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Swift’s 1989<\/em> was the best selling album of 2014 — by popular vote, it was obviously an excellent album — but many people\u00a0seemed not to notice. Instead, they wanted\u00a0to talk about\u00a0who should get credit for\u00a0the quality of\u00a0Adams’<\/em> album, as if whether there was anything good there to begin with was an open question.<\/p>\n

Frost draws on sociological research to suggest that gender might\u00a0help explain why we have such a hard time giving credit to Swift.<\/p>\n

First, she notes that musical genres are gendered and we tend to take feminized genres less seriously than masculinized ones. “Many publications that reviewed Adams\u2019 version [of 1989],” for example, “did not review<\/a> Swift\u2019s original.” This may be because serious music critics don’t review pop.<\/p>\n

Second, research shows that male creatives in the music industry\u00a0are generally more likely to get credit\u00a0than females ones. Frost writes:<\/p>\n

[M]ale musicians, regardless of genre, are more likely to receive critical recognition and be \u201cconsecrated\u201d into the popular music canon. Women are less likely to be seen as \u201clegitimate\u201d artists and are more often judged on their emotional authenticity and connections with \u201cmore\u201d legitimate, male artists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, Frost notes,\u00a0“the albums will be competing for a Grammy this year, and many think<\/a> Adams will take it over Swift<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of the two albums, the instinct to dismiss Swift’s album as “just pop” and Adams’ version as “artistic” is likely tied to the powerful ways in which the music industry, and our own experience of music, has\u00a0a thumb on the scale in favor of\u00a0men and masculine genres.<\/p>\n

This post borrows heavily from Jacqui Frost at TROT!<\/a>\u00a0and you can find links to the original research there.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musician Ryan Adams recently released an album cover. A cover, that is, of an entire album written and performed by\u00a0Taylor Swift. Both albums are titled 1989. via TheVine.com. Critical praise for Adams’ version was immediate, turning quickly to a comparison of the two. At There’s Research on That!, Jacqui Frost explained that there was… …a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,55,23678,2098,23680,8118,283],"class_list":["post-68120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-gender-androcentrism","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-gender-sexism","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/10\/7.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68125,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68120\/revisions\/68125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}