*fries flung everywhere* "Different PLACES!" -- Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl

Due later this year, more soon, etc. etc.

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/taylor-swift-announces-album-the-life-of-a-showgirl-1236487135/

https://i.imgur.com/b6CQLfH.png

1. The Fate of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest(?) Daughter
6. Ruin the Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. CANCELLED!
11. Honey
12. The Life of a Showgirl

this is the apparently leaked tracklist

looks like a redditor might have gotten their wish from 2 years ago?

Anyone think an Ophelia (Hamlet) related Taylor Swift song would be a great idea?

Rhyming "Ophelia" with "I feel ya" would be a great rhyme, especially with the thematic similarities between this character and some experiences seen in Taylor Swift songs

Found that because i could've sworn TS already had a song about Ophelia. Guess it was inevitable.

Looking forward to the late-period Swift album where she's "just like Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."

Those titles sound like they were created by an LLM trained on Taylor Swift songs.

apparently this marks her return to max martin and shellback as collaborators. *struggles to be optimistic* idk maybe it'll be good?

maybe that means this one will have some melodies

pre-covers?

someone please explain *fries flung everywhere*

someone please explain *fries flung everywhere*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTo9F5wHAs

Eldest(?) Daughter

I really hope this is the title

tracklist reads like a Lana Del Rey fan-fic

pre-covers?

We've never repeated an artist, but I admit the temptation. (Then again after the effort that went into One More Tune I almost want to give things a little space first.)

Just release the last one again and change the track titles.

Roffle.

There's probably a 50/50 chance "Wood" was written after watching "Ed Wood"

Opalite- another installment in the shiny, sparkly things series?

There's probably a 50/50 chance "Wood" was written after watching "Ed Wood"

A tribute to late singer of Mother Love Bone

or an answer song to "Would?"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/The_Life_of_a_Showgirl_-_Taylor_Swift_album_artwork.png

Plus alternates:
https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-bnytode6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=520ec5de82701203d009f5ca4c7175b2d6ce897e

https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-yfesgbl6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=75d062cb17f1daa33f1a32a05c68b33753c2f202

https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swift-has-unveiled-alternate-covers-for-the-life-of-v0-7xl2d1r6nvif1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=14434c90c065e17a2c4f0f68221da0ddec4b7a3a

On the podcast, Swift explained, “This represents the end of my night. So when I’m on tour, I have the same day every single day. ... And my day ends with me in a bathtub, not usually in a bedazzled dress.”

She continued, “I wanted to sort of like glamorize all the different aspects of how that tour felt. And that’s how that felt to like be at the end of the night when all this has gone down. You won’t be able to get to bed till four in the morning after this. But you had to jump through 50 million hoops in this obstacle course that is your show. And you did it. You got two more in a row. But you did it tonight.

“And the reason I wanted to have sort of like an offstage moment as the main album cover is because this album isn’t really about what happened to me on stage. It’s about what I was going through offstage. So I didn’t want to have like the lights are bright, I’m on the stage is the main album cover. It’s just this. This, to me, tells more of what the actual content, lyrically, of the album are.”

graphic design is my passion

lol

every alternate cover is better than the standard one

I wish there was a fifth one with her just sitting on the couch in her jammies watching TV.

*updates tealandorange.xls*

apparently this marks her return to max martin and shellback as collaborators. *struggles to be optimistic* idk maybe it'll be good?

― ivy., Tuesday, August 12, 2025 9:48 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Weren't we all complaining about Antonoff six months ago? Would be nice for her to go a different direction entirely, but I won't be mad if this sounds anything like Reputation.

i for one was not complaining about antonoff

i mean i do love reputation, it's just that her martin/shellback era coincides with her worst lyricism, and i think (to the staggered disbelief of many ppl here) the lyrics were one of ttpd's major strengths, particularly the "observing myself/my fame through a hall of mirrors" quality of "clara bow"

TTPD is the only Swift album I haven't played since the week after its release, so I'm looking forward to this.

i do love the recurring phenomenon of reading a leaked taylor swift tracklist and thinking "these are the worst song titles i've ever seen" and they're all real

I think these are going to be love songs written about her Masters.

Was hoping for a Fifteen sequel called Thirty-Five about how she went ahead and conquered the world and then got around to dating the boy on the football team.

I'm dreading hearing a song titled "CANCELLED!" for some reason

for some reason?

i appreciate her hitting pause on the dynamic she created where each release is her backing up a cement truck and burying the listener in a deluge of music. i barely gave TTPD a real listen because i just became alienated by the sheer amount of music she has released in the last five years, i lost my ability to have an entry point to her as a person and celebrity and thus to her music. she became more of a cult leader to me than an artist, so the framing of "these are 12 pop songs and there is nothing else" is like letting air into a stifling hot room, personally speaking

however, max martin isn't a producer who has ever helmed a great (or even good?) front to back album. just not his thing. ariana grande just did this and made her worst album, just a completely bland vision for what a break up album should be. so that aspect of it i'm like, idk girl. reputation has some stinkers that are somewhat buoyed by antonoff's contributions (tho some of his also stink... ok who is the common denominator... wait...)

i appreciate her hitting pause on the dynamic she created where each release is her backing up a cement truck and burying the listener in a deluge of music

girl, it's not even out yet, who knows what bonus tracks we're getting

midnights was 13 tracks 44 minutes!!! just a recent example

we're the old romantics

I'm dreading hearing a song titled "CANCELLED!" for some reason

It'll just be a skit with an old Scooter Braun voicemail.

girl, it's not even out yet, who knows what bonus tracks we're getting

― ivy., Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:04 PM (seven minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

midnights was 13 tracks 44 minutes!!! just a recent example

― ivy., Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:07 PM (five minutes ago)

am i hallucinating that she said there would be no bonus tracks? i thought she said that on the podcast (which i did not listen to). midnights has (at least?) three different deluxe editions w/ bonus tracks totaling like 25+ originals, so if that happens w/ this one then feel free to strike my statement from the record

There will be no bonus tracks because she'll release two more records next year.

And then she'll tour with King Gizzard.

It seems unlikely she's not going release different versions using all of those alternate album covers

oh yeah i did not listen to that podcast either. and won't be

xxxpost

"This new album is called 'Mornings of a Black Rose.' It's about how I wake up and eat breakfast and then get my make-up done."

It seems unlikely she's not going release different versions using all of those alternate album covers

― New Jack Cutie (President Keyes), Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:44 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago)

well, she's already selling "limited edition deluxe CDs" of each different cover but if you go on her store and look what the deluxe CDs contain, it's a bunch of extra musical shit but says nothing about new or extra tracks

the quote that i'm referencing is this. it seems pretty definitive but maybe there will be some rug pull, idk

“There’s no other songs coming,” she emphasized. “This is 12. There’s not a 13th … there’s not other songs coming. This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.”

hm. hmmmm

This is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.*

*(in the months since my last one)

joke gets funnier the more you tell it

hm. hmmmm

TTPD is the only Swift album I haven't played since the week after its release, so I'm looking forward to this.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 14, 2025 9:59 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Happened to play it last week. It's spotty but has more bright spots than Midnights.

i mean i do love reputation, it's just that her martin/shellback era coincides with her worst lyricism, and i think (to the staggered disbelief of many ppl here) the lyrics were one of ttpd's major strengths, particularly the "observing myself/my fame through a hall of mirrors" quality of "clara bow"

― ivy., Thursday, August 14, 2025 9:58 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes but "Clara Bow" is the most economical song on the album, and at the risk of sounding Extremely Dad, I'm hoping Martin reigns in her increasing tendency to overstuff her lines with f bombs and thesaurus words.

Also, ivy, I know we've discussed her turn toward Sad since Folklore. This production choice tells me she's climbing out of the murk.

I'm hoping Martin reigns in her increasing tendency to overstuff her lines with f bombs and thesaurus words.

Back to the glory days of "standing in a nice dress."

yeah the martin stuff has all sorts of forced rhythms which i hate way more than the supposed wordiness of the last few records

I do think there's a chance that returning to Martin will result in something like a Katy Perry comeback album

Honestly the biggest 'hmmm' sign is Travis K saying the album is full of 'bangers.' Your taste, sir, I do not exactly trust it.

her increasing tendency to overstuff her lines with f bombs

She been callin' people fruitcakes?!?

fussypants

Taylor is a very silly person but also a sympathetic one for me - her silliness is largely rooted in her tendency to overthink everything and her combination of strong self-awareness with an inability to really change her behaviour.

When she says shit like “this is the album I have wanted to make for a long time” I kinda believe her in a certain sense: she probably has a Notes entry in her phone with seventy five different album concepts. I can imagine this one with a description of the songs, like the showgirl, “wearing bright make up to hide the dark circles under their eyes.”

I’m not blithely expecting this album to be great - I agree with ivy about Martin generally not bringing the best out of her songwriting with a few exceptions - but TTPD certainly was a reminder that there is no direct relationship between the ridiculousness of a song title on paper and the ultimate quality of the song.

I wonder who the guest singers will be.

The tracklist on the back of the vinyl for sale on her site only lists one featured guest, Sabrina Carpenter, on the title track.

The upcoming album was produced only Max Martin and Shellback? Eternal Sunshine is Ariana's album that feels like her worst album, and all the tracks were produced mostly only Max Martin. Midnights is least interesting Taylor album, and with the exception of the deluxe editions, the entire album was produced only Jack Antonoff. On The Tortured Poets Department, it was clear that the Jack Antonoff-Taylor partnership had run its course.
‎
‎Recently listening to the Reputation album, production in the songs that stood out were So It Goes... and Dancing with Our Hands Tied (So It Goes doesn't have the best lyrics). Can't figure out if this has anything to do with the fact that in addition to Max Martin and Shellback, these two songs have co-producers. So It Goes... is co-produced by Oscar Görres, and Dancing with Our Hands Tied is co-produced by Oscar Holter. But Reputation now feels more interesting in its arrangements than Midnights, which feels monotonous.

The upcoming album was produced only Max Martin and Shellback?

Taylor is listed as a producer as well. Which likely means she recorded a bunch demos and then brought in Martin and Shellback to punch them up.

So much for my dreams of becoming Mr. Kelce ...

There's always the other one.

I think of this as a long-term investment for her — she can't make the divorce album without getting married first.

It's worth googling "Taylor Swift" just to see the bronze confetti and burning heart.

xpost They don't call her Taylor "Long Game" Swift for nothing.

xxp Let's not skip the motherhood record

Making Polymarket bet on Taylor running off with Matty Healy on her wedding day.

xpost and then the comeback record where elderly Taylor tears apart her adult child's memoir.

And then the creaky-voice duet album with her grown kids (produced by AI T-Bone Burnett) that will sweep the Grammys.

Oh Christ the think pieces we are about to be deluged with.

Her wedding is going to be three nights at a stadium, and ticket prices are going to be nuts.

you can buy 52 different colors of rice to throw through your Target app

yet another thing i would prefer to not know about taylor swift

yeah it's impossible to imagine her married; one of the points of her career is to create temples that need bringing down.

I do want to hear about how he proposed, I can't help it

I heard it was something of a Hail Mary, but you miss 100% of the marriages you don't propose.

She's clearly been listening to this guy

https://i.imgur.com/Mk7IFvk.png

yeah it's impossible to imagine her married; one of the points of her career is to create temples that need bringing down.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 26, 2025 1:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

was it?

I think so. I prefer her imagining the details of relationships.

Wow that of an indictment of homegirl that her new album drops in two hours and this thread hadn’t been revived. I totally forgot about it myself until I just logged onto Instagram

*kind of

i mean there hasn't even been a single. there have been some extremely goofy leaked lyrics though

Maybe not here but I suspect half of my staff will suddenly become unavailable in 2 hours (it's midday here).

Lol if that Charli XCX diss is real I don’t know man

Might be the actual shark jump

Well maybe there will only be 7,991 posts in the Geese thread tomorrow for a change

i feel like the charli diss (notwithstanding it seems to deal with matters separate to those covered in "sympathy is a knife") is possibly entirely calculated for them to have their own "girl, so confusing" moment in future.

anyway, i haven't listened to any of the leaks aside from that track but what i've read doesn't sound overly promising, and doesn't lead me to think i'll need to alter my current party line re: taylor, which is "she needs some different collaborators"

I am so not in the mood for the usual ILM track-by-track-this-is-awesome thing we do

My kid listened to a leak and reported back underwhelmed. But he's also not much of a fan, so qui sait.

