justin bieber wasn't actually bad for a pop singer

Good joke, tell me another.

I mean the bar is pretty low for pop singers generally. Unfortunately acts with a great deal of musicianship/artistry and actual technical musical ability are somewhat fewer and farther between in the pop world. For every Lady Gaga or Lorde there's a dozen Taylor Swifts and Justin Biebers. Plus quite a few which may land more on one side or the other e.g. Adele who has great musical ability but produces the most bland records imaginable in spite of her vocal skills.

how can you put taytay and the beebs in the same category??
i mainly mean that it was pathetic in the 2000s how everyone was being so nasty about a literal 13 year old.
taylor swift is way better than him tho ofc

They're the same basically? I mean if anything Taylor Swift is probably worse since she's basically just an industry plant due to her father buying significant stock in a record label after she failed to be signed even with her parents paying who knows how much to move to Tennessee and ingratiate her with the country music industry there. Much as I find him distasteful as a person and have zero interest in his music from what I've heard, my impression was that Bieber did seem to at least enter the industry "organically" by being discovered by a record label and signed in that way.

yh she had a boost, like many stars in all creative industries, but at least she largely writes her own songs. and i don't think she could be as popular as she is now with zero talent

Her lyricism is seriously not as good as her fans seem to think. Also she literally just settled a lawsuit that she plagiarised the lyrics from one of her most popular songs...

And yes she could be as popular as she is with no talent, that's entirely the point of the nepotism and cronyism buying her way into the industry. When you have money you can do anything, whether you're good at it or not, and be made successful at it by the people being paid to make her successful at it.

Plus one can even give her some credit by saying she certainly has had the capacity to improve greatly - because having that much money to start off and being able to buy a record deal to start with gives one the opportunity to develop that improvement. If someone gave me a record label and my family had enough money to move to where it was based, buy a fancy house for us all to live in and pay for me to do my "singer songwriter thing" I could also probably be successful (well, moderately, easier if you're a skinny blonde woman to start with to be fair - which Taylor Swift is and was).

are you talking about the shake it off lawsuit ahaha?? that was a complete sham - it wasn't even brought by the performers of the song she allegedly plagiarised, and it was based on the alleged copying of only two phrases: 'haters gonna hate' and 'shake it off' which are well known idioms. the judge was even reluctant to allow a settlement on her part because her case was clearly the stronger.
ok i see that you are upset about the opportunities and advantages she had, but that's not actually proof that she is musically untalented or lacks artistry. she has a good voice, is accomplished in two genres, is a good pianist, and most importantly has the creative drive and sense of theatre needed to be successful as a solo act

As regards the lawsuit, ultimately she did settle the case and you don't normally settle if you are going to win...

And I really disagree with the last sentence. Lady Gaga is an example of an artist with a good voice, accomplished in two genres (at least, as much as Taylor Swift is; as vexing as her fans tend to find the Jazz stuff she returns to), is a good pianist, has a creative drive and sense of theatre.Taylor Swift certainly doesn't have the latter two points in comparison, I'd argue is much less accomplished as a pianist than many other performers (including here, Lady Gaga), and the genres in question for Taylor Swift are both basically varieties of pop for different audiences at this point (post-9/11 American country is basically a wasteland). Her voice is as good as any other decently popular pop vocalist and worse than some (Adele for example, although Adele is hamstrung by lack of a lyricist and bland production imo).

For someone casting aspersions about other pop acts you seem really unable to accept any criticism of your own favourite. As they say, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...So to return to my original point: yes this kind of low tier stuff is prevalent in pop, and if you consider Justin Bieber to fall into that category I think you really need to accept Taylor Swift does just as much. Which doesn't mean you can't like them, but you just need to be honest about it with yourself and recognise you can like something even if it's not necessarily "good" (whether or not it's popular being a separate matter entirely).

i was talking about country music not jazz actually, so i guess you're right - she can really do 3 genres!
tbh technical ability as a pianist only matters so much in composing and performing pop music. there are probably 1000s of pianists better than both swift and lady gaga, but they just aren't interested in creating on the same scale.
i'm not criticising any pop acts actually, just acknowledging taylor swift is more accomplished than bieber who does use a little too much autotune.
if you feel the need to assert the primacy of your own music taste, that's fine. i don't, personally, and would like to appreciate modern pop for what it is, even if the simplicity rankles with some snobbish types.
as for your assumption that settling cases implying weakness of the defendants case, I would suggest you look at the details of the case itself and the judge's comments! They're really quite surprising