wElCoMe tO mY TwIsTeD uNdErWoRlD

Sorry for the length maaan.

I LOVE YOU, ANON. every word of this is glorious. just *chef's kiss*

"And that account started slamming anons' moms..." bestie when i say i lost it at this part...

ok. ok. focusing up, you're going to be shocked at how little 'blonde man did' actually. here's a quick-ish outline:

Sabrina Carpenter, in contract, I feel like she’s approaching her flop era because at one point people are going to get tired of the hyper sexualized content of her albums and being “Tay’s daughter” isn’t doing much for her because she managed to surpass Taylor and Swifties don’t like that. Being known as a “Tay daughter” is a curse that I honestly wish Gracie Abrams had distanced herself from. Sombr is also a trend thing - he does not give “long lasting career” lol if he collabs with Taylor she mind curse him the same way she did to Shawn Mendes who hadn’t landed a single hit in over 5 years.

I was just thinking this - no one is going to mistake olivia for going pop-synth like Taylor after this record. The complexity and thoughtfulness of the production on this album is incredible and an obvious focus for her now, along with the retro flavor.

what are we doing. these are adults btw

TLOAS should have been that love album, full stop. Her best Joe love songs dropped with her first album after getting with him. It can only go downhill from here as far as Travis tracks go.

She's been circling the drain creatively - more self-persecution, whining about being cancelled, being a witchhunted girlboss.

// this is the dumbest thing I've ever read. Writers can also feel conflicted about their feelings and not put themselves completely out there to be dissected. And that's fine. Totally understandable that a swiftie doesn't get it since they're used to taylor serving up personal and intimate details of her life everytime (which is frankly weird, concerning she does not have her partners' consent)

Also the lyric "i have this dream my daughter in law kills me for the money" has always rubbed me the wrong way because she's projecting SO hard here. She's so prepared to be a toxic boy mom in the future that she already has it out for a daughter in law who doesn't even exist yet.

sombr's cultural impact is... zero as far as i can tell. as i outlined earlier, he sounds like a particularly skilled cover band who can ape arctic monkeys, kings of leon, arcade fire etc. he doesn't sound distinctive to me.

olivia's record evidences a lot of impressive knowledge of 80s-90s work, and i can hear some of grunge band Garbage's vocal stylings on it, but no one will listen to the record and NOT know it's olivia. her interpretation of other styles and acts is still distinctive.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/olivia-rodrigo-you-seem-pretty-sad-album-review

here she is also reviewing tloasg and a substack about the criticism of taylor and tloasg

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-life-of-a-showgirl-album-review-taylor-swift

https://pclairedodson.substack.com/p/our-taylor-swift-takes-ourselves

YLPSFAGSIL review:

[...] lyrically, this is possibly Rodrigo’s least successful album [...] It almost feels like the instrumentation is hiding certain flaws in the lyrics, pushing the listener to just roll with lines that are either cheesy or vague and not look too hard at the gaps [...] there are those that feel trite, repetitive of past work, or just off [...] or yet another nod to the idea that Rodrigo feels deeply uncool in a room full of cool girls “Honeybee” tells on itself a bit, with the chorus lyric, “And it's too hard to describe this / In a way that feels honest.” That is the job of a writer, to put into words what feels abstract or overwhelming.  The lack of consistent lyrical precision [...] is most apparent on “My Way,” a supposed kiss-off to a woman who has overstayed her welcome. But the most damning thing Rodrigo can bring herself to say about the woman is that she’s “being f*cking weird.” It’s unfortunate that the post-“Misery Business”/“Better Than Revenge” guilt has resulted in a watering down of what women are allowed to say about other women.