Good luck USA

i can't imagine that our current intense and scary political climate is conducive to her style of bland, noncommittal centrism

But there are some scented candles she like to tell you about

lol have you looked at the charts this year

not really

i mean, herb alpert and gary puckett were topping the charts in 1968 so i'm not sure how much that means anyway

idk, it was just a supposition. i don't really know anything about taylor swift or pop culture or the hot 100 in 2025. but i just kind of got a whiff from the general online-o-sphere that people are over her shtick but i'm guessing she's always had haters

This is quite comfortably her worst album

Hard to believe this is the same person who wrote “Ivy”

This is bad on so many levels.

I just listened to the track with Sabrina Carpenter and it's ok. Was expecting more.

It all feels a bit...dry and neutered. And even though she's saying she's not a bad b*tch and a savage, there's something incredibly cringeworthy about Taylor singing the phrases "bad b*tch" and "savage".

idk. to me Midnights would've made more sense as a title for this album.

really dull

some of the arrangements caught my attention but basically none of the lyrics did, idk, gonna spend at least a little more time with it but i feel like we've reached the middle of the road

i do really hate that she says "bitches" on this record and is referring to women. that is much more depressing than "better than revenge"

my friend who runs a record shop said swift's people were super shitty to retailers, refused to have them shipped in time for a midnight sale, they are arriving at stores 'sometime tomorrow'.

i did like the opener, gave me a lot of false hopes for the rest of it

idk, it's kind of making me wet?

So sad to hear her trying to do a Sabrina raunchy disco track on “Wood” and just flail about.

first moment i've enjoyed on this is the bridge on "father figure"

Wife (massive Taylor fan, took daughter to eras tour) is disappointed thus far. Daughter unsure. Son is insisting we listen to Patrick Wolf loudly in a different room.

This is not her worst album. Tortured Poets is three times as long, so this is three times better. But no, it's not good, really really not good. Trying to make her lyrics fit the Max Martin style makes them really stiff this time.

the first half of tortured poets was pretty good at least and is much better than the half of this i've heard

Actually Romantic might be her worst track since Better Than Revenge, though.

Any stretch of Tortured Poets (which is by no means her best album) is better than this, come on now.

What is the point of Taylor if she jettisons any and every wualoty that makes her good, and only holds onto (indeed magnifies) the adverse side effects?

*quality

A third of Tortured Poets is about as bad as this, yeah. But it's three times as long, and that matters?

For “his love was the key / that opened my thighs” alone this album should be pulped

Okay, I hadn't made it to CANCELLED when I wrote that. Yeah, this might be her worst...

length has no direct correlation to quality. i feel like i want this etched on my tombstone

Not always, but I'd much rather be bored to death for 43 minutes than for two hours.

Or was that a reference to 'Wood'?

lol

one of my immediate beefs with this is it’s yet another taylor swift album about how much she likes some fucking guy and yet it is nowhere near as horny and subsumed in desire as rep, lover, or ttpd

i just don’t feel it! she’s not making me feel it!!! god, depressing

Responding to a song about insecurity and obsession with “Wow you are actually so obsessed with me” I reminds me of the dunder headed way right wingers post.

Did Rolling Stone really give this 5 stars?

Showgirl on the Doorstep

i had no idea that charli xcx song was about swift, i did not need a response song.

Caramanica review this AM is pretty positive fwiw

His favorite TS album is Reputation iirc

i mean i LOVE reputation and this is significantly emptier than reputation

i wonder why the critical notices are so positive hmmmmmm hummmm

If you haven't heard the popcast where they rank their favorite TS records, it's worth a listen. Reputation is definitely his favorite but also notably, iirc, the last four were his least favorite. Maybe Poets was a little higher but not much.

What does that person hired to cover Taylor Swift for USA Today have to say? That's the only opinion that matters, because they are an expert.

USA Today: "Taylor Swift New Album Engagement Wedding Dress Travis Kelce Superbowl"

So nobody thinks this is all v intentional and a response to criticism she received that Poets was too reliant on lyrics? I might have fallen down a couple rabbit holes lately but I think this is the candy fluff showgirl style stuff people want from her and so she's giving it to them. I am inclined to think there's a lot of performance art actually happening here and the video she released earlier in the week where director Taylor is directing tiny showgirl Taylor cemented that for me. Idk.

For “his love was the key / that opened my thighs” alone this album should be pulped

*vaguely envisions Taylor covering Kate Bush's "The Sensual World"*

xpost I think what people wanted was some 1989 style bangers. This doesn't appear to have those.

I also never made the connection between Sympathy is a Knife and Taylor. and since that song is pretty vulnerable and even self-loathing, Taylor's response just makes her look like a total asshole, unless I'm missing something. like I stan hard for Charli now so keep her name out your mouth.

xp, I've only listened to the first six tracks on an iphone so won't weigh in on the quality of the album atm, but I think some cared less about "bangers" and more about concision (lyrically, track count, endless promo cycles). I also saw/heard a lot of promise in moving on from Antonoff, and from my very cursory initial listen, this did sound quite a bit different than her last handful of albums.

"did you girlboss too close to the sun?" jfc

A friend who is a committed stan said elsewhere that it feeling like a mid-2000s indie rock meant it wouldn't land for a lot of people, and added "This would’ve fit right in at the club I went to in undergrad that played a mix of goth and indie/mod stuff." So, just saying.

idk the closest it comes to displaying a personality musically is when it sounds like abba or fleetwood mac by way of jennifer paige “crush” while being obviously significantly worse than any of those references. it does not feel like mid-2000s indie rock

Maybe it's her Panic! At The Disco album, she's worked with dude before.

I think some cared less about "bangers" and more about concision

Not sure you bring in Max Martin for cohesive album making though

What indie rock does this sound like? I assume they mean something like Rilo Kiley?

I also never made the connection between Sympathy is a Knife and Taylor. and since that song is pretty vulnerable and even self-loathing, Taylor's response just makes her look like a total asshole

My thoughts exactly.

ned's friend is in the bargaining stage

Son is insisting we listen to Patrick Wolf loudly in a different room.

always a good idea

I think some cared less about "bangers" and more about concision

Not sure you bring in Max Martin for cohesive album making though

― Baronet Drowned in Night Frolic (President Keyes), Friday, October 3, 2025 10:58 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Concision =/= Cohesion

Taylor's response just makes her look like a total asshole

yeah this is embarrassing; it also makes her look a fucking stupid narcissist

song is also. at least a little homophobic. to me

these are things i was hoping to never post on a new taylor swift album thread

the press around this album seems pretty focused on this one track

by design I imagine

We’re totally getting a remix with Charli on the track by year-end aren’t we

It's hard to imagine Taylor on a "Girl So Confusing" style remix. She just isn't self aware or unguarded enough to write a verse like Lorde's.

1. It won’t stop her from trying
2. *whispers* At her peak, she is

It feels like catching up to be contemporary, with "Actually Romantic" the Chappell/Billie queer storyline and "Wood" the overtly dirty Sabrina/Lola Young pop. I'll take them as made-pop narrative songs instead of confessions/disses.

er, made-up narrative songs

The mature take from my daughter's roommate: "Taylor doesn’t need to do anything for me anymore, she’s already given me my favorite music at this point."

Laura Snapes in Guardian otm

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/03/taylor-swifts-charli-xcx-hit-job-misses-the-point-and-underscores-her-tedious-obsession-with-conflict

The mature take from my daughter's roommate: "Taylor doesn’t need to do anything for me anymore, she’s already given me my favorite music at this point."

Dayenu

Yeah this album is very meh, musically and lyrically. Few of the songs distinguished themselves from each other, a few times I checked to see if it was still the same song playing or a new one. Oh well. She due for an outright dud.

I thought the last one was too. I came around to about half of Midnights, but Tortured Poets was the first time I haven't bothered returning to a single song. This musical equivalent of gruel is not for me.

loool c'mon

Forgive me, it sounds cocky
He ah-matized me and opened my eyes
Redwood tree, it ain't hard to see
His love was the key that opened my thighs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6ck7O6BBU

I look forward to the future song where she whines about how no one would have complained about Actually Romantic if she was a man.

"Actually Romantic" may be the most juvenile song she's ever written, which is saying something for somebody who started writing songs as an actual juvenile.

lol alfred

There's probably a 50/50 chance "Wood" was written after watching "Ed Wood"

there is a 100% chance a song referencing that movie would be better

There isn't a single Gaylor on here who thinks this is about a lot more than what it seems to be? Dammit. (Btw before like 3 months ago I knew nothing about all the lore and hadn't listened to the last several albums but she's so intentional. There is more to this or more that's coming.)

these lyrics are ah-matizing

"Wood" creates a sort of double offense by mildly jacking the intro to "I Want You Back" and wedding it to a terrible song. If you're going anywhere near that, you need to bring a tune to justify it.

Xpost - yep. Again - I think that's v intentional. Or AI which I actually hope is the case.

I actually laughed out loud when I played "Elizabeth Taylor" and the first words were "ELIZABETH TAYLOR!"

idk if there's a single gaylor on here. i'm certainly not, and i don't think her finally releasing her republican tradwife album is some coded signal

Also, "Father Figure" is no "Father Figure."

we shoulda pre-covered this

Xpost I'm not saying I am one or that that's what this is. I just think they're onto . . . something. There's no way all that queer flagging is accidental. No way. I honestly have no idea - maybe it is a just what you said but I really hope it isn't.

Maybe it all ties back to Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley...

I titled this thread for a reason!

The thing about all of Taylor’s complex numerology et. al. is that it has never been used to signal anything particularly deep or interesting, because Taylor herself isn’t particularly deep or interesting. She is (was?) an excellent songwriter, in inverse proportion to how much she subordinates her craft to talking about her life.

Is "fries flung everywhere" something to do with "Little Fires Everywhere"?

Cuz I just keep seeing it as little fries everywhere

In a certain sense, yes

No self-respecting queer person would hurl fries everywhere

Lol as if queer people have self-respect

*hurls fries at Tim*

To help the puffin feel less mad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTo9F5wHAs

I'm not saying I am one or that that's what this is. I just think they're onto . . . something. There's no way all that queer flagging is accidental. No way.

if it is there, it is probably intentionally done in order to market to a demographic that has been financially beneficial to her.

Is there a new Taylor Swift LP out or something?

girl can’t even make a song about her man’s dick sound horny on this

i cannot think of a less sexy pop star than TS

Well, my 10 and 15 year olds hate Taylor now lol

10 year old: SHE’S JUST TRYING TO MAKE TROUBLE SO PEOPLE WILL LIKE HER BUT SHE’S BEING MEAN

Well, my 10 and 15 year olds hate Taylor now lol

10 year old: SHE’S JUST TRYING TO MAKE TROUBLE SO PEOPLE WILL LIKE HER BUT SHE’S BEING MEAN

<TAYLOR IMMEDIATELY BEGINS WRITING DISS TRACK ABOUT CALF_ART>

hahaha awwwww

It is Oct 3rd. Mean Girls day.

there's something incredibly cringeworthy about Taylor singing the phrases "bad b*tch" and "savage".

― monotony, Friday, October 3, 2025 12:08 AM (sixteen hours ago

Maybe she was so inspired by last year's tour date in Minneapolis that she decided to write a song that references one of our southern suburbs?

akm - definitely a possibility but I would hate if that were the case

girl can’t even make a song about her man’s dick sound horny on this

― ivy., Friday, October 3, 2025 6:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

Perhaps if Taylor wrote it in limerick form it'd have been

There once was a man named Travis
He said "Honey I'd like you to have this"
Instead of a rock
He pulled out his cock
And he threw in the testicles gratis

I went to see the "release party film" in the cinema tonight with my Swiftie pal and oooooft

You need to calm down

This is a bad album, and sitting watching her be charmless introducing the songs and their inspirations was awful, and having no distractions while watching the lyric videos for each song really allows you to focus on how bad the songwriting is on this album

xxp that is an outstanding limerick, nicely done

The "kitty/pretty/witty" rhymes had me gasping in horror, I really can't believe this is the same popstar who gave us Tim McGraw

Looool Neanderthal

Yeah, who needs a pre-covers album when we can do awesome post album limericks.

I saved that limerick for posterity. Neanderthal made my day.

strong public opinion against this album is surprising. I mean it's following up a tour that grossed a couple billion dollars.

Taylor is a master of marketing so it's surprising she was unable to read the room and recognize that maybe people needed a little bit of a break.

This is going to be the number one album for the next year. That’s the only room she’s reading.

Everyone knows my stance on Taylor Swift, but what I thought was interesting is that the chatter on my Facebook feed around this album was absolutely GUSHING over it. This seems like exactly what a relatively vocal slice of her fan base wanted.

idk i have only really seen negative reactions

Even in the cinema surrounded by superfans the reaction was pretty muted. My friend, the self-admitted parasocial Swiftie, is currently going with "I think this album will be a grower."

