Making Excuses for Taylor Swift

The winner of the Grammy for Album of the Year the other night did a duet with aging rocker Stevie Nicks..... and laid an egg. Now Taylor's record label finds it necessary to make excuses for her singing, which sounded like a sick chicken:

Borchetta first responded to the backlash in The Tennessean. Asked by The Associated Press why he felt the need to defend Swift, he said because the criticism was "just over the top."
"It's that classic thing that critics do of building something up and then wanting to tear it down," he said.
Swift rehearsed her performance and duet with Stevie Nicks two different times at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in front of a crowd of people. Critics were nicer then. Entertainment Weekly wrote of the rehearsal, "The two women's voices complimented each other nicely on the harmonies of 'Rhiannon ...'"
But on Sunday night's Grammy show, Borchetta said Swift had a technical issue that made her worry about her performance. (Attempts to reach The Recording Academy for comment went unanswered.)
"We had a volume problem in the ear. So, she was concerned that she wasn't able to hear everything in the mix," Borchetta said. "That's just part of live TV. ... So you're going to have difficulties on occasion. Unfortunately, on one of the biggest stages, we did have a technical issue. She couldn't hear herself like she had in rehearsal."
As quickly as you could say "Fearless," bloggers and media outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, pounced on Swift's performance. The chatter at times overshadowed the four Grammys she won - including album of the year.

The artist who should have won the Grammy for Album of the Year does not need anyone to make excuses for her performance. Gaga and Elton rocked the house. What's more, Gaga never lipsyncs. She never uses an autotuner. She sounds better live than in the studio.