TLOAS review:

there is beauty in the attempt, and in even naming that goal: she wants to make the best possible art in a new way every single time. I’m not sure Showgirl has the best ideas of her career, but it does have some exciting ones. [...] What a delight to see Swift tussle and condescend and try to convince you she doesn’t care at all. [...] But the trying, the ambition, the fearlessness: it’s just never not exciting to see what Swift will think up next. This is the quintessential beauty of Taylor Swift: she’s always got something else cooking.

okay, this is genuinely enraging. i think it's really important to note that the TLOAS review zooms out to try to create some conversation between the record and much, much better works- it mentions Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, ABBA. she's trying to elevate the album by pretending it has some creative DNA in common with legacy acts that influenced each other.

for olivia's record, she mostly puts olivia in conversation with herself lyrically, and finds her lacking. never mind that the album is very intentionally evocative of 80s-90s musical sensibilities, including the cure who are kind of known for deceptively simple but evocative phrasing and a poignant delivery that olivia nails. also, the record is incredible from a production standpoint- symphonic and orchestral at times, full of homage and pastiche but never boring or shallow. TLOAS was lyrically terrible and the production was half-hearted, copied, or ultimately not served at all by the lyrics and vocals over it (you should listen to the instrumentals for CANCELLED!!!!, it could have been a lush track!).

I respectfully disagree. Matty clearly was what was available when her relationship with Joe wasn’t working, but she didn’t want to break it off and be left with nothing. She called him “low-hanging fruit” for a reason. He love-bombed her because he wanted to date her, and when things got real, he ghosted her after he got what he wanted (there was also that rumor that he said, “I f*cked Taylor Swift”).

I honestly never bought the whole “10-year situationship” thing. If she wanted to leave Joe for another man, she could have done it (it’s not like she hadn’t done that before), especially since they met again at the NME Awards in 2019, I think. If she wanted to go for it, she would have.

They seemed happy until after quarantine. It made so much sense when she had a song called “The Bolter” because she really seems like the kind of girl who leaves when things get boring or too normal

I think if Taylor didn’t make TTPD all about it, people wouldn’t have made such a big deal out of the Matty thing. She made it look so serious and deep while she was crashing on stage every time something related to Joe happened. She even continued giving that speech before “betty.”

Idk, but I don’t think she just magically got over a 7-year relationship so easily just because it was Matty all along?

Idk, but I don’t think she just magically got over a 7-year relationship so easily just because it was Matty all along?

no, i totally agree with you. i think a couple things are happening at once:

real life, real relationships, often take effort and maturity to navigate and maintain- more of a marathon than a sprint. the 7 year itch is a phrase that encapsulates how familiarity can breed restlessness or disconnection, and people sometimes have to work hard to find something fresh in their relationship at that point and strengthen it.

AND, flings, idealized 'what ifs', simple stupid lust/fixation can coexist with that difficult truth. not every attraction is based in love, some are based on having similar dysfunctional patterns lol. i think she definitely got more normal with joe and was able to function pretty well with him, but when she felt disenchanted with the relationship, she reverted to the old tried and true getaway car/i can cure my depression with limerence/romantic obsession route.

Hear me out, it’s a surprise live stream of the wedding. The arena all beautifully decorated and fans can sit and watch.🤞🤷🏼‍♀️

This reminded me of a blog I used to follow in a fandom I was a part of & I really liked her stuff. I knew she had irl issues that forced her to decrease her engagement in fandom. So when she made a post about suddenly losing her job due to an abusive boss, on top the stuff she was already dealing with, and needing financial assistance I thought I should contribute at least a little. It wasn't much but I donated what little I could to her kofi & genuinely wished things got better for her.

So imagine my surprise when, not a few weeks later she was posting about getting tickets for the Eras Tour! Now, I know that sometimes even when people are struggling they splurge on stuff that makes them feel good, and it's not right to judge them for wanting to have some fun. And who knows, maybe her situation drastically improved suddenly. But it still really irked me because what little extra cash I had that month I had donated to her (mainly because she posted about her father's health problems & since my mom also has the same disease I know how high the bills can get), and yet here she was going to an expensive ass TS concert. And this was at peak Eras mania so the tickets wouldn't have been cheap, not to mention she had to travel to attend the concert.

