A great essay The New Yorker's website details how country music is stuck with Taylor Swift, regardless of what she does with her career.
Kelefa Sanneh introduces the piece with a number of tweets from the Country Music Assosciation, where the publication attempts to get the genre's fans pumped up for Swift's Monday announcement, where she eventually released a new single and formally announced a forthcoming album, 1989. The irony was that, as those who've listened to "Shake It Off" already know, Swift has unabashedly taken a turn for the pop. It's not a new development. Sensible fans should have identified 2012's Red and singles such as "I Knew You Were Trouble" as purely pop.
Country music, particularly fans and media, are less eager to let go. The genre has the most loyal of buyers at its back, which have allowed performers such as Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan to go platinum without shedding their rural charms. Still, having Swift, the biggest sales juggernaut of the modern day within your genre is a nice conversation piece. The performer has other ideas, as has been made evident, but country has yet come to grips with it. Radio promoters realize the pickle her new sound puts them in.
USA Today interviewed a representative from K102, a Minneapolis country music station, that has been putting "Shake It Off" into the rotation despite the audio suggesting otherwise. CMA tweeted "Good luck on your new venture" to Swift, no sarcasm intended, after hearing the new single. The tweet was later deleted, along with the implication that the performer was no longer "country."
It seems that 1989 will be Swift's "Black album," the moment when prickly metal fans deemed Metallica to be formally "sold out." The album itself certainly sold out...millions of copies, as will 1989. But how long will country music wait to let her go?
Taylor Swift is a tough pill for the country music industry to swallow...but an even tougher one to spit out.