They were telling me that there's a community of online fans who think Actually Romantic is about Trump and not Charli. Which somehow makes it a less interesting but still terrible song.

Also everyone is talking about Actually Romantic being tone deaf when Cancelled, the song about being pals with MAGA billionaires, exists

I thought the chorus of one was “it’s a little bit Taylor” and thought – ugh too much – until I realised it was Elizabeth Taylor

Every song on here sounds way too much like another very famous song. Opalite is basically circles by P Malone, Actually Romantic is Where is my mind, Wood is either a Jackson 5 song or I'm coming out. There's one that sounds identical to a Jonas brothers song. I'm genuinely starting to think this is AI and an elaborate prank somehow.

Eldest Daughter has some of the lamest lyrics ever written

the lyrics really are as bad as everyone is saying (and they don't really work with the music, either) but musically i don't think it's that bad? like it's still uninspired and the first few tracks are very weak but it gets a bit better and there's some interesting moments even if i have to ignore the lyrics.

ok lmao "cancelled!" is truly dire

i did want to say “ruin the friendship” is good. it’s surrounded by total garbage but it’s good

by contrast i think “wi$h li$t” comes from a dimension of evil

"ruin the friendship" is probably the best thing here i agree but it's not really close to her best

i like the bass playing on this album generally, that's the best i can say about it. the production also isn't really as ugly or clunky as her worst pop moments but there's a real tension between the very tasteful bass & the rigid pop choruses that doesn't really work for me. it also doesn't really feel like she knows what she wanted this to be, there's no vision here or even much of a glimpse at one?

it's a whole album of her most mediocre pop rather than her worst, but with her worst lyrics

kinda stunning to go from tortured poets department which was probably my favourite thing she's done (the first disc at least) to this

by contrast i think “wi$h li$t” comes from a dimension of evil

― ivy., Saturday, October 4, 2025 8:35 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

in your life the greatest thing you will ever do is date the boy on the football team

hey a man can dream

re: the bass playing on this album - I could definitely hear a mid-00s Fred Falke style remix overhauling some of this into something salvageable

Actually Romantic is Where is my mind

Thank you- I new this was a Pixies song but couldn't place it.

Unduly irritated by the British spelling of "Cancelled!," because that's one of those things I've had to correct a lot for AP style over the years. Of course, that's not the worst thing about the song.

i didn't realise that was a uk/us english thing but i also have no idea what she means by using the british spelling

probably nothing. Americans get confused about this because it's spelled "cancellation" everywhere

it's one of her secret little codes, signalling to JK Rowling

only listened to a few songs but i don’t find this so bad? father opening track was pretty good, ‘elisabeth taylor’ is catchy. the charli diss is hilariously lame but it’s got a good hook, could see it being a hit (the ultimate revenge)

seems like a modest step up from the last one (which was very dull) but the vibes have soured further which is why it’s getting such a big neg reaction?

I never once noticed until just now that the UK used two 'l's in that word, and I fancied myself an angophile for the vast majority of my life

As an American in the UK who has an administrative job, I hate this one. I kind of just gave up and use both willy billy assuming that is I use the wrong one they'll know it's because I'm American.

*if* I use the wrong one rather

Lest anyone think otherwise, nilly billy is not the UK version of that phrase, just another typo.

Grew up in the UK where yeah the general rule I learned was always two Ls before "ing"... after a couple of decades in the US I still have to check a dictionary whenever I use such a word.

this is a bad taylor swift album bc this is what we’re talking about on the day after its release instead of any other quality it has

OMG, that's why cancelled has been fucking me up my entire life.

Heard Ophelia song on the radio followed immediately by Style and all I could think of was how Style still sounds great and Ophelia song was a fucking mess

As an American in the UK who has an administrative job, I hate this one. I kind of just gave up and use both willy billy assuming that is I use the wrong one they'll know it's because I'm American.

As a rule of thumb I'd say anybody who gets exercised about this is a dick

Am inclined to agree but you'd be surprised at what riles ppl up. Got told off for saying happy holidays in an email instead of merry Christmas at my last place. They said it was too American but yeah cancelled/canceled thing is a pita.

I don't have strong personal feelings about the double-vs.-single L before -ing, but I'm conditioned to see the double-L as wrong via years of U.S. copy editing. So Taylor's track list has me reaching for the red pen. https://www.csuchico.edu/style-guide/_assets/images/horiz.gif

The extra L is obviously for lesbian

ironic because by writing the song she is Taking The L

Lest anyone think otherwise, nilly billy is not the UK version of that phrase, just another typo.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Saturday, 4 October 2025 15:45 (four hours ago)

Thx ENBB for new dn inspiration

Lol yw. I read it back earlier and realized it was all wrong. Just gave up.

Yes I think “ruin the friendship” is the best thing here, in part because it reminds me of other, better Taylor songs rather than other, better songs by other artists.

And yeah the other main plus from this album is that it underscores just how good 1989 managed to be for the most part, and how much worse it could have been.

Anyway:

https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/taylor-swift-life-of-a-showgirl-first-day-sales-debut-week-1236082178/

Given the title of the album I'm surprised we haven't had a debate as to why "glamour" is still spelled "glamour" in the United States, viz Glamour magazine.

Unlike for example favor or vigor or indeed for, which is how people in the United States spell four. This is true. That is the truth (official) [solved 2025].

on the street i overheard a group of excited eight-year-old girls saying that taylor swift was "a great songwriter" and travis kelce was "just a football player"

Every huge artist has their "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

Otm

Haven’t listened and prob won’t, but a dinner table discussion turned to the lyrics of “Wi$h Li$t” and I read them this morning and I got angry. “Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you” is a new entry in the canon of worst couplets

I think Midnights was more of a New Jersey album? In the sense of being a big deal (a bigger deal than its four predecessors arguably) but which seemed to exist more as a marker of Taylor’s ascension to the top echelon than as an important artefact in and of itself - and “hollow” in the sense of being mostly fine but not moving her forward as an artist except through a series of microaggressions.

This is too actively awful.

If you switched the sequencing of the last three albums so that it went TTPD -> Midnights —> LOAS that would tell a story of decline and collapse very straightforwardly.

i dont think its bad, on par w midnights at worst

on the street i overheard a group of excited eight-year-old girls saying that taylor swift was "a great songwriter" and travis kelce was "just a football player"

― budo jeru, Saturday, October 4, 2025 7:45 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

from the mouths of babes

counterpoints:

Marcus Hutchins‬
✧@malwaret✧✧✧.c✧✧‬
· 8h
I ended up on swifty TikTok and the comments are absolutely killing me. "9th grade slam poetry", [a photo of boiled chicken], "album for cop wives", "If Taylor wrote this that's bad, if ChatGPT wrote this that's worse, and if Travis wrote this I'm actually kind of proud of him".

"album for cop wives"

lmao

I think Midnights was great and def moved her forward as an artist. This on the other hand feels hollow

midnights at least has "anti-hero"

a legit radio hit too

do you guys know that "wood" can have a double meaning?

is that an actual Taylor lyric

I realized I’m alone in my belief that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are very attractive and want to hear more about their sex life.

Great post buddy

Well you’re in luck — just so long as you can decode figurative language.

It is refreshing that Swift recognizes there’s nothing interesting about Kelce besides his dick.

The range of the figurative language, as noted with the Naked Gun references, is as vast and subtle as a hard-on.

Writing a song called “Elizabeth Taylor” when you’ve already previously delivered the (great) couplet “he can be my jailer / Burton to this Taylor” says everything you need to know

Travis & Taylor are so the kind of couple that'll play "Get The Guest" when they're in their late-40s.

It is refreshing that Swift recognizes there’s nothing interesting about Kelce besides his dick.

― Baronet Drowned in Night Frolic (President Keyes), Sunday, 5 October 2025 19:09 (yesterday)

I’m genuinely curious, do you actually believe this?

travis kelce is in trouble if and when their relationship ends.

to be honest -- not ironic -- i have known a lot of swifties and can appreciate why they value her music. but i was always grossed out by the way she invites her fans into her personal life -- always positioning herself as the victim or the underdog, whether her opponent is the "cheer captain" or the dperessed boyfriend who "kept her in a cage." the great breakup and divorce songs are nothing like that. they are either relatable bitter send offs (the "you're so vain" and "positively fourth street" school) or songs in which the singer takes accountability for their role in the relationship (anything on "blood on the tracks"). there is also an attempt, usually, to invite the listener into the experience, to make the particular universal. it shouldn't really matter "who" the song is about --- the fact that people are so invested in this with swift is a red flag for me.

however, many people i respect love her songwriting so i might just be wrong about this. i liked the song anti-hero because it felt like a moment of self-reflection. but then she was back to her old tricks again in later albums.

when in doubt, think of Kelce's cock

ok so the fate of ophelia is catchy. listening to it now.

i think this might help get students into hamlet this year.

but again, it's so obviously autobiographical. there are even football references in the video. the idea is that kelce "saved" her from the "fate of ophelia," which i guess has to do with loving someone depressed and self-destructive. (alwyn? any other artsy guys?)

the problem with this analogy is that ophelia's suicide wasn't due to "heartbreak" as genius.com says. she is publicly humiliated by hamlet and then hamlet kills her father. she was filled with guilt because she didn't heed her father's advice to not have sex with hamlet -- she felt that she had been corrupted by him and in some strange way this led to her father's killing. she is experiencing trauma.

“Anti-Hero” isn’t actually particularly notable for its self-reflection, it’s just the one time she wrote “DO YOU SEE?!?!” in fluorescent pen over the top

she also has the interlude where she makes herself the victim yet again. this time, the victim of her selfish, ungrateful adult children of the future.

interestingly, she calls herself a "cover narcissist" in this song, which like, that is exactly how a covert narcissist would think about their children.

it's possible this is the joke? like the irony is intentional and it is hers.

The point of that whole verse is that she is awful, embittered and vindictive person, so yes.

I don’t think it’s particularly remarkable as compared to the much more thoughtful (because indirect) implied self-reflection of say “Tis The Damn Season” or “Long Story Short” or (though it’s almost as on the nose as “Anti-Hero”), “Mirrorball” - but if people are still puzzling through the meaning of “Anti-Hero” maybe I’m not giving it enough credit.

I am not puzzling through it. It’s just that the new songs seem to revert back to an older mode where she doesn’t acknowledge her own shadow.

It is refreshing that Swift recognizes there’s nothing interesting about Kelce besides his dick.
― Baronet Drowned in Night Frolic (President Keyes), Sunday, 5 October 2025 19:09 (yesterday)

I’m genuinely curious, do you actually believe this?

― Allen (etaeoe), Sunday, October 5, 2025 8:23 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Do I believe Travis Kelce is not interesting?

After a triple album’s worth of Matty Healy songs I was expecting some “You’re the Riggins to my Garrity” type lyrics this time around.

I think there's a lot of self-reflection and self-criticism in Lover, starting with "The Archer," but I think it's all tied up with dating Joe Alwyn; the sense I get from that album is "this is the great love of my life, and what if it ends because I'm not good enough?" And this fear ends up driving a lot of serious self-examination; she's trying to figure out if she's the toxic one in her relationships because she desperately doesn't want to be toxic here. And that lines up with a period in her life when she's also fitting herself into the kind of life Joe wants to lead, which is much quieter and less public and more sort of performatively grown-up, if that makes sense? But none of that really comes naturally to her; it's certainly not in her pre-Lover breakup songs, as treeship points out.

So by "Anti-Hero," I think the self-reflection is starting to wear thin along with the relationship; she's still calling herself on her own bullshit, but there's a resentful edge to it that's not in "The Archer," like she's sick of always being the one in the wrong. Even the video for "Anti-Hero," with its oversized Alice in Wonderland version of Taylor, could be read as frustration at having to squeeze herself down into a quiet and tasteful life of Working on Herself when there is a part of her that will always want to be big and gaudy and enjoy her fame and trample her enemies. So the impression I get is that we are now in a period of reaction where she is leaning into and actively celebrating everything about herself that she was suppressing during the Joe era, and that means that for the time being she is done with wondering whether she's the problem.

as a casual occasional listener who is paying attention for Discourse Reasons, booming post lily!!

Yes I think that is right Lily - the sense I get is that what Taylor thinks she is doing with this album is saying “I’m going to get judged whatever I do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

Basically an entire album of “But Daddy I Love Him”.

But the writing isn’t strong enough, and the performance of her personality she offers up here isn’t interesting enough, and ultimately the stakes just don’t seem high enough, to make it work, and so it all ends up seeming mean-spirited.