I knew she was a hardcore Swiftie but she didn't really post about TS that much (on least on the blog I followed. She might've had others). And she generally seemed like a responsible & intelligent person. So I was shocked to see her decide to waste her money — on a TS concert of all things — when she was already in a difficult situation. I've never complained about this to anyone before because it seems wrong to do so. I know I don't have a right to dictate or judge her spending, but I just felt weirdly upset and wanted to vent after all this time.

Oh and I should mention that she had previously posted about taylor dating matty and how disappointed she was in her, and that she was reconsidering who taylor was as a person. But then taylor and matty broke up and this blogger immediately bought tickets the first chance she got. Swifties don't just lack financial sense but also any moral conviction when it comes to taylor.

I think this ask is coming from a valid place of personal disappointment and I also appreciate that you are trying to responsibly weigh your feelings as well as your right/lack thereof to judge anyone's spending.

I've been on both sides - the person who helps someone who seems to treat that help as a stepping stone to more 'fun' things they want, and someone who needed/received help but then was expected to never have visible fun again*. I think Eras tickets during Eras mania would have been much better spent (as resale profits) advancing treatment or paying basic bills. I don't know that person's life and maybe someone else treated them to the tickets (it doesn't sound like it based on your ask). that's probably a REALLY optimistic hope. I don't WANT to believe that someone got money from you and others and went for concert tickets instead of meeting basic needs. if they did, it definitely says something about their priorities. but this story says a lot about YOUR heart, too. you have a good one, anon.

But one thing is very obvious to me as an ex Swiftie is that Travis and Taylor will not last. She’s marrying him out of spite and to sell the narrative she found happily ever after. She wanted to marry Joe, even Matty. It’s about the idea of marriage for her. I don’t think she’s in love with Travis. Her songs about Matty are more romantic than what she wrote about Travis. She got mad her fans didn’t let her date Ratty and she resents them for it. Then she started dating the first man that showed interest in her so vocally and it’s funny because even she believes Travis was entitled with the way he came into her life (said by her in her own documentary). And I know she knows that Travis loves the attention he gets from her. Him and his family seem so attention seeking and in the disposition to play into her circus as long as it works for them. “I have this dream my daughter in law kills me for the money. She thinks I left them in the will” Baby, you manifested the Kelces. I also think Taylor’s mom is obsessed with Travis because he represents the macho man persona her conservative ass probably expects for her daughter. Just like Selena (not wonder they’re friends) both are getting married not because they love the man they’re marrying but because they’re so desperate for the image it gives their branding. They both view marriage as the ultimate validation. Like, anyone that thinks this relationship will last is kidding themselves. She’s going to over exhaust her marriage - and in a few years she’s going to drop that pop-country divorce album. Not before the kids thought, she’s definitely getting kids out of this relationship.

Baby, you manifested the Kelces.

This part! I think there's also a shallow pendulum effect of trying to get over two Brit artist types by going for the MOST American football man she could find. She basically admitted as much - in the doc, her mom tells her it's 'time to try something different' and stop falling for brooding, artistic types (something like that, I only watched some clips when it came out).

dating a type based on your disappointment over your last type is sure a choice!!

The real reason she makes albums is to set scores and trash every single person she has ever known, specially these last 3 albums.

I looooove a concept EP. Poets could so have been an EP! Especially if you narrowed the sound palette (so to speak) to Aaron's folklore-esque tracks.

tbh they're not getting duped, it's just "this celeb brings us soooo much money, so we're just printing whatever they want". mainstream media is really in the gutter

I wonder if he paid much attention to that noise, but I hope he didn't. He seemed to smile at the end of an interview when he said he'd never been to Vauxhall (where The Black Dog pub is) (summarized in free article here). this was a hint his reality wasn't anything like what swifties believed.

It sucks, sure, what people said about him with such vehement vitriol. But Olivia Rodrigo said she learned if she paid attention to online gossip, she'd go totally crazy. I imagine Joe had that point of learning to separate himself from someone else's invented reality too.