Does Taylor Swift actually play the guitar, or is it a prop?

I’ll never understand people’s obsession with discrediting some artists. Taylor Swift is an easy target due to her popularity, to it’s understandable if she’s the target du jour. I guarantee you Taylor Swift can play guitar. Maybe she’s not Robert Fripp, but she’s good enough to play guitar on the kinds of songs she writes, and that’s all she really needs to be.

It’s irrelevant if Taylor Swift plays guitar live or mostly uses it as a prop. The bulk of the people who pay to see her could care less. No one expects Taylor Swift to do Django Reinhardt worthy Jazz reinterpretations of her greatest hits. They’re there to see Taylor Swift and enjoy the show. How that experience is delivered is irrelevant, and whether or not Taylor Swift actually plays the guitar she is holding is an absurdly unimportant part of the whole.

So… yeah. Artists aren’t going to risk that. But it’s not just to avoid embarrassment and controversy. Most of them feel an obligation to deliver a great show to people who’ve paid tickets to see them, regardless of however exhausted or sick they might be at various points of their tour. People forget. Whoever an artist might be when they’re writing songs or recording in a studio, when they’re on stage they’re entertainers. And that’s why, while part of this huge production, they hedge their bets where the ability to deliver the product is concerned.

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It’s a peculiar sickness in general culture for concert-goers to demand massive spectacle while also demanding flawless performances. They literally don’t know anything about the logistics involved, or the effect it has on the people who have to navigate within that proverbial machinery.

Now, the suggestion is that her guitar might be a prop in live performances. Maybe it is. Probably. At least in some instances. Most professional musicians use pre-recorded audio as reinforcement, and it’s blended in as needed by the sound engineers. And you know why? Because people are assh***s and everybody obsessively documents everything with cell phones. Audiences expect to go out and watch shows which are these massive productions with choreographed dances, set changes, laser light shows, and little people parachuting in on over-sized lace panties (okay, I’m losing the thread there), and in and among all that literal chaos they also expect musicians to perform on their instruments flawlessly, all while singing, dancing, and being sexy. Look… that’s not possible. And if the artist tried and didn’t pull it off, there would be much lamentation in popular culture, with accompanying videos and derision on all social media platforms.