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  • Taylor Gets “Imma Let You Finish’d” Again With Accusation of Her Being Unworthy for Time Person of the Year

    Taylor Gets “Imma Let You Finish’d” Again With Accusation of Her Being Unworthy for Time Person of the Year

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    Once again, Taylor Swift has dominated the conversation and, once again, a large part of that conversation is whether or not she “deserves” something. In this instance, being Time’s Person of the Year, a still respected and aspired to cover in a world where print journalism (and most other forms of print) has effectively gone the way of the dodo. The ones calling out the tone deafness of her appearance on the 2023 cover (for perspective, fellow “influencers” shortlisted for the latest edition included Barbie and Vladimir Putin—yes, you read that right) are not just her usual detractors, though. They also happen to be Swifties themselves…arguing that, instead, the masses should be seeing Palestinian journalists on the cover. 

    This was highlighted recently by the hit-or-miss stylings of Saint Hoax, who extracted a number of comments from fans that included such sentiments as, “Big Taylor Swift fan and she’s absolutely had one of the biggest years of her entire career but hey actually maybe there are ongoing world events that could’ve been highlighted with this piece” and “As a Swiftie I’m incredibly proud of her but the real heroes are the journalists documenting the genocide happening in Palestine.” To get slightly meta, the comments about the comments themselves were more divided, with one user agreeing, “Taylor and Beyoncé: nothing more than money machines this year. The world is falling apart and they haven’t said a single thing,” while another said, “Oooomggg stop trying to take this away from her. A young woman makes it to ‘Person of the Year’ on Time magazine and what about these other people who are more deserving?? I’m not even a Swiftie but this is perverse.” Then there was the glib assessment, “Sounds about White.” 

    While the hype and praise around Swift has often made this listener repeat the Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona phrase, “What is it with this chick? She have beer-flavored nipples or something?” it does seem telling that, for the second most obvious time, her proverbial “trophy” is being denigrated/taken away. In fact, in the article itself she alludes to the years-long beef with Ye that started back at the 2009 VMAs when he was still Kanye West. And yes, it also involved fellow 2023 touring powerhouse (complete with theatrical release of said tour) Beyoncé. On that front, one supposes it’s comforting that the cast of characters in the mainstream hasn’t changed too much (mainly because Gen Z has produced a paucity of “stars”). And Swift wants to remind people of that by rehashing some well-marinated beef that started in 2016 (years after everyone thought it had all “calmed down” between Swift and West). With a little song called “Famous,” wherein the erstwhile West asserts, “I made that bitch famous.” The implication being that, thanks to his hijacking of her acceptance speech for Best Female Video of the Year at the VMAs, Swift’s star began to shine a lot brighter afterward. Barring the fact that this is one of the key examples that speaks to West’s narcissism, it’s a flat-out fallacy. No one got Swift to her position except for Swift (and, to reiterate, winning the birth lottery by being born to affluent parents willing to support what many other progenitors would balk at as a pipe dream). 

    Being that Swift is something of the queen of dredging up old material these days (what with rerecording all her previously released albums from Big Machine), it makes sense that she has an innate ability to catalog and recall every “era” of her life. And this was the era that spawned her Reputation phase, one that embraced being the “bad guy” à la Billie Eilish before the latter even really entered the collective consciousness (but insisted before Taylor on “Anti-Hero,” “I’m the problem“). Of course, there was nothing all that “bad” in what Kim Kardashian (then known, foolishly, as Kim Kardashian West) manipulated the media and the masses into thinking: that Swift had consented to Ye rapping, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why?/I made that bitch famous.” When the song came out, however, Swift reacted negatively, rightfully condemning the reference to her as misogynistic and unsanctioned. This prompted Kim K to release select portions of the phone conversation Ye had with Swift about the song that made it seem like she whole-heartedly approved. Never mind that no one bothered to ask her how she felt about the accompanying video, which was even more crass as it paraded naked wax figures (that look just like “the real thing”) of Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, George W. Bush (of all people), Donald Trump, Anna Wintour, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ray J, Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby (again, weird choice) lying in bed together. 

    With Kardashian’s damning “evidence,” Swift was fed to the media and internet dogs, branded with that damning word again: “calculated.” And, newly, “snake.” This betrayal and backlash is a moment in her life that is called out again and again in the Time article as a reason for why she is where she is now after the heartache of that treachery. For, despite the “pain” of being painted as the villain, Lansky notes, “Getting to this place of harmony with her past took work; there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. ‘It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,’ Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. ‘The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,’ she says plainly. ‘The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.’” Cue the lyric from Reputation’s “End Game” that goes, “I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me.”

