#need her to release another country album

[sonic-rider-art]

My emotionally abusive ex made hating Taylor Swift into a personality trait so I started listening to her out of spite.

Debut is my favorite. Have some drawings I did before I dumped him <3

[Commissions Open!!]

[Do Not Repost My Art]

[russo-woso]

Biggest fan || Leah Williamson x singer!reader

Request | Masterlist | prompt list

Yes, I’ve based reader on Taylor swift…

Summary Leah being your biggest fan

You were finally coming to the end of your world tour.

The past two years you’d travelled to over 25 countries, playing over 150 shows and performed at sold out stadiums all over the world.

The tour had made history. It became the highest grossing tour ever, surpassing over £1 billion.

You’d been singing your whole life, but you released your first album when you were just 15 years old.

Since that age, you’d released 10 other albums in the space of 13 years.

You’d done world tours before, but this was the biggest one to date.

This tour consisted songs from all of your albums, making each show over three hours long.

You loved going on tour, but hated it at the same time.

You loved it because you got to do what you loved, singing your heart out to people who you loved dearly every night.

But you hated it because you missed the person you loved most of all.

Your girlfriend, Leah.

Singing had brought you many good things, but the greatest thing was by far, Leah.

Leah and you met at a charity event five years ago.

You were sat next to each other and just hit it off.

It had always been hard to find relationships, often being judged for them, or people taking advantage of you, and your social status within the world.

But there was something different about Leah.

Leah treated you normal, she treated you as if you were a normal person, and that’s all you’d ever wanted.

In Leah’s eyes, you were some gorgeous girl called Y/N, not Y/N the world biggest pop star.

From that night, you and Leah kept talking, meeting up for coffee dates before Leah finally asked you to be her girlfriend.

At first you were hesitant, not knowing if Leah knew the downfalls that came with you, but when you told her, she shut you down claiming that she loved you and any downfall wasn’t big enough to not be with you.

In that moment, you knew Leah was the one for you.

But that didn’t prevent the hurt of leaving her for tours.

One of your previous tours gave Leah a vision of what life was like without you by her side, but when you both made an equal effort to talk to one another every day, you knew it was going to be okay.

That tour finished and not long after, Covid hit and you and Leah were stuck with each other for months.

It was exactly what you needed after not being with each other for months.

During Covid, you wrote two albums, with the help of Leah, that you published.

Once Covid had gone, your publicist came to you and asked if you had any plans for a tour.

You explained your thoughts about a tour with all most of your albums in and the tour started its planning shortly after.

That’s what led to the Eras Tour.

A tour that included most of your eras, except one, but there was a reason behind that.

You planned to start in America, doing over 50 shows there before moving internationally.

What you hadn’t expected was to extend the tour and add several more shows due to the demand of tickets.

At first, you were concerned about the pressure that was being put on your relationship, worried that two years was too long for Leah.

Leah was incredible though. Saying that she was going to come and spend as much time with you when she had breaks from matches.

Leah had also done her ACL as well, so she had a lot of free time on her hands, so what not better to do than come and support her girl.

As you were approaching your final shows, you and Leah were talking about your future together and what it held.

You’d hoped that your fans had gotten the message that once the tour was over, you’d be having a well deserved break from the industry.

You were having this break to spend time with your family, and also to create a family.

You and Leah had discussed having a baby once your tour ended as it felt like the right time.

With this decision in mind, you knew your final show was going to be emotional and that’s why you desperately wanted Leah to be there, even though Leah was going to be there no matter what.

What you didn’t know is that Leah had invited the whole of the Arsenal squad, and England squad, along with all her family, wanting to show off how talented you were, although everyone already knew from her non stop bragging.

You didn’t mind though, it was an emotional time and you wanted people you loved to be there with you.

Your final show was at a sold out Wembley, your eighth sold out Wembley on the tour.

The crowd was incredible like always, screaming the lyrics to your songs for three hours straight.

You kept looking over to Leah throughout the show, a proud look never leaving her face.

As you sang your final song of the show, using the iconic lyric change, karma is the girl in the team, you turned to look at the audience, bringing the mic to your mouth as tears welled in your eyes.

“Can you please give a massive round of applause for my backup dancers, my background singers, my band, and everyone who’s been involved in the tour.” You began, your voice shaking as you brought your backup and band team onto the stage once more. “We’ve made so many memories over the past 632 days, but you Wembley, have been by far one of the best of them.”

You looked at Leah who had tears in her eyes.

“There’s also just a few other people I’d like to thank…” you went through a list of them, thanking your family and friends, and the fans, but as you came to the last one, you felt like crying. “The biggest thank you goes to the girl on the team. Le, You’ve been nothing but supportive of me since we met but especially over the course of the past two years. So Thank you, le.”

At that everyone cheered her as you looked at her, tears streaming down her face.

Music started playing again as another lot of confetti was released.

“Goodnight everyone! Oh, and, this has been the Eras tour! I hope you enjoyed it!” You said, as everyone cheered for a final time.

As the stage went down, you were met with a very teary eyed Leah.

She immediately hugged you, pressing kisses all over your face.

“I’m so proud of you.” Leah whispered

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” You told her and more tears escaped your eyes.

“I love you.” Leah said, squeezing you harder.

“I love you too.”

—

“Now, toast.” Leah announced as she got up from the table.

Leah had treated you to a dinner with all of her teammates and family as a congratulations to the end of the tour.

“I dedicate this toast to my girl. My Y/N has done 153 shows over the past two years and has broken records for it. She’s also happened to break records about the most Grammy’s too but—” Leah began as you buried your head in your hands embarrassed.

“—We get it, Leah. You’re her biggest fan. We get it.” Beth joked as the table erupted in laughter.

“Anyway, to skip all the figures and statistics, I just wanted to say how proud I am of yoy. The tour has brought highs and lows but you’ve managed to get through them and for that, I am immensely proud. So, raise your glasses to the one, the only, Y/N Y/L/N.” Leah finished, hyping you up, as everyone raised their glasses before taking a sip.

Leah sat back down in her seat next to you, your arm wrapping with hers.

“Thank you, baby.” You whispered as the table fell back into light chatter.

“Everything I said is true.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you too, Leah.” You were about to lean in for a kiss before stopping, Leah whining at the fact your lips didn’t connect. “Wait, even the fact that you’re my biggest fan?”

At that, Leah’s face just turned bright red.

“It’s true, she always plays your songs in the changing rooms, always pointing out that it’s her girlfriend singing.” Alessia told you from your right and you laughed, Leah’s face turning even more red.

“My biggest fan.”

“Can I have my kiss now?” Leah mumbled, and you gently pressed your lips on hers.

“Anything for my biggest fan.”

[lovecomedy]

If you need any convincing that Noel and Liam Gallagher are incestuous freaks (affectionate), here's the basic information you need

First of all. The kisses

Loch Lomond kiss, where they just... made out on stage in front of cameras. Cool. There's a gif with every photo from every angle.

Another kiss, this time in Japan. Here's the actual video.

And here's the same video but together with nice quotes from their 2016 documentary:

Here's a 2005 award event where they kiss again and also look quite in love

And here's Liam straight up groping Noel during concerts:

General stage antics and more groping:

Just one more groping

Ok. Let's talk about the music, then

Oasis has a song that Noel wrote called "My Sister Lover". The title speaks for itself, really. It includes amazing lyrics such as "You're my lover, I'm your brother"

But there's more! Noel used the same chorus of this song (with different lyrics) for a song he released in his solo album, 20 years later. It's called "Lock All the Doors". The very first line says: "She wore a star-shaped tambourine, prettiest girl I’d ever seen". And guess... guess who famously played a star-shaped tambourine? Liam! And Noel was the one that gifted him the fucking tambourine!!

Liam wrote a song for Oasis called Guess God Thinks I'm Abel

I'll just link everything that's been said about this song, because it really is batshit insane that this song exists

(It's common in the north of England to refer to things and people as "our". When either Liam or Noel say "our kid", they're talking about each other)

Liam has the tendency of thinking every song Noel writes is about him, including the love songs

Here he says "I'm his muse", along with some other interesting quotes

Ok, now we're on to suspicious quotes!

They had sex last night, according to Liam

This one is my favorite:

Of course this one is just all the weird quotes jammed in one post, you can feel yourself going crazy as you read it

Noel assures us that Liam knows about his arse

Other people confirming that they act like a couple. And them being fucking weird about each other’s marriages.

This one has Noel saying Liam is deeply in love with him. At the bottom, Liam's tweet.

Actually Liam always tweets things that basically confirm they're relationship. Like when somebody asked him if he ever rimmed Noel. Yeah.

This radio interview is where the most lovely quotes come from. Only Noel was supposed to be interviewed but then they both showed up PISSED DRUNK. Transcription in the same post

Even More weird quotes

This one involves the word impregnate

Noel making a suspicious comment about his daughter and son, Anais and Donovan

I think to be convinced you really just need that, but I'd like to add some niceties.

Just genuinely enjoying each other’s company

This is from the Oasis; 10 Minutes Of Noise and Confusion documentary. As Noel is kissing Liam's cheek, Liam is saying "He’s a fucking cunt and I hate him and I love him and he twists my melon, man. He’s the best songwriter in the fucking world.”

Some sweet quotes, and some less sweet ones as well

From the Supersonic documentary

Hugging after playing football

Just being silly

To finish off, two wonderful video edits with endearing moments

[ohgaylor]

In 2006, the year Taylor Swift released her first single, a closeted country singer named Chely Wright, then 35, held a 9-millimeter pistol to her mouth. Queer identity was still taboo enough in mainstream America that speaking about her love for another woman would have spelled the end of a country music career. But in suppressing her identity, Ms. Wright had risked her life.

In 2010, she came out to the public, releasing a confessional memoir, “Like Me,” in which she wrote that country music was characterized by culturally enforced closeting, where queer stars would be seen as unworthy of investment unless they lied about their lives. “Country music,” she wrote, “is like the military — don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The culture in which Ms. Wright picked up that gun — the same one in which Ms. Swift first became a star — was stunningly different from today’s. It’s dizzying to think about the strides that have been made in Americans’ acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community over the past decade: marriage equality, queer themes dominating teen entertainment, anti-discrimination laws in housing and, for now, in the workplace. But in recent years, a steady drip of now-out stars — Cara Delevingne, Colton Haynes, Elliot Page, Kristen Stewart, Raven-Symoné and Sam Smith among them — have disclosed that they had been encouraged to suppress their queerness in order to market projects or remain bankable.

The culture of country music hasn’t changed so much that homophobia is gone. Just this past summer, Adam Mac, an openly gay country artist, was shamed out of playing at a festival in his hometown because of his sexual orientation. In September, the singer Maren Morris stepped away from country music; she said she did so in part because of the industry’s lingering anti-queerness. If country music hasn’t changed enough, what’s to say that the larger entertainment industry — and, by extension, our broader culture — has?

Periodically, I return to a video, recorded by a shaky hand more than a decade ago, of Ms. Wright answering questions at a Borders bookstore about her coming out. She likens closeted stardom to a blender, an “insane” and “inhumane” heteronormative machine in which queer artists are chewed to bits.

“It’s going to keep going,” Ms. Wright says, “until someone who has something to lose stands up and just says ‘I’m gay.’ Somebody big.” She continues: “We need our heroes.”

What if someone had already tried, at least once, to change the culture by becoming such a hero? What if, because our culture had yet to come to terms with homophobia, it wasn’t ready for her?

What if that hero’s name was Taylor Alison Swift?

In the world of Taylor Swift, the start of a new “era” means the release of new art (an album and the paratexts — music videos, promotional ephemera, narratives — that supplement it) and a wholesale remaking of the aesthetics that will accompany its promotion, release and memorializing. In recent years, Ms. Swift has dominated pop culture to such a degree that these transformations often end up altering American culture in the process.

In 2019, she was set to release a new album, “Lover,” the first since she left Big Machine Records, her old Nashville-based label, which she has since said limited her creative freedom. The aesthetic of what would be known as the “Lover Era” emerged as rainbows, butterflies and pastel shades of blue, purple and pink, colors that subtly evoke the bisexual pride flag.

On April 26, Lesbian Visibility Day, Ms. Swift released the album’s lead single, “ME!,” in which she sings about self-love and self-acceptance. She co-directed a campy music video to accompany it, which she would later describe as depicting “everything that makes me, me.” It features Ms. Swift dancing at a pride parade, dripping in rainbow paint and turning down a man’s marriage proposal in exchange for a … pussy cat.

At the end of June, the L.G.B.T.Q. community would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. On June 14, Ms. Swift released the video for her attempt at a pride anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” in which she and an army of queer celebrities from across generations — the “Queer Eye” hosts, Ellen DeGeneres, Billy Porter, Hayley Kiyoko, to name a few — resist homophobia by living openly. Ms. Swift sings that outrage against queer visibility is a waste of time and energy: “Why are you mad, when you could be GLAAD?”

The video ends with a plea: “Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” Many, in the press and otherwise, saw the video as, at best, a misguided attempt at allyship and, at worst, a straight woman co-opting queer aesthetics and narratives to promote a commercial product.

Then, Ms. Swift performed “Shake It Off” as a surprise for patrons at the Stonewall Inn. Rumors — that were, perhaps, little more than fantasies — swirled in the queerer corners of her fandom, stoked by a suggestive post by the fashion designer Christian Siriano. Would Ms. Swift attend New York City’s WorldPride march on June 30? Would she wear a dress spun from a rainbow? Would she give a speech? If she did, what would she declare about herself?

The Sunday of the march, those fantasies stopped. She announced that the music executive Scooter Braun, who she described as an “incessant, manipulative” bully, had purchased her masters, the lucrative original recordings of her work.

Ms. Swift’s “Lover” was the first record that she created with nearly unchecked creative freedom. Lacking her old label’s constraints, she specifically chose to feature activism for and the aesthetics of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in her confessional, self-expressive art. Even before the sale of her masters, she appeared to be stepping into a new identity — not just an aesthetic — that was distinct from that associated with her past six albums.

When looking back on the artifacts of the months before that album’s release, any close reader of Ms. Swift has a choice. We can consider the album’s aesthetics and activism as performative allyship, as they were largely considered to be at the time. Or we can ask a question, knowing full well that we may never learn the answer: What if the “Lover Era” was merely Ms. Swift’s attempt to douse her work — and herself — in rainbows, as so many baby queers feel compelled to do as they come out to the world?

There’s no way of knowing what could have happened if Ms. Swift’s masters hadn’t been sold. All we know is what happened next. In early August, Ms. Swift posted a rainbow-glazed photo of a series of friendship bracelets, one of which says “PROUD” with beads in the color of the bisexual pride flag. Queer people recognize that this word, deployed this way, typically means that someone is proud of their own identity. But the public did not widely view this as Ms. Swift’s coming out.

