Swift mauled for ‘September’ cover

TAYLOR Swift sent the Internet into a tizzy on Friday when she released a breathy, folksy cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1978 love jam September on Spotify. Her version stripped away the original’s funk-laden sensibility and presented the tune as a slow-burning “countrypolitan” song.

Covering a beloved song is tricky, and covering a beloved song in a new style is sure to irk some die-hard fans. So criticism was as swift as it was inevitable.

Monique Judge, a columnist for the black culture magazine The Root, took particular issue with the cover. In a column titled “Taylor Swift Just Disrespected Earth, Wind & Fire With Her Cover of

September”, Judge hoped the song was “some type of messed up Friday the 13th prank”.

“There are certain songs you don’t mess with, especially if you don’t have the range, and we all know Taylor Swift has all the range of a dial tone,” Judge wrote.

“Maurice White did not die for this,” she added, referring to one of the song’s writers, who died in 2016 at the age of 74 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Kelsie Gibson of Popsugar offered a defence of the tune, however lukewarm, in a piece titled “Taylor Swift Just Made a Classic Earth, Wind & Fire Song Country, and I Don’t Hate It”.

In the piece, she argued that “While the strippeddown version is a complete 180° from the soul classic, it’s also strangely reminiscent of Swift’s older country material”. “I have to say, I kinda love it,” Gibson added. The conversation grew more complicated on Twitter, where the song was met with bewildered detractors and fierce defenders.

“It is with a heavy heart I must announce that I listened to the Taylor Swift cover of September,” Connor Finnegan of Inverse tweeted.

One particularly dramatic user said the cover “has killed my spirit!” Another made this bold claim: “Taylor Swift covering September has ruined my Friday”.

The cover’s defenders were just as passionate, however, calling it everything from “hella lit” to “absolutely beautiful” to “Taylor Swift’s greatest cover of all time”.

One user wrote that the song “hit me in the feels because my birthday is on 9/20, and it’s one of my mother’s favourites. (She came of age in the 70’s.) I can’t wait to play it for her when I get home!” – Washington Post