In her head I suspect she thinks a song like “Actually Romantic” is kind of generous? Like “look at me accepting that one of the prices of being the world’s biggest pop star is that people’s notions of me will become tangled up in their self-worth, and this is as much a part of ‘fandom’ as adoration” - the tone deafness is not in the complete absence of self-awareness per se, it’s in her failure to realise that at this point she cannot use examples drawn directly from her own life to explore these kinds of dynamics without risking ending up looking clueless about the massive power disparity afforded by her fame.

“The Last Great American Dynasty” seemed like a turning point for her because it was (or appeared to be) an implicit recognition that the best way to continue exploring these dynamics was at one remove, sinking herself into characters who share qualities with the character of “Taylor Swift” but not in a literal autobiographical way: the protagonist of “August” who knows deep down that her chance of happiness can only come at the expense of others’; the protagonist of “Ivy” who passively allows other people’s desire of her to lead to violence and conflict; the protagonist of “Cowboy Like Me” who worries she is being emotionally manipulated because she is herself a manipulator.

Since then, her songs have retreated back to the autobiographical, but all the best of them (including “But Daddy I Love Him”, but also and notably “You’re On Your Own, Kid” and “Guilty As Sin” and “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” and “Clara Bow”) zoom out from there, straining towards the universal such that the autobiographical prompt becomes reduced to just that - a prompt. These songs never achieve lift off.

5.9

Actually don’t know why you’d write a song comparing Travis Kelce’s dick to a magic wand and then release that for other people to hear. Wait though, Cancelled! is a billionaire wailing that she can’t force everyone to like her. 5.9 is far too generous.

In her head I suspect she thinks a song like “Actually Romantic” is kind of generous? Like “look at me accepting that one of the prices of being the world’s biggest pop star is that people’s notions of me will become tangled up in their self-worth, and this is as much a part of ‘fandom’ as adoration”

she directly says it's this in her track-by-track commentary:

“Actually Romantic” is a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden they start like, doing too much, and they start letting you know that actually you’ve been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea and it’s presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you, but, um, taking that and you just accepting it as love and you accepting it as attention and affection and how flattering that somebody has made you such a big part of their reality when you didn’t even think about this. It’s actually pretty romantic if you really, really think about it.

That commentary is very funny as Swift has never knowingly got past a grudge in her life

Yeah, that commentary is massively disingenous. Just a horrible song, horrible idea, horrible execution.

Actually Romantic” is a song about realizing that someone else has kind of had a one-sided adversarial relationship with you that you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden they start like, doing too much, and they start letting you know that actually you’ve been living in their head rent-free and you had no idea and it’s presenting itself as them sort of resenting you or having a problem with you, b

I can't imagine expending this kind of energy on something so banal.

I liked lily’s post. Very clarifying for someone who isn’t immersed in Swift.

I am still stuck on this Ophelia thing. Poor Ophelia. In the play, she is misunderstood — she directly tells people what happened to her and they ascribe it to “madness”: “Her words are nothing / yet the unshaped use of them does lead the hearer to collection.” She was a beautiful screen for people to project their own ideas — in the play and in the play’s afterlife — and the ugly truth of her pain was something no one was willing to look at. And now 500 years later taylor is doing the same thing to her, appropriating her as a picturesque symbol of “heartbreak.”

as a casual occasional listener who is paying attention for Discourse Reasons, booming post lily!!

Same! New TS... a chance to chat music with some people i don't often get the chance but... omg what exhausting nonsense

5.9

are the online attacks on the writers as infamously bad as they used to be? searching latest tweets on their names is harrowing. you'd almost expect them to get posted anonymously.

"Opalite" is ok.

The Pitchfork review even takes a shot at that sycophantic Rolling Stone review

xp Paste's review of TTPD was anonymous.

ok, so actually romantic is very mean spirited and shitty. the charli track about taylor, sympathy is a knife, is not like this at all -- it is about her own insecurities. swift is just sort of the occasion for these reflections about herself.

this is kind of what i am talking about with her. at least in her songwriting she often doesn't seem to acknowledge other people as separate entities whose lives don't revolve around her.

reminds me of how the republicans are acting these days. it isn't enough to just tolerate them. you have to LOVE them. you have to! or you will be canceled/fired.

side note but it's super funny to me when swift fans act like travis kelce was this unknown scrub that taylor plucked out of obscurity

the jeffrey dufrene of future hall of fame tight ends

I spent the weekend listening to this album and honestly believe many of you made up your minds about this record before you heard it and gave it very little time to percolate before deciding to write it off. It's not her best work, but I'll take it over the gloom of Midnights and Tortured Poets. There are lots of little throwbacks to previous albums/songs/eras, but it sounds most like a Reputation/Lover hybrid to me, which are probably the Taylor albums I listened to the most in the last 3 or 4 years.

Love:
Opalite - her first genuine radio banger since Anti-Hero, and this one's constructed far more interestingly; love the hints of girl group pop in this one, as well as the bass playing (a recurring strength on this album); and for all the negative commentary about the album's lyrics in this thread, how good is that opening couplet?
Ruin the Friendship - Fearless remains one of my favorite Taylor records, and to get a song that twenty years later feels like her reaching back to her high school era in a really earnest way is such a treat -- I smiled when I heard "Abigail"; I love the bass line and drums on this song and how sweet it is despite clearly being about a tragic death of an old friend (suicide?)
Ophelia - how nice it is to hear real intros to Taylor songs again; this is one where Martin/Shellback did so much more than Antonoff would have, and it really delivers; and my kids are asking me to play this one non-stop fwiw
Honey - as close to "Call It What You Want" as we've gotten since; a perfect little earworm that is super light and infectious; the bass is awesome and then the flute levels the song up

Like:
Wood - I'm not a big fan of Sabrina and didn't love the idea of Taylor trying to play her game, but for me, this works and is Taylor embracing her cringe; I don't really care that it cribs The Jackson 5; it sounds modern and effervescent and would be a fun wedding dance song to replace "Shake It Off", which is now ten years old; once again, the bass and drums on this are at a completely different level than anything I've heard on a Taylor album before
Elizabeth Taylor - Taylor likes her references and this just feels like another solid entry in that category of songs (e.g., "The Last Great American Dynasty," "Starlight," etc.); "By my NY when Hollywood hates me" is one of those lines that just pops in a way that so many Taylor lyrics do; and the bass on this one is great too (during the bridge especially)
Father Figure - a really unique song in her catalogue that takes an axe to the men who were supposed to look out for her earlier in her career and instead sold her out for "pure profit"; I like the "ah" synths in the chorus and how some of the imagery ("just step into my office") recalls "The Man"; another excellent bridge, too
Wish List - the "I just want you" and "Boss up/settle down/got a wish list" phrasing reminds me of some of Reputation's better constructions, which have been sorely lacking in the Antonoff era; the biggest word in this song is "hypocrites," and for the first time since Lover, it doesn't feel like she's been looking through a thesaurus

Meh:
Actually Romantic - yes, this sounds very much like "Where is My Mind," and yes, it's punching down; I don't hate it nearly as much as most people in this thread though
Eldest Daughter - some of my least favorite lyrics on the album, but I am sympathetic to the reading that this is her saying, "I tried on all these different personas over the last decade (e.g., the "bad bitch" of Reputation), and falling in love has made me realize who I really am"; I like the bridge more than the rest of the song
Life of a SG - very musical theater to my ears, but I do like the little bit of pedal steel; it's fine but feels like a redux of two or three other songs she's written that do this theme better (e.g., "The Lucky One," "Clara Bow")

Pass:
Cancelled - total speculation but I wonder if this was a Reputation re-record bonus track that somehow made it onto the album? That "Did you girl boss too close to the sun? Did they catch you having far too much fun?" line sounds straight from that era; it doesn't work for me and sounds dated

I'm with you, Indexed, on the keepers. I heard "Opalite" on the honest-to-god-terrestrial radio station during an early morning road trip on Saturday and it banged.

i guess if you like her melodies and mostly ignore her lyrics you will probably have an ok time with this record. i first heard it as a really distorted rip and i was like "hm, this is ok. it's got more of a pulse to it than tortured poets which means people will like it more." but the moment i registered the lyrics is the instant i registered this project's vacancy and cynicism. oh and also her doing disco pop does not sound remotely modern to me, it's one of the many things that actively depresses me about that record

"opalite" is pretty clunky to me as a song. as a bunch of sound references i guess it's sort of invigorating

The lack of any tension from a genuine rhythm section, whether programmed or acoustic, kills the album for me.

If you watch the anti-hero video it's very clear now that the evil TS is actually the showgirl. I think the three versions of T in there are her younger self, the real present T, and the showgirl T. I think this whole album is written from the POV of the evil/Showgirl version of TS and I also think there is maybe a second album coming which might be the death of the SG. Could also be completely wrong but just putting it here on the very off chance I'm not.

Call me vapid but I like a lot of the lyrics on this album and tried to highlight a few of the better ones in my post. 4 loves and 4 likes on a 12 song, 41 min album? That's a pretty good batting average for me. At least for now, bests the last two and the self-titled in my ranking of her albums.

One album that kept coming to mind when I was listening was Miranda Lambert's Wildcard, the Jay Joyce produced follow up to The Weight of These Wings. Following her most ambitious album, a return to not just simpler sounds and songs but more comfortable ones that reference back to the greatest hits of the past.

oh i like that theory enbb.

"boss up/settle down”
“be my NY when hollywood hates me”

sorry to continue to be a hater but i would only single these out as being very bad

The 2nd album part is the thing I'm least sure about. Evil Taylor is Def the showgirl (outfit, star on the face, entry through the orange door) and I think the character and concept were conceived years ago.

the jeffrey dufrene of future hall of fame tight ends

― treeship., Monday, October 6, 2025 9:27 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the funniest outcome was she breaks up with kelce and gets with tony gonzalez

Perhaps she could have leaned into the showgirl persona and released the album under a pseudonym-- Christine Gaines or something like that.

lol

Hey, I embrace back-to-basics albums when they work. Wildcard followed up Lambert's greatest album and honed most of its strengths, whereas Swift follows up her windiest and most tedious album to date with a compact version of windy tedium.

reputation had its share of lyrical clunkers but there was genuine feeling in the songs. all of these start on the defensive and never get beyond it

Showgirl vs. Slim Shady showdown

not that she should have to conform to any particular societal norms or anything, but I can't help wondering what a domestic-bliss Taylor Swift record would sound like. I hadn't given this new one much thought ahead of time, but if I'd forced myself to do so, I would have hoped for something more about just being in a comfortable, happy relationship...not all of which would have to be happy, there are plenty of insecurities and disputes in any relationship, but it would have been neat to see her put her lens to that, rather than this thing, which is only interesting if you're entirely bought in to the Taylor Swift Extended Universe.

ha I was just writing a post comparing this to the MCU. as a non-fan, non-hater everything I read about this album, pos or neg, makes it sound so insular. I suppose that makes sense as a reflection on the whole Eras thing tbf, but it's somewhat surprising for one of our biggest Pop Stars

@Ivy, do you like the opening couplet of Opalite? I get way more "genuine feeling" out of her delivery on a song like "Eldest Daughter" (which to be clear, is not one of my favorites) than on most of Reputation (which to be clear, I like).

@Alfred, I really don't hear "windy" or "tedious" in this record! Poets? Absolutely. Not here.

The lack of any tension from a genuine rhythm section, whether programmed or acoustic, kills the album for me.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 6, 2025 9:52 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can you say more about this? The bass and oftentimes the drums are some of my favorite musical elements on this record.

"Wood" as a wedding staple... oh please no.

All the Charli/punching down talk... just thinking showgirlship/pro wrestling kinda style it does seem good for business. Brat got her far enough to be worthy of a TS song dedicated to her.

Yknow said as a Charli fan who didn't even know Sympathy was about TS.

FWIW Caramanica had a much more generous read of "Actually Romantic" than Snapes and noted its similarities in sound to Olivia Rodrigo, making it more of a general commentary on the other female pop stars she still inspires vitriol from after 20 years of being in the game. I am aligned to Snapes' reading of the lyrics and don't think this is another "Dear John" effort (can you imagine Taylor trying to make a song that sounded anything like BRAT?!).

Got your sweater on my bed, yeah I'm humpin' that

lol

Can you say more about this? The bass and oftentimes the drums are some of my favorite musical elements on this record.

