Defending Swift's Suckish Grammys Performance

She may be only 20 years old, but Taylor Swift woke up from her Grammy night celebration with an unpleasant hangover. Though she won four Grammy Awards on Sunday, including one for album of the year for her “Fearless,” Ms. Swift, the country-music star, was also roundly criticized for her uneven performances on the show, including an out-of-tune duet with Stevie Nicks on the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.”

Now the head of the record label Big Machine, which released “Fearless,” has spoken up on Ms. Swift’s behalf. In an article in The Tennessean, Scott Borchetta, the label’s president and chief executive, said that Ms. Swift’s critics “are not getting it.” Mr. Borchetta added: “The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else.”

Defending Ms. Swift’s performance at the Grammys, Mr. Borchetta said, “Maybe she’s not the best technical singer, but she’s probably the best emotional singer because everybody else who gets up there and is technically perfect, people don’t seem to want more of it.” He added, “If you pick any of those artists that performed” at on the Grammys broadcast, “I’m sure you can go online and find something where you go, ‘ew.’ Maybe in that moment we didn’t have the best night. But in the same breath, maybe we did. And nobody is arguing with the awards.”

Mr. Borchetta told The Associated Press that Ms. Swift had a technical problem during her duet with Ms. Nicks and was unable to hear the complete mix of the song as she performed it.