Taylor Under Fire Again: Pet Shop Boys’ Star Neil Tennant Says Taylor Swift Has ‘No Standout Hits’ as He Questions the Singer’s Popularity After the Release of Her New Album.

She is about to have her 12th number-one album with her latest project The Tortured Poets Department stealing the fastest-selling spot this year from Beyonce.

But the Pet Shop Boys lead vocalist and 80s icon, Neil Tennant, is not convinced by Ms Swift, 34, and argued she has no stand-out hits such as Micheal Jackson’s Thriller and Billie Jean.

The 68-year-old said: ‘She fascinates me as a sort of phenomenon because she is so popular.

‘I sort of like the whole thing but then think, “Where are the famous songs? What is Taylor Swift’s Billie Jean?”‘

‘Shake it Off? Is it though? I listened to that the other day and it is not Billie Jean.’

The Tortured Poets Department is a 31-song-long breakup album which, in true Taylor fashion, pointedly references her ex-boyfriends and their shortcomings which delighted her fans – dubbed Swifties.

Previous albums have referenced the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Styles and Taylor Lautner but her latest project makes thinly veiled references to her six-year-long relationship with Joe Alwyn and her brief fling with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy.

Tennant, a synth-pop legend continued his attack on the singer and said: ‘To have a successful pop career now you have to have a series of relationships which are amazing and then break up tragically.

‘I wonder what the other half of the relationship feels about this.

‘People don’t write songs like Karma Chameleon any more.’

Tennant met his musical partner Chris Lowe, 64, randomly in a hi-fi shop on London’s King’s Road in 1981 and they’ve remained dedicated to holding pop to a higher standard ever since.

With hits such as It’s a Sin – The Pet Shop Boys have sold more than 50million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music history in 1999.

Despite scoring somewhat less-positive reviews than her last three albums, according to Metacritic, The Tortured Poets Department was an immediate hit with consumers.

It sold around 1.4 million copies on Friday and surpassed the record set by 1989 (Taylor’s version) to become her biggest US album to date.

The LP was streamed on Spotify more than 300 million times in a single day.

It became the first album to cross the 200 million and 300 million stream mark, according to the platform.

Fortnight, the first single featuring Post Malone, also broke records for the most streamed song in a single day.

Swift wrote ‘All’s Fair in Love and Poetry,’ but topping the charts while hanging out at one of her beach houses may be the best revenge after a bad review.