― Indexed,

The loops and things are rather vaporous; it's been a problem for me for a while.

a general commentary on the other female pop stars she still inspires vitriol from after 20 years of being in the game

i feel like i may be seen as crazy for putting showgirl (just barely) in the top half of her discography but it's less about how much i like it and more about how i appreciate the return to pop/rock professionalism after many years of soundcloud dubstep slime:

https://www.spin.com/2024/05/best-taylor-swift-albums/

they fit pretty neatly into three tiers for me with her on #12:

Tier 1
Speak Now
Folklore
Evermore
1989

Tier 2
Red
Fearless
Lover
Reputation

Tier 3
the debut and the three most recent records

FWIW Caramanica had a much more generous read of "Actually Romantic" than Snapes and noted its similarities in sound to Olivia Rodrigo, making it more of a general commentary on the other female pop stars she still inspires vitriol from after 20 years of being in the game. I am aligned to Snapes' reading of the lyrics and don't think this is another "Dear John" effort (can you imagine Taylor trying to make a song that sounded anything like BRAT?!).

i'm just assuming that it's specifically a charli diss and implicitly also an olivia diss in that taylor thinks the broad themes of the song apply to her too (just seemingly not the specifics?)

_a general commentary on the other female pop stars she still inspires vitriol from after 20 years of being in the game_

Perhaps if she didn’t repeatedly target the chart runs of other female pop stars by strategically re releasing albums to sabotage their chances of reaching #1?

No no they just hate her cos they’re jealous.

Agree about the rhythmic doldrums (or dull drums) here. They SOUND good, I agree there’s a little more snap in the production than the last few, but there’s not much going on, not much forward motion.

Red remains her best album partly because it has the best drums of any Taylor album.

the 'targeting' of other people's release dates always sounded paranoid to me. TTPD had a mercenary and absurd strategy to stay at number one as many weeks as possible, that inherently means elbowing out a ton of new releases, friend of foe or neutral. i'm not a mind reader so i don't know that she DIDN'T cackle like a movie villain when she blocked certain artists from number one, but i also don't know (or care) if she did.

It’s some Trump-like behavior.

And wasn’t Olivia Rodrigo about 1 years old when Taylor’s debut came out? Why is Taylor going after her?

"actually romantic" is so pointedly and obviously about charli that i wouldn't give a second thought to the theory that it's also about olivia

i'm just assuming that it's specifically a charli diss and implicitly also an olivia diss in that taylor thinks the broad themes of the song apply to her too (just seemingly not the specifics?)

why is this lady dissing anyone, get a fucking life you blonde dork

Taylor's explanation of "Actually Romantic" reminds me a lot of Taylor talking about previous writing sessions with Max Martin for Red - from which it sounded like he will dig for a notionally interesting personal issue that forms the song's angle but then construct the song to simply hammer that point into the ground. This doesn't necessarily result in bad songs - for every "Bad Blood" there's a "Style" or a "Delicate" - but it does seem like it would carry a high risk of tone deaf persecution-wallowing.

More broadly, it only becomes clearer over time that the subtlety of Taylor's songwriting is an index of how subtle she is pushed to be by her surrounding circumstances and collaborators - the capacity to go from "I Forgot That You Existed" to "August" in consecutive albums and years is also the capacity to go from "Clara Bow" to "Actually Romantic" in consecutive albums and years.

the 'targeting' of other people's release dates always sounded paranoid to me. TTPD had a mercenary and absurd strategy to stay at number one as many weeks as possible, that inherently means elbowing out a ton of new releases, friend of foe or neutral. i'm not a mind reader so i don't know that she DIDN'T cackle like a movie villain when she blocked certain artists from number one, but i also don't know (or care) if she did.

― some dude

The first time she was accused of this was when she suddenly decided to let her music all be on Spotify again the same day Katy Perry released Witness. It didn't seem like just a coincidence considering Bad Blood was all about her one sided feud with Katy and Calvin Harris even let slip that she had been trying to tear Katy down whilst they were dating.

Xp great post

The first time she was accused of this was when she suddenly decided to let her music all be on Spotify again the same day Katy Perry released Witness. It didn't seem like just a coincidence.

Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. She is absolutely ruthless and she’ll never lose.

You mention Calvin Harris. Do you remember what she did to him? She wrote something for him but used a pseudonym. Then later she turned around and claimed, in like a cagey not saying/just saying way, that he took credit for her work. And he responded all frazzled, like complimenting her genius 100 times before mentioning that please taylor it wasn’t like that you asked to use a pseudonym.

I am not saying it is bad that she is the way she is. She is a competitor, like michael jordan playing the game of fame. It is just irritating that she doesn’t always own it. A lot of times she *still* falls back on “she wears short shorts / i wear t shirts” type stories where she is the innocent and meek victim of h8rs just learning to find her voice. And it just seems laughably out of step with reality. Like a stallion claiming he is a donkey or something.

She has billionaire disease, where nothing matters but acquiring more and destroying your enemies.

Aggrieved rich white people is the zeitgeist it’s true.

A lot of times she *still* falls back on “she wears short shorts / i wear t shirts” type stories where she is the innocent and meek victim of h8rs just learning to find her voice. And it just seems laughably out of step with reality.

Taylor should actively avoid trying to be authentic to her lived reality: she’s generally a much better songwriter when she either abandons autobiography or cradles it loosely.

That is good advice for any songwriter imo

I've never assumed that this putatively most autobiographical of songwriters wrote autobiographical songs. I just don't think of songwriting -- or most art -- that way. Fiction mediates.

I can't pinpoint whether this album's weakness stems in part from an (over)reliance on autobiography; I just hear weaker melodies and mostly insidiously banal lyrics.

Swift's characters often feel like generic archetypes pulled from movies. So it makes sense when she just straight up sings about movie stars.

TimF, Do you really believe that? So many of her best songs are based on her lived experiences! Some that come to mind: "Our Song," "Should've Said No," "All Too Well," "15," "Lover," "Mean," "But Daddy I Love Him," "Clara Bow," and on this one, "Ruin the Friendship" and "Opalite."

I'm gonna be pedantic and ask, how do we know? She told us?

I understand how to some fans the metastory of the artist is as much part of their art as the actual music and there's probably examples where I feel that way to some extent but frankly most celeb's lives are very dull so I've not been very enthusiastic about readings that focus on the supposed autobio.

I think the difference is that with her earlier songs; they were personal stories that also felt quite generic - and so many people could relate to them and feel an emotional connection (see also: Springsteen); but the more specific they've become to Taylor Swift superstar celebrity and her "haters", the less easy it is to give a shit?

@Alfred, she's released hundred of pages of early journal entries and her songs are full of specific details. I guess it could all just be an elaborate scheme, but c'mon.

Could be she's a secret novelist.

I appreciate that the fans enjoy using their magic decoder rings but the autobiographical nods in her songs always felt like a very facile reading of her own life? Kind of a weird inversion that, instead of viewing the lyrics as the storytelling of the everywoman and applying them to their own lives, it became "but what does she mean?"

Maybe the lyrics were always a considered, not facile, read of her own life and she doesn't really dig that deeply! Now you've got "I enjoy relationship with large beefy man" and "I am petty when people talk about me"

the joke's on me for thinking that Taylor Swift has a deep inner life that's not captured in cloying lyrical gestures

"I enjoy relationship with large beefy man" > should have been the album title

Those who don't like the lyrics on this album...I just don't see them as a dramatic departure from the rest of her oeuvre? Bits of Ophelia's lyrics remind me a lot of Midnights, for example. Father Figure is very reminiscent of The Man. And I love how many personal details are back in these songs. "Gallatin Road and the lakeside beach/ Watching the game from your brother's Jeep"..."But as the 50 Cent song played/ Should've kissed you anyway."

It's just hard to believe that you all see these lyrics as so much worse than "Why are you mad when you can be GLAAD?" and "Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you're in my head?" She's always been camp, petty, and "clever" not funny.

@mh, I don't know that I've ever thought of myself in Taylor's songs. The self-titled and Fearless were so specific to the experiences of a young female that I just got used to thinking of her lyrics as a lens into a specific person's world. When she started intentionally storytelling with characters, I still thought of them as reflections of the things Taylor was interested in and not about how they applied to my life. I don't think this is that different from how I listen to a lot of other music, but I am also not a huge lyrics person, generally.

I still thought of them as reflections of the things Taylor was interested in and not about how they applied to my life. I don't think this is that different from how I listen to a lot of other music, but I am also not a huge lyrics person, generally.

This is me too.

i'm still dying at the "album for cop wives" comment

Father Figure is very reminiscent of The Man

"the man" also not a good lyric

It's just hard to believe that you all see these lyrics as so much worse than "Why are you mad when you can be GLAAD?"

it's not, it's perfectly in line with her worst material

idk I feel like in the past her lyrics didn't sound like a student newspaper opinion piece:

Everybody's so punk on the internet
Everyone's unbothered til they're not
Every joke's just trolling and memes
Sad as it seems, apathy is hot
Everybody's cutthroat in the comments
Every single hot take is cold as ice

but lover as previously stated has material like "the archer" and "cornelia street," high water marks in her career, very nuanced and thoughtful songs. nothing like them here

xp

"every single hot take is cold as ice" god, fucking embarrassing, and on the most traditionally taylor-sounding song on the album too

I think I more deeply understand "millennial cringe" now

Ivy, yeah, "Ruin the Friendship" is probably the closest thing to nuance, and you've already said it's the one you like. I have to imagine some of the step down in lyrical nuance is intentional / a choice that goes hand in hand with working with Martin; she also wrote and recorded this while on an international tour and presumably while working on the Reputation re-recording, so one has to imagine the time and energy wasn't up to par with, say, Folklore/Evermore, where she had nothing but time to reflect and write.

I still reel thinking about the energy required to re-record albums, putting yourself in personal and artistic spaces you have abandoned.

Should pop music be about reality?
― Kim Kimberly, Tuesday, October 7, 2025 4:06 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

if being an eternal victim/crybully who needs a man to save her is just a pop fantasy, not reality, it still sucks. very shallow fantasy.

i don't have any knowledge of who she is *really* but the story of taylor swift that playout out across interviews, lyrics, "easter eggs" in music videos, whatever, has aspects i find objectionable.

i don't know why but i keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Korn's "Dead Bodies Everywhere"

i don't know why i seem to be so invested.

i didn't think i cared about taylor swift.

I don't know why i seem to be so invested
I didn't think i cared about Taylor Swift
All of the people I've ghosted stand there in the room
When my depression works the graveyard shift

i think there is someting about her that is familiar and strikes a nerve. i can't place it though.

i don't know why but i keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Korn's "Dead Bodies Everywhere"

― Edward Albee Sure (Neanderthal), Tuesday, October 7, 2025 10:51 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mod please rename the thread title

i think there is someting about her that is familiar and strikes a nerve. i can't place it though.

― treeship., Tuesday, October 7, 2025 11:02 AM

post very much in character

i don't know why but i keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Korn's "Dead Bodies Everywhere"

― Edward Albee Sure (Neanderthal), Tuesday, October 7, 2025 9:51 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

for me it's the chorus to Dashboard's "Screaming Infidelities"

lmao i can here that now

otm Indexed, I had the same thought.

I've only played through it once so far, it just seems really rushed and lazier than usual for her. I still think it would have been best for her to just chill for a couple years after that billion dollar tour, but I guess content creators gonna create content.

I still reel thinking about the energy required to re-record albums, putting yourself in personal and artistic spaces you have abandoned.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 October 2025 14:45 (thirty-nine minutes ago)

this is a really interesting angle I hadn't considered.

Hell, I can't even imagine the mental energy required to go on tour and perform songs you already recorded, again and again and again. Once I write something and send it out into the world, I'm done with it forever.

oh it's different than just writing because playing music is fun

treeship otm about why taylor swift sucks.

I still reel thinking about the energy required to re-record albums

I think the energy was there because she was sticking a knife into a foe's abdomen again and again

otm Indexed, I had the same thought.

― better than ezra collective soul asylum (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, October 7, 2025 10:19 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cue the AD "There are dozens of us! Dozens!!" meme

I still reel thinking about the energy required to re-record albums, putting yourself in personal and artistic spaces you have abandoned.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 7 October 2025 14:45 (thirty-nine minutes ago)

this is a really interesting angle I hadn't considered.

It’s cos she likes money, it’s not that interesting

So this is a pretty interesting interview where she talks about how she writes in character and that the showgirl and the poet are distinct personas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUZ9T-hstUI

It’s cos she likes money, it’s not that interesting

― Marsee playground (gyac),

She loves money. She also has a formidable work ethic. To return seven or eight times to abandoned spaces and relearning your lines and cues reminds me of a vet actor touring a warhorse of a play in summer stock, over and over.

putting yourself in personal and artistic spaces you have abandoned

i dunno, she is so happily wrapped up in her own mythology and legacy and setting a standard where everything she does is presented and viewed as a carefully laid brick in a path spanning back 20 years that we're constantly looking back at and inspecting for clues and meaning that i find it really hard to describe her as someone who "abandons personal and artistic spaces." that is a general description of being an artists that to me does not fit this person much at all

She must have anticipated that the album wouldn't be well received, if she's back to doing interviews all of a sudden.

