Bad Blood: 20 Celebrities Who Don’t Like or Care Much for Taylor Swift

By creammagazine, May 3, 2024

From the outset I’ve got to admit I don’t particularly like Taylor Swift. I can’t pinpoint it exactly but there’s just something, I dunno, fishy about her.

Love her or loathe her, there’s no denying Taylor Swift has had a major impact on the music charts, and it certainly is impressive that she’s managed to recruit fans numbering in the tens of millions.

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But while most music icons who have earned a huge following – from John Lennon to Doja Cat – have done so through an insistence on challenging the establishment, or at least going against the norm, Swift and her ‘creative’ output are actually run-of-the-mill and banal.

On the aesthetic front (cue my crucifixion), I don’t quite know what the big deal is because she looks common to me. All those beige ballgowns, occasionally taken over by a blaze of red, white and blue patriot wear. The ski-jump nose and those twitching eyes – on some people that can look cute. On her, bleh…

In fact I’ll go further to say I think Taylor Swift looks like a rich privileged white woman itching to jet off to the alps rather than genuinely listen to what you have to say. Sorry Swifties.

I once interviewed Taylor on the red carpet at the ARIA awards in Sydney and, quite frankly, I’ve gotten more enlightening responses from Google. Mind you, the photograph I took of her that night (in 2012, above) has aged quite nicely. It’s head-on, you see, so you don’t notice the ski-jump nose so much.

Taylor Swift’s long list of celebrity feuds always keeps fans intrigued. For entertainment of a different kind, visit www.nettcasino.com for an exciting range of online games.

As for her music, I find it very much on the safe side with nothing much to express – except for relentless regretful remarks about ex-boyfriends (who does this at 34?) or disses about her competition in the music industry (you’re ultra-rich, you’re uber-famous, you can stop competing). But her actual music? It’s all ABCs to me. As one Quora user (Donald DiPaula) put it: “Her chord progressions are banal. Her arrangements are [like] putting lipstick on a pig; trying to prettify something that she should just have abandoned. And her melodies are trite and simplistic, like you would teach to preschoolers; think The Wheels on the Bus.”

Of course, it’s this formulaic simplicity of Taylor’s lyrics that her fans find easy to relate to. While the singer complains about the toxicity of men, it’s not surprising that millions of girls who have been stood up by guys are going to root for her. They feel they can truly relate, forgetting that Taylor has 1.1 billion US dollars she can turn to in consolation. After spending thousands on concert tickets and every format available of her records, her fans sadly don’t have anywhere near that much. And I do mean sadly. Swifties are a truly sad lot.

Taylor has so much money, she can go to sleep at night knowing she saved a country from starvation… if she really wanted to. Now that’s power and real influence. She also has plenty of money to throw into her pursuit of the perfect man – each of her past partners falling off the mouse wheel feeling weaker, used and embarrassed.

Everything Taylor Swift stands for is about using it up, wearing it out, and making big bucks by singing about it. From her song ‘Style’ to the aforementioned big bracelet buyout, she is Capitalist America’s greatest wet dream come to life.

 

I’ll pause for a moment to take a deep breath… Aaaand breathe out. That’s better.

Now, I’m not the only one who is pissed off with the amount of attention, popularity and mass fortune Taylor Swift is increasingly raking in. Here is a list of famous folk who also don’t happen to like her, or her music that much. And for an artist who desperately craves peer approval, that’s got to hurt.

Compiled by Antonino Tati

 

01. Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys singer-songwriter Neil Tennant is the latest music icon to take aim at Taylor Swift, suggesting the pop megastar doesn’t have the songs to back up her success. Tennant told the Guardian recently: “Taylor Swift sort of fascinates me as a phenomenon because she’s so popular, and I sort of like the whole thing, but then when I listen to the records … for a phenomenon as big [as she is], where are the famous songs? What’s Taylor Swift’s Billie Jean?”

When journalist Alexis Pertris suggested Swift’s best-known single Shake It Off could possibly qualify, Tennant remarked, “I listened to that the other day, and it’s not Billie Jean.” He went on to say, “I like the fact that [she] brings all these people together, even multigenerational, but I think the one disappointing thing is the music — not the lyrics, the music.”

I’m guessing since saying this, Tennant has had a better look at Swift’s lyrics and realised that – for a self-described poet – her words are less Emily Dickinson and more just plain dicky. All prose, no poetry, littered with mixed metaphors and annoyingly redundant refrains.