    That drama came first when Kardashian initially released the edited conversation Swift had with West and, second, when the complete recording was leaked in 2020 (a year when people had plenty of extra time to analyze such things). So it is that Swift can look back now and candidly say, “​​You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” Yet they say what makes a successful person—a hero, even—is someone who doesn’t stay knocked down (though, this is the sort of cheeseball line that, as usual, totally overlooks the many benefits of privilege). Having been part of the fame game for so long at this point, and weathering the many so-called controversies of it (though never anything even remotely as interesting as dancing in front of burning crosses or getting pleasured amid gender-fluid patrons in a The Night Porter-inspired hotel), Swift has learned to take the bad with the good. What choice does she have, after all, if she wants to remain in the spotlight? Which she very patently does.

    As she tells Time, “Nothing is permanent. So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before.” This, to be clear, is her subjective response to being discredited, and has little bearing on the actual album sales that occurred after Kardashian and West attempted to disparage her reputation. Lansky remarks on this as well, coming to the conclusion that if Swift felt canceled, then it’s valid. Life being so much more about feelings than objectivity these days. 

    And what Swift feels now is that her “response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She then adds, in a moment of pettiness that can’t help but overtake her, “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.” More direct shade against not just West and Kardashian (still somehow raking in her millions as “a girl with no talent”), but also Scooter Braun. 

    As for those who call Swift’s decision to talk trash about that trash in what is theoretically a “classy article,” well, it’s obvious why she would more than “casually” “hint” at the feud that ignited the material on Reputation: she’s about to rerelease that album next, and it’s always good to prime the masses for the narrative that was going on during the period in Swift’s life when an album was initially unleashed. And she’s, needless to say, very much ready to take back that narrative (you know, the “one that [she] never asked to be a part of, since 2009”). It being one of the only examples of a time when she wasn’t totally in control of it. Of rerecording this album, Swift muses, “The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be ‘fire.’ The rerecordings project feels like a mythical quest to her. ‘I’m collecting horcruxes. I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.” As it has been for everyone else watching the drama unfold all along. Just as they’re watching a repeat of what West did to Swift at the VMAs by witnessing the internet insist that someone else (multiple someone elses) is more deserving of what she was honored with. Clearly, in this context, the “competitor” is literally in another playing field. Nay, battlefield. Making it difficult for anyone who doesn’t want to offend to argue that Swift being attacked for accepting her place on the cover has nothing to do with Palestine.

    To be even more direct, in America, no one gives as much of a fuck about Palestinian journalists as they do about Taylor Swift. And that’s just the cruel, pure honesty that has ruffled so many feathers. In this regard, the editors of Time actually did do their part to assess “the individual who most shaped the headlines over the previous twelve months, for better or for worse.” Considering the latest Israel-Palestine conflict didn’t even pop off until October, that alone gives Swift a more competitive edge for the cover, as she’s been making headlines from day one of 2023, most notably when the world was “shocked” to learn of her breakup with Joe Alwyn and then appalled by her decision to go for Matty Healy as a rebound. Is it bleak and unfortunate that celebrity culture is more influential and headline-shaping than the everyperson risking their lives to report on unspeakable atrocities? Of course. Is it new? No. Is it worth diminishing Swift’s record-breaking accomplishments in 2023? Not really. Unless one is fond of the symmetry that brings us back to the very moment that Swift says sparked it all for her to work harder, better, faster, stronger (a song Kanye has sampled, yes): being publicly shamed and told that someone else should have gotten her recognition. Recognition that, at this juncture, is almost comical in its absurd reverence. Case in point, at another moment in the article, Lansky pronounces, “As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell.”

    All of these are extremely grandiose, over-the-top comparisons that give Swift a lot more credit than she’s due (ironically, the crux of the argument for why Palestinian journalists should be on the cover instead). Not because she hasn’t “earned her stripes” (even if it’s not as challenging to do so when, again, you have emotionally and financially supportive parents), but because, well, she’s just so vanilla compared to the aforementioned legends she’s being compared to. Even so, maybe it’s time that some people should just “let Taylor finish.” Like she said (despite being fined multiple times for not taking trash out), “Trash takes itself out every time.” Or, in this case, hyper-overrated pop stars doomed to “age out” of popularity do (at least when they’re a woman). Something Swift herself has openly admitted to waiting for, thus taking advantage of the spotlight while the world is fully committed to letting her bask in it. Genocide be damned.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • For the Broke Asses in the Ultra Cheap Seats: The Eras Tour in Movie Format Makes It Clear That Taylor Swift Is Still the Apolitical “Good Girl”