Then, Vogue released an interview with Ms. Swift that had been conducted in early June. When discussing her motivations for releasing “You Need to Calm Down,” Ms. Swift said, “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male.” She continued: “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.” That statement suggests that Ms. Swift did not, in early June, consider herself part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community; it does not illuminate whether that is because she was a straight, cis ally or because she was stuck in the shadowy, solitary recesses of the closet.

On Aug. 22, Ms. Swift publicly committed herself to the as-of-then-unproven project of rerecording and rereleasing her first six albums. The next day, she finally released “Lover,” which raises more questions than it answers. Why does she have to keep secrets just to keep her muse, as all her fans still sing-scream on “Cruel Summer”? About what are the “hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,” in her chronicle of self-doubt, “The Archer,” if not her identity? And what could the album’s closing words, which come at the conclusion of “Daylight,” a song about stepping out of a 20-year darkness and choosing to “let it go,” possibly signal?

I want to be defined by the things that I love,

Not the things I hate,

Not the things that I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of,

Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night,

I just think that,

You are what you love.

The first time I viewed “Lover” through the prism of queerness, I felt delirious, almost insane. I kept wondering whether what I was perceiving in her work was truly there or if it was merely a mirage, born of earnest projection.

My longtime reading of Ms. Swift’s celebrity — like that of a majority of her fan base — had been stuck in the lingering assumptions left by a period that began more than a decade and a half ago, when a girl with an overexaggerated twang, Shirley Temple curls and Georgia stars in her eyes became famous. Then, she presented as all that was to be expected of a young starlet: attractive yet virginal, knowing yet naïve, not talented enough to be formidable, not commanding enough to be threatening, confessional, eager to please. Her songs earnestly depicted the fantasies of a girl raised in a traditional culture: high school crushes and backwoods drives, princelings and wedding rings, declarations of love that climax only in a kiss — ideally in the pouring rain.

When Ms. Swift was trying to sell albums in that late-2000s media environment, her songwriting didn’t match the image of a sex object, the usual role reserved for female celebrities in our culture. Instead, the story the public told about her was that she laundered her affection to a litter of promising grown men, in exchange for songwriting inspiration. A young Ms. Swift contributed to this narrative by hiding easy-to-decode clues in liner notes that suggested a certain someone was her songs’ inspiration (“SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM,” “ADAM,” “TAY”) or calling out an ex-boyfriend on the “Ellen” show and “Saturday Night Live.” Despite the expansive storytelling in Ms. Swift’s early records, her public image often cast a man’s interest as her greatest ambition.

As Ms. Swift’s career progressed, she began to remake that image: changing her style and presentation, leaving country music for pop and moving from Nashville to New York. By 2019, her celebrity no longer reflected traditional culture; it had instead become a girlboss-y mirror for another dominant culture — that of white, cosmopolitan, neoliberal America.

But in every incarnation, the public has largely seen those songs — especially those for which she doesn’t directly state her inspiration — as cantos about her most recent heterosexual love, whether that idea is substantiated by evidence or not. A large portion of her base still relishes debating what might have happened with the gentleman caller who supposedly inspired her latest album. Feverish discussions of her escapades with the latest yassified London Boy or mustachioed Mr. Americana fuel the tabloid press — and, embarrassingly, much of traditional media — that courts fan engagement by relentlessly, unquestioningly chronicling Ms. Swift’s love life.

Even in 2023, public discussion about the romantic entanglements of Ms. Swift, 34, presumes that the right man will “finally” mean the end of her persistent husbandlessness and childlessness. Whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s extracurricular activities involving a certain football star (romance for the ages? strategic brand partnership? performance art for entertainment’s sake?), the public’s obsession with the relationship has been attention-grabbing, if not lucrative, for all parties, while reinforcing a story that America has long loved to tell about Ms. Swift, and by extension, itself.

Because Ms. Swift hasn’t undeniably subverted our culture’s traditional expectations, she has managed, in an increasingly fractured cultural environment, to simultaneously capture two dominant cultures — traditional and cosmopolitan. To maintain the stranglehold she has on pop culture, Ms. Swift must continue to tell a story that those audiences expect to consume; she falls in love with a man or she gets revenge. As a result, her confessional songs languish in a place of presumed stasis; even as their meaning has grown deeper and their craft more intricate, a substantial portion of her audience’s understanding of them remains wedded to the same old narratives.

But if interpretations of Ms. Swift’s art often languish in stasis, so do the millions upon millions of people who love to play with the dollhouse she has constructed for them. Her dominance in pop culture and the success of her business have given her the rare ability to influence not only her industry but also the worldview of a substantial portion of America. How might her industry, our culture and we, ourselves, change if we made space for Ms. Swift to burn that dollhouse to the ground?

Anyone considering the whole of Ms. Swift’s artistry — the way that her brilliantly calculated celebrity mixes with her soul-baring art — can find discrepancies between the story that underpins her celebrity and the one captured by her songs. One such gap can be found in her “Lover” era. Others appear alongside “dropped hairpins,” or the covert ways someone can signal queer identity to those in the know while leaving others comfortable in their ignorance. Ms. Swift dropped hairpins before “Lover” and has continued to do so since.

Sometimes, Ms. Swift communicates through explicit sartorial choices — hair the colors of the bisexual pride flag or a recurring motif of rainbow dresses. She frequently depicts herself as trapped in glass closets or, well, in regular closets. She drops hairpins on tour as well, paying tribute to the Serpentine Dance of the lesbian artist Loie Fuller during the Reputation Tour or referencing “The Ladder,” one of the earliest lesbian publications in the United States, in her Eras Tour visuals.

During the Eras Tour, Ms. Swift traps her past selves — including those from her “Lover” era — in glass closets.

Dropped hairpins also appear in Ms. Swift’s songwriting. Sometimes, the description of a muse — the subject of her song, or to whom she sings — seems to fit only a woman, as it does in “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” “Maroon” or “Hits Different.” Sometimes she suggests a female muse through unfulfilled rhyme schemes, as she does in “The Very First Night,” when she sings “didn’t read the note on the Polaroid picture / they don’t know how much I miss you” (“her,” instead of that pesky little “you,” would rhyme). Her songwriting also noticeably alludes to poets whose muses the historical record incorrectly cast as men — Emily Dickinson chief among them — as if to suggest the same fate awaits her art. Stunningly, she even explicitly refers to dropping hairpins, not once, but twice, on two separate albums.

In isolation, a single dropped hairpin is perhaps meaningless or accidental, but considered together, they’re the unfurling of a ballerina bun after a long performance. Those dropped hairpins began to appear in Ms. Swift’s artistry long before queer identity was undeniably marketable to mainstream America. They suggest to queer people that she is one of us. They also suggest that her art may be far more complex than the eclipsing nature of her celebrity may allow, even now.

Since at least her “Lover” era, Ms. Swift has explicitly encouraged her fans to read into the coded messages (which she calls “Easter eggs”) she leaves in music videos, social media posts and interviews with traditional media outlets, but a majority of those fans largely ignore or discount the dropped hairpins that might hint at queer identity. For them, acknowledging even the possibility that Ms. Swift could be queer would irrevocably alter the way they connect with her celebrity, the true product they’re consuming.

There is such public devotion to the traditional narrative Ms. Swift embodies because American culture enshrines male power. In her sweeping essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” the lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich identified the way that male power cramps, hinders or devalues women’s creativity. All of the sexist undertones with which Ms. Swift’s work can be discussed (often, even, by fans) flow from compulsory heterosexuality, or the way patriarchy draws power from the presumption that women naturally desire men. She must write about men she surely loves or be unbankable; she must marry and bear children or remain a child herself; she must look like, in her words, a “sexy baby” or be undesirable, “a monster on the hill.”

A woman who loves women is most certainly a monster to a society that prizes male power. She can fulfill none of the functions that a traditional culture imagines — wife, mother, maid, mistress, whore — so she has few places in the historical record. The Sapphic possibility of her work is ignored, censored or lost to time. If there is queerness earnestly implied in Ms. Swift’s work, then it’s no wonder that it, like that of so many other artists before her, is so often rendered invisible in the public imagination.

While Ms. Swift’s songs, largely written from her own perspective, cannot always conform to the idea of a woman our culture expects, her celebrity can. That separation, between Swift the songwriter and Swift the star, allows Ms. Swift to press against the golden birdcage in which she has found herself. She can write about women’s complexity in her confessional songs, but if ever she chooses not to publicly comply with the dominant culture’s fantasy, she will remain uncategorizable, and therefore, unsellable.

Her star — as bright as it is now — would surely dim.

Whether she is conscious of it or not, Ms. Swift signals to queer people — in the language we use to communicate with one another — that she has some affinity for queer identity. There are some queer people who would say that through this sort of signaling, she has already come out, at least to us. But what about coming out in a language the rest of the public will understand?

The difference between any person coming out and a celebrity doing so is the difference between a toy mallet and a sledgehammer. It’s reasonable for celebrities to be reticent; by coming out, they potentially invite death threats, a dogged tabloid press that will track their lovers instead of their beards, the excavation of their past lives, a torrent of public criticism and the implosion of their careers. In a culture of compulsory heterosexuality, to stop lying — by omission or otherwise — is to risk everything.

American culture still expects that stars are cis and straight until they confess themselves guilty. So, when our culture imagines a celebrity’s coming out, it expects an Ellen-style announcement that will submerge the past life in phoenix fire and rebirth the celebrity in a new image. In an ideal culture, wearing a bracelet that says “PROUD,” waving a pride flag onstage, placing a rainbow in album artwork or suggestively answering fan questions on Instagram would be enough. But our current reality expects a supernova.

Because of that expectation, stars end up trapped behind glass, which is reinforced by the tabloid press’s subtle social control. That press shapes the public’s expectations of others’ identities, even when those identities are chasms away from reality. Celebrities who master this press environment — Ms. Swift included — can bolster their business, but in doing so, they reinforce a heteronormative culture that obsesses over pregnancy, women’s bodies and their relationships with men.

That environment is at odds with the American movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality, which still has fights to win — most pressingly, enshrining trans rights and squashing nonsensical culture wars. But lately I’ve heard many of my young queer contemporaries — and the occasional star — wonder whether the movement has come far enough to dispense with the often messy, often uncomfortable process of coming out, over and over again.

That questioning speaks to an earnest conundrum that queer people confront regularly: Do we live in this world, or the world to which we ought to aspire?

Living in aspiration means ignoring the convention of coming out in favor of just … existing. This is easier for those who can pass as cis and straight if need be, those who are so wealthy or white that the burden of hiding falls to others and those who live in accepting urban enclaves. This is a queer life without friction; coming out in a way straight people can see is no longer a prerequisite for acceptance, fulfillment and equality.

This aspiration is tremendous, but in our current culture, it is available only to a privileged few. Should such an inequality of access to aspiration become the accepted state of affairs, it would leave those who can’t hide to face society’s cruelest actors without the backing of a vocal, activated community. So every queer person who takes issue with the idea that we must come out ought to ask a simple question — what do we owe one another?

If coming out is primarily supposed to be an act of self-actualization, to form our own identities, then we owe one another nothing. This posture recognizes that the act of coming out implicitly reinforces straight and cis identities as default, which is not worth the rewards of outness.

But if coming out is supposed to be a radical act of resistance that seeks to change the way our society imagines people to be, then undeniable visibility is essential to make space for those without power. In this posture, queer people who can live in aspiration owe those who cannot a real world in which our expansive views of love and gender aren’t merely tolerated but celebrated. We have no choice but to actively, vocally press against the world we’re in, until no one is stuck in it.

And so just for a little while longer, we need our heroes.

But if queer people spend all of our time holding out for a guiding light, we might forgo a more pressing question that if answered, just might inch all of us a bit closer to aspiration. The next time heroes appear, are we ready to receive them?

It takes neither a genius nor a radical to see queerness implied by Ms. Swift’s work. But figuring out how to talk about it before the star labels herself is another matter. Right now, those who do so must inject our perceptions with caveats and doubt or pretend we cannot see it (a lie!) — implicitly acquiescing to convention’s constraints in the name of solidarity.

Lying is familiar to queer people; we teach ourselves to do it from an early age, shrouding our identities from others, and ourselves. It’s not without good reason. To maintain the safety (and sometimes the comfort) of the closet, we lie to others, and, most crucially, we allow others to believe lies about us, seeing us as something other than ourselves. Lying is doubly familiar to those of us who are women. To reduce friction, so many of us still shrink life to its barest version in the name of honor or safety, rendering our lives incomplete, our minds lobotomized and our identities unexplored.

By maintaining a culture of lying about what we, uniquely, have the knowledge and experience to see, we commit ourselves to a vow of silence. That vow may protect someone’s safety, but when it is applied to works of culture, it stymies our ability to receive art that has the potential to change or disrupt us. As those with queer identity amass the power of commonplaceness, it’s worth questioning whether the purpose of one of the last great taboos that constrains us befits its cost.

In every case, is the best form of solidarity still silence?

I know that discussing the potential of a star’s queerness before a formal declaration of identity feels, to some, too salacious and gossip-fueled to be worthy of discussion. They might point to the viciousness of the discourse around “queerbaiting” (in which I have participated); to the harm caused by the tabloid press’s dalliances with outing; and, most crucially, to the real material sacrifices that queer stars make to come out, again and again, as reasons to stay silent.

I share many of these reservations. But the stories that dominate our collective imagination shape what our culture permits artists and their audiences to say and be. Every time an artist signals queerness and that transmission falls on deaf ears, that signal dies. Recognizing the possibility of queerness — while being conscious of the difference between possibility and certainty — keeps that signal alive.

So, whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s sexual orientation or gender identity (something that is knowable, perhaps, only to her) or the exact identity of her muses (something better left a mystery), choosing to acknowledge the Sapphic possibility of her work has the potential to cut an audience that is too often constrained by history, expectation and capital loose from the burdens of our culture.

To start, consider what Ms. Swift wrote in the liner notes of her 2017 album, “reputation”: “When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test.”

Listen to her. At the very least, resist the urge to assume that when Ms. Swift calls the object of her affection “you” in a song, she’s talking about a man with whom she’s been photographed. Just that simple choice opens up a world of Swiftian wordplay. She often plays with pronouns, trading “you” and “him” so that only someone looking for a distinction between two characters might find one. Turns of phrase often contain double or even triple meanings. Her work is a feast laid specifically for the close listener.

Choosing to read closely can also train the mind to resist the image of an unmarried woman that compulsory heterosexuality expects. And even if it is only her audience who points at rainbows, reading Ms. Swift’s work as queer is still worthwhile, for it undermines the assumption that queer identity impedes pop superstardom, paving the way for an out artist to have the success Ms. Swift has.

After all, would it truly be better to wait to talk about any of this for 50, 60, 70 years, until Ms. Swift whispers her life story to a biographer? Or for a century or more, when Ms. Swift’s grandniece donates her diaries to some academic library, for scholars to pore over? To ensure that mea culpas come only when Ms. Swift’s bones have turned to dust and fragments of her songs float away on memory’s summer breeze?

I think not. And so, I must say, as loudly as I can, “I can see you,” even if I risk foolishness for doing so.

