Taylor Swift

[hellsbells]

Wasn't lemonade about Jay-Z cheating?

I mean, I find Taylor's new album repetitive and boring, but she's doing something that appeals to lots of people.

[ahah]

Apr 22, 2024 21:29:33 GMT -4 hellsbells said:

Wasn't lemonade about Jay-Z cheating?

I mean, I find Taylor's new album repetitive and boring, but she's doing something that appeals to lots of people.

I think the difference is that Beyonce sings in general terms about what she's going through - Taylor plants so many easter eggs that her albums look like the White House lawn for the egg roll. Taylor makes it a sport for her fans to sit around the day after an album release and figure out who she's talking about in each line. Yes, it appeals to a lot of people, and she makes a lot of money off of it. But it also keeps her from having any privacy ... if she wants that.

[hellsbells]

I just don't know how much more privacy Beyonce gets than Taylor. They both have pretty intense and rabid fans.

[Deleted]

And wasn’t Lemonade about Jay-Z cheating on her? You don’t get more personal than that.

[ahah]

Apr 23, 2024 7:41:46 GMT -4 @borokat said:

And wasn’t Lemonade about Jay-Z cheating on her? You don’t get more personal than that.

Again, it's universal theme vs specific experience. When Beyonce does an album about being cheated on, or Dave Grohl does an album about grief, the songs are about feelings that many people can relate to. I see that as very different than Taylor singing about when Kim Kardashian was mean to her, working hard to ensure everyone knows she's talking about Kim.

[phillipa]

I'm less concerned with Taylor's privacy as I am with her exes, other women, and children. Taylor can make a conscious choice about how much she wants to share about herself. She also, as others have noted, doesn't have to go to restaurants and football games with other famous people. She could lay low if she wanted to, and she doesn't. That's fine, that's her choice.

But I'm guessing she doesn't consult with the people she writes about. I don't think she's going to her exes and being like, "I'm writing a song about your drug addiction, that's cool, right?" She's not asking for permission to write about people's kids. That's the bigger deal to me. These people didn't consent to any of this, and she doesn't care, because they're just a tool for her to use to appeal to her fans.

[technicolor]

I think Swift herself seems both trapped in this celebrity gossip house she built, yet keeps on adding to it with her marketing, pap walks, Easter eggs for fans and hyper specific songwriting. To be fair, she started it when she was a teenager. She might have difficulty imagining a different way.

The new album is such a muddle because she wants it to be everything all at once. Her intimate confessional Stevie Nicks thing and record breaking pop juggernaut.She wants to be edgy but also appeal to everyone and not have any of the experiments or controversy that comes with real out there songwriting. Pitchfork kinda summarized it with saying that she should have sat on this and decided what she wants it to be. There are interesting songs, but it's too much and too confused.

Like, I can see a thesis forming, but she either lacks the clarity or the will to follow through. Healy is a sort of breaking point for her own conflicted feelings about fame. Like, she doubles down that she wanted him and it's her reputation to ruin. Because I do see the blinkered behavior of her stans who don't want to admit that she's as problematic as Healy and them harassing and threatening him is a way to keep this out of sight because they want Taylor the Disney Princess, not Taylor the very flawed human being.

And she gets there to some degree, but then falls back into her usual martyr narratives. I'll give her this: For all she dished out at him, I think she really humanized Healy for me and I didn't want that Lol. Even at her most myopic, I see the shadow narrative of him realizing that he can't function in her curated world. So her strength as a writer shines through, it's just all unfocused.

[chiqui]

I don't even know Matt Healy and I'm starting to respect him.

[cremetangerine82]

I see both Taylor and Drake as being twins of being successful on a formula and a fear of nor changing it at this point, down to dissing exes in ways that make themselves look like the worse partner. They both have potential of making really bold choices because of their commercial success, but they don't.

[askye]

As I noted upthread: I used to be indifferent to Taylor Swift, but she slowly won me over with her unrelenting, Sith-like quest for world domination.

I agree with the criticisms about the new album being much too long and bloated. I actually messaged one of my friends who is a hardcore Swiftie shortly after the album came out, and I was like: "I don't have the patience to sit through all 31 tracks. Just give me a list of the best 5 or 10 songs that I should stream."

All that being said, I think "So Long, London," the song mentioned upthread about her cheating(?) British ex-boyfriend, is lovely. I also really like "Cassandra," on the extended release, which has a similar vibe to many of the songs on the Folklore and Evermore albums.

Also, if Taylor doesn't call up Greta Gerwig to do a Barbie-themed music video for "My Boy Always Breaks His Favorite Toys," I will be disappointed.