While lyrics are important, it’s Taylor’s politics that should also be considered here. Is she pro-capitalism in the quickest-way-you-can-get-rich sense, or does she genuinely care about the people and the Culture? I have a personal story of a friend who works in childcare – Marcia cheers up unwell kids by giving them good company and friendship bracelets… Except they didn’t get any bracelets this year – Taylor Swift had insisted her fans bring a bracelet each to her concert and they bought out the entire nation’s factories’ worth, leaving none for the sick kids. So, what are Taylor’s qualitative traits again?

 

02. Courtney Love

Rock icon Courtney Love recently delivered her contemptuous thoughts on Taylor Swift, claiming the pop juggernaut is “not important” or “interesting” as an artist. Courtney told the UK’s Evening Standard, “Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist.” Love once sang Swift’s praises but that admiration appears to have fallen by the wayside, possibly due to the ubiquity of Taylor now reaching insane proportions. And you know what they say about there being ‘too much of a good thing’.

 

03. Damon Albarn of Blur, Gorillaz

In January 2022, Swift got into a social media fight with musician Damon Albarn, after he claimed she shouldn’t call herself a songwriter if she isn’t the only person credited on a track. She tweeted at the time: “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really f**ked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.” She signed off the tweet with a cunning, “PS: I wrote this tweet all by myself in case you were wondering.” More of the style of that comment and I might find Taylor’s music fun and ironic.

 

04. Demi Lovato

In a cover story interview for Glamour magazine, Demi Lovato protested against Swift’s ‘girl squad’ brand of feminism. “To be honest, and this will probably get me in trouble, I don’t see anybody in any sort of squad that has a normal body. It’s kind of this false image of what people should look like. And what they should be like, and it’s not real. I think that having a song and a video about tearing Katy Perry down, that’s not women’s empowerment.” Lovato then went on to say that, to her, feminism means actually speaking out on issues that affect women.

 

05. Diplo

Music producer Diplo joked on Twitter that “someone should make a Kickstarter to get Taylor Swift a booty” then jokingly posted a link to a ‘Get Taylor Swift a Booty’ fundraising page. After Swift fans tore into him (as they do), Diplo said that the experience was “like an army worse than North Korea”. He wrote: “All I know is don’t ever get into a feud with Taylor Swift. She has, like, 50 million people that will die for her.”

 

06. Ben Shapiro

Daily Wire host and prominent YouTuber Ben Shapiro took on the task of reviewing Taylor’s latest album The Tortured Poets Department in its entirety – giving his take on all 31 songs, none of which appealed to him. He variously describes Taylor and her work as “pretend”, “whiney”, “frivolous”, “ridiculous” and “emotionally self-involved”. He went on to say that Swift should “stop being such a whiney pain in the ass. I know people who have experienced actual tragedy, actual torture – there are people in the world who have kids who have cancer. And those kids die. That’s real torture.”

“You’re not tortured because you went out with a boy who was mean to you, and then you broke up, and then you went on your private jet. You’re not tortured, so stop pretending.”

 

07. Katy Perry

Bit of an old tiff, this. Katy could well have been the first celebrity to throw her hat into the Dissing-Taylor-Swift ring. The dissonance between the two artists might have started because they both once dated John Mayer. But some say their beef is strictly business, beginning with a battle of backup dancers required for each of their tours. Katy once compared Taylor to the character Regina George of Mean Girls and even chimed in on Twitter when Taylor’s ex, Calvin Harris, dissed Swift for trying to “bury” him like she did Katy. Indeed, the feud between Katy and Taylor is so real, Swift went and wrote a whole song about it in Bad Blood. Katy took the song-dissing contest to next level, releasing her piss-take record Swish, Swish and going on talk shows to admit the song was about Swift. How’s this for a bitchy lyric? “Your game is tired; You should retire; You’re ’bout as cute as an old coupon expired.” Ouch.

 

08. Avril Lavigne

When Swift liked a Tumblr image that claimed she was better to her fans than certain other celebs (Avril Lavigne was pictured in the photo, along with Katy Perry), Avril was not impressed and responded by tweeting, “Comparison is judging, and judging a person does not define who they are, it defines who you are.”

 

09. Barack Obama 

President Barack Obama himself once threw some shade Taylor’s way, joking at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner: “Republicans fell in love with this thing and now they can’t stop talking about how much they hate it. It’s like we’re trapped in a Taylor Swift album.”

