February 4th, 2010

A backlash has begun against Country singer Taylor Swift after the nation heard her lackluster live performance at the Grammys. Taylor won the sympathy of the country after Kanye West stormed the stage during her MTV VMA speech.  Now people are starting to debate whether Taylor earned her Grammys after she sang out of tune with Stevie Nicks.

Taylor Swift’s label head jumped to her defense today, telling the press Swift’s Grammy-night performance may not have been note-perfect, but it captured why the 20-year-old is the “voice of a generation.” Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta went on to say, “This is not American Idol. This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator. It’s not about that technically perfect performance.”

His comments about Idol riled Season One champion Kelly Clarkson, who immediately responded in an open letter on her I Am Kelly blog. “Thank you for that ‘Captain Obvious’ sense of humor because you know what, we not only hit the high notes, you forgot to mention we generally hit the ‘right’ notes as well,” Clarkson wrote. She signed her post “One of those contestants from American Idol who only made it because of her high notes.” Clarkson has two Grammy wins under her belt, and songwriting credits on some of her biggest hits, including “Because of You” and “Already Gone.”

Watch the Taylor Swift Grammy video before it disappears. It keeps getting pulled from youtube for copyright infringement.

Taylor Swift & Stevie Nicks – Full Live Performance at Grammy’s 2010

Ouch! Taylor Swift’s painfully weak, off-key vocal performance Sunday night at the Grammy Awards has become the subject of so much on-line controversy that some fans and music biz veterans alike are wondering if she’d have been better off not performing at all. At the very least, her karaoke-level singing made a good argument in favor of using Auto-Tune (the recording studio device that helps vocally challenged performers sound at least somewhat in in tune).

For the record, we winced through Swift’s similarly tone-deaf duet with Miley Cyrus during LAST year’s Grammys telecast. But since she wasn’t even nominated for an award, let alone the winner of four Grammys, including Album of the Year (as she was on Sunday), it apparently was less of an isssue.

Not so after her performance Sunday, which featured Swift opening with her own “Today Was A Fairytale,” then engaging in an alarmingly under-rehearsed duet on Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” with Stevie Nicks, who appeared both alarmed and annoyed by her young partner’s eyebrow-raising warbling. By the time the performance concluded, with Nicks relegated to backing vocal duties for Swift on the Butch Walker-penned “You Belong With Me,” it was reaffirmed that Swift might really benefit from lip-syncing or using Auto-Tune (not that Auto-Tune helped T-Pain and Jamie Foxx, whose earlier vocal duet on “Blame It” rivaled Swift’s performance for sheer wretchedness).

There are now at least three trending topics on Twitter about the debacle, including: “Taylor Swift Can’t Sing,” “Taylor Swift Offkey” and “Taylor Swift Pitch.” One of our favorite blogs, borowitzreport.com, quickly weighed in with some tweets of its own, including: “Satan Chooses Taylor Swift Performance as Ringtone” and “God Hoping Taylor Swift Does Not Thank Him.”

Taylor Swift’s reps have attempted to defend her reputation against the backlash but the internet is buzzing about her rumored romance with John Mayer, the fact she didn’t thank her fellow nominees and some suggested she need autotune to hit a note.

After taking home four trophies, it’s hard to call Taylor Swift’s Grammys experience an off night.

Still, many critics—albeit not us!—panned her duet with Stevie Nicks. The New York Times called her “painfully out of tune” and the San Diego Union-Tribune said, “her karaoke-level singing made a good argument in favor of using Auto-Tune.” Ouch!

Well, Taylor’s label chief, Scott Borchetta, thinks such reviews are way harsh and he is coming to her defense.

“I think are missing the whole voice of a generation that is happening right in front of them,” he declares to The Tennessean. Borchetta is so fired up about the haters, he’s even challenging them to a duel!

“The critics are missing the bigger picture,” he says. “This is what always happens and is the unfortunate part of the American dream—that we build these people up to watch the critics tear them down. Well, you better have more than what you’ve got now if you think you’re going to get in the ring and fight with us.”

As for the specific, Taylor-can’t-sing complaints swirling around the interwebs, Borchetta says her success as an artist is not about that.

“The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else.”

Presumably, he’s not just referring to the monetary effect T.Swizzle’s had on the music industry as a whole, but we digress.

“Maybe she’s not the best technical singer, but she’s probably the best emotional singer because everybody else who gets up there and is technically perfect, people don’t seem to want more of it,” he continues. “Everybody is not perfect on any given day. If you pick any of those artists that performed, I’m sure you can go online and find something where you go, ‘Ew.’

“Maybe in that moment we didn’t have the best night. But in the same breath, maybe we did. And nobody is arguing with the awards.”

Snap!

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Beyonce launched her new fragrance “Heat” in New York City at Union Square. Beyonce dished at the launch about her excitement about having the number one fragrance in the country and explained her PDA with hubby Jay-Z at the Grammy Awards.

“If I had one scent that I would leave as my signature, it would be Heat. I hope that everyone is ready to catch the fever!”

So said Beyoncé Knowles of her debut fragrance, Beyoncé Heat, at a star-studded launch party last night (complete with light show) in New York City’s Union Square.

Held in the original Tiffany’s building, guests and journalists from locales as far flung as Mexico City, Amsterdam and Cape Town flowed in and out of various rooms where their five senses were sent into overload as they experienced the fragrance up close.

Husband Jay-Z, fellow Destiny’s Child member Michelle Williams, Usher, and little sister, Solange, (who played double duty as DJ) were among the attendees.

The sultry 28-year-old, clad in a body-hugging red dress by Marc Bouwer, is (Sasha) fiercely proud of the signature eau she created with Coty. “I wanted it to be original and I didn’t want it to be like all the other celebrity brands.” explained Knowles. “It’s been two years in the making.”

“Every little detail is very personal, so I’m extremely proud.”

Knowles was inspired to make a scent by her mother, Tina Knowles. “My first memory of fragrance is my mother,” she explained. “And as a very young girl, hearing her footsteps…her stilettos click, click, clicking on the hardwood floor and she wore a beautiful fragrance and she would walk past me and it would just stay in the room. It left a warm feeling every time I thought about her scent.

“I think about the icons that I respect and they all have their own fragrance so I thought it was time for me to have my own.”

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