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Swift at a performance last October: "I write ALL my own songs"
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GAELEN MORSE / REUTERS
Damon Albarn, frontman of Blur and head of the virtual band Gorillaz, gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times.
So far, so unspectacular.
The singer released a new solo album a few weeks ago, and on Monday evening he performed these and older songs at a concert.
So he met the newspaper just in time to talk about his work.
The music journalist Mikael Wood mentioned, among other things, that Taylor Swift was an "outstanding songwriter".
To which Albarn replied, "She doesn't write her own songs."
Wood disagreed, noting that Swift co-wrote some of her songs.
"That doesn't count," Albarn said.
There is a big difference between a songwriter and a co-songwriter.
Then he said that he thinks the music of Billie Eilish and her brother is much better than that of Swift.
"It's just darker, less endlessly optimistic."
This is how Taylor Swift reacts
The interview was published on Sunday and is now causing quite a stir – especially because the message has now reached Swift itself.
She reached out directly to Albarn via Twitter on Monday.
"I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this," she wrote, referring to the interview in the Los Angeles Times.
»I write ALL my own songs.«
Albarn's statements are completely false and defamatory.
"You don't have to like my songs, but it really sucks to try to discredit my writing." In the original, Swift uses the words "it's really fucked up".
In another tweet, Swift then adds: "PS: In case you're wondering - I wrote this tweet myself." Within a few hours, both tweets were each given almost 500,000 "likes".
Several of the people who have worked with Swift have supported the singer.
Albarn's statements "couldn't be more untrue," said producer/songwriter Aaron Dessner, for example.
Albarn obviously has no idea how Swift works.
Producer/songwriter Nathan Chapman tweeted that Swift writes 1 million percent of her own songs, "and she's one of the best songwriters of our time."
And Jack Antonoff, who has worked with Swift since 2013, wrote that Albarn has never been to his studio, "but apparently he knows more than the rest of us about all the songs that Taylor writes and contributes."
Swift not only got a lot of support — but a response from Albarn shortly after her tweets.
The singer apologized “unreservedly and unconditionally”.
He had a conversation about songwriting, he wrote - "and sadly it got reduced to clickbait".
The last thing he wants to do is discredit Swift's songwriting skills.
Albarn is one of the most influential British pop musicians.
As a singer in the band Blur, he became a Britpop star in the 1990s. In 1998, together with the cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, he founded the Gorillaz project, which mixes pop with electronica, hip-hop and reggae and is represented by comic avatars.
Albarn is also active as a solo artist.
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