Taylor Swift's Rep Barks Back at Grammy Performance Backlash

Leah Collins, Dose.ca
February 4, 2010

Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks duet at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. Is the "voice of a generation" totally out of tune?

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Photo by: Getty Images

Taylor Swift's Grammy performance may have been a convincing argument for the introduction of Auto-Tune in country music. Swift's pitchy (to say the least) duet with Stevie Nicks prompted flack from both critics (see Entertainment Weekly, Boston Globe) and fans (Popeater and MTV round up some Grammy-viewer comments here and here).

The 20-year-old country princess has plenty of achievements to counterbalance the backlash: four brand-new Grammys, the biggest-selling album of '09, the pretty-pretty features of a woodland sprite. Nevertheless, Swift's people are mounting a defensive campaign against the criticism.

"The biggest message is (the critics) are not getting it," Swift's record label chief, Scott Borchetta, told newspaper The Tennessean. "Because the facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we've got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else."

He continues: "I think (the critics) are missing the whole voice of a generation that is happening right in front of them."

Borchetta used the same "voice of a generation" label in another interview with Associated Press. (So, perhaps the kids today are more tone-deaf than previously believed.) As he further explained to AP: "This is not American Idol. This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator. It's not about that technically perfect performance."

Conceding that Swift's vocals were flawed, he told AP that a technical problem was to blame.

"We had a volume problem in the ear. So, she was concerned that she wasn't able to hear everything in the mix," Borchetta said. "That's just part of live TV. ... So you're going to have difficulties on occasion. Unfortunately, on one of the biggest stages, we did have a technical issue. She couldn't hear herself like she had in rehearsal."

Swift hasn't yet commented on the situation, though we hope she's too content repairing her trophies, braiding her hair and writing generation-defining pop songs to care much about all this chatter.

Watch Swift's Grammy performance below (maximum volume not suggested).