I remember the first time I knew I had seen Taylor Alison Swift break free from the trap of stardom. I wasn’t sitting in a crowded stadium in the pouring rain or cuddled up in a movie theater with a bag of popcorn. I was watching a grainy, crackling livestream of the Eras Tour, captured on a fan’s phone.

It’s late at night, the beginning of her acoustic set of surprise songs, this time performed in a yellow dress. She begins playing “Hits Different.” It’s a new song, full of puns, double entendres and wordplay, that toys with the glittering identities in which Ms. Swift indulges.

She’s rushing, as if stopping, even for a second, will cause her to lose her nerve. She stumbles at the bridge, pauses and starts again; the queen of bridges will not mess this up, not tonight.

There it is, at the bridge’s end: “Bet I could still melt your world; argumentative, antithetical dream girl.” An undeniable declaration of love to a woman. As soon as those words leave her lips, she lets out a whoop, pacing around the stage with a grin that cannot be contained.

For a moment, Ms. Swift was out of the woods she had created for herself as a teenager, floating above the trees. The future was within reach; she would, and will, soon take back the rest of her words, her reputation, her name. Maybe the world would see her, maybe it wouldn’t.

But on that stage, she found herself. I was there. Through a fuzzy fancam, I saw it.

And somehow, that was everything.

[forteafy]

Vices & Virtues | F1 Masterlist ♡ [ONGOING]

My current hyperfixation combonation between F1 & P!ATD since their breakup has lead me to write one-shots inspired by my favourite album, 'Vices and Virtues.'

This is a work in progress, and I would LOVE to know what one-shot's you'd like to see first! Please REPLY or MESSAGE me and let me know!

The Ballard of Mona List | FA14 (Assistant!Reader)

You’ve been assistant to the driving legend Fernando Alonso for three years now; there is nothing you wouldn’t do for him. When one request leaves both him and you questioning everything, what will happen to your relationship?

Let’s Kill Tonight | DR3 (Singer!Reader)

At the height of your career, you’re invited to perform at the Australian GP performance park. What you’re not aware of is the fact Red Bull’s Daniel Riccardo is quite possibly your biggest fan – not in a creepy way, more of an ‘unrequited love’ way.

Hurricane | LH44 (Royal!Reader)

Lewis Hamilton didn’t expect the highlight of his knighthood to be meeting the Princess. You didn’t expect the highlight of the knighthood to be the man leaving his phone number on a napkin. A secret relationship begins between a princess and a driver. 

Memories | LN4 (Journalist!Reader)

You've known Lando for as long as you can remember, the two of you have been inseparable. There has always been a silent promise to be together forever. Sometimes, the world can be cruel and choices inevitably have to be made for you both.

Trade Mistakes | PG10 (SingleMom!Reader)

The worst thing a parent can hear is that their child is in the emergency room. When you find out it was your ex-boyfriend, (her father) who bought them in, will your heart be able to take it?

Ready To Go | CS55 (Student!Reader)

Everybody knows how a holiday romance works; two weeks of passion before the person forgets about you the moment you land back in your home country. What happens when said person shows up on your doorstep with a bouquet of roses and two paddock passes?

Always | CL16 (Chef!Reader) [4.1K, completed]

Neither of you wanted to break up, not truly. No matter where Charles goes, who’s bed he wakes up in or how many times he sees you, he’ll never be able to move on. Will he drop everything the one day you call for help? Of course, he will. 

The Calender | GR63 (Actress!Reader)

He promised he would be there. You have always been there for George, on every single day that he needed you, and the days he didn’t think he did. Will he be able to keep his commitment and be there for the biggest night of your career?

Sarah Smiles | SV5 (Engineer!Reader) [3.3K, completed]

You and Sebastian are the same person; ultra-focused on your career and surrounded by a life built and designed especially for you. When your worlds collide, you can’t help but wanting to start letting one another in, maybe the ultimate power couple will be born out of a successful race. 

Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met…) | MV1 (Horner!Reader)

After the untimely divorce of his older brother, Christian Horner welcomes his niece to spend a summer season by his side at Red Bull Racing. Golden Boy, Max Verstappen is infatuated with the girl and wants nothing more than to put a smile back on her face. And possibly her mobile number. 

PLEASE let me know if you'd like to be tagged! I can't wait to begin writing these and releasing them all to you, let me know what ones you'd like to see! ♡

[black-arcana]

WITHIN TEMPTATION Lost Tens Of Thousands Of Instagram Followers Over 'Pride' Post

In a new interview with Germany's Radio Bob!, vocalist Sharon Den Adel of Dutch symphonic metallers WITHIN TEMPTATION was asked if she took notice of the fact that the band recently surpassed 400,000 followers on Instagram. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, to be honest, I'm not sure if I should say this on radio, but I was a bit shocked of our own audience in a way, because we reached actually 4,2 [420,000] and we lost a two [20,000], because we made an announcement, like, okay, just a post about Pride [the yearly event for acceptance and visibility of the LGBTIQ+ community] in the Netherlands. And we lost 0,2 just by one post saying equality stands for…"

She continued: "I don't care about losing those, but it was a shock to me. So many people were appalled by that message, it's, like, what is the world going to? I was a bit sad about that. It was, like, okay, because you said something about equality and how we see people, how we treat people. Wow. It was a shock… It's reflecting how people are thinking about how things are changing in society sometimes by things you post. It's, like, wow. I didn't see this coming. But anyway, anyway, I'm not regretting it at all. So I'm really happy that it happened because it just cleans up the database. [Laughs] Who cannot stand for equality for everyone? It's, like, come on."

Last December, Den Adel was asked by Mexico's Summa Inferno why it was important for her and her bandmates to voice their political views in some of their recently released songs, including "Wireless" and the title track of their latest album "Bleed Out", which have highlighted such current topics as the war in Ukraine and the suspicious death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman "detained" for not wearing a hijab. She said: "We are musicians. And what do musicians do? They're storytellers, in my opinion. At least that's how I see myself, as a storyteller.

"Back in the day when there were castles, hundreds of years ago, when the musicians were traveling from country to country, what they did is bring the news from one country to another country," she explained. "If there was a war far down South, then half year later, people would know up North because then the musicians came and they make music, telling the stories of what's happening in the world. And I think that essence of being a musician, I think that's important. I think the essence of keeping certain subjects alive in a different way than in the past, of course, but now more like the news goes so fast in our time, because we have Internet and everything, we know what's happening in every country, more or less. And the thing is it becomes old news very fast. But certain things you need to keep addressing and talking about, like what's happening in Iran, for instance, but also the war in the Ukraine, and of course now that what's happening in Gaza and in Israel. Those topics are important to talk about.

"For us, we've written songs about certain of these topics, like Ukraine and Iran," Sharon added. "We did write something about that. We were inspired by that. So that's why we're talking about it in our interviews. And because it becomes old news very quickly here in Europe. I don't know how it's in your country, but nobody talks that much anymore about the Ukraine or what's happening in Iran. Not at all, because it's not in the news anymore. Ukraine is, because we are, of course, supporting them, but in different ways from a European point of view. But Iran, it's already very much old news since Mahsa Amini died because she resisted the morality police and died in a horrible way after being beaten to death, just because she wore her clothes in an incorrect way, to them. And it's very important to talk about these topics because otherwise it becomes old news and their fight is still going on. And that's in many subjects. We could have written about so many things in the world, even about South America where certain things are happening. But these were the things that inspired us when we were in the studio. At that moment, the war broke out in Ukraine. At that moment, Mahsa Amini had just died and we watched the news, and before we knew it, it was integrated in our music. But it could have been also other topics that are just as much needed to be talked about, of course. But these were the things that were happening in the moment when we were writing music."

Asked if she is afraid of the backlash and criticism she and the rest of WITHIN TEMPTATION might receive for publicly voicing their political views, Sharon said: "Well, I believe in democracy. And I think also we have a voice, and I believe in debating. What I hope to do with this — we're not lashing out or criticizing anything. It's more like we try to keep the subject alive because just by talking about it, we can bring other people to new ideas or get a little bit deeper into the subject or start being interested in the subject and thinking about what is the right thing to do. What kind of world do we wanna live in? I think that's a good question. So I'm not afraid of feeling attacked because of the fact that we take a certain point of view because I think… Well, I think it's, that's the thing of democracy. We can all be a voice and we can all contribute to the debate on what kind of world do you wanna live in and what do you accept from each other and what don't we accept from each other. There should be a certain pressure from other countries trying to help certain people in need. And I think it's most important that we support those who are in oppression, who are oppressed, and to let them know there's people thinking about them and supporting them."

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Sparks Fly is officially 18 years old: history of a song that was almost lost & how fans saved it from being left in the vault

The night of Halloween 2006, a 16-year-old girl named Taylor Swift had just released her first album. To promote her music, she'd go wherever venues would call her to perform. On October 31st, it was Portland, Oregon's turn, where Taylor opened for Jake Owen in a bar called Duke's. Owen, a country singer who also debuted in 2006, was 25 at the time.

We can safely assume that Taylor was happy to meet Jake, as she wrote this on MySpace right after:

"Happy Halloween :-) Current mood: happy Happy Halloween! I’m sitting at the airport in Portland, Oregon.. About to get on a red-eye flight (Oh yes, I just said red-eye. Meaning, all night. This should be interesting…) to Toronto, Canada for another weekend of Rascal Flatts shows. Tonight was awesome. It was a show in Portland at a bar called Duke’s, I opened up for Jake Owen. And a little back-story, I’ve had his album on repeat for the past couple of months.. It’s an amazing album and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I’ve got every line memorized, and if you see me on a plane.. Chances are, I’m listening to some song off that album, at a volume level that’s probably going to cause long-term hearing damage someday. ANYWAY. I got to walk in on his sound check and meet him. Turns out he’s extremely cool, and had bought my album on iTunes. :-) And since I had to leave after one song of his set, he played my favorite song “8 Second Ride” first. Which is another reason why he’s awesome. And just to let everyone know, YES, I did dress up for Halloween. Yes, I stood onstage in an angel costume with huge wings (that really conflicted with my guitar playing). And I convinced my two guitar players Todd and Kevin to put on those little headbands with the devil ears attached. Haha. Oh yeah, it was great. It’s so awesome playing to a crowd and seeing some people who know the words to EVERY SONG! I love that the album is out, and I love that y'all are listening to it. You guys are so awesome, and I really appreciate all of your comments. I love you all so much. Thanks for everything."

The day Speak Now was announced, a known fan at the time revealed said that the song was written on November 2, 2006, so a couple of day after the Portland show.

The most incredible news is that "Sparks Fly" is going to be put on the album. That song is so incredible. Taylor wrote it on November 2, 2006, performed it live in Oroville on May 30, 2007, and now it is finally being released on October 25, 2010. Definitely a dream come true for Taylor fans worldwide! (X)

So on November 2, 2006 Taylor finished the first of the three known versions of a song called Sparks Fly. The first handwritten draft was showcased in a museum:

On April 6, 2007, Taylor premiered the song in her native Reading, Pennsylvania, and then sang it again on May 30th in Sacramento, CA. This version was recorded by the same fan that revelead the writing date and uploaded online, gaining traction among the fanbase.

This live features a very prominent banjo and different lyrics:

“You stand there in front of me” -> “you stood there in front of me”

“Get me with those brown eyes, baby” -> “get me with those green eyes, baby”

“Take your open hand and take me out” -> “reach out open-handed and lead me out”

“Dim the paper lanterns” -> “don’t need more paper lanterns”

“This night is the 31st” -> “my heart is beating fast”

“So let’s make it count now, baby” -> “I could wait patiently”

“I’ll run my fingers” -> “I run my fingers”

“And make no borderlines” -> “gonna strike this match tonight”

“Forgive me when I can’t take in everything you are” -> “and lead me up the staircase”

“You kissed me like you meant it, I swear I saw sparks” -> “I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show”

There was also an additional section: We stood at the gate (and you kiss me) / With the moon on your face / And you’ll kiss me

In December 2007, People Magazine releases a special photoshoot for Taylor's 18th birthday, which features photos of her bedroom, including the infamous Mirror Tracklist, a very early tracklist for her then-unnamed sophomore album. The tracklist inlcudes Sparks Fly as the 6th track.

As we know, Sparks Fly ended up being dropped from Fearless and shelved. We actually don't know whether the song was recorded or not, although some sources say that it was, but ended up being excluded in favour of The Way I Loved You.

Throughout the Fearless era, the fans didn't forget about the live version of Sparks Fly. On June 13th, after Taylor premiered the song Mine, Taylor hosted a 13-hour meet & greet, where one of the most asked questions was what happened to Sparks Fly:

“'Sparks Fly' is a song I wrote a few years ago and played in concert. You guys have learned it and I think like it, which makes me really happy. When we did the 13-hour Meet and Greet at the CMA Fest, there was a comment I got over and over again. You guys were saying, 'So what about 'Sparks Fly?' Is it going to be on the next record? [...] I played that song at maybe one or two shows, and you guys just jumped on it and really made it something that I had to put on the album because you really showed interest in it.”

That week Taylor finished Speak Now, completing the last song (The Story Of Us) on the 16th, but taking into consideration what the fans had asked her, she went back to Sparks Fly, changing the lyrics one last time, especially the second verse:

First verse: You say my name for the first time, baby, and I fall in love in an empty bar -> You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.

Second verse: So reach out open-handed and lead me out to that floor / I don’t need more paper lanterns / Take me down, baby / Bring on the movie score / ‘Cause my heart is beating fast and you are beautiful / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would... -> My mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea / You touch me once and it’s really somethin’ / You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be / I’m on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it’s no good / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would…

Bridge: Just keep your beautiful eyes on me / Gonna strike this match tonight / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show -> Just keep on keepin’ your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I'm captivated by you, baby I’m captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show.

I think that the line "I'm on my guard from the rest of the world" from Sparks Fly being written after "And you figure out why I'm guarded" from Mine is very telling of what Taylor was going through in her personal life.

Once the album was out, the secret code hidden in the song lyrics spelled: “Portland, OR”. The secret message seemed to confirm the theories that had followed the song all summer.

In July 2023, Jake Owen commented on being the ispiration behind the song: “It’s a great song and the speculation has always been funny to me. I’m sure Taylor probably laughs at it all too, but I’m happy to even have my name in the discussion around it. She’s an amazing girl and an amazing artist. It’s been incredible to see how she’s grown as a musician and what a global phenomenon she’s become.”

To me, Sparks Fly is a signature song of hers. Classic Swift story telling, sprinkled with teenage dreams in an euphoric rock production. It's really cool to see how fans played a fundamental role to save this song from oblivion. Can you imagine our reaction if we had got this song in the Fearless Vault or the Speak Now Vault?

[ladybugsimblr]

Rolling Stone - Fall Bailey Kay, One of One

-

Shoutout to @soulsimmin for the other musical artists noted on the cover and general Team BK shenanigans. Somebody cut the check.

