Jack White has denied branding Taylor Swift’s style of songwriting “boring” in an interview.
The White Stripes frontman hit headlines after saying in an interview with The Guardian that he finds it “boring” to write about himself and isn’t interested in writing songs about public breakups like Taylor.
After some outlets claimed he had branded the pop superstar’s music “boring”, Jack took to social media to insist he hadn’t.
“I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together,” he wrote, before explaining that he was only talking about himself.
“I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and it could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer,” he continued.
“Taylor and other singers have tremendous success writing in their own styles and I’m very happy for them that they’ve succeeded in engaging with so many music lovers in their own way.”
The musician, who has since deleted his clarification post, added that the furore has made him “less and less interested in doing interviews” at a time when there’s “this massive demand for click bait and content”.
He noted that he is now reluctant to give interesting or passionate answers to interview questions because he’s “busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this”.
During the interview, Jack explained that he prefers to write from a character’s perspective because he wouldn’t like to sing an autobiographical song over and over again, especially if it’s about a “painful” time in his life.
“Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself,” he said.
