ok here’s my take that no one asked for: taylor swift has not had a good album since speak now. speak now was the last good album. after that, her albums got worse and worse - red was a mid at best album with a few bangers, 1989 was a bad album with a couple bangers, reputation was a bad album with a few bangers, lover was a bad album with like. one banger.
then she wrote folklore and evermore, which broke her pattern. i still think they were not good albums, but they fit more into the category of red and reputation where they were mid to bad albums with a couple really well written songs on them, but overall just meh.
then came midnights, her first true flop. midnights is catchy old-navy commercial pop music and it. is. not. good. there is not one single good song on midnights. i saw the eras tour right after midnights was released with my friend because they gave me a free ticket and, im not kidding, we left right before the midnights set because we did not care about the album and wanted to beat the traffic. a true flop.
and tortured poets department continued to followed the pipeline - overall a flop, however i can recognize that whos afraid of little old me and smallest man who ever lived are decent songs, maybe just not my taste. but overall, falling into that millennial bland pop music that i feel like an NPC might listen to.
and then came life of a showgirl. i listened to it with an open mind, i really did, but oh my god, she flopped. she flopped harder than shes ever flopped before. life of a showgirl makes midnights look good. life of a showgirl is not just millennial-bland-pop — it’s white-billionaire-millennial-bland-pop. its private-jet-millennial-bland-pop. it’s fake-activism-millennial-bland-pop. it’s existing-with-SO-much-more-money-than-any-one-person-could-possibly-need-in-a-world-that-is-starving-millennial-bland-pop.
“oh it’s entirely self written” yeah i can tell. “oh it’s about her experiences in the industry” okay yeah and i don’t want to hear about them. people like to hear stories of underdogs, and she hasn’t been one since 2015. hearing stories of her experiences as genuinely the most powerful and successful person and one of the wealthiest people in the music industry isn’t cool or inspiring, it feels like listening to her go “oh poor me, i have all this money and i’m marrying an NFL quarterback and i’m so so successful but im SAD.” and like sure. okay. you can be sad and face struggles no matter what your status is but it feels so tone-deaf and her music is no longer relatable because SHE is no longer relatable.
this isn’t to hate on taylor swift. ok maybe it is a little bit. but truly her first three albums are three of my favorite albums and she has absolutely written bangers. but dear god she has gotten so out of touch as a person and her music has taken such a massive nosedive, i think because of it.