Article Below

Category: Baaad Bitch

10.59pm The initials BK pop on the screen indicating Bailey Kay has joined the Soom call. The camera flashes on and my heart skips a beat. I hear her soft but firm voice say “Kiss” and another face appears in the view. Bailey’s husband Quinton leans in for a kiss as requested. The two quickly exchange “Love you’s” and adoring looks and then he’s gone as fast as he appeared. Bailey Kay turns to me and I now have her undivided attention. She flashes that gorgeous smile and my heart skips a beat again.

“Sorry. Hi! Thank you for agreeing to meet with me this late. I hope you’re a night owl too.” Absolutely not. I’m normally in bed by 10pm, but who says no to the Queen B when she agrees at the last possible second to her first interview in ages. I awkwardly reply “I am tonight!” and she laughs, exclaiming “I like you!” Phew! Any remaining tension and nerves are gone. Let’s get into this.

Channeling my glitteriest of kitties I jump right in and ask “Where are the visuals? We the butterflies are begging for the music videos and performances.” Honestly I expected a glare or an eye roll in return, but I get a sly smirk instead. “You are the visual”

I instinctively look at the small image of myself on the screen thinking I did too much with my look for this call. Bailey must have sensed my confusion and continues: “Butterfly is about celebrating life, love, and freedom, overcoming struggles and transforming into your best, highest self. I didn’t want to dictate how anyone experienced those things with the typical visuals. But I did want to get the party started so I gave you the first step- the music.”

“So you dropped the album and bounced to let us party and figure it out for ourselves?”

“You are funny! But yes, kinda. And look what happened! You all started your own challenge and created the visuals, and all I had to do was sit back and watch. Also I really didn’t leave y’all empty handed. I thought we killed it with the pics in the Butterfly Box. But I can’t forget the hive is the hardest to please and I love that. Keeps me on my toes.”

“Ok, I see the vision, but why literally leave the country and go on vacation during an album rollout? That’s unheard of!”

“Ok two reasons. The first is that was what I needed to do. That was my way of celebrating. I told my baby girl that putting out an album was like graduating. I fought hard to overcome my own issues and dark places and now that the project was out to the world, I needed to release and just be with my family, my babies.”

“And the second?”

“Because I can. I’m THAT girl! Deadass!” Again with a smile and a laugh. BK might be the nicest bad bitch I’ve ever met.

“What do you say to the critics who say the album is going to fail? There are rules to the game if you want to succeed.”

“I say check the streaming numbers and sales.” That eye twinkle and smile return one more time. “Rules are meant to be broken. Sometimes. Note to self: Redact that line before my terrors read this. But seriously if we did the same thing, the same way, every time, art, music, life would all be extremely boring. Tackling the unheard of and never been done before is my shit. I live for that. As far as succeeding… I’ve been lucky enough to have more success in my entertainment career than I ever dreamed of. Whatever I do from here on is the extra sauce and will not be measured by industry standards.”

“Speaking of the future, what more can we expect for Butterfly? Please say tour.”

“Ha! Ummm performances are coming. It’s time for me to party with the butterflies.”

“Ok, will they be on multiple stages in cities near all of us?”

“I can't with you! But I can say I’ll perform songs from Butterfly and the rest of the catalogue, on stage, soon. Stay ready.”

And ready we will stay. Ready for the Queen BK. One of One. Number One. The Only One.

[aurora-daily]

AURORA in an interview for Ticketmaster via Amroth | April 6th, 2024

In April 2022, AURORA read a letter that changed her life. It was co-written by indigenous activists, titled ‘We Are the Earth’, and called for a revolution: a collective response to global warming – to “heal the land”. They described being connected to the land “through our hearts”, and the earth as “the heart that pulsates within us.”

The letter led AURORA to consider a question: what happened to the heart? “Everything we do is about greed, about money, about mass consumption, about capitalism,” she says, blue wide-eyed and flooded with feeling. “There’s war everywhere, countries under water, flowers in Antarctica. We are ruining our land, mistreating our animals, our clothing, and each other. We have stopped leading from the heart.”

And so 27-year-old Norwegian art-pop superstar AURORA began studying books on human anatomy. She wanted to understand when and why Western culture lost touch with the deeper purpose of our most vital organ.

“The ancient Greeks thought the heart was the portal to spiritual divinity, that it represented the interconnectedness of the world,” she says. “But then Aristotle comes along and says, ‘the heart is a pump’. Then Plato says, ‘the heart makes blood’. Then another guy says, ‘the heart filters the blood’. And so bit by bit, it became purely functional. We had misinterpreted its whole meaning.”

The letter also resonated with AURORA on a more personal level. In 2022, she released her chart-topping last album, The Gods We Can Touch, which saw her complete a sold out UK headline tour, including at BST Hyde Park alongside Adele. With over a million album sales and 2.6 billion streams, and her inaugural The Gods We Can Touch book selling 14,000 copies (while signed copies sold out in less than an hour), AURORA was at her professional peak. Yet at the same time she experienced something painful that split her in two. She sensed a disconnect between her mind and heart. “It made me understand women in a way I hadn’t before. It made me understand how evil hides behind the nicest of faces.”

AURORA’s fourth album, What Happened to the Heart?, is a journey from weakness to strength, from self-destruction to self-healing. Of reuniting a fractured self. “It’s actually the most personal and cathartic album I have ever written,” she says quietly, as if the realisation had only just come to her.

‘Some Type of Skin’, a dark slice of electro-pop, reveals the conflict at the album’s core. “When you’re vulnerable, anything that brushes up against you makes you bleed,” she says. “But you need to go into battle, you need to build some type of skin.” In the song, AURORA cries: “Hit me hard where I am soft… should my heart reveal itself to be more than a muscle? Or a fist covered in blood?”

To build her armour, AURORA decided to throw herself into chaos. “Usually I am very careful, very reasonable” she says. “But for once I wanted to experience what it felt to be unreasonable. I needed to be destructive.” So she gave herself a year, while she was touring ‘The Gods We Can Touch’, to throw herself into life hard and fast. “A lot of alcohol, very little sleep, a lot of fun,” she smiles, a little wistfully. She went ice swimming and hurled things in rage rooms. “It was painful, but I was building skin.”

The chaos extended to the writing process. “I had a rule: I could only write in unsafe spaces, I needed to be rootless.” That meant no forests, where AURORA had spent much of her childhood in Bergen, Norway – a solitary safe haven away from those who made her “feel alien”. These “unsafe spaces” were loud, full of people, “strange smells, noises…anywhere where I could feel observed”.

AURORA travelled all over the word, meeting with women she describes as modern day philosophers, “women with true knowledge”. In particular, three female tribe leaders in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. “There is wisdom in their indigenous values. These women live in the modern world just like us, but they still choose to live with kindness.”

She was inspired by their feminine power. “Men have been leading us for thousands of years and look where that has got us. We need change, and women have had everything figured out from the very beginning of time. We were the first timekeepers, we could track the seasons inside our own bodies.” She grins cheekily. “I would be scared of us too, if I were a man.”

Feminine strength inspired 'The Gods We Can Touch' – fighting against internal shame and societal judgement of the female body – and it is no less present here. Above the throbbing techno of 'Starvation', produced by German Nicolas Rebscher, who also worked on her debut EP 'Running With the Wolves', AURORA mourns the depletion of the human spirit as a result of technological invasion that is particularly threatening to women. “Our souls are starving, because AI is taking over; art is being replaced by computers,” she says, gravely. “And women, our consent, is being exploited, as it always has been, from porn to deep fakes.”

The act of mourning is integral to What Happened to the Heart? As AURORA says, “I’ve been thinking a lot about funerals, and in the music people used to deal with death”. She drew on buried grief for loved ones, as well mourning her former self.

“In Norway there is a culture of repression. I suppressed something for so long, and became infected by it,” she says, with a deep sigh. “So once I began to properly address my past, I realised that a lot of things I remembered were very different from how I imagined. And I had to accept that I have to change to move on. I am not the same as I was". She adds, firmly: "I have to learn how to work with this body, in this mind, as they are now.”

This mourning led to a kind of holy communion between AURORA's heart and mind for the first time. “I spent a lot of time drinking wine alone, speaking out loud, my heart and mind finally in conversation.” She would record these conversations and later transcribe them as fodder for her songs, such as ‘The Dark Dresses Lightly’, a haunting folkloric melody over an urgent drum pattern, which imagines the heart and the mind as two characters sitting at a table, drinking together – you can even hear the glasses clinking in the production.

AURORA leans forward conspiratorially. “So the heart says, ‘Okay, now, we've gone too long without communicating. Tonight, we're going to get drunk, go deep into this shit, and explode on each other’.” The song is the album’s turning point, AURORA adds, “when all the ugly has come out, and you can kind of hear me having an orgasm because getting everything out is so delicious, and the healing can truly begin.”

These imaginary exchanges felt so visceral to AURORA that she would sometimes paint them; the heart and mind in a sword duel, “splattering all over each other”, she says, her face lighting up with mischievous delight.

It’s a viscerality mirrored by the album’s production: a thrumming, primal force that confronts the almost ecclesiastical purity of AURORA’s own vocals. “It reflects this idea of the body falling apart, and being glued back together by something inhuman.” This discord is brought to life by “beautiful old synthesisers” that AURORA found all over the world, including with previous collaborator Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. “I got him to puke all over the song ‘My Body is Not Mine’ with his old modular synths” she says, which, fittingly, “had a mind of their own.”  

Despite the thematic and sonic darkness of the album, AURORA wanted to maintain a certain playfulness. “A very random, very intuitive,” way of producing. She collaborated with some of her favourite Norwegian artists and producers, from Ane Brun on ‘My Name’, to Matias Tellez on ‘Invisible Wounds’. On some tracks she plays the drums, a fiddle player and a traditional Chinese Pipa player were brought in, and some songs contain a “beautiful mandolin from the 60s”, she says, smiling, picking up an imaginary bow as she loses herself in the memory. There is even a disco song, ‘Do You Feel?’, produced by longtime collaborator Magnus Skylstad and sure to be a club-banger and chart hit. “It makes no sense, I have no idea why it’s on the album,” AURORA laughs, like a tinkling bell. “But my sister was born in the 80s and I was kind of thinking about her. And I liked the idea of having a song that made no sense.”

Not all these songs are a product of chaos, however. The first and the last songs of the album, ‘The Echo of My Shadow’ and ‘Invisible Wounds’, were written in the quiet. “In my living room, where it was safe. They came directly from my solitude.” And with this quiet comes hope: “We both need to/Tend to the invisible wounds,” AURORA sings, a call to action for herself, to the listener, and to the world, to rupture with this malignant state of inertia, to fight back, to heal. “We need to stop this sense of global denial. We need to blow up, because it’s important, sometimes, to explode. Explosion is vital for change, to put the heart back into politics.” She smiles, and says, in the softest tone: “I think what we need... is a small riot.”

[mywritingonlyfans]

The Car's about you. // Alex Turner X Reader.

Filling the request: I know you haven't been writing much but I'd like you to consider writing something with Alex where they're split but he dedicates the whole new album to her. pls 🥺🙏

Words: 3,4K.

(gif's by tedystaleva)

"Al?" Your worried filled the room, making Alex, even if tired, slowly open his eyes to you.

"Why're you 'ere?" He wasn't harsh, his tone was soft and you felt like you could cry in front of him for missing his voice so much.

Trying to avoid curiosity for what was to come, as well as the tension, Jamie, who had forced you there, replied, "Well, since you don't want to listen to us, we bring her to you." He shrugged, as if it was obvious Alex needed you in a predicament of his even though you weren't together anymore.

Thanking you, Jamie kissed your forehead and left, leaving you and Alex, who was pale and somewhat thinner, in nothing but silence that was deafening.

"You look terrible." Your face shuddered, making him mentally conclude that he'd still rather be in pain than see you going through it.

"Thank you," he laughed humorlessly, avoiding any pre-concert efforts.

His eyes squeezed shut as he sat down on the couch, refusing to let himself believe he felt a little dizzy. He was always stubborn, he knew that, just as he was sure that if you asked him to treat himself better, he would.

"When it started, Al?" You knelt down in front of him, sensing his temperature by his forehead and neck. Your eyes avoided looking directly into his, something that cut him like a knife.

Ignoring the answer, since both knew the answer to it all, he asked what had been on his mind since the release, "Did you hear the new album?"

You bit your lip, taking a deep breath. You adjusted his blazer and allowed yourself to look at him, his eyes drooping, looking tired but he was still your Alex, you would never forget that. You stroked his curls, which were shorter since you last saw him, and you felt better to see him snuggle into your touch.

"Not yet, Al," he looked disappointed.

You took off your cardigan, duly oversized as usual, and draped it over him. More relaxed, he sighed in relief because you were there for him.

"I brought some medicine that might help, could you take some before the concert?" You asked as if he were a child.

Before you could get them out of your bag, he grabbed your hand.

"It's just a cold, I can handle it."

"Can you really?" You raised your eyebrows, ready to give a sermon but then retreated, remembering that he was nothing yours anymore. Still, he expected to see you mad at him for not taking care of himself, not doing the right things and choices, he missed that. "It's only getting worse, Al. You know that, otherwise Jamie wouldn't have called me countless times." Your voice was quiet, on an exhausted sigh. It was hard to say if you couldn't bear to hear from him or you were tired of seeing him mistreating himself and having to hear such reports from people close to him. Your serenity, even when you were mad at him, was one of the things he loved about you, even in fights it was clear how much you only exploded when it was to show how much you care and can't tolerate that anymore.

"I 'ate Jamie," He wrinkled his nose, reaching for your meds.

"You love the boys for taking care of you." You smiled in victory and he couldn't help but smile to you.

"How're you feelin'? Don't you think that continuing to sing and movin' to another country all the time will harm you?" He wanted to hate you for those questions, but he couldn't. Touring kept his mind busy and he enjoyed it, however, it was obvious you were right.

He rubbed his eyes hard, stretching his body. "Tired, not tired of not bein' able to sing, but I feel like my voice is startin' to feel like I'm feelin' different. My chest hurts, I feel weak and sometimes it's 'ard to breathe."

"And you're sure it's just a cold?" You asked in disbelief as he coughed dryly. "And you're puttin' up with all this without even taking a pill?"

He nodded. Sometimes he felt like he deserved it, for example, when you came to his mind late at night and he remembered that he just let you go without doing anything about it.

"You are hurtin' people 'round you, in addition to takin' chances with your voice," you didn't proceed, you just kept reflective.

"Do I 'urt you by doin' this?"

Swallowing hard, you replied, "let's just say it's not nice to hear that you're away from most of your family and friends and you're hurting yourself by being stubborn, Alex."

There was silence, this time far from uncomfortable. You avoided looking at each other for a few moments until that failed, soon he had taken your hand and when you didn't pull back, he felt a shred of hope left.

"Are you stayin' for the concert? You need to 'ear the new album, and it sounds like a good opportunity..." he suggested, refusing to put it off any longer.

