In recent weeks, Taylor Swift has been a pretty hot topic among social media outlets. Between her quick relationship status change and the everlasting 2009 VMA beef, it’s hard to scroll through your Facebook news feed and not see anything written about her. Thus, I felt that this would be the most appropriate time to address something: why Swift should go back to country.

Now, I’ll be honest, I was never a huge Taylor Swift fan to begin with, even back when she was just a country artist. But after all these years and watching her transition from country to pop and likewise watching her jump from boyfriend to boyfriend, I’ve got to say that I definitely liked her more when she was country, for several reasons.

To start, her country songs were actually really good. Her voice is soft yet confident, which I feel suits the country-genre well. The background instrumentals weren’t overkill like they can be in some other country songs, and paired with her vocals it made for a pretty catchy song. Admit it, when “Our Song” comes on, you belt it out like no other and never get tired of doing so. You could have any of her country songs on repeat—“Teardrops on Her Guitar,” “Picture to Burn,” “White Horse,” etc.—and you wouldn’t mind one bit. You can’t exactly say the same with “Blank Space” or “I Knew You Were Trouble.” The music itself is just different, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but paired with her vocals it just didn’t mix very well. Her voice really just isn’t suited for pop music like other artists’ voices are. Maybe, just maybe, you can blame the radio stations for this one, but still. Musically-speaking, Swift’s pop songs just aren’t up to par.

Likewise, I feel that lyrically she was much stronger in her country songs. For instance, take the following lyrics in “I’m Only Me When I’m With You:”

“And I don't try to hide my tears

My secrets or my deepest fears

Through it all nobody gets me like you do.”

Or take these lyrics from “Back to December:”

“It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you

Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine

I'd go back to December, turn around and make it all right

I go back to December all the time.”

These lyrics are poetic and convey deeper feelings, deeper meanings. You can just hear the genuineness in her voice as she sings these lines. Likewise, I just feel as though they’re more original. The meaning she is trying to convey in both these songs are shown in hundreds of other songs, yet she makes it her own in these two songs. Now, turn the tables and look as some of her pop songs, and it’s hard to say the same thing. For instance, take these lyrics from “Blank Space:”

“So it's gonna be forever

Or it's gonna go down in flames

You can tell me when it's over

If the high was worth the pain

Got a long list of ex-lovers

They'll tell you I'm insane

'Cause you know I love the players

And you love the game.”

And now some more lyrics from “Bad Blood:”

“Did you have to ruin what was shiny? Now it's all rusted

Did you have to hit me, where I'm weak? Baby, I couldn't breathe

And rub it in so deep, salt in the wound like you're laughing right at me.”

Personally speaking, these lyrics just don’t speak to me whatsoever. I don’t get the same sense of genuineness and poetry I did with the first set of lyrics. They obviously have meaning as any set of lyrics does, but to me these lyrics’ chief function is to be catchy, not to be meaningful. And by all means, if that’s the kind of music you’re in to, then so be it. But me personally, music to me has to convey meaning first and be catchy second.

While “Bad Blood” is still fresh in your mind, I’d like to switch to a different reason why Swift was better off sticking with country: less pettiness. For one, while she did write quite a few country songs about her ex-boyfriends, they were nowhere near as petty as some of her pop songs regarding her ex-boyfriends. For example, listen to some of her country songs such as “Tim McGraw,” “Should’ve Said No,” and “Back to December” which were all written about ex-boyfriends. When I hear these songs, I don’t roll my eyes and think “Oh, just another song about one of Taylor Swift’s exes!” I hear genuine passion, genuine regret, genuine love, and genuine hope. Now, when I listen to “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” “I Knew You Were Trouble,” or “Out of the Woods,” I do roll my eyes and think that it’s just another ex-boyfriend song. I don’t hear passion or hope or anything else; all I see is pettiness.

So let’s actually talk about “Bad Blood” now, since I used it as a transition in my previous paragraph. While this song is probably her best pop song, it is completely and utterly petty. For starters, everyone knows this song is about Swifts’s beef with Katy Perry, and if you got beef with Swift, then you got a song written about you by Swift. If this isn’t petty enough in itself, Swift banded up a group of her famous friends like Selena Gomez and Hailee Steinfeld to star in the music video for “Bad Blood.” She literally wound up a group of girls to be on her side and even got a bunch of them to pose with her on the red carpet of some award show. Is this Mean Girls? Do you see Katy Perry doing the same thing? Spell it with me: P-E-T-T-Y.

Finally, let’s talk recent news. So Taylor and Calvin Harris just called it quits a few weeks ago and she’s already moved on to this new dude named Tom Hiddleston. But since it’ll be another year or so before we hear about Calvin in a song, Taylor had to keep it fresh by telling everyone that she was the one who wrote Calvin’s current hit single “This is What You Came For.” Now, she could’ve chosen to release this information while they were dating, or months or years after the relationship ended, or heck here’s an idea, she could’ve kept the information a secret like originally planned. But nope, just weeks after the relationship ended, she just had to somehow get that information out there. Come on, you know what word I’m gonna use by now to describe this incident.

Now, did she pull any of this crap back when she was country? Nope.

Here’s the kicker though: Taylor doesn’t have to do any of this. She doesn’t have to be desperate, she doesn’t have to try and save her career, she doesn’t have to try and keep her name out in the press. She was doing just fine as a country artist. I mean, look at all the awards she received when she was country! Heck, she freaking beat out BEYONCE for Best Female Video at the 2009 VMA’s with country song “You Belong With Me.” She was doing great in the music industry already, so why all this drama?

When Taylor Swift was country, she was admirable. Her talent and her overall personality shown brightest in that industry, and had I liked country back when she was country, she probably would have been one of my favorite country artists. Her songs were great musically and lyrically, and you know she was singing and producing songs for the love of music and not for the fame or for the “Which boyfriend is she talking about now?” articles that followed. I get that she’s receiving a ton of backlash and no person should be receiving that amount of backlash, but she can’t entirely play the victim here. Taylor Swift is not made for pop, never was and never will be no matter how much she thinks she is.