I thought of her obsessive self-mythology too, but consider: to go through the trouble of re-recording every lick and sung note going back to an album you recorded when George W. Bush was in his second term goes beyond self-mythology into a state akin to sociopathy. Which, you know, fine.

xpost

the thesis of the eras tour is that personal and artistic spaces are not places to be abandoned but rather ones that contain foundational memories not just for the listener but perhaps even more importantly for the artist, and as such those places deserve to not just be revisted but rebuilt as monuments to all there was and is

I think tours are different experiences from recording. Megastars like Janet Jackson, Garth Brooks, Madonna, you name'em, have always used tours in part as ways to reenforce foundational memories; tours function as statues in the park.

of course artists have always played and recontextualized old music on tour but there is clearly something about the way she presented that tour that was meant to convey to the public that this was a different and more special way of engaging with old music. and it was obviously received as such!

as far as the re-recordings go i really don't know how you could view them thru any lens other than finances and personal animosity. i would agree with gyac that i'm not sure it's much more interesting than that

Well, sure, reclaiming her masters and all that. That's her intention. I'm looking at it as an observer, thinking, "Damn, girl, that's work." Anger is an energy.

to what degree her work ethic is driven by artistic vs economic impulses is certainly a topic for debate

She can talk to Mick Jagger about it.

It's hard not to read greed into the continuous milking of her fanbase. "Oh, you like the new album and already bought all four difference covers with the exact same content? Cool! I've got some nifty acoustic versions you might like to hear, so I'm gonna break 'em into batches of 2 or 3 and you'll need to buy all four new exclusive versions from my website to hear 'em all!"

It seemed like she was starting to get a lot of backlash for that kind of thing after the endless variants for Midnights, but it's back again. Of course there's an argument that it's gaming the charts and sales stats, sure, but it's also really fucking gross.

Looking forward to the The Life of a Showgirl: Hospice Care and The Life of a Showgirl: Afterlife editions in four months.

haha for a sec i was like ... sure i don't like her either but i'm not sure i want her dead lol

I have a hard time accepting that these things are entirely motivated greed and financially motivated when we're talking about someone who was went through years of sexual assault litigation for $1, gave hundreds of millions of dollars of her earnings to her crew, etc. All rich people are motivated by money, so I won't pretend she's not, but if the fans didn't immediately buy the 14th version of Midnights, they'd stop making them! I routinely see artists release multiple vinyl editions of their albums now...this is not a new or unique thing.

Well I'd say it's a large order of magnitude difference between a band that sells 10,000 copies of an album, tops, to have three different vinyl color variants, and what Taylor's doing though.

There are ways to spoil your fans that isn't milking the same material over and over and over and over again.

Fwiw, I don't begrudge her monetizing her talents and no one "forces" her fans to buy it all, I just find the crass exploitation of fans off-putting.

Work for her crew one season, boom, $55 million bonus

Sadly my application is still pending! I'll lug wardrobe crates for her.

The fans aren't fucking victims, guys. If people don't want to own a variant of an album, they won't buy it. All those acoustic versions are freely available on youtube and spotify -- not like you need to buy the Japanese import to literally hear the one bonus track, which y'know, Bjork and Radiohead were doing 30 years ago. I really don't get this line of criticism. I went to a Pixies/Sppon show recently and saw a guy buy all seven or whatever versions of the tour t-shirts and the tote bag to boot. Poor guy.

sometimes you're a band t-shirt guy but for one particular band. what are you going to do, wear the same shirt seven days in a row? go shirtless six days of the week? hmm?

but why then release 4 CDs with 2 acoustic tracks each or w/e? what's the strategy from her end?

also, genuine question, what does this mean? "gave hundreds of millions of dollars of her earnings to her crew"

never mind, ignore my first question, I misread the post

pic.twitter.com/H6gpfqAtuS

— felicity shagwell ੯‧̀͡⬮ ᡣ𐭩 (@liIpochaco) October 6, 2025

The fans aren't fucking victims, guys.

Idk, I think I see one right here. Did Pixies/“Sppon” use their vast stumble bonus track wealth to fund private jet trips across continents so they didn’t have to bother having dinner in the same city they were touring in?

also, genuine question, what does this mean? "gave hundreds of millions of dollars of her earnings to her crew"

― rob, Tuesday, October 7, 2025 3:58 PM (eight minutes ago)

never mind, I looked it up myself. she gave bonuses equivalent to 9.5% of the total ticket sales from the tour, must have put a serious dent in HER earnings

That should have been single but I don’t need to read another rant about how a run of limited edition tshirts is just like rereleasing multiple versions of the same product so you can fund frivolous lawsuits against, oh idk, teenagers who track your private jet usage?

I didn't even bother bringing up the difference in scale of environmental impact between twenty boxes of t-shirts toted around for a tour and warehouses full of exclusive CDs and vinyl that impact the ability of other artists to get their albums pressed.

Can we not do this again please.

Didn’t do it the first time, if you want to be ubiquitous people will have opinions. Anyway my last thought for now is that self-censoring the word “dickmatised” on a song purely about Travis Kelce’s penis might be the funniest thing she’s done in years.

can someone offer a precis of information about travis kelce's penis without me having to listen to the song or read the lyrics

proportional hog

xpost It's made of wood but wants to become a real penis

mmmhmm

Consider the beneficial environmental impact of not laboriously reproducing opinions with all the originality and insight of a fifteen year old’s seventh post on Reddit

It’s ok to not pretend the very rich are victims btw

I forgot we aren't supposed to denigrate the ilm pop darlings. Flogging myself appropriately as required by the Poptimism Accords of 2008.

lol I’ve been nastier about this album than anyone on this thread. The problem is not what you think.

I've been subtly hinting that my take is Taylor Swift is Not That Deep as a Person -- And This is why That's OK

the point of Taylor giving millions of HER earnings to her crew is that she very easily could have given someone else's earnings to the crew, but she made sure it was hers. like she could have given all of her gaffer Travis's earnings to the rest of her crew and told Travis that 'there's McDonald's' when he asked where his money was, but she didn't. and that's big of her.

bet some of you feel dumb now criticizing her.

I hope everyone watches that video or other parts of what is a really good video and confirms that it's satirical which somehow seema to have gone over a lot of people's heads.

(meant "what is a good interview")

she wrote bad lyrics on purpose? is all i have to say to her implying it's satirical

it's like Tommy Wiseau putting "It's a comedy" on the cover of The Room after the reviews came in

Thanks for sharing the interview ENBB

Taylor acknowledging that she is leaning into a caricature of herself here does not render these songs satirical nor good

That is what I meant about the perils of her writing “autobiographical” songs - I guess it’s possible that “Our Song” is autobiographical, but its construction is driven by what works in terms of narrative, rhyme scheme, the joyful pile-on of detail.

Similarly the Chekhov’s Gun device in “All Too Well” would be exactly as delightful whether or not that scarf ever existed.

But here she’s playing to the section of her audience who conceive of depth and meaning like a game of wordle.

now she'd use the scarf to strangle Jake G

Now she sends his babies axes

I'm with Indexed in that I think the lyrics on this album are of a piece with what she's always done, or rather what she's done since Speak Now (which was essentially a collection of subtweets about various people, most of them working in show business). It's also why Fearless is still my favorite.

(she'll probably revive the axe motif when she writes a post-breakup sequel to "Wood")

The Life of a Vengeful Lumberjack

it's funny she uses the word "dickmatized"

Surely only a matter of time before she releases a song called “Lorena Bobbitt”

That is what I meant about the perils of her writing “autobiographical” songs - I guess it’s possible that “Our Song” is autobiographical, but its construction is driven by what works in terms of narrative, rhyme scheme, the joyful pile-on of detail.

the best songs of course speak to universal experiences, whatever their source material. taylor probably knows that. but we live in a celeb obsessed age of ephemeral gossip and she caters to it.

the number of people who think “dickmatized” is a neologism or misspelling, smdh. Taylor fans need some cultural outreach

xp I feel like the ephemeral celeb gossip stuff peaked years ago? it’s more targeted “I know everything about my parasocial bestie and all their personal gripes” now and not a broad prurient interest in whatever

It is pretty boring when she’s writing about non-entities like Jake Gyllenhaal and Joe Jonas. I wish she’d take on more titans like Lefsetz.

I used to date a swiftie and she took me to the 1989 tour. Joe Jonas made a cameo onstage so at least some of these exes might not mind having been the source of songs.

That concert was weird and culty. They played videos on the importance of friendship where lena dunham and selena gomez would share stories of laughing and baking cookies with taylor. Felt very forced even though I like Selena and (maybe not an ilx approved opinion anymore but whatever) Dunham.

At one point taylor said we were all her friends. She was sort of like a kindergarten teacher.

I remember when Taylor had a gay guy over to eat at her house and then sent him out to tell the press that she wasn’t homophobic.

Lol

she'd make a good potus in the dick nixon vein

Forgive me
she was so loquacious
so woke
and so bold

“Holy Ground” - one of her best songs - is about her reconciling platonically with Jonas. So in that sense it’s just as “celeb gossip culture”/subtweetish as “Actually Romantic”. But the difference is that you don’t need to know the purported factual basis in order for that song to work. A lot of these new songs don’t allow the listener to abstract away from the factual grounding, because if you do there would be nothing of interest left.

It’s not about the content.

She would be more trumpian than nixonian

Constantly nursing grievances

Trump is a lot funnier TBH

"Holy Ground" has that amazing rhythm track.

wasn’t aware of the video cameos at concerts. interesting choice!

as like, a 2013-era appreciator/merely aware of of charli xcx-er, i’m here to announce mild surprise that my 19 y/o interrupted gen convo to state to me, an ancient dad, “did you see swift dissed charli in a song? it seems dumb. ” but she’s no swiftie.

i’m not clear of this awareness means anything other than that now i’m aware that these people are “in the news.”

I also dated a Swiftie at one point, and I was kind of surprised how acceptable- preferable even, the re-recordings were for the hardcore fanbase. To me that smacks of The Animals/Ventures Greatest Hits cassettes you might find at a grocery store, some semi-legit lineup of a classic band, re-recording their hits ALWAYS with tons of reverb circa 1986, etc, just the lamest thing you could possibly do. In fact it was so prevalent that many early CD comps that are the real deal state "original recordings" prominently.

"oh, cool, so are you gonna listen to Taylor's Version and decide which you like better?"

"what? no. I'll only listen to Taylor's Version now."

iHeart stations mostly play the Taylor's Versions of old songs now, it's pretty irritating with 1989 songs, they really didn't quite get the sonics right without Max Martin. the TV albums basically wound up being her mixtapes, it allowed her to really start dropping music as often as Drake and get to a level of year-round ubiquity that usually only big rappers enjoy. i roll my eyes at that whole phenomenon a lot but i'm also kind of glad that she did more than anybody to teach a generation of musicians and music fans what a master recording is and why it's important for an artist to own their masters.

Love to see the "Holy Ground" love, absolutely in my top tier of hers.

was the deal with Big Machine particularly bad for her? Sure, its good that people understand the value of owning your masters. But I feel like a big part of the equation is being left out of the general narrative, like how much was Big Machine spending on Max Martin, Antonoff, her advance, promotion etc etc over YEARS to bring her to the point where buying her masters was even possible. I understand that she probably should have had the right of first refusal when they came up for sale in the first place, at least thats what I would consider the right thing to do, but....

'No Good Art Comes From Greed' Yikes if she really made 12 different CD versions, the last four announced of those being the ones with bonus tracks. That's awful.

https://defector.com/taylor-swift-life-of-a-showgirl-bad-greed

Savage. I don't know. You can't say she doesn't have a work ethic (7 albums including 4 re-recordings, along with 18 months of touring, in three years). If this is just about money, wouldn't she do far better with Eras Tour pt II? Sweatshirts sell for way more than vinyl.

The last four variants, have different bonus tracks each, right? So fans ordered one cd (or multiples for covers or whatever), and then found out that there were four more cds that were released later that each had different bonus tracks. That sounds like Garth Brooks trying to get on the charts tricks and yeah, that's just fucking greedy.

That's the first thing i've heard that has given me a negative impression of her, all of the other stuff (Charli) could be celebrity nonsense but as a music collector that's some garbage.

The last four variants, have different bonus tracks each, right? So fans ordered one cd (or multiples for covers or whatever), and then found out that there were four more cds that were released later that each had different bonus tracks.

Time for all you swiftie daters to introduce them to soulseek.

this is actually only slightly worse than when she first used the Ticketmaster verified fan programme for the Reputation tour, and you could buy up to 12 copies of the album to increase your chance of getting tickets

how acceptable- preferable even, the re-recordings were for the hardcore fanbase.

