Taylor Swift Is NOT EVIL

I'm probably in the minority and there's always going to be a wave of h8ters anyway.

I read the Washington Post's article, "Taylor Swift’s cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’ is getting some pretty harsh criticism" and I seemed to be appalled. If you can't get to the link, basically TS made a cover version of Earth, Wind, and Fire's "September", a pop/dance hit.

To some it was like somebody tagged (painted onto) The Mona Lisa. Or placed the "Dogs Playing Poker" picture in The Louvre. Or brought light beer to an Octoberfest...

Somebody out there are getting a little worked up over nothing.

Just for comparison's sake, here's the EWF version:

...and here's Taylor Swift's (some fan made this lyrics video version one...):

Very different style, actually the chords and progressions are completely modified. So actually if you had completely different lyrics, you would NOT be able to guess the TS version was a cover of the EWF version. No freakin' way.

EWF used a funky "groovin" descending chord and bass line (verse pattern):

Dmaj7-C#m7-Bm7-C#m7-F#m7

Swift makes a simple strumming folk-song-ish line:

B-A-E-B

Even if you don't know jack squat about chords, you can visibly see it ain't all that complicated. Not knowing what's in her head, she might have just figured the lyrics were pretty darn good and she wanted to do a "country ballad" out of it.

Even then, if the TS version turned out to be a hit, that's more songwriting royalties for the EWF guys, so it's all good.

Arranging completely different covers of the same song is something as old as time. The most radical cover that's had substantial success was Joe Cocker's "With A Little Help From My Friends", the cover of the Beatles' song. But I don't know if there was any flak from that (I was only six years old at the time...), and most likely this (September) will not be as popular either.

All too much fuss for just a nice, different take on a tune.