"Al," Before you could continue, he interrupted himself.

"That'll be the last one before I seek for help. You stay and I'll see the doctor."

"Promise?" You asked in a low voice, weak smile. "Like tomorrow?"

"Do you want me to see a doctor tomorrow?"

"Yeah, if you're already goin' to make me stay here for longer," he bit his lip with a bitter reminder that you weren't his anymore and there was no point in you sticking around for several days. Still, he felt like a failure knowing that your plans didn't involve seeing the concert, but just convincing him of something he knew he should be doing. He was afraid that you weren't there for him, but rather, for fear of the boys' insistence, as if he was going to die if he didn't get any help. "I want to know what you have, and what you're going to need to do, okay? If you need rest, you go rest and take some days off!"

He nodded, still laughing humorlessly. His eyes followed you as you got up, gathering your things for yourself and leaving him with only the warmth of your cardigan, that luckily had your essence to comfort him.

"You'll be 'round?" He asked, hoping you'd tell him where you were staying. He imagined coming to you after the concert, but you were smarter.

"I do not know yet," you refused to look at him. He knew you, he knew you were meticulous enough to already have everything planned out for the trip, as you probably thought a thousand times before going to him, and knowing you so well had never hurt him so much. You didn't want to deal with him. "I think I better go, I'll see you in a few, Al," He nodded with a funereal smile.

"See ya, lil' one," his tone was sad, it no longer seemed worth trying to hide it.

Sighing deeply, before leaving you answered about the album, "I'm dying to hear you sing again, but I can't since the last time. I can't bring myself to listen to the new release because I hate to think about you and wonder how you are, it's hard enough to deal with the band being all over the place because of engagement over the album. I hope you understand, it wasn't my bad will, I would have called you after listening to it, I believe it's nothing but amazing like almost everything you do, Al. I just couldn't put myself to it." Leaving a speechless Alex, you got out, feeling your eyes fill with tears as Jamie and Matthew stopped you.

"He's great?" It was funny how general the question was but you knew what he wanted to hear.

"Yeah, he'll be. He told me he's going to see someone tomorrow, he's taken some medicine and he's not going to cancel today's concert. He doesn't look well at all, I don't think he'll be advised to stick to this routine any longer." You said with difficulty, feeling a lump in your throat. You wanted to catch the next flight back home and just call him the next day and ask how everything went, but you had promised him.

"I feel relieved that he's going to see one, we've been talkin' 'bout it for weeks and he won't listen to us." Jamie continued, making you only then, in the midst of your bewildered head, realize that he was the one who asked.

"I'm going to my room, I need to sort out some things from work," you tried to get away.

"You're stayin'?" Matthew asked, looking you up and down strangely. "For Alex?" He frowned.

"I don't know," you knew you would, but you didn't know the answer to that. It was hard to tell if you were doing this for him or for yourself or out of fear.

Matthew looked at Jamie, in a boyish smile so characteristic of him. "You haven't heard the album, huh?" Jamie rolled his eyes but seeing you agreeing, Matthew's satisfaction made sense. You could tell there had been some sort of inside joke/understanding between them.

"Why?" The obsession with the questions about the album was already starting to feel like something wrong.

"Nothing, I think, if I were you I wouldn't have listened either. Alex's a dickhead." You just nodded.

Without you've even said anything, producers called their name and they had to go, they left laughing amongst themselves like a derivative of an 'I told you so' before leaving you with cozy hugs and kisses on the forehead. You missed them, no more than Alex, but you did.

------

Knowing where he was was suffocating, he was downstairs, in the number of which now rang in your head. The urge to call or come down to see if he was feeling better was almost maddening, yet you remained still, quiet uneasy, with Jamie's short messages updating you on things. You could imagine Jamie saying how much you still cared for Alex to him, but you were unable to try to guess how Alex felt about it.

You had opened Google a couple of times, typing in their name and threatening to open any album information. Your courage was gigantic, but you didn't want to risk hearing Alex's voice, didn't even want to think about how you were going to put up with an entire concert of theirs in a few.

When you opened the cover of the new album online, passing your eyes quickly over the names of the songs, you gave up, locking your screen and putting it aside. Deep down you wanted to hear it, obviously, but you knew how good Alex was at describing feelings, and while you suspected you weren't described in them, you didn't really want to know. This could hurt more than you would ever imagine, and you didn't want that.

"Would you be able to arrange tea for after the night? Maybe lemon, ginger or even eucalyptus?" You offered a smile to the producer who was at the side of the stage minutes before it started, trying your best not to look like a boring nutcase.

The man looked to you quickly, returning to his duties. "I can work on it. Anything else?"

You were surprised, not expecting such an answer, and then you continued with the same affectionate expression as if you had been a puppy that fell out of the moving truck. "Maybe warm water bottles and some hot towels too?" You smiled wider, "I don't wanna be a pain, he's just not feeling too well."

"It's fine," the man nodded. "You're Alex's girlfriend, right?"

You didn't say anything, and before you could think to deny it, he cut you off. "You guys did such a great job on the new album."

-----

With the man's words still ringing in your head, you walked to the side of the stage, seeing Jamie looking at you and Matthew smiling when he saw you, waving his drumstick lightly. They were probably already on the second or third song.

Alex hadn't noticed you, and as stunned as you were, it took you a while to actually hear and make his words coherent.

He was in your black cardigan from earlier, covering his light blue shirt. His hands were in the air, his voluminous hair blowing and the dark glasses in his eyes made him look even more perfect; as usual. However, it was inevitable not to notice how his voice was different, cracked and tired, and his movements seemed slower than usual, anyone could tell he was trying too hard to be there.

It was all just as dizzying as you thought it would be, the pain in your heart was real, knowing that you didn't belong there anymore.

"… And if we guess who I'm pretending to be/Do we win a prize?/Having attempted twice, both incorrectly/Do we get a third try?…"

Your mouth hovered open, recognizing those words that eventually composed into a melody. You had written that for him, on a napkin during a trip supposed to be relaxing for both of you. Only then, you started to absorb every phrase from the songs, making sure you took note of every new one that he was going to sing.

As the lyrics went on, your eyes filled with tears, Alex hadn't failed to bring nostalgia to it all, it was like you could transport yourself back to that day, having him wake you up with wet kisses in the morning, brunch at the hotel already with bathing suits and the incessant indirect due insecurities. His voice was painful, even in the older songs, and something told you it wasn't just because he was unwell.

"But now the orchestra's got us all surrounded/And I cannot for the life of me remember how they go,"

Your heart squeezed again, not only the line, but also the words, which often seemed disconnected to many, made complete sense to you; as if they were actually made with you in mind.

And by following with, "Whilst wonderin' if your mother still ever thinks of me," completed by, "So predictable, I know what you're thinkin'/I'm watching your every move/I feel the tears are coming on/It won't be long/It won't be long." Not only did you burst into tears, but you cursed yourself for thinking that in all this time, he didn't care about you or that he'd ever be able to keep memories of yourself with him.

Alex had no idea you were there, amidst the dark and fervent flashes of light, he couldn't identify you, though you could tell his lost gaze was searching for you.

With silent tears running down your chin and almost blinding you, before the concert could come to an end, you looked around for familiar faces. You needed a copy of the album.

"Hey, hey," as a signal, James gripped your shoulders. "Are you okay? Does Alex know you're here?"

You shook your head, not quite sure whether you were saying yes or no, but he understood that your answer was that you couldn't say.

"It's just that's, huh, if something happened to you Alex would kill us." That phrase, with Alex's voice singing Humbug songs, brought back damn flashbacks to how Alex always made sure you were okay when you visited on tour, he made such a big deal out of it, since he knew how introverted you could get sometimes. At the moment, you felt ungrateful.

"I'm good," you pushed back the tears, so more could take up space. "I really need to see the album, do you have it with you?" He nodded, forcing himself to ignore your shaky voice.

He pulled out The Car, in a completely paper cover, as a mere sampler, and placed it in your hands, making sure that the ones that were selling were the same as those printed.

Out of breath in your lungs, you flipped through it quickly, seeing right on the first page one, "With all love and admiration, this is dedicated, as well as co-writing, to my girl." And just below that was your name, in full.

You thought you weren't capable of crying even more, but it was impossible to help. You could feel your face bloated and the salty taste wash over you. Still not fully aware of your senses, you flipped through the lyrics, confirming that each one of them had your name on it, as if you had worked on it together, something that never happened. He had paid attention to details/lines/memories and then described, and yes, it was all about you.

Before the concert was over, it wouldn't be possible to read all of them in full, but what you saw and heard was more than enough. At that, you grabbed the copy of the album, which was now marked with your tears, and walked back to where you were earlier. Watching them wave goodbye and promising to be back soon while you didn't back down from going after Alex.

As in a scene from a movie, Matthew held Alex's shoulders, directing him towards you, who was failing to stop your tears.

Al's tired eyes seemed to take on a new sparkle, but the moment he noticed your state, his face darkened. Seeing the album in your hand, he knew, but before he could even question it, you were already thrown into him. Your arms laced around his neck and your feet on tiptoe as you squeezed him with all your capacity, and he hugged you back as if he could take your pain for him. And suddenly, the knot in your throat felt tighter and it burned, if before you cried silently now you were imperceptible like a sobbing monster.

"Hey, lil' one," he pushed your hair back to try to see your face, an act that was totally in vain. You buried your head in his chest, holding him to you in fear that you might lose him. "Don't cry, babe, c'mon, tears is one thing that shouldn't be on your face."

"I'm sorry, I'm really am," your body shook as he held your face, kissing the salty drops that insisted on falling. Looking at you like that suffocated him, so his eyes were also filled with water.

"It was nobody's fault, we know that." His forehead pressed against yours, curls messy and clinging to your hair. His nose brushed yours, he refused to take any steps away from you. "It's in the past, right?" he asked through his ragged breaths. You still felt his body as warm as earlier, you still wanted to gift-wrap Al and send him home with you to London, forcing him to take care of himself.

You closed your eyes, enjoying his touch on you. It felt like there was no one else there but you. He kept his hands cupping your face and due to your delay in responding, he lifted your chin towards him. "I hope you weren't upset by the album, it was like a gift to you, I thought you deserved somethin' special. Oh, and it's not plagiarism, I gave you the credits." He kissed your cheek, so subtly, as if you were going to slip through his fingers.

You nodded, you had liked it enough to be there for him, just as you still loved him immensely to have made such a trip to him after hearing how badly he was doing.

"I need you, Al," and it was all you said to feel his lips on yours, his strong arms, yet so gentle, pulling you to him as you took your time amid the salty tears. The feeling was the same, as if you had never been apart.

Minutes later, you were interrupted by applause from the boys and some technicians. You laughed sheepishly and Alex bowed, pretending to thank the tiny audience.

"Stay with me?" He whispered in your ear, hugging you from the side.

"'til you get better?" You kissed his nose, laughing.

"Well, yeah," he wrapped you to himself again, fitting his head to the top of yours, "but also, until we recover the absence of all wasted time."

You smile wider, "I'm all yours, Al."

[themultifandomgal]

From 2010- Modest Management Suck

2012

Part 20

“We’re about to go out and do some signing” Harry says to the camera

“We’re at Natick Mall in Boston. It’s gonna be really fun, we’ve heard there’s loads and loads of people and we’re very very excited” Niall says as I laugh at Louis pretending to walk down stairs behind us

“Let’s go!” Liam and Harry shout at the same time. We stand behind a door waiting for it to open

“Anyone else feeling nervous?” I ask feeling a slight tingling in my toes and fingers. I can also feel my heart racing

“It’s excitement, you’ll be fine” I hear Richard say. Nodding my head I watch the doors open and I put a smile on my face. I walk behind Harry and in front of Niall just trying to focus on my breathing as we walk through the Mall where so many people are screaming. We all sit down shocked that this many people have come out to see us. The security then let the fans in small groups come over to us. We sigh the books that we had released late last year.

Throughout the whole time I try to keep smiling and my heart racing at bay, but I can always count on my boys for noticing when somethings off. So when we have a little break for something to eat I sit down on the sofa breathing in deeply

“What’s up?” Louis asks frowning as he sits next to me

“I don’t know, my chest hurts” I almost sob “I- I can’t stop shaking, but I’m not cold I’m really warm”

“Paul I don’t think YN should go back out there” Liam says

“No, but Simon…”

“Fuck Simon and what he says” Niall says sitting on my other side

“She’s going out there even if I have to drag her out there” Richard crosses his arms

“Look at her, she can barley breathe” Paul defends

“I think this is makin’ her worse” Harry kneels down and takes a shaking hand in his and gives it a squeeze of reassurance

“She’s going out there and that’s final” with that Richard leaves the room

“Hey jus’ look at me and breath with me” I try to match Harry’s breathing to calm myself down.

Another day another performance. This time is for the Today Show. We arrive on a bus which stops at the Rockefeller Plaza. We all jump off and run to the stage as music is already playing

“New York City make some noise!” Harry yells into his microphone. Immediately WMYB starts playing

“You're insecure, don't know what for. You're turnin' heads when you walk through the door. Don't need makeup to cover up. Bein' the way that you are is enough” Liam starts singing. Harry then turns to look at me and gives me a little encouraging smile since I’ve been feeling so worried and stressed recently

“Everyone else in the room can see it. Everyone else but you”

We all sing the chorus, then it’s Zayn’s turn then mine

“I don't know why you're being shy and turn away when I look into your eyes”…

“One Directions first album has hit number 1 in 6 countries and they could make it 7 this week when Up All Night is released here in the United States. One Direction is Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and YN YLN. Good morning guys”

“Morning” we all say in unison

“What do you like best about American girls?” the interviewer asks and I roll my eyes at the question. I then spot Richard off to the side shaking his head at me

“They’re very very loud” Liam says which causes everyone to scream

“YN what’s it like for you? Your living every girls dream right now being close to these boys all of the time”

“Your right I am living my dream, but it’s being on stage and singing. I’m just lucky I get to do that with these guys I can call family” I reply

“What’s the best and worst part of this sudden fame?”

“I think for me and I know these guys will probably agree, but I’ve made 5 best friends” Zayn says “the only down side would be that we don’t get to see our friends and family as much” or that our every move is controlled, is what I would love to have added on. We continue on the interview and sing a few more songs.

I stand next to Louis and Harry while our choreographer puts us in our places for rehearsals for the Kids Choice Awards

“I want YN and Zayn to switch” Richard says hands on his hips “we can’t afford more cheating rumours so during this song you have to stay away from each other”

“And what happens when the press say YN and Liam are dating or YN and Niall?” Zayn asks

“We will deal with that if it happens. Harry I’m looking into getting you and Taylor Swift together. Boots both of your careers”

“Are you serious?” Zayn raises his eyebrow “this is ridiculous” he huffs

“Simons wishes, keep rehearsing” Richard then leaves us to carry on rehearsals. I take in a deep breath just as I feel an arm around my shoulder. I look up to see Zayn

“I know, me to” neither Zayn or I have ever liked Richard, but we’ve always tried to keep the peace but it’s getting harder and harder.

