Ritchie Blackmore gives his opinion on Taylor Swift

Ritchie Blackmore is one of the most influential guitarists of all time, who first achieved fame as a member of Deep Purple and then created his own band, Rainbow, which also became one of the most important Hard Rock bands in the history of music. He has been in the music business for more than six decades already and saw the evolution of many music genres and really doesn’t like what’s playing on the radio these days.

In a recent video posted on his Youtube page (Transcribed by Classic Rock), the guitar player gave his opinion on the most successful artist in this world nowadays: Taylor Swift.

Ritchie Blackmore gives his opinion on Taylor Swift

“When the family all get into the truck and we go on a bit of a holiday – which probably is like 20 miles down the road cuz I don’t like to travel – all I hear is Taylor Swift or something. I find it hard to relate to that, but it’s not wrong, it’s the new generation wanting to hear that. That’s probably as great to them as The Beatles and Cream and Jimi Hendrix was to me. So I can’t really complain, but I do like to complain, and I will complain, and I think the crap that they’re playing on the radio today is bloody awful.”

“I don’t listen to rock’n’roll so much anymore. I listen to the old rock from the 50s when it was fresh. Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore’s playing, James Burton with Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers, love all that stuff, Buddy Holly being my favourite at the time, of course. I feel like an old Granddad, you know, complaining about the music they’re playing on the radio at the moment. I feel that back in the 70s when Eric Clapton was playing Cream and that stuff it was thoughtful music. Eric of course started the whole thing.”

He continued:

“There are so many types of music that I like, but very rarely do I hear it on the radio. I’d rather hear talk radio about who’s the latest president and stuff like that kind of bores people to death. I don’t hear good music from my point of view. It. might be good music, but it’s not something I want to hear.”

Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Taylor Swift is one of the best-selling artists of all time. She sold an estimated amount of more than 200 million records sold worldwide. Until 2024 she released 11 studio albums, 4 live albums and 4 re-recorded albums.

She is currently the solo artist with the most weeks at number one on the United States Billboard 200 chart and also the first billionaire to have music as the main source of income. In 2023 she was the most streamed artist in Spotify, with 26.1 billion streams.

Certainly there is no artist like her nowadays, who can generate this amount of ticket and record sales everywhere in the world.