Pop icon disses Taylor Swift on stage: ‘Where are the songs?’

A legendary pop star has taken aim at Taylor Swift, demanding to know how she’s gotten so successful without having “famous songs”.

Taylor Swift for The Tortured Poets Department.

Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant is the latest music legend to take aim at Taylor Swift, suggesting the pop megastar doesn’t have the songs to back up her success.

Tennant made the comments on stage in London during a livestreamed conversation with the Guardian this week.

“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 she is), where are the famous songs? What’s Taylor Swift’s Billie Jean?” he asked onstage, referring to Michael Jackson’s 1983 Thriller hit.

Guardian music critic Alexis Pertris, who was running the Q&A, interjected to suggest perhaps Swift’s best-known song, the 2014 global hit Shake It Off, could qualify.

The Pet Shop Boys, L-R: Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant.

“I listened to that the other day, and it’s not Billie Jean,” Tennant replied of the song, which is 18 times platinum here in Australia with an astonishing 1.2 million in sales.

“I like the fact that it brings all these people together, even multigenerational, but I think the one disappointing thing is the music — not the lyrics, the music,” he continued.

Tennant, 69, made the comments ahead of the release of the Pet Shop Boys new studio album, Nonetheless, out today. It’s the synth pop duo’s fifteenth studio album in a career spanning almost 40 years and millions of record sales.

Tennant is not the only music legend to take aim at Swift recently: Hole frontwoman and rock icon Courtney Love declared in an interview 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,” she claimed.

Swift’s new album has had massive streams – but mixed reviews. Picture: Getty

Courtney Love claims Swift is “not important.” Picture: Getty

Swift was at least in good company: Love also took aim at Beyonce, Madonna and Lana Del Rey in the interview.

The comments come as Swift last week released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. Hours after its release, Swift dropped a bombshell: It was in fact a double album, with a total of 31 songs on the release.

While the mammoth set has broken all Swift’s previous streaming records, the two-hour-plus runtime hasn’t led to universal acclaimed: Review collating site Metacritic currently gives the album a combined critic’s score of 69 out of 100, a noticeable drop from recent Swift releases like Midnights (85), evermore (85) and folklore (88).

In our review, we noted that while Tortured Poets Department “is by no means a bad album – Swift is yet to make one of those – you can’t escape the feeling Swift needs a shake-up. A new collaborator, a new sound, or perhaps simply some time to recharge.”

Originally published as Pop icon disses Taylor Swift on stage: ‘Where are the songs?’