Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant calls Taylor Swift’s music ‘disappointing’

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Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, but the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant isn’t all that impressed by her music output to date.

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In a Guardian Live event this week, the British singer casually dumped on Swift’s global dominance, saying she hasn’t reached the same heights as the late Michael Jackson. 

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“I was looking at the chart today and it is all Taylor Swift,” Tennant said during the panel (per Entertainment Weekly). “Taylor Swift sort of fascinates me as a phenomenon because she’s so popular, and I sort of quite like the whole thing, but then when I listen to the records … for a phenomenon as big (as her), where are the famous songs? What’s Taylor Swift’s Billie Jean?” 

Pet Shop Boys keyboardist Chris Lowe, who was sitting next to him on stage, questioned his assessment asking: “Shake It Off?”

“Is it, though?” Tennant replied. “I listened to that the other day, and it’s not Billie Jean, is it?”

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Tennant did admit he likes how Swift has been able to find an audience with different generations of fans and conceded she’s “got a great voice.” 

“I like the fact that it brings all these people together, even multigenerational,” the West End Girls singer continued. “I just think the one disappointing thing is the music. Not even the lyrics, the music.”

Tennant’s remarks follow fellow musician Courtney Love, who declared earlier this month that Swift “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, 59, said in a new interview with The Standard,.

But Swift’s legion of fans aren’t paying any attention to the criticism. Her new record, The Tortured Poets Department, has become the first album in Spotify’s history to pick up a billion streams in a single week.

Tennant’s comments are also clearly at odds with Swift’s dominance on the singles charts. The 14-time Grammy winner has had a number of recent No. 1 hits, including Cardigan from Folklore, Willow from Evermore, Anti-Hero from Midnights, and Is It Over Now? from 1989 (Taylor’s Version) have all hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the past two years. She also landed a No. 1 hit with Cruel Summer (a song that came out in 2019) last year. 

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During the final week of 2023, Swift then broke Elvis Presley’s long-standing record for the most weeks spent atop the Billboard 200 album chart by a solo artist.

On social media, Swifties ruthlessly mocked Tennant’s remarks. “It’s always somebody we gotta Google talking smack about Taylor. Where (are) his famous songs?” one person swiped, with another adding: “I don’t know who this man is. I mean, he could be walking down the street and I wouldn’t know a thing.”

“It’s always one-hit wonders with their big opinions nobody asked for,” a third critic wrote.

Although Tennant and Love used Swift to generate headlines for their latest projects (the Pet Shop Boys are plugging a new album while the former Hole singer has launched her first podcast), Machine Gun Kelly wasn’t interested in saying anything negative about the Bad Blood singer. When he was dared to say three negative things about Swift during an episode of Hot Ones Versus, Machine Gun Kelly heaped praise on the pop star.

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“Ladies and gentlemen, you have got to be out of your motherf—ing mind if you think I want any smoke with that fanbase,” he answered. “Also, Taylor is a saint and very nice to me. And (her boyfriend) Travis (Kelce) is my bro.”

Meanwhile, Matty Healy is reacting to Guilty as Sin, The Tortured Poets Department track which alludes to her brief relationship with the 1975 lead singer.

“My diss track?” Oh!” he said in a video shared by Entertainment Tonight. “I haven’t really listened to that much of it, but I’m sure it’s good.”

Healy’s aunt, Debbie Dedes, also shared her thoughts on her nephew inspiring a song on Swift’s new album.

“She writes about all her relationships, doesn’t she? I don’t think it will come as a shock to him at all,” she told the Daily Mail. “He’s very happy in his new relationship so I’m sure he will be focusing on that.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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