    For the Broke Asses in the Ultra Cheap Seats: The Eras Tour in Movie Format Makes It Clear That Taylor Swift Is Still the Apolitical “Good Girl”

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    Billed instantly as a “three-hour career-spanning victory lap,” Taylor Swift’s sixth tour is, needless to say, her most ambitious yet. Part of that ambitiousness has extended to releasing it as a concert film while still touring the world with the production. Obviously, she’s not worried about losing any profits by making it available to the “broke asses” who couldn’t manage to get themselves to the real thing. And even to those who already did, but simply want to see it in an even more “larger than life” format (IMAX being designed to accommodate such a desire). As Swift says, “Too big to hang out/Slowly lurching toward your favorite city.” That she is, as movie theaters across the globe roll out the reel and proceed to endure what can best be described, rather unoriginally, as Swiftmania. Indeed, one wishes Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr would weigh in on the matter, but instead non-Beatle Billy Joel already decided of Swiftie fanaticism and the Eras Tour, “The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania.”

    Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone tapped into part of why people are so, ugh, enchanted with the tour when he wrote, “​​Taylor Swift keeps building the legend of her Eras Tour, week after week, city by city, making every night so much longer, wilder, louder, more jubilant than it has to be. There’s nothing in history to compare. This is her best tour ever, by an absurd margin. It’s a journey through her past, starring all the different Taylors she’s ever been, which means all the Taylors that you’ve ever been.” The thing about that, of course, is, well, Swift hasn’t exactly been all that multi-dimensional over the years. Sure, she’s changed her sound from country to pop and dabbled with some musical styles in between, but, in the end, she’s still the Aryan wet dream wearing red lipstick. Steadfastly committed to delivering a good time without much of any true substance to say in her position of power. Not through the music itself anyway (unless one counts the forced feeling of “allyship” in “You Need To Calm Down”). Over every so-called era, that has remained the most constant of all—Swift’s singular focus on one non-political topic and one non-political topic only: bad boyfriends. And, sometimes, when she’s cresting on the high of being in love, “good” boyfriends…before they inevitably turn bad. 

    This is one of the key aspects of Swift’s “relatability quotient.” With the “everywoman” seeing themselves in her despite the fact that few “average” women are giraffe tall, thin, blonde and blue-eyed. The Barbie ideal, as it were. Once upon a time, this was embodied by Britney Spears, who experienced a similar level of fervor at her so-called peak (that word always suggesting, somewhat rudely, that a person will never be as good as they were at a certain moment in time). The fundamental difference between the two is that Swift has remained America’s sweetheart throughout her career, while Britney defiantly ripped off the shackles of that role when she shaved her head and, months later, gave a somnambulant performance of “Gimme More” at the MTV VMAs. Up until that instance, Spears had always been a consummate performer. Dancing, (mostly) singing and sexing it up for the crowd. She chose one year in her life to have a rightly deserved breakdown, and things never really went back to being the same for her. 

    In 2007, Swift (a Sagittarius like Britney) was eighteen, and had just released her self-titled debut one year prior. This reality seemed to reinforce that, when it comes to the music industry, there is always another young(er) blonde pop star in the making, waiting to take over for the current “hot thing.” And Swift would embody the same “I’m a good girl who does as I’m told” aura (that Britney initially did) for the vast majority of her career. Herself admitting, “My entire moral code as a kid and now is a need to be thought of as good” and “The main thing I always tried to be was, like, a good girl.” Even now, after “going political” (a.k.a. making one public statement against a Republican Congresswoman), it’s clear that what lacks most from Swift’s work, ergo her stage shows, is a message worth imparting. Of course, her fans and casual listeners alike will say that there can be no more important message than simply “making people feel good.” To a certain extent, that’s true. However, after a while, one wonders if Swift’s failure to say anything on the same level as a Madonna stage show is an exemplification of how the public no longer really wants to be challenged. “Preached to,” as it were. This, in some respects, is emblematic of the “algorithm effect” that has taken hold of society, with everyone seeing only what they want to see, and no “unpleasant” (read: contrary) viewpoints thrown into the mix. Including the one that would dare call out Swift for being anything other than perfection. 

