#taylor swift level of huge in america

[yuzuyoon]

i see a lot of similarities between the start of jimin's solo career and the start of bts' career.

the way they're both seen as "underdogs", fighting against the current music industry that gives privileges to their favorite artists, and that makes the fanbase even bigger and unbeatable, because they get tired and angry about so many injustices.

or the fact that I read a few tweets today about people complaining about the success of "who" and saying "this song I don't listen to anywhere".

it reminded me of the time bts started releasing their hit songs in English and people had the same speeches.

i've seen a lot of comparisons of jimin's story to bts'! it's funny how kpop companies (even bighit and hybe) keep trying to "make the next bts" when they've accidently made the next bts in jimin.

i think jimin has the potential, the skill and talent, and the "it factor" to genuinely be an incredibly huge artist, especially in america. the only thing that's missing to actually get jimin to that place is adequate promo.

the lack of promo even though jimin could very well be the next big thing here really just confirms the fact that bh wants jk to be that "main pop boy." they've given jungkook the tools, but he's missing that spark that jimin has. the moment someone in that company realizes that and gets jimin his push is the moment that we need. it'll happen one day (hopefully)

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WBITA if I tried to get my best friend to leave the Mormon church?

Complicated story. I was born pagan, later raised Mormon, reinforced by adoptive family. I met my best friend in the entire universe in the church, we've been friends for years now. If I can just vent about how much I love her: she is the inspiration of all my creative works, she's the only human being alive who can make me listen to a Taylor Swift song, she's funny and kind and stuck with me when she found out I was trans, in a notably transphobic church (shes queer herself).

Some time ago I was starting to get the faintest feeling that I was becoming disillusioned with the LDS church, but I was going through a tough time and chalked it up to me being neurotic and not knowing stuff (I am mentally disabled). Now, we don't live in Utah, so the Culty Shit isn't as pervasive where I am, so it's just possible that my lack of general knowledge about the church was because I was socially self-isolated and ignorant. I was surrounded by equal parts Mormon and non-Mormon peers. I was taught not to drink alcohol or have extramarital sex or abortions or wear immodest clothing (I was assumed a girl at the time). Somehow the only thing i felt absolutely certain of was that if i were brave enough to come out to my (extremely queerphobic) family, I would end up dead. Then I started to get older and ask questions about the gospel, the answers to which got progressively more unsettling. It went from "we're all destined to be gods someday" to "the lighter your skin is, the closer you are to God" and then "the colonization of America was Gods punishment on native people for not following His will". And since Mormonism supposedly encourages asking God questions, I asked, and the answer hit me that I was not supposed to be here.

Now, my best friend is in no way racist or queerphobic or even nationalist, I've known her long enough to be certain. She's said multiple times that she would die and kill for me and will always support me no matter how I change. She knows I'm disillusioned with the Mormon church and she bears me no ill will, our relationship has been largely normal. But I'm worried about her. Even out here, our Mormon woman friends get married and go on missions at a frighteningly young age. My friend hasn't expressed any interests in missionary work, and I think on some level she knows how colonialist the concept is.

But with Mormons, a big thing is that they're taught that apostasy is a huge wrong, and they make a big show of shunning apostates. I worry that if I point out the churches flaws, she'll see it as me trying to lead her astray, and shun me. There's a chance she might go through the same process I did and leave the church on her own, but I'm anxious about standing by and waiting. I'm worried for her. Should I interfere or let her come to her own conclusions?

What are these acronyms?

[alarrytale]

Imagine how different things would be if Zayn was the one tasked with dating TS to help 1D break America, or if Louis was the one in the BBC deal with Nick Grimshaw, or if Niall was the one to attend fashion shows, if H was made to date E and Liam dated Kendall Jenner. Sony gave all this to Harry so that he'd be ready to go solo after 1D. //

Zayn dated Gigi Hadid for four years and he has a child with her. She's a hugely high profile model known by everyone in the US, more popular than Swift was in 2012. Harry only dated Taylor for two months and Kendall on and off.

Zayn isn't as successful as Harry or Niall because he doesn't want to promote his work on tv and radio or sing outside the studio. If he toured he would be huge but he doesn't want to because he has anxiety. Not the fault of the label.

Niall could have attended fashion shows, nobody was stopping him. He dated the famous Irish model Barbara Palvin which gave him publicity and then Selena Gomez and Hailee Steinfeld. The latter two are very famous and gave him more exposure than attending a fashion show or than Harry got from dating the less well known Nadine Leopold and Camille Rowe.

Liam dated Cheryl who at the time was the most successful female singer in the UK.

All of them have had high profile relationships including Louis' with Danielle Campbell

Hi, anon!

It's important to distinguish between the time before and after the band. In the band they were restricted if the activity they wanted to do were against their image (or could lead to them to surpass Harry in popularity). Niall couldn’t go to a fashion show because that wasn't his image and he'd take away attention from H by his attendance. You'd also have to secure an invitation and either the label did so for Harry, or he was invited because of his popularity and image.

What Zayn did was after he quit the band. He needed a type of exposure in the US that he wasn't really afforded while in 1D. Gi*i has never been more popular than TS. It's also not about the length of the relationship, but about the impact and number of headlines it can get them. Zayns issues that stops him from touring and exposing himself more are due to his time in 1D. He's carrying around trauma from that time, like Liam and Louis does as well. The only reason Niall doesn’t carry that amount of trauma is because he wasn't burdened with heavy stunting and fake babies. He got off because he's straight passing and not rumoured to be in a relationship with a bandmate. Zayn's anxiety isn't the fault of RCA but the fault of Sony, Syco and Columbia.