[deankarolina]

nine albums that got me through 2024

tagged by @yvesbuprofen thank you! have I mentioned how much i love your url btw cos i do cannot get over how good it is whenever i see it

So a large part of the reasonings for some of these is gonna be concerts + yes all the loona girls getting a spot here

i did - yves: not to be parasocial but yves was honestly a large part in getting me through the winter, her releases this year have been amazing and having her concerts to look forward to had me pushing through everything I had going on & getting to meet her multiple times after being a fan for 7 years was wild. her newest album is so good and i don't think i can explain how some of the tracks on that emotionally resonate with me with dim maybe being one of my fave releases.

ttyl - loossemble: this album was such a great showing of the girls talents, you could really just see them shine and how happy they were performing and showing it off just filled with upbeat bops also that just made me happy.

dall - artms: deciding last minute to go to their concert despite my anxieties and such was such a correct choice it really dug me out of a hole i'd fallen into at the time and seeing them perform this album was amazing, the tracks are so joyful to me (& like w/ yves interacting w/ lip & choerry was just <3).

howl - chuu: while loving her strawberry rush release this yr & how upbeat it made me I think I ended up gravitating towards the howl tracks for comfort a lot more especially aliens <3.

the land is inhospitable and so are we - mitski: I've gone to see mitski nearly everytime she tours in ireland since her first show in 2016 with a tiny audience with the same 2 friends each time, so after they immigrated this year it was very melancholic to go to her dublin show alone & then very emotional to travel to see her concert with those 2 friends in the new country where they're based + seeing the growth of her music and performance from then to now really felt like the culmination of some personal things for me that persisted every time i listened to this album through the year.

aaa - hyukoh & sunset rollercoaster: this one is just an album that I had on a lot tho usually in parts with about half of the songs on this exactly being the type of music that can get me through doing mundane tasks and the other half being music that would just help me sleep

sink - sudan archives: just a hypnotic stunning album great for relaxing, do yourself a favour and listen to her tiny desk the way she uses that violin is just fantastic 'nont for sale' a fave.

jubilee - japanese breakfast: yeah this one esp 'posing In bondage' is just another one of those that would relax me a lot it was very much a just a late night repeat play many a times.

adventure - momoko kikuchi: I have this on cassette and anytime I needed a break from my phone or just being online at all (which was a fair few times) I'd end up popping this on and forgetting everything else.

tag if you'd like: @staghunters @blastburnt @elizabeth-mitchells @kdramamilfs @everyoneisrelevant

[jennyboom21]

In 2006, the year Taylor Swift released her first single, a closeted country singer named Chely Wright, then 35, held a 9-millimeter pistol to her mouth. Queer identity was still taboo enough in mainstream America that speaking about her love for another woman would have spelled the end of a country music career. But in suppressing her identity, Ms. Wright had risked her life.

In 2010, she came out to the public, releasing a confessional memoir, “Like Me,” in which she wrote that country music was characterized by culturally enforced closeting, where queer stars would be seen as unworthy of investment unless they lied about their lives. “Country music,” she wrote, “is like the military — don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The culture in which Ms. Wright picked up that gun — the same one in which Ms. Swift first became a star — was stunningly different from today’s. It’s dizzying to think about the strides that have been made in Americans’ acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community over the past decade: marriage equality, queer themes dominating teen entertainment, anti-discrimination laws in housing and, for now, in the workplace. But in recent years, a steady drip of now-out stars — Cara Delevingne, Colton Haynes, Elliot Page, Kristen Stewart, Raven-Symoné and Sam Smith among them — have disclosed that they had been encouraged to suppress their queerness in order to market projects or remain bankable.

The culture of country music hasn’t changed so much that homophobia is gone. Just this past summer, Adam Mac, an openly gay country artist, was shamed out of playing at a festival in his hometown because of his sexual orientation. In September, the singer Maren Morris stepped away from country music; she said she did so in part because of the industry’s lingering anti-queerness. If country music hasn’t changed enough, what’s to say that the larger entertainment industry — and, by extension, our broader culture — has?

Periodically, I return to a video, recorded by a shaky hand more than a decade ago, of Ms. Wright answering questions at a Borders bookstore about her coming out. She likens closeted stardom to a blender, an “insane” and “inhumane” heteronormative machine in which queer artists are chewed to bits.

“It’s going to keep going,” Ms. Wright says, “until someone who has something to lose stands up and just says ‘I’m gay.’ Somebody big.” She continues: “We need our heroes.”

What if someone had already tried, at least once, to change the culture by becoming such a hero? What if, because our culture had yet to come to terms with homophobia, it wasn’t ready for her?

What if that hero’s name was Taylor Alison Swift?

In the world of Taylor Swift, the start of a new “era” means the release of new art (an album and the paratexts — music videos, promotional ephemera, narratives — that supplement it) and a wholesale remaking of the aesthetics that will accompany its promotion, release and memorializing. In recent years, Ms. Swift has dominated pop culture to such a degree that these transformations often end up altering American culture in the process.

In 2019, she was set to release a new album, “Lover,” the first since she left Big Machine Records, her old Nashville-based label, which she has since said limited her creative freedom. The aesthetic of what would be known as the “Lover Era” emerged as rainbows, butterflies and pastel shades of blue, purple and pink, colors that subtly evoke the bisexual pride flag.

On April 26, Lesbian Visibility Day, Ms. Swift released the album’s lead single, “ME!,” in which she sings about self-love and self-acceptance. She co-directed a campy music video to accompany it, which she would later describe as depicting “everything that makes me, me.” It features Ms. Swift dancing at a pride parade, dripping in rainbow paint and turning down a man’s marriage proposal in exchange for a … pussy cat.

At the end of June, the L.G.B.T.Q. community would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. On June 14, Ms. Swift released the video for her attempt at a pride anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” in which she and an army of queer celebrities from across generations — the “Queer Eye” hosts, Ellen DeGeneres, Billy Porter, Hayley Kiyoko, to name a few — resist homophobia by living openly. Ms. Swift sings that outrage against queer visibility is a waste of time and energy: “Why are you mad, when you could be GLAAD?”

The video ends with a plea: “Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” Many, in the press and otherwise, saw the video as, at best, a misguided attempt at allyship and, at worst, a straight woman co-opting queer aesthetics and narratives to promote a commercial product.

Then, Ms. Swift performed “Shake It Off” as a surprise for patrons at the Stonewall Inn. Rumors — that were, perhaps, little more than fantasies — swirled in the queerer corners of her fandom, stoked by a suggestive post by the fashion designer Christian Siriano. Would Ms. Swift attend New York City’s WorldPride march on June 30? Would she wear a dress spun from a rainbow? Would she give a speech? If she did, what would she declare about herself?

The Sunday of the march, those fantasies stopped. She announced that the music executive Scooter Braun, who she described as an “incessant, manipulative” bully, had purchased her masters, the lucrative original recordings of her work.

Ms. Swift’s “Lover” was the first record that she created with nearly unchecked creative freedom. Lacking her old label’s constraints, she specifically chose to feature activism for and the aesthetics of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in her confessional, self-expressive art. Even before the sale of her masters, she appeared to be stepping into a new identity — not just an aesthetic — that was distinct from that associated with her past six albums.

When looking back on the artifacts of the months before that album’s release, any close reader of Ms. Swift has a choice. We can consider the album’s aesthetics and activism as performative allyship, as they were largely considered to be at the time. Or we can ask a question, knowing full well that we may never learn the answer: What if the “Lover Era” was merely Ms. Swift’s attempt to douse her work — and herself — in rainbows, as so many baby queers feel compelled to do as they come out to the world?

There’s no way of knowing what could have happened if Ms. Swift’s masters hadn’t been sold. All we know is what happened next. In early August, Ms. Swift posted a rainbow-glazed photo of a series of friendship bracelets, one of which says “PROUD” with beads in the color of the bisexual pride flag. Queer people recognize that this word, deployed this way, typically means that someone is proud of their own identity. But the public did not widely view this as Ms. Swift’s coming out.

Then, Vogue released an interview with Ms. Swift that had been conducted in early June. When discussing her motivations for releasing “You Need to Calm Down,” Ms. Swift said, “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male.” She continued: “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.” That statement suggests that Ms. Swift did not, in early June, consider herself part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community; it does not illuminate whether that is because she was a straight, cis ally or because she was stuck in the shadowy, solitary recesses of the closet.

On Aug. 22, Ms. Swift publicly committed herself to the as-of-then-unproven project of rerecording and rereleasing her first six albums. The next day, she finally released “Lover,” which raises more questions than it answers. Why does she have to keep secrets just to keep her muse, as all her fans still sing-scream on “Cruel Summer”? About what are the “hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,” in her chronicle of self-doubt, “The Archer,” if not her identity? And what could the album’s closing words, which come at the conclusion of “Daylight,” a song about stepping out of a 20-year darkness and choosing to “let it go,” possibly signal?

I want to be defined by the things that I love,

Not the things I hate,

Not the things that I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of,

Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night,

I just think that,

You are what you love.

The first time I viewed “Lover” through the prism of queerness, I felt delirious, almost insane. I kept wondering whether what I was perceiving in her work was truly there or if it was merely a mirage, born of earnest projection.

My longtime reading of Ms. Swift’s celebrity — like that of a majority of her fan base — had been stuck in the lingering assumptions left by a period that began more than a decade and a half ago, when a girl with an overexaggerated twang, Shirley Temple curls and Georgia stars in her eyes became famous. Then, she presented as all that was to be expected of a young starlet: attractive yet virginal, knowing yet naïve, not talented enough to be formidable, not commanding enough to be threatening, confessional, eager to please. Her songs earnestly depicted the fantasies of a girl raised in a traditional culture: high school crushes and backwoods drives, princelings and wedding rings, declarations of love that climax only in a kiss — ideally in the pouring rain.

When Ms. Swift was trying to sell albums in that late-2000s media environment, her songwriting didn’t match the image of a sex object, the usual role reserved for female celebrities in our culture. Instead, the story the public told about her was that she laundered her affection to a litter of promising grown men, in exchange for songwriting inspiration. A young Ms. Swift contributed to this narrative by hiding easy-to-decode clues in liner notes that suggested a certain someone was her songs’ inspiration (“SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM,” “ADAM,” “TAY”) or calling out an ex-boyfriend on the “Ellen” show and “Saturday Night Live.” Despite the expansive storytelling in Ms. Swift’s early records, her public image often cast a man’s interest as her greatest ambition.

As Ms. Swift’s career progressed, she began to remake that image: changing her style and presentation, leaving country music for pop and moving from Nashville to New York. By 2019, her celebrity no longer reflected traditional culture; it had instead become a girlboss-y mirror for another dominant culture — that of white, cosmopolitan, neoliberal America.

But in every incarnation, the public has largely seen those songs — especially those for which she doesn’t directly state her inspiration — as cantos about her most recent heterosexual love, whether that idea is substantiated by evidence or not. A large portion of her base still relishes debating what might have happened with the gentleman caller who supposedly inspired her latest album. Feverish discussions of her escapades with the latest yassified London Boy or mustachioed Mr. Americana fuel the tabloid press — and, embarrassingly, much of traditional media — that courts fan engagement by relentlessly, unquestioningly chronicling Ms. Swift’s love life.

Even in 2023, public discussion about the romantic entanglements of Ms. Swift, 34, presumes that the right man will “finally” mean the end of her persistent husbandlessness and childlessness. Whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s extracurricular activities involving a certain football star (romance for the ages? strategic brand partnership? performance art for entertainment’s sake?), the public’s obsession with the relationship has been attention-grabbing, if not lucrative, for all parties, while reinforcing a story that America has long loved to tell about Ms. Swift, and by extension, itself.

Because Ms. Swift hasn’t undeniably subverted our culture’s traditional expectations, she has managed, in an increasingly fractured cultural environment, to simultaneously capture two dominant cultures — traditional and cosmopolitan. To maintain the stranglehold she has on pop culture, Ms. Swift must continue to tell a story that those audiences expect to consume; she falls in love with a man or she gets revenge. As a result, her confessional songs languish in a place of presumed stasis; even as their meaning has grown deeper and their craft more intricate, a substantial portion of her audience’s understanding of them remains wedded to the same old narratives.

But if interpretations of Ms. Swift’s art often languish in stasis, so do the millions upon millions of people who love to play with the dollhouse she has constructed for them. Her dominance in pop culture and the success of her business have given her the rare ability to influence not only her industry but also the worldview of a substantial portion of America. How might her industry, our culture and we, ourselves, change if we made space for Ms. Swift to burn that dollhouse to the ground?

Anyone considering the whole of Ms. Swift’s artistry — the way that her brilliantly calculated celebrity mixes with her soul-baring art — can find discrepancies between the story that underpins her celebrity and the one captured by her songs. One such gap can be found in her “Lover” era. Others appear alongside “dropped hairpins,” or the covert ways someone can signal queer identity to those in the know while leaving others comfortable in their ignorance. Ms. Swift dropped hairpins before “Lover” and has continued to do so since.

Sometimes, Ms. Swift communicates through explicit sartorial choices — hair the colors of the bisexual pride flag or a recurring motif of rainbow dresses. She frequently depicts herself as trapped in glass closets or, well, in regular closets. She drops hairpins on tour as well, paying tribute to the Serpentine Dance of the lesbian artist Loie Fuller during the Reputation Tour or referencing “The Ladder,” one of the earliest lesbian publications in the United States, in her Eras Tour visuals.

Dropped hairpins also appear in Ms. Swift’s songwriting. Sometimes, the description of a muse — the subject of her song, or to whom she sings — seems to fit only a woman, as it does in “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” “Maroon” or “Hits Different.” Sometimes she suggests a female muse through unfulfilled rhyme schemes, as she does in “The Very First Night,” when she sings “didn’t read the note on the Polaroid picture / they don’t know how much I miss you” (“her,” instead of that pesky little “you,” would rhyme). Her songwriting also noticeably alludes to poets whose muses the historical record incorrectly cast as men — Emily Dickinson chief among them — as if to suggest the same fate awaits her art. Stunningly, she even explicitly refers to dropping hairpins, not once, but twice, on two separate albums.

In isolation, a single dropped hairpin is perhaps meaningless or accidental, but considered together, they’re the unfurling of a ballerina bun after a long performance. Those dropped hairpins began to appear in Ms. Swift’s artistry long before queer identity was undeniably marketable to mainstream America. They suggest to queer people that she is one of us. They also suggest that her art may be far more complex than the eclipsing nature of her celebrity may allow, even now.

Since at least her “Lover” era, Ms. Swift has explicitly encouraged her fans to read into the coded messages (which she calls “Easter eggs”) she leaves in music videos, social media posts and interviews with traditional media outlets, but a majority of those fans largely ignore or discount the dropped hairpins that might hint at queer identity. For them, acknowledging even the possibility that Ms. Swift could be queer would irrevocably alter the way they connect with her celebrity, the true product they’re consuming.