Fwiw, my younger daughter went full re-recordings for the duration, but as soon as the old versions became OK again with Swift's endorsement she enthusiastically went back to them. As in, some variation of "phew, I'm glad that's over with." I told her that I thought she preferred the new versions, and she said there are some things she likes better about some re-recorded albums and songs, but by and large the original albums are the ones she loves and the new ones are novelties. She mostly embraced the new ones out of a sense of loyalty and solidarity. She recognized it as gamesmanship.

I'm with Indexed in that I think the lyrics on this album are of a piece with what she's always done, or rather what she's done since Speak Now (which was essentially a collection of subtweets about various people, most of them working in show business). It's also why Fearless is still my favorite.

I mean, that’s kind of the point. She was 20 when Speak Now was released. Perhaps less endearing now when she’s a media titan who’s amassed unassailable wealth, but evidently there’s more of a market out there for the very rich whining about not being universally liked than I’d thought.

Talked to a Swiftie yesterday and expressed that "Actually Romantic" was unbecoming; he was adamant that if Charli was doing the things Taylor calls to light in the lyrics, the song is perfectly justified.

That is what I meant about the perils of her writing “autobiographical” songs - I guess it’s possible that “Our Song” is autobiographical, but its construction is driven by what works in terms of narrative, rhyme scheme, the joyful pile-on of detail.

Similarly the Chekhov’s Gun device in “All Too Well” would be exactly as delightful whether or not that scarf ever existed.

But here she’s playing to the section of her audience who conceive of depth and meaning like a game of wordle.

― Tim F, Tuesday, October 7, 2025 4:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

How do you rate and consider "Marjorie" in this context? It'd make my top 5 Taylor songs and is one of the few that really moves me specifically because of who it's about and the words Taylor uses to eulogize her.

he was adamant that if Charli was doing the things Taylor calls to light in the lyrics, the song is perfectly justified.

A man or woman over 18 who takes this shit seriously breaks my brain; it's the popstan equivalent of the who's-up/who's-down POLITICO ethos on social media.

Of course a Swiftie thinks Swift is justified. That’s how nationalism works.

Swift tankies.

Probably thinks Charli is using human sheilds

Space lasers.

BTW Tom Ewing’s post and the subsequent exchanges in replies make for good reading:

https://bsky.app/profile/tomewing.bsky.social/post/3m2ngoov5lc2b

This album probably will be just as successful as the last one, but I think the Charli diss is almost designed to kick people like us off the bus. It’s like her “deplorables” moment.

this is the most Charli fans who don't really care about TS have paid attention to her in years, though

if she really wanted to make such a heel turn she could at least seem like she was having fun with it, like "look what you made me do" wasn't good but it was endearingly silly

I got curious about who was playing bass on this album (Shellback?) and the flute on "Honey" and finally looked up the credits. Apparently "Wood" features flute, alto flute, trombone, flugelhorn, English horn, bari sax, a clavinet, and bass clarinet. There's a tuba and accordion on "Honey." And there's an oboe on "Cancelled!"

all of this just makes me fantasize about sabrina carpenter k.o.-ing swift in a beef next year.

he was adamant that if Charli was doing the things Taylor calls to light in the lyrics, the song is perfectly justified.

A man or woman over 18 who takes this shit seriously breaks my brain; it's the popstan equivalent of the who's-up/who's-down POLITICO ethos on social media.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 8, 2025 8:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this x100000000 - people take this who won the "battle" hip hop style mindset into it (which sucks in hip hop too)

i feel like everyone is chasing that high of the kendrick/drake beef

they're not like us

taylor diss geese so we can consolidate into #onethread

'No Good Art Comes From Greed' Yikes if she really made 12 different CD versions, the last four announced of those being the ones with bonus tracks. That's awful.

https://defector.com/taylor-swift-life-of-a-showgirl-bad-greed

― Frederik B, Wednesday, October 8, 2025 2:39 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

so she's pulling a Boris?

I heard that if you play all the bonus tracks at the same time on their own boomboxes it becomes another new song.

lol

wouldn't put it past her to pull a Zaireeka

Only way to hear it is in the middle of a football field with the various versions played through the PA.

i would agree w/ the idea that taylor missed an opportunity w/ "actually romantic" to write a more thoughtful and interesting song but emotionally speaking charli wrote the same song about fka twigs w/ "von dutch" so i have a hard time feeling like she was wronged, even w/in the narrow context of pop star beefing, in any way. if anything "actually romantic" makes for a neat food chain construction between the three artists...

Ooh, the plot thickens. I didn't know "Von Dutch" was about Twigs.

I don’t think Charli is above reproach either—if Taylor had dissed her for bigging up Dime Square Nazis on BRAT then I’d be there for it.

xpost yeah, you have to be deep in the lore to know that that’s a Twigs diss.

i'm trying to think of how to properly articulate this but -- is taylor swift the biggest pop star of all time who has essentially never had a new vision for how pop music should sound? the biggest pop star of all time who will leave behind no sonic fingerprint? if i think of what taylor swift's legacy is going to be to other artists a decade or two down the road, i imagine a whole generation of pop stars will model aspects of their careers after her but will anybody be like "i want to *sound* like taylor swift"...? because what would that even mean? the closest i can think of is gracie abrams but that kinda proves the point because what does gracie abrams sound like? it's not to say that taylor doesn't have a "sound" because i think her music from 1989 and on is pretty narrowly defined from a sonic POV but there was a period of her career post-'fearless' where the sonic direction of her music was a juicy topic for both the artist and audience to chew on. but she is now, by my count, on 6 albums of very overt pop music where she is doing nothing to shift the sound of pop music in any way. the best she could do was "it was a pandemic so i made a singer songwriter album." i find this as ahistorical as i find it disappointing! maybe the only A+ list all time legendary pop star i can think of who i would put in a similar bucket is like whitney houston or something? but the terms of their art are so different that that comparison feels silly. maybe adele? but when you start putting taylor up next to people like michael jackson, prince, madonna, janet jackson or even contemporaries like gaga, beyonce etc -- people we consider to be apex auteur songwriter/producer pop stars -- her lack of ever having had anything to say about how pop music should sound (as opposed to how her own music should sound) is imo extremely glaring and has made her last three albums ones for the dustbin of history for me

if Taylor had dissed her for bigging up Dime Square Nazis on BRAT then I’d be there for it.

Wait, what?

that's a reference to "mean girls" being about dasha from red scare but given that taylor dated matty healy i'm not sure she'd have much of a leg to stand on there...

not a global phenomenon in the same sense but Westlife are the third most successful act of all time in terms of UK Singles chart and you would be very hard-pressed to find anyone who is currently making music like them, and even at their peak of success they were outliers amongst their boy-band peers.

I think a huge part of why Brat's success stings Swift is that the memes and the cultural imprint trounced any broader impact from her contemporaneous release. There was nothing from TTPD that went viral the same way as eg "I'm so Julia."

And there's nothing she's releasing that's having the same real-world impact as eg Adele's "Hello." The Swift fans seem to love what she does regardless of quality but I doubt anyone who isn't a fan of Swift could tell you much about this album or the last two.

I still haven't played a note of this since I left the cinema and the screening of the lyric videos on Friday. I keep thinking about how many times I gasped in horror at how embarrassing parts of it were, I know it sounds dramatic but this is laughably bad. It feels like the album that her critics think all her music sounds like.

It was definitely funny going to the theater to see Friday the 13th Part 3(D) and walking by a sea of flippers. It was two audiences side by side in the lobby

*flappers

A sea of dolphins

I'm not sure I've ever been in a new album thread here with more ink spilled about lyrics from people who've barely engaged with the album in question. Maybe Folklore/Evermore warped everyone's expectations of what a Taylor Swift lyric is supposed to be, but those albums were also commercial flops.

Here are some of the lyrics I really like on this album.

And if you'd never come for me (Come for me)
I might've lingered in purgatory
You wrap around me like a chain (A chain), a crown (A crown), a vine (A vine)
Pulling me into the fire

I had a bad habit
Of missing lovers past
My brother used to call it
"Eating out of the trash"
It's never gonna last
I thought my house was haunted
I used to live with ghosts
And all the perfect couples
Said, "When you know, you know"
And, "When you don't, you don't"

I pay the check before it kisses the mahogany grain
Said, "They wanna see you rise, they don't want you to reign"
I showed you all the tricks of the trade
All I asked for is your loyalty, my dear protégé

Glistening grass from September rain
Gray overpass full of neon names
You drive (Mm, mm)
Eighty-five (Mm, mm)
Gallatin Road and the Lakeside Beach
Watching the game from your brother's Jeep
Your smile (Mm, mm)
Miles wide

I waited by the stage door, packed in with the autograph hounds
Barking her name, then glowing like the end of a cigarette, wow, she came out
I said, "You're living my drеam"

those albums were also commercial flops

*squints, checks Wikipedia*

folklore was number one for eight weeks and about half a year after release had sold 2.3 million copies and...I would not call that a flop?

Particularly with no tours for those albums

I don't think you need to engage with a whole album to discuss awful indvidual songs. In fact, I think that's a pretty crazy demand, and more evidence that Taylor Swift is clearly held to a different standard.

That said, I did engage with the album, and the problem with me wasn't really what I thought the lyrics would look like on paper, but that they sounded stiff and clumsy combined with the kind of rigid melodies that Max Martin always wants. It worked last time, but this time it feels off.

"Commercial flops" relative to the rest of her albums. They are her worst selling albums with about as well as the re-recordings.

https://preview.redd.it/taylor-swifts-album-sales-in-the-us-v0-nnp7zsuclhsf1.png?auto=webp&s=e1cda0185ed98de0a58506245550e912a05ea939

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3Zh9kLX0AEScuL.jpg:large

She has too much talent to make an album with zero enjoyable moments, but it’s difficult to make it through the whole thing as an album. Some of the single might sound good on radio over time.

Hard to believe this is likely to be her third best-selling album ever, at least according to that chart.

I put it on yesterday for the first time since my initial listen, specifically looking for bright spots I might have missed. Regret to inform that my impression remained the same. There are some pretty good songs, a lot of bad ones, and I really do feel like her writing standards slipped on this one. Someone was comparing this to Speak Now upthread, on the ground that that album also had some waspy stinger, but Speak Now has some of her best melodies and bridges, and also some of her best lyrics. There's nothing on the new one that gets close to the emotional nuance of "Back to December," "Never Grow Up" or "Last Kiss." Even the Kanye song makes room for empathy.

I don't think she was a wiser person at 20 than she is at 35, but I do think she was a much more careful and thoughtful artist in the making of that album than this one.

That distinction is OTM.

People keep framing their critiques around what this album tells us about TS as a person. The real issue is what it tells us about her a songwriter.

She's entered that sacred place inhabited by multimillionaires like Ye, Jagger, Drake, you name'em, where writing about relationships has the distanced quality of a subtitled film and/or writing about their fame and its discontents is what comes most naturally. Even the songs putatively based on experience on Fearless, Speak Now, and Red had the precision of fiction, graced by melodies that sharpened the lyrical details. Since 2022 (for me) her talent for good melodies and lyrics has ebbed, and without those talents she turns to objects of scorn to excite her. I mean, jeez, even Dylan got less mean-spirited as he got older.

I dunno, I think she wrote with precision and grace on the best songs of TTPD (people’s issues with that album seems to come down to the saminess of Antonoff’s production and the sheer length of it). Songs like “But Daddy I Love Him”, “Guilty as Sin”, “I Can Do It With A Briken Heart” (one of her funniest self-jabs, almost as good as “Long Story Short”) and “Clara Bow” managed the rare feat of being both explicitly rooted in her personal experience and effortlessly transcending the limitations of that experience through craft and acuity.

*broken. Writing on my phone here

But look, my views are obviously distorted by thinking that at her best TS is one of the best songwriters we have, and I find myself becoming unduly impatient with critics, fans and Taylor herself when any of them adopt a different frame for considering her work.

Good posts -- thanks for elevating the discussion -- and the four best songs on TTPD by a long shot.

I dunno, I think she wrote with precision and grace on the best songs of TTPD (people’s issues with that album seems to come down to the saminess of Antonoff’s production and the sheer length of it). Songs like “But Daddy I Love Him”, “Guilty as Sin”, “I Can Do It With A Briken Heart” (one of her funniest self-jabs, almost as good as “Long Story Short”) and “Clara Bow” managed the rare feat of being both explicitly rooted in her personal experience and effortlessly transcending the limitations of that experience through craft and acuity.

With an artist of her caliber the waning happens slowly.

