When was the last time anyone who was in the pop music clubhouse had a serious criticism of anyone else who had made it into the club? I don't begrudge Swift any of her material success, but to me her lyrics are unimpressive. A song doesn't have to be lyrically profound to be good, but to be great it can't be as superficial--however 'personal' it might be--as her songs are.

I mean, I have written songs from a young woman's perspective that I would put up against anything she has written. To prove it, here are the choruses of the songs:

Been Down That Road

There was a time

You could've been my everything

It's like you stepped

Right out of my dreams

But now I know

I'm stronger than a dare

Been down that road

And what I lost I'll

Just leave there

belt-out-the-chorus country ballad about a young woman who wants a real relationship with a man, who has long since had enough of being weak enough to be played for sex by superficially attractive males who are too inadequate to have anything more to offer ('bad boys', in her case), realizing that she can't retrieve what she has lost of herself in those relationships but can only escape that emotional cul-de-sac by refraining from starting down that relational road in the first place

Rebel Girl

Now, it might not be the role

That you would've chose

But you've learned your lines

And you'll perform for empty rows*

The only part

You swear you'll never play

Is the victim of a girl

Who has no say

Get it on

Little rebel

Girl

*For a performer, putting as much into a performance in a mostly empty venue as one would a full house is a mark of integrity; in her case, integrity means being true to the identity she has created for herself, whether or not anyone else is acknowledging her.

rocking, up-tempo country song about a teenaged female who has discovered the power in being rebellious (especially, the verses show, in using her sexuality) as at least giving her strength to be her own self and provoke a reaction in others (though rebellion is ultimately a dead end unless it is a means to the end of growing and developing into something better, which is implicit in the verses of the song that illustrate how she is exploring so far the uses of the power she has discovered: at this point, she still sees herself as a "little rebel girl")