There is such public devotion to the traditional narrative Ms. Swift embodies because American culture enshrines male power. In her sweeping essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” the lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich identified the way that male power cramps, hinders or devalues women’s creativity. All of the sexist undertones with which Ms. Swift’s work can be discussed (often, even, by fans) flow from compulsory heterosexuality, or the way patriarchy draws power from the presumption that women naturally desire men. She must write about men she surely loves or be unbankable; she must marry and bear children or remain a child herself; she must look like, in her words, a “sexy baby” or be undesirable, “a monster on the hill.”

A woman who loves women is most certainly a monster to a society that prizes male power. She can fulfill none of the functions that a traditional culture imagines — wife, mother, maid, mistress, whore — so she has few places in the historical record. The Sapphic possibility of her work is ignored, censored or lost to time. If there is queerness earnestly implied in Ms. Swift’s work, then it’s no wonder that it, like that of so many other artists before her, is so often rendered invisible in the public imagination.

While Ms. Swift’s songs, largely written from her own perspective, cannot always conform to the idea of a woman our culture expects, her celebrity can. That separation, between Swift the songwriter and Swift the star, allows Ms. Swift to press against the golden birdcage in which she has found herself. She can write about women’s complexity in her confessional songs, but if ever she chooses not to publicly comply with the dominant culture’s fantasy, she will remain uncategorizable, and therefore, unsellable.

Her star — as bright as it is now — would surely dim.

Whether she is conscious of it or not, Ms. Swift signals to queer people — in the language we use to communicate with one another — that she has some affinity for queer identity. There are some queer people who would say that through this sort of signaling, she has already come out, at least to us. But what about coming out in a language the rest of the public will understand?

The difference between any person coming out and a celebrity doing so is the difference between a toy mallet and a sledgehammer. It’s reasonable for celebrities to be reticent; by coming out, they potentially invite death threats, a dogged tabloid press that will track their lovers instead of their beards, the excavation of their past lives, a torrent of public criticism and the implosion of their careers. In a culture of compulsory heterosexuality, to stop lying — by omission or otherwise — is to risk everything.

American culture still expects that stars are cis and straight until they confess themselves guilty. So, when our culture imagines a celebrity’s coming out, it expects an Ellen-style announcement that will submerge the past life in phoenix fire and rebirth the celebrity in a new image. In an ideal culture, wearing a bracelet that says “PROUD,” waving a pride flag onstage, placing a rainbow in album artwork or suggestively answering fan questions on Instagram would be enough. But our current reality expects a supernova.

Because of that expectation, stars end up trapped behind glass, which is reinforced by the tabloid press’s subtle social control. That press shapes the public’s expectations of others’ identities, even when those identities are chasms away from reality. Celebrities who master this press environment — Ms. Swift included — can bolster their business, but in doing so, they reinforce a heteronormative culture that obsesses over pregnancy, women’s bodies and their relationships with men.

That environment is at odds with the American movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality, which still has fights to win — most pressingly, enshrining trans rights and squashing nonsensical culture wars. But lately I’ve heard many of my young queer contemporaries — and the occasional star — wonder whether the movement has come far enough to dispense with the often messy, often uncomfortable process of coming out, over and over again.

That questioning speaks to an earnest conundrum that queer people confront regularly: Do we live in this world, or the world to which we ought to aspire?

Living in aspiration means ignoring the convention of coming out in favor of just … existing. This is easier for those who can pass as cis and straight if need be, those who are so wealthy or white that the burden of hiding falls to others and those who live in accepting urban enclaves. This is a queer life without friction; coming out in a way straight people can see is no longer a prerequisite for acceptance, fulfillment and equality.

This aspiration is tremendous, but in our current culture, it is available only to a privileged few. Should such an inequality of access to aspiration become the accepted state of affairs, it would leave those who can’t hide to face society’s cruelest actors without the backing of a vocal, activated community. So every queer person who takes issue with the idea that we must come out ought to ask a simple question — what do we owe one another?

If coming out is primarily supposed to be an act of self-actualization, to form our own identities, then we owe one another nothing. This posture recognizes that the act of coming out implicitly reinforces straight and cis identities as default, which is not worth the rewards of outness.

But if coming out is supposed to be a radical act of resistance that seeks to change the way our society imagines people to be, then undeniable visibility is essential to make space for those without power. In this posture, queer people who can live in aspiration owe those who cannot a real world in which our expansive views of love and gender aren’t merely tolerated but celebrated. We have no choice but to actively, vocally press against the world we’re in, until no one is stuck in it.

And so just for a little while longer, we need our heroes.

But if queer people spend all of our time holding out for a guiding light, we might forgo a more pressing question that if answered, just might inch all of us a bit closer to aspiration. The next time heroes appear, are we ready to receive them?

It takes neither a genius nor a radical to see queerness implied by Ms. Swift’s work. But figuring out how to talk about it before the star labels herself is another matter. Right now, those who do so must inject our perceptions with caveats and doubt or pretend we cannot see it (a lie!) — implicitly acquiescing to convention’s constraints in the name of solidarity.

Lying is familiar to queer people; we teach ourselves to do it from an early age, shrouding our identities from others, and ourselves. It’s not without good reason. To maintain the safety (and sometimes the comfort) of the closet, we lie to others, and, most crucially, we allow others to believe lies about us, seeing us as something other than ourselves. Lying is doubly familiar to those of us who are women. To reduce friction, so many of us still shrink life to its barest version in the name of honor or safety, rendering our lives incomplete, our minds lobotomized and our identities unexplored.

By maintaining a culture of lying about what we, uniquely, have the knowledge and experience to see, we commit ourselves to a vow of silence. That vow may protect someone’s safety, but when it is applied to works of culture, it stymies our ability to receive art that has the potential to change or disrupt us. As those with queer identity amass the power of commonplaceness, it’s worth questioning whether the purpose of one of the last great taboos that constrains us befits its cost.

In every case, is the best form of solidarity still silence?

I know that discussing the potential of a star’s queerness before a formal declaration of identity feels, to some, too salacious and gossip-fueled to be worthy of discussion. They might point to the viciousness of the discourse around “queerbaiting” (in which I have participated); to the harm caused by the tabloid press’s dalliances with outing; and, most crucially, to the real material sacrifices that queer stars make to come out, again and again, as reasons to stay silent.

I share many of these reservations. But the stories that dominate our collective imagination shape what our culture permits artists and their audiences to say and be. Every time an artist signals queerness and that transmission falls on deaf ears, that signal dies. Recognizing the possibility of queerness — while being conscious of the difference between possibility and certainty — keeps that signal alive.

So, whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s sexual orientation or gender identity (something that is knowable, perhaps, only to her) or the exact identity of her muses (something better left a mystery), choosing to acknowledge the Sapphic possibility of her work has the potential to cut an audience that is too often constrained by history, expectation and capital loose from the burdens of our culture.

To start, consider what Ms. Swift wrote in the liner notes of her 2017 album, “reputation”: “When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test.”

Listen to her. At the very least, resist the urge to assume that when Ms. Swift calls the object of her affection “you” in a song, she’s talking about a man with whom she’s been photographed. Just that simple choice opens up a world of Swiftian wordplay. She often plays with pronouns, trading “you” and “him” so that only someone looking for a distinction between two characters might find one. Turns of phrase often contain double or even triple meanings. Her work is a feast laid specifically for the close listener.

Choosing to read closely can also train the mind to resist the image of an unmarried woman that compulsory heterosexuality expects. And even if it is only her audience who points at rainbows, reading Ms. Swift’s work as queer is still worthwhile, for it undermines the assumption that queer identity impedes pop superstardom, paving the way for an out artist to have the success Ms. Swift has.

After all, would it truly be better to wait to talk about any of this for 50, 60, 70 years, until Ms. Swift whispers her life story to a biographer? Or for a century or more, when Ms. Swift’s grandniece donates her diaries to some academic library, for scholars to pore over? To ensure that mea culpas come only when Ms. Swift’s bones have turned to dust and fragments of her songs float away on memory’s summer breeze?

I think not. And so, I must say, as loudly as I can, “I can see you,” even if I risk foolishness for doing so.

I remember the first time I knew I had seen Taylor Alison Swift break free from the trap of stardom. I wasn’t sitting in a crowded stadium in the pouring rain or cuddled up in a movie theater with a bag of popcorn. I was watching a grainy, crackling livestream of the Eras Tour, captured on a fan’s phone.

It’s late at night, the beginning of her acoustic set of surprise songs, this time performed in a yellow dress. She begins playing “Hits Different.” It’s a new song, full of puns, double entendres and wordplay, that toys with the glittering identities in which Ms. Swift indulges.

She’s rushing, as if stopping, even for a second, will cause her to lose her nerve. She stumbles at the bridge, pauses and starts again; the queen of bridges will not mess this up, not tonight.

There it is, at the bridge’s end: “Bet I could still melt your world; argumentative, antithetical dream girl.” An undeniable declaration of love to a woman. As soon as those words leave her lips, she lets out a whoop, pacing around the stage with a grin that cannot be contained.

For a moment, Ms. Swift was out of the woods she had created for herself as a teenager, floating above the trees. The future was within reach; she would, and will, soon take back the rest of her words, her reputation, her name. Maybe the world would see her, maybe it wouldn’t.

But on that stage, she found herself. I was there. Through a fuzzy fancam, I saw it.

And somehow, that was everything.

[ims0scared]

t.A.T.u (Russian: Тату) — Russian music duo formed in 1999 that consist Julia Volkova and Lena Katina. Lena Katina first music steps were taken in children's music pop band Avenue, in 1997 she joined Neposedy, later on, Julia Volkova also joined the formation (They were part of the band along with members like Sergey Lazarev and Vlad Tapalov). In 1998 Julia got kicked out of the band for bad behaviour, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and getting in arguments with other band members, but Neposedy denied it and said that Julia left the band because of her age (Neposedy were children formation while Julia was 12 when joined the band) Lena left the band in 1999. Same year Ivan Shapovalov and his business partner Aleksander Voitinskiy planned to start a music project in Russia. They started organizing auditions in Moscow in early 1999 for teenage female vocalist. By the end of auditioning, the partners narrowed their search down to ten girls, including Lena and Julia that finally became the members of t.A.T.u. Lena and Julia knew each other before the auditions. Both girls stood out among the others because of their appearance and vocal experience, but the producers decided to start working with Lena. Katina began recording demos, including "Yugoslavia", a protest song about NATO boming of Yugoslavia, when the demos were cut, Shapovalov insisted that the project needs another girl, that will be a complete opposite of Lena. In late 1999 Julia Volkova was added to the project to complete the duo. Shapalov after adding Volkova to the project, noticed how close the girls are, he decided to use it and gave the band lesbian image, which made Voitinsky left the band because he said that the idea was immoral and he doesn't want to be part lf it.

"Ivan said, that we need second girl in a band, and that the band needs to be famous, He just said, that we need another girl, because if we will have two it will be happier and more interesting, we can take someone new, someone different, and then they will be singing together. Now i am working in a new project, not in Ivan project, he was a horrible collaborator (...)"

- Aleksander Voitinskiy for programme "Show-Business", 2000

According to Katina, Shapovalov was inspired to create the duo after the release of the Swedish film "Show me love" about romance between two school girls. After completing the duo producers decided to name the group word Тату (Tatu) It is a shortened version of russian phrase "Та любит Ту" (Ta lyubit tu — eng. This [girl] loves that [girl]) For the whole year girls were recording songs for their first album collaborating with Elena Kiper.

Debuted in 2000 with their single "Ya soshla s uma" The song describes the pain in a girl's soul because she is in love with another girl, but is afraid. It became a big hit in Central-Eastern Europe just like their next singles — "Nas ne dogoniat" and "30 minut". Their debut album "200 po Vstrechnoy" came out in May 2001, the english version of the album "200 km/h in the Wrong Lane" came out in 2002, the album was certified platinium by IFPI for over 1 milion copies sold in Europe and become the first foreign group to reach number 1 in Japan, it was also certified gold in United States. "All the thing she said" (english version of their song "Ya soshla s uma") have made it to first place of top songs in over 20 countries, and have been sold in 6 milion copies, it became one of the most succesful singles of XXI century. The controversial music video showing Julia Volkova and Lena Katina passionately kissing in rain infront of a crowd dressed in Catholic school uniforms was supposed to show — Created by their Manager Iwan Shapovalov — "love" between singers. Later on, t.A.T.u relased 3 english albums and 3 russian albums.

t.A.T.u scene image was controversial since beggining. They are most known from their first album, which was revolving around homosexual relations between Julia and Lena. During the promotion of second album they admitted that it all was just a marketing strategy, and they are not lesbians. Even after that they didn't give up on their homosexual characters. Lena Katina spoke up about it in one of their interviews in 2009

"Julia had some lesbian experiences before t.A.T.u, and i didn't, so it was obvious i was quite embarrased, it was foreign to me, but i agreed because i knew this topic is really important. I was on a meeting with fans in Los Angeles and alot of people are still greatful for us. One girl told me that t.A.T.u is the reason why she survived. It's a horrible feeling when you're a teenager and you know that you aren't like others. All your best friends are falling for boys, and you want a girl. You feel alone, and no one understands you, and then a band shows up and tells you that everything can happend in life and you shouldn't be afraid of who you are. When people are saying, we saved them from suicide, i feel like it wasn't pointless. (....) We are also actors somehow. We created a story of two girls in love, and we played it."

Their second album was about interpersonal problems, the russian title (Ludi Invalidy) itself was already controversial around organisations fighting for rights of disabled people. In their opinion the title was suggesting thath disables people don't live, they funcionate, and their only personality traits is stupidity, brutality and greed. Lena and Julia disagreed with organisations and said that they don't understans the point of singles name and the meaning behind it.

Their last pair of albums "Vesyolye Ubylki" and "Wasted Managment" was relased between 2008 and 2009. T.A.T.u oficially broke up in 2011, but they reunited to preform at special ocassions as The opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

(It's my first longer post in here, sometimes inbetween of weird images i want to be posting some more productive stuff about topics that i find interesting, i will be posting more about my fav bands, i wanted to make more posts today but this one took me waaaayyy too much time. If u know anything else that you would like to add to this post, or correct me on my mistakes, feel free to comment :P)

[married-2-the-music]

K-pop Discography Deep Dives: Dreamcatcher (Part ONE)

A Disclaimer: I was planning, when I first started Tumblr, to be a lurker, but then I began an office job and needed something to listen to to keep myself occupied. And then, I started going through entire K-pop groups’ repertoires, album by album, and jotting down my thoughts. And then, I stumbled into K-pop tumblr and decided, you know what, there’s at least four people on this hell site who would read in depth rants about these discographies and at least five who wouldn’t read it and then get mad because it’s kind of our job as K-pop fans. My lukewarm takes should be taken with an entire silo of salt and the knowledge that this is completely for fun and occupying my very bored, very neurodivergent brain. All this to say, for the love of god, I’m a sleep-deprived student and I don’t have time for internet hate, so don’t kill me. With that being said, enjoy!

Here are my credentials: I’m a HUGE fan of Dreamcatcher, and have been an Insomnia since mid-2021 or so, just after the release of BEcause. They were actually the first concert I’ve ever been to, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience for that. They totally gave their all for those two hours and I ended up loving them even more afterward. I’m even considering going again if they have another tour.

Dreamcatcher debuted in early 2017, so they’re nearing their 7th anniversary (breaking K-pop’s infamous curse), with 7 members: JiU, SuA, Yoohyeon, Gahyeon, Handong, Dami, and Siyeon. Handong was not involved in their 2020 comebacks due to being in her home country of China when COVID broke out, but she’s since returned. They have very complicated storylines which I won’t be going too deeply into here besides when I think a specific song’s meaning in context is important to mention.

Their first single was Chase Me, which starts with a deceptively lovely piano and very typical for-late-3rd-gen-vocals. I was surprised by how k-poppy the song sounded, at least in its early stages and verses, but this was their debut after all. A lot of their early work is slowly stepping out of k-pop convention, one step at a time, although a sound all their own wouldn’t come for a couple songs. Any worries I had were assuaged by such a strong chorus, especially the combination of the bridge just before the last one.

Good Night immediately stands out from the often overly-bubbly, aegyo-filled 2017 k-pop landscape with its creepy ticking clock, marionette-like dance moves and an almost violent electric guitar riff. This time the guitar continues through the whole song, so there’s no fear of it sounding same-y. I’ll probably say this many times in this review, but I just can’t get over how well-suited DC’s vocals are to this rock sound, which isn’t always the case for other groups I’ve seen with a rock concept. The distorted voices in the bridge are a nice touch too. The b-side Lullaby is actually quite lovely, and is a good showcase for their voices in a more soothing context.

Fly High is a poppier sound for Dreamcatcher, although still with more of a rock base than is usual in k-pop, which does make sense as it’s supposed to be a prequel to their much darker storyline. I’ve heard it described before as a bit like an anime theme song, and I’d have to agree, especially the “I can make it!” combined with the strings, lighter electric guitar, and super high power note. Even with a bit of a sound change, Dreamcatcher never slows down their energy, which is something I really appreciate. They always sound like they wholeheartedly believe what they’re selling.

From the EP, Prequel, there are a few great b-sides I could choose (like the off-beat Sleep-walking), but I’m gonna have to say that Wake Up is my favorite. I’m totally biased, but I’ll just never forget the experience of watching them have the absolute best time performing this live for their encore and jumping into the stratosphere while waving a pride flag back and forth. It’s an anthem that needs an audience, first and foremost, and there’s really nothing more exciting than screaming “Wake up, wake up!” at the top of your lungs.

Full Moon is a special single for their first anniversary, and I won’t spend too much time on it, but I really like how it combines that anime-esque energy from Fly High, a harsher electric guitar, EDM, and some ballad elements. It’s a style that DC returns to later in their career, and it’s fun to see a slightly less complicated version here. I never gave this song much of a chance before so I’m glad I did now.

You & I is next in the “Nightmare” saga, and is probably both the most popular of that arc and the most similar to a lot of mainstream k-pop (which I do like, I want to be clear about that. This is not an attack on mainstream k-pop, guys, I run a blog about it.). Maybe it’s a product of that, but in such a strong catalogue it doesn’t really stand out to me. All of DC’s songs add other elements to their rock sound like EDM, pop, metal, or even a flute (we’ll get to that), but You & I is pretty straightforward, as are its lyrics. The chorus and the opening hook are both pretty good, I will admit, and always get me at least nodding to the song. Again, I in no way even dislike this one, and I’m not going to skip it if I’m doing a re-listen or if it comes up on shuffle, but I just never find myself going out of my way to listen to it.

Though the title isn’t my favorite, I quite like the EP Escape The Era. Which a Star may be an average b-side but it's really elevated by their voices and its twinkling instrumentation, while Scar takes some lovely strings and some crushing electric guitars and somehow turns itself from a rock song into a ballad and right back again. Mayday, meanwhile, is much like Wake Up with its anthemic answer, and immediately gets me headbanging to its hook.

WHAT starts with a tense energy right out of the gate with those strings, and in what may be DC’s best first 20 seconds of a song, it culminates in an excellent electric guitar riff that would feel right at home in a BabyMetal song. When the song returns to “normal” after, it only adds to the sense of “wrong” and foreboding…until the chorus smashes through a brick wall with perfect metal anthem energy. In case it wasn’t clear, I love this song and it’s tied for my favorite. You just can’t do much better than a song encouraging people to wake up, fight their nightmares, and live another day, which is one of my personal favorite song subjects.

In a switch from Escape The Era, I love What but Alone In The City is one of my least-favorite of their albums. That being said, I do like the contrast between acoustic and electric guitars in Trap, and its build up is pretty great. But I usually have more than one liked b-side.

Over The Sky is another special single and returns to the softer, more string and pop-rock led base (or “anime theme”, I suppose). It feels much happier than a lot of Dreamcatcher’s singles, and is a nice break in between their very heavy discography. I especially like the twinkling quality of its background piano.

PIRI is the end of their nightmare saga, and is a continuation of the defiance seen in What. It’s named after a traditional Korean flute that the song uses to say “sound the alarm (piri), emergency, emergency.” This is the first time rap is incorporated in its own (albeit short) verse, and I think the combination works quite well. The inclusion of the flute in the background is something I’ve never heard in a song before, but its shrillness provides a good contrast to the very low guitar and drums and Dreamcatcher’s voices sitting in the middle, perfectly capturing the song’s whole idea of being stuck in between light and dark. Overall, a fitting finale.

From PIRI’s EP The End Of Nightmares, while I do really like the sweetness of the ballad Daydream, Diamond was an easy choice for me. It has quite a minimalistic chorus, which normally I’m not the biggest fan of (for evidence, look at any review I’ve ever written to hear me decry the existence of anti-drops), but here it’s to let the great guitar hook and electronic background have some time to be appreciated and its fuller pre and post-choruses make up for it.

Deja Vu is a special single made for a game collaboration, so perhaps one would assume it to be a usual ballad or easily-overlooked piece of a great discography. One would assume very, very wrong. I assumed this, when I heard the first, very slow verse and the backing piano. Deja Vu definitely leans more into melancholy than most of their singles, but it's really at the end of the pre-chorus where the band comes in and DC goes full-on rock ballad that it begins to sound like them.The song is a slow burn, definitely, but the incredible catharsis at the end is totally worth it. Just go watch the music video itself, which is full of delightful drama and betrayal, and can best be described as “Macbeth, if it was gay, Korean, and magical.” You’re welcome.

Raid Of Dream, the EP, was also produced for the game, but the mix of metal clashing and delicate vocals in Silent Night, the backing piano for the full-on ballad Polaris, and the return of the anime theme (plus guitar solo!!) in the call-to-action that is Curse Of The Spider render it quite a strong album in their greater discography.

I don’t normally dive too deeply into Japanese releases, but, like with Taemin, Dreamcatcher’s offer an interesting expansion on their work. Endless Night starts with much harsher rock than most of their singles, while Breaking Out features a surprisingly chill tropical beat, and No More goes full now-or-never nu metal with guitar riffs that would make Babymetal proud.

R. o. S. E. BLUE is another special single produced for a game, and does lead into the more ballady side of k-pop soundtrack songs, but without sacrificing Dreamcatcher’s rock edges. It, like Deja Vu, is a slow burn that doesn’t seem to have much energy at first, but builds up to it through its great pre-choruses. It’s definitely not as good as Deja Vu (few things are), but does remind me of later-stage Gfriend’s more dramatic and celestial sound, and the music video follows JiU attempting to rescue her friends from the magical prison their minds are trapped in, at the expense of herself.

So that’s where we’ll end it for now, being around halfway through. I mentioned last time in my TXT review that this was supposed to be a one-parter and became two, but the second one is basically done and will be coming out in a few days (after I listen to the new album), not a week from now, and I won’t be doing supplementals. Apologies to the five people who actually read those, lol. So, I’ll see you next time for Part Two. Tschüss!

[black-arcana]

WITHIN TEMPTATION's SHARON DEN ADEL Laments Rise In Dominance Of Right-Wing Political Parties In Europe

Last fall, Dutch symphonic metallers WITHIN TEMPTATION co-sponsored the Ukraine Aid Operations boat fundraiser for the Ukrainian Marines. They donated 6,000 euros for 30 patches, which they packaged with a limited-edition box of their latest album, "Bleed Out". Asked in a new interview with Hop N Music how this idea came about, WITHIN TEMPTATION singer Sharon Den Adel said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "There were so many songs inspired by the Ukraine. And I really believe that in a lot of countries, right-wing parties have become more dominant in Europe, which I think is not a good thing because most of them are not pro Ukraine; I mean, they're more pro-Russia, so they say, 'Okay, we're not going to support Ukraine.' And I really believe if Russia does win this war from the Ukrainians, then there will be another country oppressed by Russia and he [Putin] won't stop there. And I believe it will destabilize Europe because I think we're more polarized about the subjects in Europe that I was hoping that would unite us more, but it's tearing us a bit more apart, which I think is a sad thing because I do think we need each other, especially when you talk about military defense from Europe, because America is getting more distant from us. We need to depend on ourselves, to my opinion also, and the Ukraine, they have a small army compared to Russia.'

She continued: "So, these patches, they're being sold for 200 euros per patch. So every patch is 200 euros. And we bought 30 of them to put in different boxes, and through that money, they can buy things like night binoculars, but also helmets, small kind of things that they can't get from the army, from the government in the Ukraine, because there's so much they need. They just get big things, like the tanks and the boats they get from the government, but the smaller things, they need very quick access and it takes too long for them to get them or not even get them in time to stay safe. And so we felt through this corporation, the, Ukrainian Aid Ops, it's called, and they get mostly money from people, like donations, but you can buy patches, but also artwork from things they find on the battlefield and they make artworks of it, like vases from shells, military shells. And so they make something beautiful out of something that's really ugly, of course. And we really wanna support them because, like I said, this is a sovereign country. Nobody's allowed to attack a sovereign country. And this is within Europe, and it's getting close towards us. And I really believe that we — there's two reasons. First of all, it's a sovereign country. Don't touch a sovereign country. Second of all, because it will threaten also Europe. And I think we're not prepared for Russia. If they wanna take over more countries, yeah, it's gonna be gonna be way worse than it already is. So I really believe we should keep on supporting the Ukraine for that, and that's why we support them through this organization."

Three months ago, Den Adel was asked by Metal Musikast why she and her bandmates feel the need to voice their political views in some of their recently released songs, including "Wireless" and the title track of their new album "Bleed Out", which have highlighted such current topics as the war in Ukraine and the suspicious death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman "detained" for not wearing a hijab. She said: "Well, I think it's very difficult to separate your music from who you are as a person, of course. And seeing this happening in Europe, an invasion by Russia into Ukraine, and Kyiv is only two hours flight from [my home], and so it feels really in my backyard that this war is happening. And seeing the propaganda from Russia, setting up the European countries towards each other instead of that we are… We are trying to stick together, but the propaganda does get to certain countries, like Slovenia and Hungary and some others. And also in our own country [the Netherlands], this year we voted, apparently as a country, for far right, which I don't understand. And that party also, yeah, has a lot of same ideas as some other countries, which are pro-Russia. Not to say that our country is pro-Russia at all, but I think that was a vote against, that people weren't satisfied with the government that we have and thought it could be like a protest vote. But, to me, that's pretty stupid. In many countries now, people start to vote for far-right parties because they're fed up with the government, how it was, because, well, things didn't go perfect, of course, but on the other hand, to start voting for far right is another thing. But we are, as a country, very supportive of Ukraine, but it's more like the propaganda does reach certain people also in our country. And that worries me, because I think we should stand shoulder to shoulder to help Ukraine."

Den Adel also talked about WITHIN TEMPTATION's music video for the band's "A Fool's Parade" single, featuring Ukrainian producer and vocalist Alex Yarmak. Recorded amidst the streets of Kyiv with renowned Ukrainian video director Indy Hait, the clip captures Sharon at important Ukrainian landmarks. Asked what it was like to make a music video in the capital city of a country at war, Den Adel said: "Well, I was never scared to go there, because I was in good hands, to my opinion. We were helped to do this video and to organize everything, what we wanted to do in Kyiv, by the organization called Music Saves Ukraine. And they told us about the app that you had need to have. For instance, if you go into Kiev, which we did by night train from Poland, because there's no commercial flights from Amsterdam to Kyiv anymore. So we had to go by night train from Poland to Kyiv. And they told us to download an air-alerts app because everyone in Ukraine has that, and you can select a region that you are in and any incoming dangerous drones or airplanes, like MiGs, who are carrying a supersonic bomb or anything, they will put that in the app and you know what the danger is and how much time you have to go to a shelter. And there's shelters everywhere, even in the hotel that I was. And we once had to go underneath the metro station, because there was a MiG on their way. And sometimes it has a bomb, sometimes it doesn't. It's sometimes just looking and scouting where they can do something with the next airplane. And this time it wasn't wearing any supersonic bomb, which was good for us because it can wipe out a complete area in a matter of seconds."

She continued: "It's strange to be there, because normal life continues in Kyiv for 90 percent, to my opinion, when I was there, because when I left the bombing was actually intensified by Russia on Kyiv. But they have a good air defense system, which most rockets and bombs don't hit Kyiv itself, but the debris, of course, does, and the pieces of that, of the thing that they are trying to attack them with, it's coming still down on buildings and buildings do get hits and also bystanders. But if you know in time that they're coming, then you can go to a shelter. Most of the time it goes okay. So I wasn't scared because I knew this knowledge upfront. And, yeah, it is when the air alert goes off and when you see military people walking in streets, it's a different picture than the rest of Europe, of course."

Last November, the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) won the largest number of seats in the Dutch national elections. Many people believe the shift was triggered by economic and cultural anxieties that have whipped up fears about immigrants.

According to a press release from WITHIN TEMPTATION's publicist, "A Fool's Parade" "showcases the band's commitment to raising awareness of Ukraine's ongoing battle against Russia's invasion. The song itself serves as a condemnation of Russia's deceitful actions and sheds light on the harsh realities faced by Ukraine. WITHIN TEMPTATION remains steadfast in their support for Ukraine, with involvement in initiatives such as the Ukraine Aid OPS foundation, advocating for more much-needed solidarity." All royalties from the new single will be donated to Music Saves UA for the duration of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In March 2022, WITHIN TEMPTATION was one of the artists who took part in a telethon concert in support of Ukraine. "Save Ukraine - #StopWar" united more than 20 countries and bring together more than 50 participants. The marathon was broadcast from Warsaw on the Polish TV channel TVP. In addition, broadcasters from many countries around the world rebroadcasted the marathon on their local channels.

The "Bleed Out" album was released last October.