 

10. Calvin Harris

Calvin Harris, who once dated Swift, released a barrage of tweets about the songstress. One of these read: “I figure if you’re happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex-bf down for something to do.” In other tweets, Harris referenced some of Taylor’s more notable personal feuds. Then she took the mickey out of him, featuring a headstone in her Look What You Made Me Do video with Calvin’s name on it, followed by him taking the piss when he made his My Way music video. Please stop fighting in front of the children.

 

11. Nicki Minaj

Minaj and Swift had an infamous Twitter spat, rumoured to be about an award nomination for Swift’s Bad Blood video. Though they publicly made up (Swift even apologised over Twitter), Minaj was caught liking some shady subtweets about Swift. Katy Perry jumped in (again) with her take on the feud, writing, “Finding it ironic to parade the pit against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes in the takedown of a woman…”

 

12. Kanye West

We’ve all seen that clip of Kanye interrupting Taylor’s thank-you speech at the VMA Awards in 2009. As Taylor was about to speak, having won the ‘Best Female Video’ category, Kanye decided it was the right time to tell the world Beyoncé should have won because “she had one of the best videos of all time”. That incident kicked off an on-again, off again feud that continues to rage. As does the fight between she and Kanye’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian…

 

13. Kim Kardashian

Kanye West threw fuel onto the fire when delivering the lyrics in his song Famous that “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex; Why? I made that bitch famous.” In an interview with GQ magazine, his then-wife Kim Kardashian insisted Taylor knew all about the lyrics and that she in fact had approved them. “She totally knew that [the song] was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn’t. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved… What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?” Taylor retaliated by showing herself sitting in a bathtub in the video for Look What You Made Me Do, hands full of jewels, and making the signal of a gun shooting – mocking Kim Kardashian being robbed in Paris later that year as some kind of karmic joke. Nice violent aesthetic, that.

 

14. Joe Jonas

Taylor was just 18 when Joe Jonas dumped her, and he did it with a 27-second phone call. That’s enough to piss any girl off, so imagine what vengeance ran through the blood of the insta-diva back then? Joe kept bringing up trouble, once laughing in an interview with Joan Rivers about Taylor’s dating history.

 

15. Joan Rivers

A TikTok is currently doing the rounds dug up from the archives and featuring comedienne Joan Rivers taking the absolute mickey out of Swift. “You know what I’m really sick of? Taylor Swift. [Pretends to cry like a baby]: My boyfriends left me, my boyfriends left me… Nine guys in nine months. Figure out why, you dumb bitch.” The clip is the perfect antidote to all that superhype by Swifties currently plaguing the web.

 

16. Joshua Tillman

Musician Joshua Tillman (aka: Father John Misty) told Rolling Stone that he thinks Swifties are a part of something of a cult. Speaking of his experience at one of Swift’s concerts, he said, “There was a disturbing aspect, this insistence on telling girls, ‘I’m normal, don’t let anyone tell you what you should be.’ If you wanted to curate an evening with the Grand Leader, this is what you would do. It’s a very, very false normal. And that’s dangerous.”

 

17. Jared Leto

Actor-come-musician Jared Leto didn’t mince words when he expressed his thoughts on Taylor, saying, “I mean fuck her, I don’t give a fuck about her”. He said this while being forced to listen to some of Swift’s music.

 

18. Miley Cyrus

Cyrus spoke out about Swift’s Bad Blood video in an interview with Marie Claire, claiming that violence in the name of revenge doesn’t exactly set a good example. “I don’t get the violence revenge thing,” Cyrus said. “That’s supposed to be a good example? And I’m a bad role model because I’m running around with my titties out? I’m not sure how titties are worse than guns.”

19. Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox once warned his son Sam to never date Taylor Swift since he knew full well about her vengeant songwriting. Since then he’s changed his tune, saying Taylor  “moves economies” (well, hers) and “changes the way the world works” (God bless us all).

 

20. John Mayer

John Mayer dated Swift for a short time but long enough for Taylor to write the song Dear John about their (supposedly toxic and inappropriate) relationship. Mayer told Rolling Stone that he was “really humiliated” and that the song, “made [him] feel terrible.” He responded in kind with his own song, Paper Doll, which included the lyrics, “You’re, like, 22 girls in one, and none of them know what they’re running from; was it just too far to fall for a little paper doll?” Nice writing, but I doubt it’s going to get him into the make-believe, pretentiously titled Tortured Poets Department, is it?

 

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