I had assumed Taylor was on a wane path circa ‘Lover’ - still some great songs but a creeping sense that she both had to stretch harder to reach previous heights and also had less and less incentive to bother doing so.

The weaknesses of that album and this one are extremely similar (though I think more concentrated here) - so I’m reluctant to adopt any firm conclusions re overall career trajectory

She'll still write good songs -- the artists I mentioned (Kanye West excepted) still write the occasional keeper.

Wonder what was going on in 2021 that might have affected sales numbers of things

/2020

Haha yeah that was my immediate thought

Folklore in particular was crucial in setting up Taylor to seem like a world striding behemoth circa Midnights - its relatively lower sales in part reflect that by that point TS hadn’t had a proper hit since 1989 (which the later success of “Cruel Summer” obscures).

I guess there's no non-COVID counterfactual, but when I talk to Swifties about my love for Folklore/Evermore, they give me the side eye. I thought they were widely considered "down" albums. Doesn't she even say something about Evermore being the one her fans don't like in the Eras film?

i'm trying to think of how to properly articulate this but -- is taylor swift the biggest pop star of all time who has essentially never had a new vision for how pop music should sound? the biggest pop star of all time who will leave behind no sonic fingerprint?

This was a very interesting question, and it raised another question in my mind, which is: are Taylor Swift songs un-coverable? I mean, yeah, there was the Ryan Adams thing but that came off more petulant and look-at-me than respectful. Like, has she pushed the fictionalized-autobiography/personal-lore thing so far at this point that no one else can sing the songs without seeming insane?

xpost That’s weird. I thought Folklore/Evermore was a particularly beloved period. Just didn’t have big pop singles.

I thought it was more beloved too; wasn't aware of a backlash.

A lot of the fans love Folklore but dislike Evermore - in which the songwriting is (for the most part) even more (relatively) obtuse.

It is important, though, to always keep in mind that a lot of the fans are extremely stupid.

One very telling hot take I have seen on the new album was a viral Facebook post where the writer said something like "I got into Taylor with "Love Story". It broke at the same time as Kings of Leon's "Sex On Fire", and all the cool girls liked that song and poked fun at me for preferring "Love Story". I don't care. "Shake It Off" is my spiritual anthem. I'm so glad that Taylor has made a whole album for people like me which all the cool girls who jumped on board with Folklore and Evermore don't understand."

It is important, though, to always keep in mind that a lot of the fans are extremely stupid.

Wow, poptimism IS dead.

A lot of fans of any artist are extremely stupid. Hell is other people etc.

Trudat.

People like Coldplay and Nazis

This was a very interesting question, and it raised another question in my mind, which is: are Taylor Swift songs un-coverable? I mean, yeah, there was the Ryan Adams thing but that came off more petulant and look-at-me than respectful. Like, has she pushed the fictionalized-autobiography/personal-lore thing so far at this point that no one else can sing the songs without seeming insane?

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, October 8, 2025 4:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe different, but reminds me a bit of Neil Tennant's criticism of Swift that she doesn't have a "Billie Jean."

She does have story songs like ‘Getaway Car’ or ‘Style’ that don’t rely so much on being “about Taylor Swift.”

albeit the market is very small in comparison to other formats, but just learned that Taylor accounts for about a third of all new cassettes sold.

Hard to believe this is likely to be her third best-selling album ever, at least according to that chart.

that's the bent reality of equating streaming plays- might as well check out the new Taylor on the way to work- with actual sales.

so, I was on vacation when this album came out and didn't have a chance to actually listen to it until yesterday. i did, however, read a lot of the discourse, which had prepared me to dislike it. surprisingly, though, i find that I am connecting with it more than the last couple of albums on a purely musical level. and I am realizing that the discourse is getting in the way of my enjoyment of songs like "Actually Romantic" and "Wood" because knowing who they are about makes me feel more uncomfortable and ambivalent about them. yes, there are a bunch of clunky/cringy lyrics on this album that would be noticeable even if I didn't know all the metatextual stuff, but I can easily forgive that if the songs are catchy, which they mostly are.

that said, one of the standouts for me is "Ruin the Friendship," which feels more classically Swiftian in both structure and theme and which I found quite emotionally affecting while listening this afternoon. (a coincidence, perhaps, that Taylor's friend Abigail is mentioned both in that song and in "Fifteen," the first of her songs to really move me.)

If I was to attempt to answer the question “how has Taylor changed our sense of how pop music can sound” I would probably point to a song like “Fifteen”, but reframe the proposition as “how has Taylor changed our sense of what a pop song can do while remaining a pop song”.

Taylor isn’t the first pop star to truck in “confessional” songwriting and she’s not the first to signpost that confessional approach with lyrical specificity (Vanessa Carlton’s “White Houses” was a great example of an archetypal Taylor song avant la lettre in its combination of Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel), but I think she may well be the first pop star to do it consistently across her career and to train such a broad swathe of listeners to approach her music applying that as a key frame for understanding what she is doing.

“Ruin The Friendship” is the album’s best song for the way in which (like much of her previous work, with “Fifteen” being a prime example), its specificity and universality do not exist in tension but reinforce one another.

Surprisingly, I've really come around on this album. My initial knee-jerk reaction was that it was terrible and her worst to date. I think I was bringing a lot of negative vibes into that first listen, mainly because I think I'm probably a bit exhausted with Taylor Swift and feel a lot anger of about some of her business and PR practices. On top of that, the first listen of a Taylor album is usually based around absorbing the lyrics, which I still don't think are particularly profound or interesting here (aside from a couple of small moments). But the album has been on high rotation at home this week (gf is a Taylor obsessive) and there's so many satisfying vocal and instrumental hooks from this thing that have been rattling around in my head all week. I think the return to Max Martin has been good for Taylor - there are so many little production and vocal melodies and flourishes that she just wasn't putting into her music as much when she was mainly working with Jack. Basically, it's just a fun, light, catchy pop album. I like it.

The one lyric I really like:
We lie back
A beautiful, beautiful time-lapse
Ferris wheels, kisses, and lilacs
And things I said were dumb
'Cause I thought that I'd never find that
Beautiful, beautiful life that
Shimmers that innocent light back
Like when we were young

How do you rate and consider "Marjorie" in this context? It'd make my top 5 Taylor songs and is one of the few that really moves me specifically because of who it's about and the words Taylor uses to eulogize her.

In case it isn't clear, I'd put "Marjorie" in the same category as "Ruin The Friendship" and "Fifteen" in this regard. The song works because the specificity with which the relationship is framed reinforces, rather than undercuts, its universality.

Nice, jaymc and triggercut, and +1 on finding "Ruin the Friendship" emotionally affecting -- only other songs in her catalogue that have ever made me misty eyed were "The Best Day" and "Marjorie" but the way she sings "When I left school, I lost track of you...goodbye" it's a gut punch; feels genuine and is very relatable. I like how she sings "My advice is always ruin the friendship" in the last chorus, too; not sure she's ever given direct advice (to younger fans?) like this in a lyric before.

I agree, Tim F.

Agreed that "Ruin the Friendship" is an obvious highlight (especially if you have a relatable set of regrets, which whomst among us ...)

Decided to write about this one after all. (All the songs I disliked the most on first listen are now stuck in my head, so mission accomplished, I guess she knows what she's doing.)

https://www.otherdavemoore.com/p/how-you-get-the-world-reflections-4f3

Greil Marcus:

1 Taylor Swift, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, AMC Theaters, Southdale, Edina, Minnesota (October 5). Her narration in this film on the songs from The Life of a Showgirl is interesting, especially when reasonable commentary doesn’t begin to enclose the anger in the songs. As the bile rose in “Father Figure,” “Actually Romantic,” and “Cancelled!” I thought, Lou Reed would like this music. He’d appreciate the way roles inside a song shift so that while no one may be innocent, some are more guilty than others: that, as on Reed’s New York, for a lot of people the exercise of cruelty, dominating the news of the world as well as enforcing the ordinary humiliations of any everyday transaction, is its own reward. He’d appreciate the wit in the way the person pushed to the side can see herself in every role in turn, like the person telling the story in “Positively 4th Street.” Part of the pleasure of this hour and a half is in seeing someone navigate a life, sometimes fictional, sometimes not, without, it can seem, missing a thing. A favorite moment, Swift on Shakespeare, delivered in a way that can make you think, hey, maybe I should check this out: “He really holds up.”...

This is funny because a friend posted earlier this week about the Halloween lineup he's part of, with one band doing Lou Reed and another doing Taylor Swift, and I suggested a set of Lou Reed doing Taylor Swift songs, like "Jackie wears short skirts / I wear t-shirts / Oh baby, oh baby" and he replied "We are never never NEVER oh yeah NEVER NEVER never getting back together."

Some great mashup potential there: "I'm Waiting for the Better Man"; "The Best Perfect Day"; "Coney Island (Baby)"

(Hey)I believe there's got to be some retribution
(Hey)I believe an eye for an eye is elemental
(Hey)I believe that something's wrong if she's alive right now

Decided to write about this one after all. (All the songs I disliked the most on first listen are now stuck in my head, so mission accomplished, I guess she knows what she's doing.)

https://www.otherdavemoore.com/p/how-you-get-the-world-reflections-4f3

― cr4bdbgs, Friday, October 10, 2025 10:52 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I very much enjoyed this essay. Thank you for writing and sharing it.

there's this one part of "life of ophelia" that sounds exactly like the sort of melody billy corgan was writing around the time of adore and i wish she'd commit to that more

Washington Post classical music critic (who also likes PJ Harvey and other non-classical music) isn't crazy about Taylor Swift voice memo demos that he listened to (on certain versions of the album and then some pulled I think)

The memos certainly highlight Swift’s lyrical tendencies in a wilder state: She pens lyrics the way I repack a suitcase at the airport when I’ve been told I’m over the weight limit — a hurried and haphazardly edited attempt to make everything fit where it does not.

They also seem to confirm a suspicion I’ve long had about Swift’s songs — that they often spring entirely from individual words or shiny phrases, the way an interior decorator might design a whole room around a statement lamp. One memo charting the progress of “The Fate of Ophelia” makes clear that Swift is far more attached to the sound of the title than the spirit of the character.

More than anything — and perhaps this is why these memos feel like a letdown — there’s nothing surprising to be found behind this curtain. The life of “The Life of a Showgirl” sure sounds like business as usual at the Swift mill. Each memo seems to tell a story about filling in a predetermined shape with stray ideas and lightly tweaked clichés. Sometimes the recordings expose the songs as little more than syllabic puzzles or unfinished pictures in a coloring book.

In this way, the demo-memos reveal less about Swift’s process than her product — a brand of pop that has a lot more to do with formulas than chemistry. The next time Swift decides to take us behind the scenes, I hope she’s also willing to take us below the surface.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2025/10/17/taylor-swift-life-showgirl-voice-memos-outtakes/

unfrozen caveman classical music critic discovers songwriting

LOL

I mean lol here is a good extremely recent omar little post about John Woo that’s probably closer to realistic quote about how great art is made?

“this sort of go for broke creativity and utilizing everything available to you, and finding a way to incorporate every idea that's possessed you into the story narrative.”

Thx Indexed!

Taylor Swift does use formulas -- but they're for her melodies, not her writing, and they seem pretty intuitive as "formulas" go. You'd think the classical music guy would have at least figured out that "Fate of Ophelia" has Dorian verses so that she can stay in the same scale the whole time. (Is that the part like Smashing Pumpkins? Where she sings "if you ever called for me" in the pre-chorus.)

Also not sure why everyone wants to find a "curtain" for the most What You See Is What You Get superstar of all time.

It was quite interesting to be able to avoid this until now and watch the initial reactions.

Anyway, definitely not top tier Taylor and probably would land in the lower half of my rankings. But this isn't the trainwreck I expected. If she just had to put out one so soon after the tour, at least this is slight (though unfortunately that also extends to the pretty weak lyrics). I like that it's not Antonoff and, as others upthread have mentioned, the bass on here is pretty good!

Keepers - "Ophelia", "Elizabeth Taylor", "Opalite" (clearly the opening run had my hopes higher!), "Honey" (it and "Opalite" are by far the highlights), I also hear some Thompson Twins in "Opalite" and it's a banger even with all the bites of older songs

Meh to decent - "Eldest Daughter", "Ruin the Friendship" (I actually don't hate the high school era Taylor vibe), "Actually Romantic", "Wishlist", "Showgirl"

Terrible - "Father Figure", "Wood" (she just can't pull off Sabrina dirty), "Cancelled"

https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/

It's this kind of thing that makes me hate the Billboard rules these days. The top 14 is just every song from the TS album plus two other songs.

Are the other two Morgan Wallen?

K-Pop Demon Hunters and Alex Warren