    In this regard, too, she differs from Spears, who was far more derided for being a talented blonde girl, but with “nothing to say.” This being most clearly immortalized in an 00s interview during which she said of George W. Bush, “We should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know. And, um, be faithful in what happens.” Alas, Spears’ faith in a few patriarchal institutions has been shaken to its core in the decades since and, similar to Swift, she’s had a reckoning with the “good girl” she once thought she wanted to be in order to receive endless accolades and praise. For someone like Madonna, who provided the blueprint of the modern theatrical stage show with 1990’s Blond Ambition Tour, that was never a reckoning that needed to occur. She was always a “bad girl” from the start. In other words, a woman who spoke her mind without fear or inhibition. This is why one of her earliest stage shows, the Who’s That Girl Tour, addressed political topics ranging from AIDS to essentially directing the missive of “Papa Don’t Preach” at Ronald Reagan and the pope. No other woman, least of all in the hyper-conservative 1980s, would have ever dared to do that, and certainly not at the very beginning of her career. 

    And yes, it is Madonna, who was once marveled at for staying in the business for a paltry fifteen years, that has allowed for someone like Swift to exist in it for almost two decades without anyone questioning it. Because, as Madonna established, the idea of a pop star, particularly a woman, having many eras is merely a reflection of an inherently misogynistic public that expects to see something new in order to be kept interested in the same woman. Especially when there are more youthful options cropping up all the time. As Swift noted, “The female artists have reinvented themselves twenty times more than the male artists. They have to or else you’re out of a job. Constantly having to reinvent, constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny.” This speaks to something Madonna said about the Who’s That Girl Tour: “That’s why I call the tour Who’s That Girl?; because I play a lot of characters, and every time I do a video or a song, people go, ‘Oh, that’s what she’s like.’ And I’m not like any of them. I’m all of them. I’m none of them.” In actuality, the real reason to highlight that title was the fact that she had a movie of the same name playing in theaters (briefly) the summer the tour was happening. A movie that was originally going to be called Slammer before then-husband Sean Penn ended up being thrown in the slammer himself and it seemed like it would be in poor taste. 

    Swift’s luck with movie roles hasn’t been much better than Madonna’s, but people seem to talk about the clunkers that are Valentine’s Day and Cats far less than, say, Body of Evidence or Swept Away. Both Swift and Madonna are, of late, focusing on what they do best, with the latter kicking off her own world tour the same weekend the Eras Tour film debuted in theaters. Perhaps an unwitting “flex” on Madonna’s part, as she still seems keenly aware that, of all the pop stars, she’s the only one willing to make a truly political statement during her shows. What’s more, no matter how “old” she’s gotten, she has always been an active participant in the choreography expected of a pop star/musical extravaganza. And so, while the Eras Tour film is deft in creating the kind of spectacle that allows the viewer to feel like they’re actually at the show (complete with annoying audience members singing along in the theater), perhaps what stands out more in the movie than it would in person is the lack of choreography that Swift herself engages in. Instead, she’s a master at the art of the illusion of movement as she struts frequently up and down the ample stage. Here, too, Swift can be differentiated from a “real” pop star in that she has always merely dipped her toe into what that means as someone who more strongly identifies with the singer-songwriter qualities that theoretically mean chilling at home and writing poignant lyrics without having to worry about executing a dance move correctly onstage. But this is where Swift makes it clear that, in the twenty-first century, a musician has no choice but to become the multimedia art project that Madonna always was from the get-go. A walking, talking embodiment of synergy. Even if an embodiment that has never truly “ate” (despite Swift’s recent comparisons to the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson…stage presence-wise, among other ways). 

    The uninformed accusations that Madonna is jumping on the Taylor and Beyoncé bandwagon of doing marathon, theatrical shows is rather absurd considering this is what Madonna has been doing from the beginning, long before anyone else thought to put in the effort it requires. Particularly the effort it takes to endure the personal risk to one’s life and reputation by speaking out against the injustices of the world. This has not been received warmly by quite a few institutions, not least of which was the Vatican, who urged Italians to boycott Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour for being blasphemous. In response, Madonna made a public statement in Rome during which she declared, “My show is not a conventional rock show, but a theatrical presentation of my music. And like theater, it asks questions, provokes thought and takes you on an emotional journey. Portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation.” 

    As the Eras Tour film underscores, that’s not really what’s happening at a Taylor Swift show. And that’s fine, one supposes—it just serves as a reminder that what people go apeshit over often isn’t very thought-provoking. With Swift preferring to, instead, take a page from the name of an LCD Soundsystem documentary by just “shutting up and playing the hits.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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