Who will Taylor Swift model her next song after?

Taylor Swift is easy to like. She's polite in interviews, she's nice on Twitter. Even if you aren't a fan you can appreciate how nice she is in an industry filled with privileged people engaging in bad behavior.

I've noticed that some of Taylor's songs seem to be similar to other hit songs. Maybe its coincidence. She's had several big hits that have had a lot of airtime but she has several albums of songs. If some percentage of all songs sound alike, her music's popularity is providing ample opportunity for us to observe those similarities.

Here are a couple of examples of songs that I found to be similar.

Lorde's Royals was a top 100 hit when it was released in 2013 When I first heard Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space' a year or two ago I was surprised by its similarities to Royals. Here are the YouTube videos so you can compare.

Recently Taylor released "Wildest Dreams". It was so similar sounding to Lana Del Rey that I thought it might be one of her new songs. Here are YouTube videos of "Young and Beautiful" and "Wildest Dreams" for comparison.

I'm not alone in spotting the similarities between "Wildest Dreams" and Lana Del Rey. AXS mentioned it in an article about "Wildest Dreams". Vulture wrote an article asking "Did Taylor Swift Rip Off Lorde and Lana Del Rey?"

There is a wide range of "borrowing" that goes on with music. From musical styles, song construction, chords, etc, its sometimes difficult to know what separates "borrowing" from "copying".

Digitalmusicnews.com has a story about 22 songs that sound alike that shows some examples of pretty much outright copying. The two Taylor Swift songs are similar in construction but seem far from what would constitute copying.

Even if she were copying the styles of others, these are well constructed songs.

What do you think? Is Taylor Swift intentionally copying the musical style of other popular songs or are these similarities coincidence?

Comments

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