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Tag: Taylor Swift The Tortured Poets Department

  • The Darkness Surrounding Taylor Swift of Late

    The Darkness Surrounding Taylor Swift of Late

    As the news of Taylor Swift’s three canceled dates in Vienna over an elaborate terrorist plot make the rounds, it seems a general “dark pall” has been cast over the singer of late. It started earlier in the year, with the “conspiracy theory” (a.k.a. totally plausible hypothesis) that every time another female pop star has a chance of making it to number one on the charts, Swift chooses that week to release a new iteration of The Tortured Poets Department. Which is why there are now thirty-plus variants of the album. Yet another reason many people felt that Billie Eilish was shading Swift specifically when she told Billboard, “We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging… which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money.” The shade was felt whether Eilish intended it or not because everyone knows that Swift is the “queen” of doing this.

    Eilish also remarked, “I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is. It is right in front of our faces and people are just getting away with it left and right…” While Eilish was sure to say “some artists,” it was difficult for many readers, Swifties included, not to automatically think of Taylor’s album release methods. Or tactics, if you prefer. And yes, she weaponized them just in time for Eilish’s release of Hit Me Hard and Soft, her third record. Alas, it was blocked out of the top spot thanks to the three variants of TTPD that Swift unleashed the same day, May 17th. This precise “phenomenon” (and hardly what Chappell Roan would call a “femininomenon”) also happened when Charli XCX released Brat (after which the world was never the same).

    A week after the album might have slid into the top slot on the UK charts, Swift conveniently decided to release six—that’s right, six—TTPD album variants that were exclusive to the UK. The geotargeting on this front felt especially calculated (to use that word Swift hates being called), and totally merited XCX writing a song called “Sympathy is a knife,” suspected to be about Swift specifically because of the lyric, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.” This being a reference to the brief period when Swift was “canoodling” with The 1975’s Matty Healy, for which XCX’s fiancé, George Daniel, is the drummer. There were other “nods” to being made to feel insecure by Swift throughout the song, including the part of the chorus that goes, “‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side.”

    Charli fans were “moved” enough by the track and its supposed muse to start chanting, “Taylor is dead” at a show of hers in São Paulo on June 22nd. When XCX was informed of the “mantra,” she spoke out on social media, saying, “Can the people who do this please stop. Online or at my shows. It is the opposite of what I want and it disturbs me that anyone would think there is room for this in this community.” So yes, that’s just the first piece of the kind of darkness that’s been following Swift lately, this “varietal” ostensibly of her own making. To be sure, this aspect of said darkness is rooted in her competitive nature and insatiable drive to “succeed”—or, as Lana Del Rey put it earlier this year, “She’s told me so many times that she wants it more than anyone.”

    That much was made clear early on in her career, not just in her willingness to take a bum deal with Big Machine Records, but even in the mention, during an 00s-era interview, of why she decided to play a twelve-string guitar instead of a six-string one. The reason, as she told the interviewer, in the country twang she was then putting on, “I had this one real jerk of a teacher… he goes, ‘There’s no way that you’ll be able to play a twelve-string guitar at your age and your fingers aren’t developed enough and there’s no way you’d be able to play it.’ …So I got that twelve-string guitar and I would play it every day until my fingers bled, and, you know, at first it seemed really hard, and then I just realized that if I put my mind to something, then it was really mind over matter.” This seeming to be her ongoing philosophy for “winning” at the charts. Yet even her continued “domination” in numbers hasn’t fooled “the culture,” with The Guardian publishing an article titled, “Taylor Swift may have captured the charts, but Charli XCX captured the zeitgeist” the same week Swift blocked XCX from the number one spot.

    However, even if the cracks in Swift’s “reign” have started to show this (Brat) summer as the “Gen Z girls”—namely, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan—take over, there was still The Eras Tour to prove her “crown” undisputed. What with the hordes willing to schlep across the world and pay any price to see her (this also resulting in the “Taylor Swift economy” effect, as the business the tour brought to each stop bolstered the revenue of restaurants, hotels and the like). Including an American stalker of Swift’s, who made threats to both her and her current boyfriend, Travis Kelce. The stalker in question flew all the way to the Gelsenkirchen, Germany show, where he was arrested the day of the July 18th performance. Thus, the dark pall surrounding Swift got a shade darker. Ratcheting up on July 29th during a Taylor Swift-themed yoga class where twenty-five children turned up to participate. Tragically, three of those children, all girls, would not make it out alive after a stabbing rampage by a seventeen-year-old named Axel Rudakubana.

    In the aftermath of the attack, misinformation regarding the “background” (read: ethnicity and origins) of the stabber began to spread rampantly online, prompting ongoing political unrest throughout the UK that was propelled by proponents of the far-right. With Swift in the eye of the storm as the “link” to it all, any theories that the use of her name and music might have been a factor in the targeting of this class seemed to be corroborated by yet another, more ambitious terrorist (two, in fact) attempting to infiltrate her August 8th show in Vienna. The plot was foiled (ergo averting another 2017 Dangerous Woman Tour-level tragedy), with Swift spooked enough to cancel all three dates of her slated Vienna performances.

    This means she’ll be “on break” until August 15th, when her next rash of dates for The Eras Tour have her circling back to London’s Wembley Stadium, meaning that she’ll be in the heart of one of the sources of her recent darkness (apart from Joe Alwyn). And it wouldn’t be surprising if she mentioned the Southport stabbings while onstage (then again, Swift tends to disappoint when it comes to being open about anything “too political”).

    To round out the recent tincture of darkness enveloping the pop star, and almost as though to mock everything Swift and her fanbase represent, M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap was released at the beginning of August. It’s a movie that takes place at a “Taylor Swift-esque concert” where, you guessed it, a trap has been set up to lure and arrest a notorious serial killer (played by Josh Hartnett, in his villain era). Indeed, Shyamalan pitched the premise as: “What if The Silence of The Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?” It doesn’t exactly help the current non-rosy image Swift seems to be embodying/attracting at the moment.

    But perhaps this darkness all goes back to what was initially referenced above: Swift’s obsession with being “ahead.” And while Swift herself loves to talk about karma, perhaps she didn’t consider the way in which she might have tipped the karmic scales by being so consumed with the number one (not, in this case, thirteen) spot. For it doesn’t feel like a cosmic coincidence that all of these horrible things should be happening after her summer of chart-blocking, preventing other women in the game from getting their flowers. All thanks to this thorny rose by the name of Swift.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • It’s A Weird Time to Sell Florida As a Place to Escape To As Opposed to From: Taylor Swift’s “Florida!!!”

    It’s A Weird Time to Sell Florida As a Place to Escape To As Opposed to From: Taylor Swift’s “Florida!!!”

    For a long time, people were able to speculate that Taylor Swift was a “God-fearing” Republican. Her ties to the country music genre, paired with a staunchly apolitical nature, made it easy to opt for that assumption. Especially for the audience (mostly male) that wanted to believe Swift was their Aryan goddess. Those fantasies were shattered in 2018, when Swift made the first political statement and endorsement of her then twelve-year career. Her declaration of support for Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen in the midterm elections for Tennessee was accompanied by urging youths who hadn’t yet registered to vote to do so immediately, with Swift concluding, “So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned 18 in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting!”

    It was not “happy voting” for Swift, in the end, though. Because Blackburn won that midterm election and continues to be the senator for that state as of 2024, amid the release of Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department. On said album, there are many songs to pick at in terms of “problematic lyrics” (not least of which is: “We would pick a decade/We wished we could live in instead of this/I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid”), but one that stands out in particular is “Florida!!!” featuring Florence + the Machine (a.k.a. Florence Welch). As track number eight on the album, it falls appropriately between “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “Guilty As Sin?” Both titles evincing images of Florida in that everyone seems to be prison material and most people who live there are guilty as sin (no question mark)—not just of drug-addled misdeeds, but the crime of effectively supporting the state’s increasingly discriminatory policies. 

    Thus, for Swift to romanticize the state at a moment in its history when it has implemented among the most, let’s just say it, 1830s-inspired laws out there (Swift’s dream come true!) feels like a return to her being billable as an Aryan goddess for white supremacists. A category that Florida’s führer, Ron DeSantis, falls into based on his consistent support for extremely prejudicial legislation. “Luckily,” the U.S.’ clusterfuck of a justice system has prevented DeSantis from getting certain constitutionally-violating laws to stick (at least not entirely), including 2022’s comically named Stop Woke Act, which “banned employers from providing mandatory workplace diversity training.” A key portion of that law was blocked by a federal court of appeals earlier this year, indicating the rampant disgust for many of the laws that have passed under DeSantis’ encouragement. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, approving a measure that allows Florida residents to carry a concealed loaded firearm, supporting one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation and, of course, the notorious Don’t Say Gay law, which restricts Florida teachers from discussing gender, sex and sexuality. Such Orwellian laws are also in line with DeSantis and his Republican brethren banning trans people from using public bathrooms that affirm their identity and trying to limit the performance of drag shows under the measures proposed in the incongruously titled Protection of Children Act. 

    All of this is to say, again, it’s a weird time for Swift to be promoting Florida as a place of escape, rather than, in truth, a place people should be trying to escape from. Unless, of course, they’re white and heteronormative like Swift. To that point, Swift remarked of her “inspiration” behind the song, “I think I was coming up with this idea of like, ‘What happens when your life doesn’t fit or your choices you’ve made catch up to you and you’re surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment, and circumstances did not lead you to where you want to be and you just want to escape from everything you’ve ever known. Is there a place you could go?’” It seems odd that the state that would jump out at her for that is fucking Florida. Because, to reiterate, Florida is where you receive said harsh consequences and judgment in the first place. And yet, with Swift having no real concept of what that would actually mean as a result of her long-standing privileged situation in life, maybe she really does have no clue that Florida offers nothing resembling “refuge.” Except, as mentioned, to people who look like her. And share her hetero “values.” 

    Nonetheless, Swift continued to prattle on about writing this tourism ad for one of the worst states, “I’m always watching like Dateline—people, you know, have these crimes that they commit. Where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida, you know?” Do they? That seems like a real “imagination” stretch on her part. Even so, she insists, “They like try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in [to reemphasize, one can only “blend in” in Florida if they possess Swift’s, er, aesthetic]. And I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name, I want a new life, I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping-off point behind, ‘Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida.’” Oof. Absolutely not. Maybe she could have gotten away with the idea of Florida being a place for “reinvention” in the 90s, back when South Beach and Miami Beach were beacons of hedonistic gay nightlife to the point where even Madonna and Gianni Versace wanted to live there. But, at present, those days of “anything goes” acceptance are clearly long gone. 

    Even so, Swift and Welch adamantly declare, “Florida/Is one hell of a drug/Florida/Can I use you up?” Not if it doesn’t use you up first, which it definitely will. Elsewhere, they sing, “I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida/Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable [it is…to champion Florida in such a way at this moment in history]/What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida.” Oh Florida will fuck people up all right—just not people like Swift. And her blithe promotion of this state as some kind of “oasis” for “starting over” is sure to help DeSantis’ cause in continuing to pass whatever dystopian laws he wants. After all, Taylor Swift still thinks it’s “the place to be” regardless.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Here’s What Taylor Swift Changed For The European Leg Of The Eras Tour

    Here’s What Taylor Swift Changed For The European Leg Of The Eras Tour

    If you’re a diehard Swiftie like us, your immediate reaction to learning the title of ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?’ was probably “me, Taylor.” Which is totally understandable! We’ve been following along with the Eras Tour for over a year and she still finds new ways to surprise us. And the European leg is like a new show entirely, now that we have The Tortured Poets Department in our lives.

    Let’s take a look at what changed throughout the show and its setlist, one era at a time! These changes are accurate as of the first night in Paris on May 9th, 2024.

    Pre-Show Playlist

    First off, the changes started before Taylor even took the stage! Taylor added three new songs to the playlist that echoes throughout the venue before she goes on. 

    The Intro

    The nostalgic Eras Tour intro includes Taylor saying the name of each era, so naturally, she had to add in The Tortured Poets Department! Listen closely and you’ll hear her say the album name between the 1989 quote and Red album title. 

    Lover

    At the first show in Paris, Taylor unveiled a new orange and magenta bodysuit with matching boots! Not much changed throughout this set, but we did lose ‘The Archer.’ We thank her for her service! The closing song is now ‘Lover’ with an extended outro. 

    Fearless 

    Thankfully, since the Fearless set is only three songs, Taylor didn’t rearrange anything! Again at the first Paris show, she revealed a new black, silver, and gold fringe dress that we think pays homage to the iconic fringe dress she wore on the 2009 Fearless Tour. We’re not crying, there’s just something sparkly in our eye.

    Red 

    The first major change of the show is that the Red set is now the third era in line, instead of evermore! The setlist remained the same aside from the switch in its placement. We also got a new ‘22’ shirt saying “this isn’t Taylor’s Version,” which we’ll need for when we’re out in public and mumble under our breaths about how a store is playing the wrong version of her music.

    Speak Now

    Taylor really brought us back to the Speak Now World Tour with the refreshed version of the Speak Now set! Unfortunately, we’re back to it being only one song, but we can’t complain too much because we adore ‘Enchanted.’ Before Taylor takes the stage, the screens show updated visuals with stunning flowers, and the dancers come out to keep the crowd entertained. 

    reputation 

    At the opening night of the European leg in Paris, Taylor had the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and give every era a new costume except reputation. And she did it! Nothing changed during this set – not even the red and black snake bodysuit – so all you fellow rep stans out there are safe.

    folklore & evermore

    The sets with the most change are folklore and evermore, which have been combined! But we did lose the ‘seven’ spoken interlude as a result. As Taylor explained it in Paris, she “reunited the sisters, combined them into one chapter.” Even the new Paris costume combined the eras, giving us the folklore style with a golden yellow color like the evermore dress. We think it makes perfect sense and we love getting to hear them together. Some sacrifices, though: ‘tis the damn season,’ ‘tolerate it,’ ‘invisible string’-slash-’the 1,’ and ‘the last great american dynasty.’ 

    Check out the setlist for this section below:

    • ‘cardigan’ (sitting on the cabin where she sang ‘invisible string’ and ‘the 1’)
    • ‘betty’ 
    • ‘champagne problems’ 
    • ‘august’ x ‘illicit affairs’ 
    • ‘my tears ricochet’
    • ‘marjorie’ 
    • ‘willow’ 

    After ‘willow,’ Taylor disappears into the stage to get ready for the next era.

    1989 

    The visuals between everlore/folkmore and 1989 have the same concept as the folklore–1989 transition from the first leg, but they go from a mountain scene to a bright city rather than centering around the folklore cabin. No setlist changes here, though we got a new costume combination! Taylor wore a glittery pink top with a blue skirt in Paris, complete with one pink boot and one blue boot. It honestly reminds us of the mix-and-match jackets and skirts she wore on the original 1989 Tour, and we’re so excited to see what combos she wears in the future. 

    For the first time ever, Taylor leaves the stage after the 1989 set instead of staying on for surprise songs!

    The Tortured Poets Department 

    Welcome to the Eras Tour setlist, TTPD! We had our fingers crossed for you and you so delivered. The set starts with a screen visual that draws from the ‘Fortnight’ music video, complete with a road, cages, and even papers falling from the sky. There’s also a little snippet where she sings the “oh, oh, oh” from the chorus of ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.’

    Taylor described the album as “Female Rage: The Musical” in Paris, so it’s no surprise that this section is really theatrical. There’s even a skit before ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’ where she collapses on the floor, then has to get all dressed up in a new outfit to put on a show. And keep an eye on the visuals during ‘ICDIWABH,’ because there are nods to songs like ‘Peter.’

    • ‘But Daddy I Love Him’
    • ‘So High School’
    • ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?’ (with a moving platform!)
    • ‘Down Bad’
    • ‘Fortnight’
    • ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’
    • ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’

    Surprise Songs

    Surprise Song O’Clock got a little facelift in Paris with a new, all-pink dress, but it’s the same instruments and chaos as always! Paris Night 1 got ‘Paris’ on guitar, fittingly, and ‘loml’ on piano. Be sure to stay tuned and keep up with what pairings she gives us!

    Midnights

    We’re so excited that Midnights can still be the closing set of the Eras Tour! The setlist stayed the same, though Paris got a new blue bodysuit with cutouts. We couldn’t think of a better ending for the show, especially with this ‘Karma’ lyric:

    “Ask me what I’ve learned from all those years
    Ask me what I’ve earned from all those tears
    Ask me why so many fade but I’m still here…” 

    What do you think of the new Eras Tour setlist? Did she cut any of your fave songs? Let us know in the comments below or hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

    Check out more sweet Taylor Swift content! 

    TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT:
    FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | TIKTOK | TWITTER | YOUTUBE 

    Madison Murray

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  • What Does It Say About the Current Culture That A Critic Has To Hide Their Name to Write An Unfiltered Assessment of a Taylor Swift Album?

    What Does It Say About the Current Culture That A Critic Has To Hide Their Name to Write An Unfiltered Assessment of a Taylor Swift Album?

    While Taylor Swift, in her cloying manner, has seen fit to post all of the glowing reviews she collected about The Tortured Poets Department by retweeting them with responses that quote her own lyrics, not every review was an example of high praise. But before one pivots to that lone wolf who stood apart from the pack of praising reviewers, let us go over the reviews Swift actually did choose to highlight. There was the one from Rolling Stone that gave it “instant classic” status and a review title called, “Come For the Torture, Stay For the Poetry.” Swift’s lyric quote reply? “And that was the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding” (a line taken from the album’s eponymous “The Tortured Poets Department”). To The Times and The Sunday Times’ declaring the songs to be “as rich and concise as a short story collection,” Swift gushed, “These chemicals hit me like white wine” (except she spells it “whiiiiite wiiiiine”), a lyric pertaining to Travis Kelce on “The Alchemy.” Swift also reposted a review from the UK’s i newspaper (though that seems slightly like scraping the bottom of the barrel for her), which offered the vague title, “If you expected a Taylor Swift revenge album, you were wrong.” Although not “laudatory,” per se, Swift still replied, “I feel like laughing in the middle of practice” (a lyric from the only other Kelce-inspired song besides “The Alchemy,” “So High School”). 

    From another British publication (and yes, it’s pointed that she’s favoring British rags, as though to further laugh in Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy’s face from afar while they’re forced to be subjected to these headlines in their home country), The Independent, Swift reposted the review titled, “Taylor Swift’s country-hued tales of bad boys & good girls are irresistible.” Her reply to that was: “Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be” (another lyric from “The Tortured Poets Department”). The mutual ass-licking bender continued with Swift reposting Variety’s, review, “Taylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing Tortured Poets Department,” specifically quoting some rearranged lines from it that praised the record as “a culmination of [Taylor Swift’s] genius for marrying cleverness with catharsis… If she is both our best heartbreak chronicler and most uplifting popular entertainer, no one is coming for either job.” This being a nod to her warning on “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart,” “Try and come for my job.” But rather than quoting that line, Swift goes with one from “Down Bad”: “for a moment I was heaven struck.”

    Another Billboard review offered, “Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is messy, unguarded and undeniably triumphant.” Swift returned, “What a crash, what a rush,” a line from “Florida!!!” From HITS Daily Double, Swift retweeted the article that assured, “She’s A Big Girl Now,” with the publication highlighting in their caption, “​​On TTPD, @taylorswift13 has grown up, is telling the truth and is letting go of the past.” First of all, was she not telling the truth before? It’s not exactly the most flattering compliment, especially to a pop singer who famously despises not being believed (see also: her sexual harassment lawsuit). Nonetheless, Swift answered, “If you know it in one glimpse, it’s legendary” (from “loml”). She at last concluded her bender of reposting good reviews with one from Uproxx (also not the most sophisticated rag), which touted, “​​Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department Isn’t The Breakup Album You Were Expecting—It’s Better.” Swift rewarded that sentiment with another lyric from “So High School”: “cheeks pink in the twinkling lights.” It is also worth noting that Swift named each and every one of the reviewers in her retweets. For it is important to her to give credit where ass-licking credit is due (a very deliberate and quintessentially petty choice on her part, as though to emphasize and further ostracize the anonymous reviewer with the gall to not see her work as “masterful”). 

    Of course, all of this “aw, shucks” posturing is a put-on, with Swift herself happy to admit, “You know you’re good, and I’m good.” Britney would have said it more poetically and without as much faux humbleness: “I wasn’t good. I was great.” And yes, Spears, too, was subjected to her unfair share of scrutiny and condemnation. In truth, more than Swift has ever experienced, for Spears’ height of fame also existed at a height of paparazzi invasiveness and gossip rag power. Even so, Swift has made no bones about her irritation with anything resembling criticism. Granted, she’s never lashed out at critics in a manner as direct and unexpected as her “dark foil,” Lana Del Rey. Instead, Swift lets her dissatisfaction be known in other ways (like writing a song called “Mean” after a critic slammed her performance of “Rhiannon” with Stevie Nicks at the 2010 Grammys). Or, when that fails, she’ll leave it to the Swifties to let their dissatisfaction be known. While the Swifties’ “wrath” could never compare to that of the Barbz’ or the Beyhive’s, it is sufficient enough for a reviewer going against the accepted opinion that TTPD is “genius,” “brilliant,” etc. to decide, “Na, I’m not gonna put my name on this review.”

    With critics well-aware of the personal and professional fallout that could result from lambasting the fans’ precious god(dess), it was a review of The Tortured Poets Department from Paste magazine that opted to allow the writer to put their work out into the internet ether with the protection of anonymity. No name was attached to the review (save for “Paste Staff”) and, as such, it is one of the most brutally honest assessments of Swift and the album that has come about during this “era.” While Variety insisted that Swift hasn’t made a right proper breakup album since 2012’s Red, the critic here emphasizes that Swift has been writing the same record from the get-go…with folklore and evermore being “hiccups in the timeline—existing as the most fully-formed renderings of Swift’s own insecurities and concerns” (not to mention her only genuine attempts at writing in the third person). For the reviewer, that’s definitely not what TTPD is, so much as further evidence that Swift is on songwriting autopilot at this juncture (and who knows, maybe AI came up with the lines about “seven chocolate bars” and a “tattooed golden retriever”). 

    On “The Alchemy,” Swift insists, “This happens once every few lifetimes.” For Swift, “it” (read: love turned to regret and anguish) happens every album cycle. Every relationship and every breakup is her artistic cannon fodder to shoot back into the masses so that they can process her heartache as well. Perhaps help her pinpoint the moment where it all went wrong. It is precisely for this reason that she concludes the album with the line, “The story isn’t mine anymore.” That it certainly isn’t. For once you put anything out into the world, even a review, it is condemned to be interpreted, twisted and analyzed. And yet, Swift is quick to insist that art should be above condemnation or critique: “What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.” Madonna once said something similar in the form of: “What people fail to realize is how much guts it takes to do what we do, what any artist does… How much guts it takes to put yourself on the line and say, here’s my work, here’s my heart and soul.”

    Well, first of all, that’s what a critic, a good critic is actually doing as well. And second, Madonna has never been as “fragile” as Swift, nor has the majority of her canon been an “autopsy” of dead relationships (she simply isn’t that heteronormative). A topic that is becoming less and less mineable. Indeed, one can hear Swift struggling to sound profound not only in the lyrics, but in the commentary she offers for each song. For “Fortnight,” she bills not getting to be with the person you thought you would be as the most tragic thing possible. A “perspective” that reeks of being a privilege of the rich (for who else has time for such la-di-da romantic ideals?). As she tells it, she imagined “Fortnight” taking place “in this, like, American town where the American dream you thought would happen to you didn’t, right?” Let us pause here to note that Swift seems to be mutating the definition of the “American dream” into something centered on “winning” in love, not financial security and job satisfaction by way of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” And maybe she’s transforming the conventional definition to conform to referring to love because she already did achieve the American dream long ago. “Hard-won” by way of being born to a financial adviser (who is a millionaire himself), which certainly helps with having a “pie-in-the-sky” dream supported. Thus, Swift continues to explain why “Fortnight” is “tragic” because, “You ended up not with the person that you loved, and now you have to just live with that every day, wondering what might have been, maybe seeing them out, and…and that’s a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective.” In other words, her own very tunnel vision-y one. For Swift’s biggest and only “tragedy” at this juncture is not being able to secure her “true love,” whoever she might actually deem that to be (for now, it seems, grossly enough, like it was supposed to be Matty Healy). 

    And that’s where, with just one line, the Paste magazine reviewer’s biggest, most damning smackdown comes in: “There is nothing poetic about a billionaire.” And definitely nothing tortured either. So it is that the very notion of Swift painting herself as a “tortured poet” spouting lyrics like, “Don’t want money/Just someone who wants my company” is utterly incongruous. What’s more, apart from the fact that a large percentage of America does want her company (and is willing to pay for it, too), money can buy friends and love anyway. False ideas of “pure intentions” be damned—everyone, at their core, is interested in another person for what they have and what they can give. Especially in the U.S. 

    With the anonymous reviewer tearing down the facade of Swift’s “tortured” shtick for this album (and others that have come before it), they then go on to pick apart the lyrics and production themselves, throwing Jack Antonoff under the bus for good measure by noting that he “rewrites the same soulless patterns every time,” elsewhere begging to “get that man away from a keyboard.” “All of this to say” (now a “Fortnight” quote) that it is important to have divergent voices among the clamoring accolades not just for Swift herself, but this album in particular. Just as it was when the only critic who lambasted Beyoncé’s surprise drop self-titled album dared to say, “…her version of empowerment, such as it is, is based on a sort of inherent conservatism, rooted not in compassion and generosity, but instead in materialism, braggadocio and inescapable narcissism. Feminism is actually caring about people who are oppressed—women, minorities, the poor. It is not spending 99% of your time talking about how great you are and how much hotter you are than other women and how rich you are, and occasionally inserting some sort of nebulous piffle about ‘girls running the world’ or whatever else.”

    The critic who dared to put his white male name on that review ended up needing to write a follow-up apology article about it…due to the backlash, naturally. And this was in 2013, which we can now look back on as a much less “woke,” less easily scandalized time. In the climate of the current culture, it’s only gotten so much worse for critics, who don’t even feel safe to put their name on an honest assessment (or “opinion,” if you prefer). And while someone like Swift wants to paint herself as being a “tortured artist,” there is no art more tortured (and ridiculed/deemed “valueless”) than criticism itself, with critics presently written off as nothing more than “trolls” (as though the work they do is as “effortless” and without measured consideration as firing off a comment in the comments section). “Trolls” that can no longer speak freely due to a mutated form of fanaticism that sees fit to punish any unfavorable review with verbal abuse and/or threats of violence. Hence, the editor’s note that accompanied the TTPD review: “There is no byline on this review due to how, in 2019 when Paste reviewed Lover, the writer was sent threats of violence from readers who disagreed with the work. We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.” As though to prove Paste’s point, one writer posted about the harassment she was receiving online due to speculation that she was the “culprit.” (She was not.)

    Unfortunately, the fact that this might become more and more the norm in the ever-waning field of criticism is not only a harbinger of the death of free speech in the U.S. (a.k.a. “agree with my views or die”), but also yet another reason for someone ever considering a “career” (read: unpaid side gig, at this point) as a critic to turn quickly toward another path. But for those few still willing to stay the course, it’s evident that the inverse of the Lady Gaga “ism” (itself grafted from Madonna), “There can be 100 people in the room and 99 don’t believe in you, but all it takes is one who does,” holds plenty of weight for the critic brave enough to stand in defiance against the 99 people who really, really believe.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Fortnight” Video: Being in (Unrequited) Love/Artistically Inclined Will Send You to the Loony Bin

    “Fortnight” Video: Being in (Unrequited) Love/Artistically Inclined Will Send You to the Loony Bin

    Despite Taylor Swift’s pervasiveness, it’s probably more likely that Gen Zers would associate the word “fortnight” with the misspelled (as “Fortnite”) video game of the same name. As opposed to, you know, Swift’s first single from the song-packed album that is The Tortured Poets Department. And they certainly wouldn’t associate it with its actual definition: “a unit of time equal to fourteen days (two weeks).” For those previously unschooled in this highly British/highly Austenian term, Swift has decided to bring it back into the mainstream. Along with the idea that being in love—unrequited or otherwise—(especially as a woman) and being artistically inclined (especially as a woman) is a recipe for ending up in the loony bin. Or at least being branded as “crazy.” Not quite “right” in the head.

    In fact, this has always been the unfortunate case for women. And this is precisely why Swift gives callbacks to artistic women of the past (including the likes of Emily Dickinson and Clara Bow) while imprisoned in the mental institution of her self-directed video for “Fortnight” featuring, unexpectedly, Post Malone (who was just as unexpected in the part of Beyoncé’s romantic interest for “Levii’s Jeans” from Cowboy Carter). Those who have watched Swift flout the so-called rules when it comes to how many times one is “allowed” to write a song obsessing over the details of a failed relationship will understand, then, why she might fear getting thrown in the booby hatch (even though no pop star has more of a right to be afraid of that than Britney Spears). 

    This phobia comes to light repeatedly in the imagery presented throughout The Tortured Poets Department. And it’s all established with the first verse in “Fortnight” that goes, “I was supposed to be sent away/But they forgot to come and get me/I was a functioning alcoholic/‘Til nobody noticed my new aesthetic” (this concern about being “sent/taken” away also shows up in Midnights’ “Hits Different” via the lines, “Is that your key in the door?/Is it okay?/Is it you?/Or have they come to take me away?”). Apart from the fact that this sounds vaguely like what happened to Lizzy Grant in terms of being “sent away” to boarding school for her early-age alcoholism, it also does set the tone for Tay’s “new aesthetic” (that she introduced at the 2024 Grammys in her white ball gown with black elbow-length evening gloves) in the “Fortnight” video: Emily-Dickinson-in-a-mental-institution-chic (and yes, it’s been overly spotlighted this year [for the ostensible marketing tie-in of TTPD] that Swift is distantly related to Dickinson—they’re sixth cousins…three times removed!). Or, if you prefer, Clara-Bow-in-a-mental-institution-chic. Take your pick. 

    Considering Swift names a song after the silent movie actress on TTPD, it’s only natural that Bow’s signature look (as it pertains to her maquillage) should be mimicked here—along with the music video’s own mimicry of a silent movie aesthetic. Particularly as that song (“Clara Bow”) alludes to the ways in which the entertainment industry chews up and spits out women—no matter how successful—like grist for the mill. Particularly once a “newer (read: younger) edition” comes along. This very thing happened to Bow when silent movies turned into “talkies” and she couldn’t successfully make the transition (it was her Brooklyn-y accent, goddammit). Swift likely marvels, at times, over her contrasting ability to continue enduring not only in a marketplace with ever-changing whims and tastes, but in one that doesn’t exactly believe in “romance” anymore. Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem like Swift herself is a “romance acolyte” anymore either…that is, if the reams of lyrics on TTPD are anything to go by.

    So it is that the image of her waking up chained to a bed frame affixed to the ceiling of her “cell” (all topsy-turvy, like her love life) is what opens “Fortnight.” Followed by a nurse delivering her dose of “Forget Him” pills. This being a nod to the lyrics, “I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary.” Yes, that must be why she’s still trapped in this institution (prison itself is also frequently wielded as a metaphor on the album). One that she can only get out of by traveling through the “secret gardens of [her] mind” (a lyric from “I Hate It Here”). And so she does, walking through a door that leads into a more Kafkaesque administrative room. In walking through it, her dress changes from a white gown to one of black Victorian mourning (and this is where she looks quite Dickinsonesque). Sitting down at a typewriter (cue the lyrics on “The Tortured Poets Department” that go, “I think some things I never say/Like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?’”) across from Post Malone’s, the two both write their side of the story, with colors eventually spilling out of the top (his blue, hers pinkish—how gender normative) and rising up to clash against the other’s story. Clearly, they have some opposing opinions on how it all went down. 

    As their colors touch, however, things go into flashback mode, with Swift (now dressed in pants and a jacket) and Post (dressed in the same pants and jacket as Swift) lying next to one another—while Swift holds a copy of a book called Us (très original)—in a manner that echoes the overhead shot from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) are on the ice together (as Ariana Grande already taught us last month, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is very happening this year). But Swift subs out ice in favor of many, many white pages that we soon see are in a daguerreotype-like silhouette of her own head shape. 

    In the next scene, Swift runs to Post Malone and embraces him eagerly, even though, as the camera closes in to show him caressing her face and shit like that, it’s obvious she’s feeling kind of cringe-y because she can’t quite keep a straight face. Still, Post Malone being Swift’s love interest is believable enough thanks to the fact that she’s currently dating another grizzly bear named Travis Kelce. As they stare at one another from afar in a subsequent moment, the pages of “their story” swirl around them as Swift tries to reach out for him again. 

    Alas, this escape into the past was all in her head, nothing more than a memory (whether real, embellished or imagined). This we’re made to remember when we see her back in the mental institution—this time strapped into an electrode-based machine that looks like it’s going to give Swift the best electroshock therapy money can buy (for whatever bygone era she’s pretending to be in). Crazier than Swift is supposed to be, however, is the random cameo by Ethan Hawke as one of the doctors helping to administer the “therapy.” Except it’s not that random at all when you realize Josh Charles, who also co-starred in Dead Poets Society with Hawke, is one of the doctors, too. See how meta Swift just got…again? Another not-random-at-all-though-it-might-seem-that-way moment occurs when a black dog crosses into the scene as well. But no, “The Black Dog” is a song on TTPD, not to mention the name of a pub in London (with Swift’s pointed specificity in mind, that’s definitely not a coincidence) and known for being a harbinger of death and/or a messenger of evil/from hell. So yeah, the tortured relationship “Easter eggs” abound.

    By the end of the video, all of the pages in the Kafkaesque admin room are burning up around Taylor, as though the story between her and her ex-beloved never really happened. As though all the time and effort she put into turning it into art was for nought. Meanwhile, the Taylor of the “padded room,” so to speak, heaves a piece of furniture into the observation mirror, shattering glass everywhere.

    So you see? When all is said and done, being a “crazy bitch” isn’t for the faint of heart (nor, apparently, is it suited to the physically feeble)…but Swift certainly knows how to romanticize it nonetheless. 

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Just Who Is Taylor Swift Really Torturing on The Tortured Poets Department? Anyone She Can (Herself Included).

    Just Who Is Taylor Swift Really Torturing on The Tortured Poets Department? Anyone She Can (Herself Included).

    Pulling close to the same rate of album releases—one a year—that Rihanna once did starting in 2005 (with some rare breaks in 2008 and between the years 2012 and 2016) before she effectively retired to become a beauty mogul, Taylor Swift has always had a seemingly strategic release rate of every two years for studio albums (and no, the re-recordings aren’t being factored in). The Tortured Poets Department, her eleventh record, proves no exception to the every two year pattern (though Reputation did, with Swift waiting three years after 1989 to release it—but then, she had been “bullied” into sequestering herself by Kimye). And in the two years that have gone by since Midnights came out, Swift has only become more of a mythical figure to her worshippers. The ones who now despise Joe Alwyn for breaking her heart, throwing her away, etc. They’re likely to feel even less kindly about him (and several others) after hearing what Swift has to say on this record.

    Starting with “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone (though he’s featured in a similarly faded manner as Lana Del Rey on the original recording of “Snow on the Beach”), Swift brings her listeners into the pseudo-intellectual world of The Tortured Poets Department. Whether or not that’s meant to be a mirror of Alwyn’s own pseudo-intellectual, faux pretentious nature is at one’s own discretion. Though one imagines Swift is trolling him more than she’s actually taking herself too seriously when she says things like, “Your wife waters flowers/I wanna kill her,” there’s plenty of gravity in her admissions, “And I love you, it’s ruining my life” and “For a fortnight there, we for forever.” The idea of “I touched you for only a fortnight” also speaks to where she stands now with this person, who has been lost to a parallel existence that no longer aligns with hers. In this way, Swift channels Ariana Grande on Eternal Sunshine’s “i wish i hated you.” Specifically, when she resignedly laments, “Our shadows dance in a parallel plane/Just two different endings, you learn to repair/And I learn to keep me in one place.” Swift hasn’t really learned that, it would appear (not just literally, with her constant jet-setting, but figuratively as well). And, in contrast to Grande’s latest breakup album (nay, divorce album), Swift doesn’t come across in a manner that exudes “let bygones be bygones” vibes (and actually, at one point on “imgonnagetyouback,” she quips, “Bygones will be bygone”). No, instead, she fulfills many women’s fantasies of being able to publicly dig the knife into an ex who did her wrong by emotionally abusing her. So she abuses right back, as usual, with all the receipts.

    This includes highly specific references like the title track itself, said to be a riff on the name of a WhatsApp group (created by Andrew Scott) that Alwyn was a part of called “The Tortured Man Club.” And yet, ironically, “The Tortured Poets Department” is more directly aimed at Matty Healy than Alwyn. Particularly with lyrics like, “I think some things I never say, like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?,’” “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate/We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” (he probably will be now after the streaming bump that comes with a “Taylor plug”), “I scratch your head, you fall asleep/Like a tattooed golden retriever” and “Sometimes I wonder if you’re gonna screw this up with me/But you told Lucy you’d kill yourself if I ever leave.” Elsewhere, Swift notes, “But I’ve read this one/Where you come undone,” which sounds a lot like “I think I’ve seen this film before/And I didn’t like the ending” on folklore’s “exile.”

    Nor does she seem to like the ending on “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” Yes, that means her. What’s more, she also uses the trick of dual applicability to either Alwyn or Healy. For verses such as, “My boy only breaks his favorite toys, toys, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh/I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh/‘Cause I knew too much, there was danger in the heat of my touch/He saw forever so he smashed it up” could work for both of them. Clearly, Swift has a thing for cads. Though that’s not hard to do when taking into account the selection of “straight” men available. And even though it’s the men of this world who are too damaged for long-term relationships, Swift insists that, “Once I fix me/You’re gonna miss me.” A line that channels the old internet chestnut that goes, “Once I do such-and-such, it’s over for you bitches.” As for the outro, it feels more, er, tailored to Alwyn when she says, “Just say when, I’d play again/He was my best friend/Down at the sandlot/I felt more when we played pretend/Than with all the Kens [guess that means Swift admits she’s Barbie]/‘Cause he took me out of my box/Stole my tortured heart/Left all these broken parts/Told me I’m better off/But I’m not.” Because surely, she can’t really think she’s not better off sans Healy.

    After being discarded like a broken toy by Alwyn, it’s only natural that Swift should be “Down Bad,” an uptempo song that betrays Swift’s heartbroken state as she sings, “Now I’m down bad, crying at the gym/Everything comes out teenage petulance/‘Fuck it if I can’t have him’/‘I might just die, it would make no difference.’” In point of fact, the majority of Swift’s work remains resonant to so many “aging” women precisely because the teen girl inside never really dies. And that’s where many women get frozen in their minds due to the traumas and insecurities suffered during said “era.” Swift also compares the high of her relationship to being abducted by an alien, only to endure the low of being cast out of his spaceship and back into dull, ordinary life. Which can never feel ordinary again to her. This, too, has applicability potential to Healy, much to fans’ chagrin.

    For those who were craving more specificity about Alwyn instead, “So Long London” is able to deliver. A contrasting companion piece to Lover’s “London Boy,” Swift details her loathing of Alwyn not only for breaking her heart, but also making her hate London as a result (“I’m just mad as hell ‘cause I loved this place”). The sentiment echoes Billie Eilish’s on “Happier Than Ever” when she says, “I don’t relate to you, no/‘Cause I’d never treat me this shitty/You made me hate this city.” Except that, while Eilish insists, “I don’t talk shit about you on the internet/Never told anyone anything bad/‘Cause that shit’s embarrassing…” Swift is perfectly willing to embarrass her own self with the details of this botched, and yes, tortured relationship—in addition to the rebound one with Healy.

    The closest Swift might ever hope to get to as far as her version of “Papa Don’t Preach,” “But Daddy I Love Him” offers country song vibes (sorry Beyoncé, Swift isn’t ready to hand over the genre entirely) not just in musical tone, but narrative one as well. As a song that seems to be less about Alwyn and more about her pair of romantic choices after Alwyn (A.A., if you will—which works on another level in that he seemed akin to a drug), Swift derides the critical, judgmental eyes of a small town watching her every move. A clear allegory for the media at large. When she sings, “Now I’m running with my dress unbuttoned/Scrеamin’, ‘But, daddy, I love him’/I’m having his baby/No, I’m not, but you should see your faces/I’m telling him to floor it through thе fences/No, I’m not coming to my senses I know it’s crazy/But he’s the one I want,” it could be as much about Matty Healy as it is Travis Kelce. Both men being more than somewhat “unrefined” choices for a “poetess” like Taylor.

    No stranger to getting off on dating “bad boys” (by Swift’s white bread standards), the theme of running away with a man/“forbidden love” is nothing new in Swift’s oeuvre, with songs like “Love Story” and “Getaway Car” urging the protagonist (Taylor, of course) to just say, “Fuck it” and make the “bad choice” by fleeing into the sunset with her bloke of choice. For a while, that was Alwyn, who might also be considered as being referenced here in that, “But Daddy I love him” is also a line Ariel from The Little Mermaid shouts in defiance. And what did Ariel have to do in order to be with basic-ass Eric? Lose her voice, ergo herself—obviously. Something Swift feels she did by catering to Alwyn’s privacy “needs.”

    On the track that follows, it would seem all her recent time with Lana Del Rey is rubbing off on Swift (complete with a song title like “But Daddy I Love Him”) in terms of being sure to mention the same color palettes repeatedly in songs. While in “But Daddy I Love Him,” those colors were gray and white (as in: “If all you want is gray for me/Then it’s just white noise, and it’s my choice”), “Fresh Out The Slammer” offers ​“gray and blue and fights and tunnels.” As the song’s name suggests, it’s not nearly as glamorous as Rihanna’s “Phresh Out the Runway.” No, instead Swift is wielding a prison sentence as an allegory for the “relationship time served” with Alwyn. So it is that the first verse consists of her declaring, “Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to.” Here, it’s apparent she’s referring to calling Matty Healy the moment she was free from Alwyn’s ostensibly dark cloud. Like Florida, Healy seemed to be a sunny and fun (even if trashy and humiliating) escape. And yes, Florida also happened to be the first stop on The Eras Tour after the breakup between Swift and Alwyn was announced.

    As for the mention of “work[ing] your life away just to pay/For a timeshare down in Destin,” it sounds weirdly coded as a message of support for Britney Spears, who did work her life away in a conservatorship to pay for her sister, Jamie Lynn, to have a million-dollar condo in Destin. Of course, it’s probably alluding more to sharing space inside a man’s heart (*cough cough* Alwyn’s), even though he was once the king of hers.

    Unlike other artists that have collaborated with Swift, Florence + the Machine isn’t one to “fade into the background.” And she certainly doesn’t on “Florida!!!,” a song that feels stadium-ready as the duo extols the non-virtues of a “drug” like Florida (initially mentioned in “Fortnight” when Swift sings, “Move to Florida/Buy the car you want”). Indeed, the motif of addiction (as well as mental illness) runs rampant throughout The Tortured Poets Department—begging the question of whether or not Swift should attend some SLAA meetings. In any case, Camila Cabello knows all about being seduced by Florida—it seems it’s the place to be seduced by again (despite its horrifying political policies), its light no longer dimmed after reaching a peak in the 90s (enough to compel Madonna to buy a house there). One that crested in the aftermath of the assassination of Gianni Versace in 1997.

    While there’s no question mark to Andrew Cunanan being guilty as sin of that crime, Swift puts that very punctuation after “Guilty As Sin?” Among the most generic-sounding tracks on the record, it could perhaps be because hearing little “Easter eggs” about Healy has already started to grow a bit stale (at only nine of thirty-one songs in). Yet that’s precisely how Swift opens the “poem,” making a pointed allusion to Healy with the lines, “​​Drowning in The Blue Nile/He sent me ‘Downtown Lights’/I hadn’t heard it in a while.” Cue the “Downtown Blues” streaming bump as well. In the same breath, Swift still makes time to refer to Alwyn by noting, “My boredom’s bone deep/This cage was once just fine/Am I allowed to cry?” At the same time, the “cage” she mentions could be just as much fame itself as it is her overly private relationship.

    A seeming nod to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” is less about the men who have been in Taylor’s bed and more about her increasingly fraught relationship to and with “fans,” the media and, as some are speculating, Olivia Rodrigo. After all, if “vampire” and “the grudge” really were about Swift, it’s only fair for her to weigh in with, “The scandal was contained/The bullet had just grazed/At all costs, keep your good name” and “I’m always drunk on my own tears, isn’t that what they all said?/That I’ll sue you if you step on my lawn/That I’m fearsome, and I’m wretched and I’m wrong.” Her contempt for losing her innocence as the years have gone by is also manifest in the analogy, “I was tame, I was gentle ‘til the circus life made me mean/Don’t you worry folks, we took out all her teeth.” As for the unique blend of narcissism and self-loathing that celebrities can have, Swift speaks to it (or Rodrigo claiming “vampire” isn’t about her) with the bridge, “So tell me everything is not about me, but what if it is?/Then say they didn’t do it to hurt me, but what if they did?/I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me.”

    More subtle digs at Rodrigo seem to manifest with a title like “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can).” For, not only does Rodrigo sing, “But I am my father’s daughter, so maybe I could fix him” on “get him back!,” she also sells a sweatshirt with the phrase, “Maybe I can fix him!” as part of her collection of merch for Guts. But Swift seems keen to adopt the phrase for her own canon as she, needless to say, applies it to Matty Healy. Addressing how embarrassed everyone felt for her by describing a “character” whose “jokes” “were revolting and far too loud,” Swift eventually pronounces, “They shook their heads saying, ‘God, help her’ when I told ’em he’s my man/But your good lord didn’t need to lift a finger I can fix him, no, really, I can/Whoa, maybe I can’t.” Set against the backdrop of some country milieu and painting Healy as some kind of villainous cowboy, Swift again makes it overt that she’s not content to lose her erstwhile crown as Country Queen.

    The slowed-down piano ballad that is “loml” plays with the phrase “love of my life” (for which the song is abbreviated) until Swift delivers the dramatic subversion of it by the end as she rues, “And I’ll still see, until the day I die/You’re the loss of my life.” This one being among the few that more implicitly points to Alwyn, Swift paints her poetic images with verses such as, “Talking rings and talking cradles I wish I could unrecall/How we almost had it all/Dancing phantoms on the terrace/Are they second-hand embarrassed/That I can’t get out of bed?/‘Cause something counterfeit’s dead.” At the same time, Healy could still figure into the lyrics, “It was legendary/It was momentary/It was unnecessary/Should’ve let it stay buried.” In fact, “loml,” in its twisted way, can apply to all the many “great loves” of Swift’s life who have already inspired albums past. And maybe some part of her doesn’t want any one man to think he could be the true “loml.” That it actually takes many for her to get to the point of even singing a song like this.

    As for the emotional wreckage that occurred just in time for The Eras Tour to start, “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” acknowledges, “All the piеces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting ‘more’/I was grinnin’ like I’m winnin’/I was hitting my marks/‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart.” Seeing Swift at her most braggadocious and unafraid to take a bow for her skills and accomplishments, she also mentions that it often comes at the cost of being “miserable.” Particularly during the emotional aftermath of the Alwyn “affair.” So it is that Swift says with chirpy sarcasm, “Lights, camera, bitch, smile/Even when you wanna die,” adding, “He said he’d love me all his life/But that life was too short.”

    Her career’s life, however, is not, with Swift appearing to aim for the kind of longevity that some can only dream of. This is perhaps why she uses the tactic of “pretending it’s her birthday” every day when she’s depressed, so as to remind herself why it’s worthwhile to “power through the pain” and channel it into her music instead. So it is that she sings, “I’m so obsessed with him, but he avoids me, like the plague/I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art/You know you’re good when you can even do it with a broken heart.” For her “coup de grâce” line she concludes, “Try and come for my job.” This being a foreshadowing for another song on the album that speaks on a certain beef she can’t let go of with Kim K.

    In the meantime, she’ll keep coming for Matty Healy, as “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” indicates. That much is immediately given away with the descriptor, “Gazing at me starry-eyed/In your Jehovah’s Witness suit.” Swift then goes on to talk about Healy’s penchant for drugs and being disappointing, complete with the shade-drenched dig, “You didn’t measure up/In any measure of a man.” By verse three, the music starts crescendoing as Swift belts out her barrage of questions about why and how he could do this to her. Ruin her “sparkling summer” by rusting it.

    Swift then switches gears quite quickly on “The Alchemy,” marking her first unmistakable “homage” to Kelce with football metaphors that include, “So when I touch down/Call the amateurs and cut ’em from the team” and “These blokes warm the benches/We’ve been on a winning streak/He jokes that it’s heroin, but this time with an ‘e.’” Talk about hitting below the belt. But Swift, evidently, has been playing much too nice all this time in her lyrics, and is proving, once and for all, that the pen is mightier than the…British penis.

    Although, track order-wise, Clara Bow doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near a song that glorifies Kelce, “Clara Bow” is the song that succeeds “The Alchemy.” Swift undoubtedly homed in on Bow as a prime example of someone who was chewed up and spit out by the Hollywood machine after being one of its prized cash cows before the transition from silent movies to “the talkies.” In an alternate universe, Swift can seem to see her own path taking that “spit-out” route as she starts to realize the pressure of a revelation like, “You’re the new god we’re worshiping/Promise to be dazzling.” Of course, Swift also seems to be anticipating what happens as women in the entertainment industry get older and they end up being cast aside by the public in favor of a younger, shinier “model.” Hence, the bridge, “Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours demanding more/Only when your girlish glow flickers just so/Do they let you know/It’s hell on earth to be heavenly/Them’s the brakes, they don’t come gently.”

    By the final verse, Swift gets ultra meta by remarking to the next proverbial “it girl,” “You look like Taylor Swift/In this light, we’re loving it/You’ve got the edge, she never did/The future’s bright, dazzling.” These lyrics come at a timely moment in the wake of certain (not inaccurate) comments Courtney Love made about the singer not being “interesting as an artist.”

    She does little to prove Love wrong upon transitioning to “The Black Dog,” yet another song that could be about either one of her two recent British blokes. A fact that’s kind of offensive to Alwyn considering how much of a blip Healy was by comparison. But maybe that’s part of Swift’s stinging intent toward her ex of seven years. Title-wise, the generic nature of it is meant to mirror the typical name of some British pub as Swift condemns, “I just don’t understand/How you don’t miss me/In The Black Dog, when someone plays The Starting Line/And you jump up, but she’s too young to know this song/That was intertwined in the magic fabric of our dreaming.” Again, Swift broaches the unpleasant subject of getting older herself, while exes of her past (Jake Gyllenhaal included) continue to date younger women. As the first track to signal the “second album” in this surprise double album (either putting Beyoncé to shame for passing Cowboy Carter off as one album at twenty-seven tracks or making her look even better for being able to release a non-double album with so many songs on it), little changes in terms of lyrical themes or musical tones.

    That much is also made clear on “imgonnagetyouback,” which, at times, sounds like the sonic sister of “Maroon” from Midnights. There is also some blatant knife-digging into Olivia Rodrigo again, in terms of ripping off the latter’s premise and double meaning conceit for “get him back!” This is done via the chorus, “Whether I’m gonna be your wife, or/Gonna smash up your bike, I haven’t decided yet/But I’m gonna get you back/Whether I’m gonna curse you out, or/Take you back to my house, I haven’t decidеd yet/But I’m gonna get you back.” Seems like she did just that to Rodrigo with this song. So whatever ex it’s “really” supposed to be about, the aim was ultimately taken at this Gen Zer. There’s also a continued element of surrendering to jadedness as Swift states that her “​​eras [are] fading into gray”—that go-to color of hers on this album.

    Another telling sign of Swift losing all sight of any rose-colored glasses in matters of love is “The Albatross.” Painting herself as that “burden to bear” for any man who dares pursue her romantically, Swift asserts, “I’m the life you chose/And all this terrible danger/So cross your thoughtless heart/She’s the albatross/She is here to destroy you.” Yet another instance of Swift’s tongue-in-cheek sarcasm on this record, she doesn’t seem to care anymore about trying to “protect her reputation” or “seem innocent.” Knowing that, no matter what she does, she’s damned if she do and damned if she don’t.

    That much is magnified on “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” another track about, you guessed it, Healy. Once again condemning him for his drug habits (and now, his occasional bisexuality), Swift accuses, “You needed me, but you needed drugs more (a similar line appearing in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”)/And I couldn’t watch it happen/I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools/Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules/All to outrun my desertion of you.” But, of course, that desertion was inevitable as Swift bowed to public pressure and backlash in the end. Opting for a more all-American boy like Kelce, who is also referenced in another shade-laden line that goes, “And you saw my bones out with somebody new/Who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school.”

    Swift alternates back to dissecting Alwyn on “How Did It End?,” another melancholic piano ballad akin to “loml.” Her most blatant hint at Alwyn is the line, “He was a hothouse flower to my outdoorsman.” Famously private and averse to being photographed with or interviewed about Swift, it seems telling that she might mention this immediately as a prime reason for why it ended. She then reconciles with the public lust for watching her continue to fail in love with her mimicry of the masses going, “Come one, come all/It’s happ’nin’ again.” Step right up to watch her try to pick up the pieces of her shattered personal life. Among the more gut-wrenching images in the song is Swift subverting the elementary school tease about sitting in a tree and K-I-S-S-I-N-G, changing it instead to, “My beloved ghost and me/Sitting in a tree/D-Y-I-N-G.”

    And talking of elementary school, Swift’s subsequent track is the 90s-sounding “So High School,” one of the only songs that radiates the “old Taylor” in terms of being unapologetically cringe. We’re talking Lover-era uncomfortable. And maybe that, too, is another dig at Alwyn. The most out-of-place offering on TTPD (even “The Alchemy” fits in more seamlessly), Swift gets unabashedly bathetic when she gushes, “I’m watching American Pie with you on a Saturday night/Your friends are around, so be quiet I’m trying to stifle my sighs/‘Cause I feel so high school every time I look at you, but look at you.” Worse still, “Truth, dare, spin bottles/You know how to ball, I know Aristotle/Brand new, full throttle/Teach me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.” This is Swift settling into her ultimate basic bitch, “I don’t care how uncultured my baby is” era.

    Reverting back to her “depressing diva” era (even though that’s Lana’s thing), “I Hate It Here” is another slow-tempo number that’s all about Swift’s unique ability to travel to the “secret gardens in [her] mind” when she can’t stand a place (e.g., the present). Saving all of her “romanticism for [her] inner life.” Even though, sometimes, that romanticism of the past can be a trap because, as she says herself, “Seems like it was never even fun back then/Nostalgia is a mind’s trick/If I’d been there, I’d hate it.” And when she was there, she actually did hate it. Namely, back in 2009, when her beef with Kanye West first began, and then, in 2016, when Kim Kardashian-formerly-West escalated it. Something Swift keeps thinking about to this day, as recently made evident in Time magazine for her “Person of the Year” interview, wherein she insisted she was “canceled within an inch of [her] life and sanity” thanks to the unnamed Kimye.

    She undoubtedly brought it up to help prepare listeners for the non-at-all-veiled “thanK you aIMee” (my, what a subtle stylization tactic). And yes, let us take pause to pay respect to the original pop princess who barely coded a song with the name Amy in it, the legendary Miss Britney Spears with “If U Seek Amy.” Swift definitely isn’t seeking her though, no matter how her name is spelled. Barely disguising the woman or story in question, Swift still does her “best” to frame the narrative in a more “high school-y” context (high school does, indeed, often seem to be on her brain), opening with the verse, “When I picture my hometown/There’s a bronze spray-tanned statue of you/And a plaque underneath it/That threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school.” Painting (no spray-tan pun intended) Kim as a high school bully throughout, she comes to the point of referring to that time North West danced to “Shake It Off” for a TikTok post and goes for the jugular by saying, “And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue/I don’t think you’ve changed much/And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues/And one day, your kid comes home singin’/A song that only us two is gonna know is about you.” With “Shake It Off” being expressly about shaking off all the haters’ hate, including Kim’s, who now tries to cozy up for clout. How this song might affect the Lana-Kim alliance via Skims is unclear, but surely there must be a conflict of interest for LDR to try being friends with both.

    While the masses might be obsessed with “studying Taylor,” she has her own voyeuristic tendencies, as explored in “I Look in People’s Windows.” The shortest song on the album at just over two minutes, it would have been ideal, actually, to soundtrack The Woman in the Window. In this case, though, Swift is trying to find her ex among the windows across from her apartment as she admits, “I look in people’s windows/Transfixed by rose golden glows/They have their friends over to drink nice wine/I look in people’s windows/In case you’re at their table/What if your eyes looked up and met mine/One more time.” In another moment, she questions her ex (whichever one she might want to address) directly in the same way she does on “The Black Dog” by asking, “Does it feel alright to not know me?/I’m addicted to the ‘if only’/So I look in people’s windows/Like I’m some deranged weirdo.” At least she can cop to that in a way that few stalker-y men can.

    Rhyming “throttle” with “bottle” again like she does on “So High School,” so begins “The Prophecy” with the verse, “Hand on the throttle/Thought I caught lightning in a bottle.” Alas, she didn’t, “it’s gone again.” Thus, Swift can’t help but victimize herself a little bit by insisting she’s “cursed” as much as she is blessed. Delivering the tragic (for a white billionaire) lines, Swift pleads in earnest, “Change the prophecy/Don’t want money/Just someone who wants my company.” She then gets all Karen-y with the gods by demanding, “Who do I have to speak to/About if they can redo the prophecy?” But, in truth, one imagines she wouldn’t really want it to be redone, even though she laments, “Oh, still I dream of him.” One supposes, in this case, that means Alwyn…mainly because the sonic tone has a similar feel to “invisible string.”

    What else could follow “The Prophecy” but “Cassandra,” the name of the prophetess no one would believe when she delivered the vision that the Trojans didn’t want to hear. As is the case with “thanK you aIMee,” Swift weaves her own feud with West and Kardashian into this song, getting quite brutal by the time the bridge rolls around with the condemnation, “​​They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time/That I was onto something/The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line/They all said nothing/Blood’s thick but nothing like a payroll/Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul/You can mark my words that I said it first/In a morning warning, no one heard.” Swift then concludes with the scathing assessment, “When it’s ‘burn the bitch,’ they’re shriekin’/When the truth comes out, it’s quiet/It’s so quiet.”

    Swift switches tack again on “Peter,” not a reference to the apostle, but rather, to Peter Pan. While many have speculated that this song is about Alwyn in lieu of another ex (i.e., Healy)—thanks to the telltale line, “Sometimes it gets me/When crossing your jetstream”—it could easily serve as the anthem for all male millennials, the breed most known for suffering from Peter Pan syndrome.

    Acting in the slighted role of Wendy, Swift bemoans, “You said you were gonna grow up/Then you were gonna come find me/Said you were gonna grow up.” Unfortunately, “Peter” (or whoever she’s really talking about) never did. Even though it doesn’t seem like Travis Kelce is that much of a grown-up either.

    And yet, Swift appears to make note of her own puerile tendencies on “The Bolter.” While some might have assumed such a title would be about Alwyn, it is a self-referential track, with Swift describing, ultimately, how stifling a relationship can be, and, therefore, how liberating it can feel to be free of it. Or, as the chorus goes, “Started with a kiss/‘Oh, we must stop meeting like this’ [very The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside”]/But it always ends up with a town car speeding/Out the drive one evenin’/Ended with the slam of a door/But she’s got the best stories/You can be sure/That as she was leaving/It felt like freedom/All her fuckin’ lives/Flashed before her eyes/And she realized/It feels like the time/She fell through the ice/Then came out alive.” So yes, in the end, there seems to be a sense of relief about her “tenure” with Alwyn reaching a denouement, her “runaway bride steez” paying off yet again. As does her absorption of the LDR canon, with the lyrics, “Off to the races” managing to enter the fray during the bridge.

    Providing listeners with yet another piano ballad, “Robin” is a bittersweet track (yes, another one) that encapsulates the innocence of childhood (or what should be the innocence of childhood). Tying into “Peter” in this regard, Swift is ostensibly obsessing over this “era” of existence as TTPD comes to a close because it’s arguably the last time she can remember being as full of earnest hope unmarred by the crushing weight of fame-related reality (even if fame is a prime example of unreality).

    For the grand finale (also a piano ballad), Swift’s literary-themed (in keeping with the album title) “The Manuscript” is another meta exploration like “Clara Bow.” One that delves into how she can’t help but turn all the pain of each failed relationship into a “story.” One that, eventually, “isn’t [hers] anymore.” Mainly because she serves it up to the world for endless scrutiny and dissection in the name of alchemizing pain into art. One of the lines that might be overly examined in this instance is: “He said that if the sex was half as good as the conversation was/Soon they’d be pushin’ strollers/But soon it was over.” Since it’s often been joked about that maybe the reason Swift can’t “hold onto a man” is a result of her less-than-stellar boudoir skills, this lyric isn’t exactly helpful to kiboshing that theory.

    As for the many other lyrics about many other people well-beyond just Joe Alwyn, they answer the question of who TTPD is really torturing. And that is: anyone and everyone who has ever wronged her in the past decade. Hence, a bit of self-flagellating as well.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • For Taylor Swift, “God I Love the English” No Longer Applies

    For Taylor Swift, “God I Love the English” No Longer Applies

    Having recently opted for “all-American boy” Travis Kelce, it seems the days of Swift’s fetish for British men are over. Though, for a while there, it was going quite strong, starting with Harry Styles in his One Direction era. Swift then moved on to Calvin Harris (who would probably specify he’s Scottish, not British—but still), then Tom Hiddleston, then Joe Alwyn. The latter British bloke being her longest relationship at approximately six years (though maybe less, if one is to go by “You’re Losing Me” being written in early December of 2021). Even so, Swift didn’t seem to be fully convinced she was entirely “over” British peen, briefly dabbling with The 1975’s Matty Healy before quickly realizing how damaging he was to her “brand.” In fact, Ice Spice’s involvement in the entire dalliance (with comments Healy made about Ice Spice on a podcast quickly resurfacing during their time together) appears to be something Swift is still making up for now (after already giving her a feature on a “remix” of “Karma”), carting her along into the multimillion-dollar box (a.k.a. suite) seats she enjoyed while watching “her man” play in the Super Bowl. 

    And what she’s also apparently making up for is all that lost time without some good old-fashioned American dick in her life. We’re talking the kind of sausage that is as American as they come: an Ohio-born football player for the NFL. As for Kelce’s own recently-ended long-term relationship, it was with sports and fashion influencer Kayla Nicole Brown. Having been with her for five years (albeit on-again, off-again), it seems as though Kelce, too, wanted to make an about-face, “type”-wise. Because yes, Taylor Swift is about as far from a Black woman as you can get. Nonetheless, she’s been doing her best to get as close to one as possible by way of Ice Spice, who is clearly spicing up Taylor’s fucking life more than Travis Kelce. A man that has only served to bland-ify it with his Americanness and general lack of a “cosmopolitan” nature (let’s put it this way: he isn’t going to be putting a dress on or reading aloud from a book of Romantic poetry anytime soon). What her British boyfriends all possessed, even if only by sheer virtue of actually being in the arts as opposed to being football players. And that’s not a trait to be overlooked. For, as Swift saw forever crystallized in a meme of Kelce screaming like a wild animal in his coach’s face, it’s no good when someone has that much sports-driven testosterone coursing through their veins. You never know when it’s going to cause a rage flare-up. Though perhaps Kelce knows better than to fly into one around Swift, lest he risk having his temper tantrum immortalized in a song. 

    Although Swift isn’t a stranger to dating the all-American boy, including Joe Jonas and a Kennedy (Conor), Kelce is arguably the biggest cliche of what that trope represents. And it’s unlikely that, with future boyfriends, Swift will be able to ever top such a stereotype of what it means to “be American.” Unless, of course, she should decide to go the Lana Del Rey route and date a cop. But no, not even Swift could make cops “chic.” Football, on the other hand, is something easy to breathe life into once more (especially through a highly publicized end-of-game kiss, delivered in a Hollywood ending fashion). After all, it’s no secret that, in the U.S., all of life is just an extended metaphor for high school. Where the jock and the thin blonde girl are treated as royalty while the rest of the “student body” merely looks on with the requisite amount of awe and reverence. Thus, although some might have been growing fed up with Swift’s British bloke fetish, at least what could be said for it was that it didn’t reinforce the already barely latent idea that all the world’s a high school, and those with the “objectively” good looks and wealth are the ones who will be perennially rewarded by society’s capitalist values. 

    And yet, what’s also rather ironic about Swift’s sudden one-eighty toward embracing the cheerleader role in her football player boyfriend’s life is that she, at one point, viewed herself as someone who was not “football player’s girlfriend” material. In truth, it was the very song about this “difficulty” of hers that put her on the map beyond just the country music radio scene: “You Belong With Me.” In the accompanying music video, Swift plays the so-called dweeb (mainly because she has giant black-rimmed glasses holding her back from being seen as the “hot” girl) who lives across from her “cute” friend. Who, quel choc, happens to be a football player that she can’t seem to attain. Not only because she’s a “nerd,” but because he already has a cheerleader girlfriend (also played by Swift, in a very bad brunette wig…let’s just say she’s not sporting the same quality hair as Rachel McAdams in her ten-thousand-dollar [some even say twenty-thousand-dollar] wig for Mean Girls). Thus, “Nerd” Swift is relegated to the sidelines in a far crueler way than she is now, forced to watch the object of her affection look out toward Brunette Swift instead of her, all bedecked in her marching band attire. 

    By the end of the video, though, Swift, in the style of a true high school rom-com formula, takes off her glasses, puts on a form-fitting gown and shows up to the prom so that the football player dude can see how “hot” she actually is without her dweeb costume. Naturally, the two end up together. And Swift ostensibly admitted that she was never born for the “unpopular girl” role. Yet she held off for this long on returning to Brunette Taylor status by giving in fully to the high school fantasy/fairytale she conveyed to us long ago in 2008 (though the single and video were released in 2009). One she perhaps tried to stave off for several years with British men, assuring listeners at one point, “God I love the English” on Lover’s “London Boy.” Ultimately, however, Swift has succumbed to her most puerile desires from the Fearless era in seeking out the validating comfort of the all-American jock. And there’s no doubt that Matty Healy helped give her the final push back in that direction. With The Tortured Poets Department slated to be a scathing spotlight on her years spent with Alwyn, listeners will soon know even more about why Swift has returned to preferring her own Uh-muhr-ih-cuhn breed. Cemented by featuring a song on the album called “So Long, London.” De facto “Hello ‘Murica.”

    Genna Rivieccio

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