That James Dean vs That Daydream Nation Look: Taylor Swift covered by Ryan Adams - Genre, Gender and Style

Please find a series of articles on the whole Taylor Swift/Ryan Adams affair below. The articles are primarily a press review of the discourses surrounding the Ryan Adams/Taylor Swift operation. I've also included a few articles from the past past, mainly Taylor Swift profiles from mainstream magazines like The New Yorker and New York Magazine. You can skim through these to get a sense of the operation and of the critical response to it. As you read relate it to our discussion on cultural value and cultural hierarchies and consider the unspoken gender aspect in these critical evaluations. Make sure you all read the Tavi Gevinson article linked to at the bottom of the post in .pdf format. Also included is a recent article from The Atlantic about authorship in pop music and the strategies used by record companies to downplay the 'outsourcing' of pop hit manufacturing. Read that if you are interested in these specific aspects of popular culture. Use this case study, and this material along with it, to get a sense of the kind of sources and knowledge you should be prepared to draw on in order to produce critical analyses of popular culture. Remember that these articles are not primary sources but they in fact are part of the intertextual and paratextual aspects of the text you are analyzing (in this case Taylor Swift and/or Ryan Adams, the record 1989 and the questions raised in relation to gender representation and the mode of address. Enjoy.

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the Vindication of Taylor Swift

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the mansplaining of Taylor Swift

No Blank Space, Baby: Taylor Swift Is The Soul Of Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams isn’t revealing something ‘good’ about Taylor Swift’s ‘1989.’ The album was already great.

Beats 1 Ryan Adams interview about '1989' with Taylor Swift call in 'surprise'

Platinum Underdog: Why Taylor Swift Is the Biggest Pop Star in the World

You Belong with Me

How Taylor Swift made teen angst into a business empire.

Taylor Swift Is Confusing

Haters Gonna Hate: Listening to Ryan Adams’s “1989”

The Reinvention of Taylor Swift

Flavorwire Interview: Talking Taylor Swift With Tavi Gevinson

The complete version of this article by then 16-year old Tavi Gevinson published in The Believer in 2013 is below in PDF. Tavi Gevinson started the Style Rookie blog when she was 12. Rookie Mag below is a treasure of 'readings' of Tween/Teen culture from a non mainstream perspective --with all of its exhilaration and limitations.

Tavi Gevinson, JUST KIDDING: NOTES ON TAYLOR SWIFT

Rookie Mag

Why must we hate the things teen girls love?

Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts.