taylor swift wants you to think she understands women

life after swiftiesm

Every woman’s second puberty package, better known as frontal lobe development, includes a fully formed opinion on Taylor Swift. There’s indifference, nostalgic love, there’s also hatred. Typically, the sentiment remains and solidifies as time goes on – but for some of us, the pendulum swings. Like any honorable devoted former swiftie, I felt I owed The Life of a Showgirl an honest try with an open mind but a sealed wallet – not due to my one-sided beef with polyester cardigans and ten thousand vinyl variants as our jetsetter continues to break emission records, but because I wanted to see if there’s still an aching bone in my body that would enjoy diluted Taylor past her artistic prime, which was Folklore/Evermore. My verdict is the album is a big yawn. Two Swedes came to rescue what was left of her permanently altered pen at the hands of Jack Antonoff’s crimes, but the record is boring at best and hanging by a thread of perceived self-importance at worst.

how can i blame this on matty healy?

Don’t take me for somebody who hates pop. I’m a frontline believer in the power of pop music when it’s done conceptually and tastefully, especially when it doesn’t take itself seriously. I love Addison Rae. I love Doja Cat. Hell, I love Tate McRae (Sports Car is one of the best songs to have come out this year, FYI). My soft spot turned eyeroll for Taylor’s songwriting has little to do with the music itself. It just doesn’t cease to amaze me how one of the biggest musicians of all time has failed to retain any cultural capital – if you’re going to be this ostentatiously rich, give us something cool, take a risk or two. What does the biggest pop star have to lose? Between her political pick-and-choosiness and Hillary Clinton’ing her way through the mud, associating with questionable friends of her questionable fiancé, lacking taste, constant referencing of the same old scandals that happened many moons ago, it’s becoming really hard to defend a treadmill of poor aesthetic and narrative choices. Engaging with Taylor Swift’s craft over these past few years has felt like eating dry protein powder with the measuring scoop straight out of the tub. I’d rather raw dog some unsweetened cottage cheese.

Am I spiritually evolving, or do I blame this rapid decline on Matty Healy? Scientists should study the effects a bad situationship can have on cognition.

Perhaps I’ve just been a victim of a slow, painful disillusionment with both Taylor Swift the pop star and Taylor Swift the business entity. The two are separate, but the former started to disintegrate at the expense of the latter. At some point a few years ago, Taylor the artist lent itself fully to Taylor the corporation, giving way to profit over quality. A kingdom built on the relatability factor was never going to last, sure – which is why the mythical, make-believe fabric of Folklore was an excellent sideways move that not only felt like her most selfless work but delivered escapism emblematic of a great songwriter that cares about her craft. Now, years later, it’s evident that moment in time was accidental: she’s moved onto building a universe of cultural decay in which everything is a reference to itself, and unless you’ve signed an unspoken agreement to exist under the Taylor Swift umbrella and handed your autonomy over to her, in the current geopolitical climate, the Swift universe provides nothing but endless me VS the world rhetoric and renders in poor taste as the planet continues to burn. Make no mistake: refusing to read the room is a very deliberate choice. In this context, the entire Miss Americana campaign feels like a fever dream.

not working it out on the remix

I was quite devastated by Actually Romantic, the in-your-face nod to Charli xcx’s Sympathy is a knife, a track that relays jealousy towards a more powerful, more successful woman in the industry. To quote Fran Lebowitz, thinking before you speak is essential, otherwise posing “greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.” Arriving at annoying conclusions is what Swift consistently does best. One doesn’t need more than two active braincells to excavate one’s very own tug of war from Sympathy is a knife – the sheer vulnerability of which is the opposite of a diss track in the first place. But, of course, count on Taylor to miss the point… And make it worse by being irresponsibly reactive. Charli goes “I wanna buy a gun / I wanna shoot myself / Volatile at war with my dialogue” handing us a raw, exposed culmination of envy that jolts us awake at our worst – it isn’t graceful or kind. It’s bitter, it’s disgusting, it’s crude, it’s honest; she admits it. Taylor’s disproportionate lack of empathy in response is staggering – anything less than worship a person feels towards her must be a fault of theirs, or they’re on drugs. More importantly, the track is hypocritical: claiming an artist is obsessed with you when you yourself won’t stop talking about Scooter Braun and your haters is just a lack of self-awareness bleeding out. The diss falls flat because it just reinstates the fact that she is, indeed, Boring Barbie that can’t take the high road to save her life. This is your quintessential girl’s girl?

arrested development

I love and cherish old Taylor; the tenderness with which she would approach the world-building of acute heartbreak remedy early on was something truly special. She’d create melodic sentiments that would extend beyond their simplicity and offer a safe space for women and girls, something to embalm our big emotions in, to feel recognized in our own mundanity. The formula worked for a long while – it made her famous and kept the stadiums full. Somewhere along the way what once was Swift’s unique selling point has been duped by or tainted with resentment, incessant self-referential nods, a tinge of defensiveness, and rehashing the same drama with the same public figures for 4+ album cycles. Reputation did it well because it was new, fresh, and singular, but at some point, a big girl with big money needs to get a therapist and work through her arrested development. It’s not even a matter of stagnation, really, but one of indulging in your own bitterness for too long, applauded and cheered on by a large demographic of fellow grudge holders. The people that bring up their ex from five years ago at a party are an easy bunch to lazily cater to: always angry about something and on the verge of yet another “I just think it’s funny how…”

And with all these egotistical underpinnings in a condescending tone, Taylor Swift the artist still wants you to think she understands womanhood – worse, she genuinely believes she cares for women and tends to some imaginary sacred relationship with us, her predominantly white female audience backing her legacy. Does she? Does she care about women while eschewing the political and staying dead silent on Gaza, knowing even her big name counterparts Lorde and Dua Lipa are speaking up? Or when she shuts out and buries every female artist that isn’t abiding by the Swiftiesm playbook, one that requires a high interest debt to her good graces like successors Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams? Does she care about women’s rights as she continues to associate herself with MAGA lunatics? Perhaps flying too close to the 1% sun naturally distorts your moral compass, but I don’t believe she’s driven by any genuine desire to understand women. To understand people, you have to at least like them – but she hasn’t been curious about anyone but herself, her bank account, and her public perception in a very long time. Swift’s stage of let them eat cake is terminal.

My only question is: who is this new album for? It isn’t for you or for me. It’s for her own self-absorbed mastery, made to be palatable at the expense of being anything at all. All of this could almost be forgiven if she stopped pretending to care altogether and just focused on making good art like many big stars before her. Unfortunately, it seems like even that is too big of an ask — she likes being petty more than she likes making music. And god forbid we critically engage with it: freedom of speech has no place in the self-proclaimed English teacher’s world; she will either come for you herself in the next album cycle or let the fans do the dirty work. I would know, I used to be one of them.

And here I go, disillusioned and a little annoyed, because Taylor Swift is what happens when Marnie Michaels thinks she’s Fiona Apple. Capitalism personified and on the verge of decay, milk clumps in a matcha latte, cheap nylon athleisure. The last thing I wanted was to outgrow an artist I once loved –one that provided endless comfort and escapism with an invisible string woven through every stage of my own life– but she had it coming. No pop star should be foaming at the mouth trying to convince the world she’s a literary genius with a heart of gold, the purest of intentions, and by some happenstance just soooo many haters. Girl, I don’t know, I’m bored. Give us something cool next time, preferably without the patronizing lyrics and all the double entendres about your uninspiring man’s big wood. Should’ve stayed in the drafts, as they say.