With Niall, again you need to distinguish between in and out of the band. He was linked to Palvin (she is hungarian not irish) and rumoured to be dating ellie gou*ding. All the others were after the band. He did date celebrities on his level or higher that are american after the band to get exposure in the US, like zayn. Harry dated no names after the band for the relationships to seem more real (he wasn't dating for exposure, but he needed a beard and a muse for his album).

And about Liam. Cheryl was not the most famous singer in the UK at the time. Not even close. That would be Adele. Cheryl is a laughing stock in the UK and always has been. No one takes her seriously and she isn't liked much for being racist and is a terrible person. She's also mocked for her autotune use. She was high profile (in the uk) and gave Liam some headlines, but not the good kind of headlines unfortunatly...

And again with Louis and D. That was after the band, and she was not high profile. Not internationally known. She was the only one willing and she was american.

My point is, during the band Harry was set up by 1D's label to gain himself attention and be in a position to launch a successful solo career when the time came. The others had to play catch up to do what H did during the band days now that they were solo artist. So H had a head start.

I have to say, again, that i don't blame H for any of this. I also think he deserves his current success. I'm just uncomfortable that it had to happen at the expense of the other band members. It is what it is though.

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Jeff Buckley, an overlooked inspiration

Sept. 30, 2015

PUB: UWIRE

In a society dominated by artists such as Taylor Swift and One Direction, it is difficult for songwriters of equal or greater talent to achieve the same level of fame if they don't adhere to the conventions of today's popular music.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, Jeff Buckley is considered the 39th greatest singer of all time, surpassing Mariah Carey (79), Christina Aguilera (58) and Brian Wilson (52). This may be a surprising fact, considering that Buckley is generally less notable amongst the general population compared to the likes of Carey.

However, his vocals are immediately attention-grabbing, and it's not necessarily because of his wide vocal range. Longwood sophomore and listener of Buckley, Joel Worford explains that it's his emotion that makes his vocals feel so powerful.

"The big thing about Jeff Buckley was the way that his voice conveyed emotions... through his vocal tone, as a listener, he made you feel a certain way," Worford said.

So, with acclaim from a popular magazine such as Rolling Stone, one may wonder why Buckley isn't as well-known as his peers on the list of 100 greatest singers of all time.

One reason for this may be that Buckley passed away shortly after releasing his first album, "Grace." Another reason may be the amount of profundity that Buckley tries to provoke within the listener.

"I think his music is too complicated, and his lyrics touch on subjects that are foreign to most people. If you've never felt loss or loneliness, then his lyrics aren't going to mean anything to you... His lyrics really transcend basic feelings," Worford said.

Buckley also purposefully tries to stray away from the norm with the way he writes his music. His songs tend to be longer than the three to four minutes of the average pop song. For example, his song "Lover, You Should've Come Over" is six minutes and 43 seconds. His music also features aspects of Eastern music and vocal experimentation. In his song "Grace," he almost sounds as if he is shrieking by the end of the song.

Despite Buckley's tendency to deviate from the average, his music is still relatable to a lot of people. He has been covered many times, specifically his rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Buckley's version of this song is generally the first to show up in the search results for the song "Hallelujah" on iTunes, ahead of Cohen's original version. This song also gained popularity from being covered multiple times on talent shows like America's Got Talent.

Buckley has been a huge influence on Worford, as a musician. He said that he is influenced "mainly by (Buckley's) lyrics because his lyrics are more like poetry... And his guitar playing is just really tight."

Although Buckley only released one album, his music proves that there still may be room for growth and diversity in a world that is dominated by pop stars. With Buckley as an example, there are more underrepresented artists and genres that need to be heard and explored.

Worford encourages others to give Buckley's music a chance.

"I would suggest to anyone to listen to Jeff Buckley," he said. "You just never know who it's going to click with, and for the people who it does, it's amazing."

[coolspork]

Maybe this is completely unfounded but a lot of times I see discourse surrounding the act of fandom flattening out commentary dense works into YA love stories and there's always a large group of people in the "just let people like what they like it doesn't have to be deep" camp. And I'm constantly reminded of that quote from the Iranian official (i think it was a govt official? I could be wrong) about how America's heroes are all fictional. Like we are a society built on vapid aesthetics and disregard for other parts of the world because we're culturally dominant (that's a whole other discussion, but the short of it is even our non-militaristic global presence is destroying cultures) and by and large we tend to take moral direction from film and media (also a whole other discussion, also problematic to say the least) which is why those moments of solidarity on TV back in the late 20th century were so fucking huge because Americans take direction from media and if the media says maybe we can get along then that might just change minds. Which is kind of a ridiculous premise but it has been shown to have a real impact on attitudes in the home alongside other social justice work.

But back to the thing about YA novel romances, when we refuse to engage in what little cultural direction we're spoonfed there becomes a whole population of people that have read books critiquing major power structures in our country such as authoritarianism, militarism, police brutality, racism post-civil rights movement, and (very prominently) classism, but have no desire to engage with the work the author is doing, or think it isn't relevant to them despite these being issues present at every level of society. Now you end up with huge groups of people spewing "no ethical consumption under capitalism" to soothe any guilt that may arise from irresponsible consumption or support of bad actors and bigots, popular depictions of characters with real world cultural importance that have been reduced to the caricatures they were made to break from, and most jarringly the constant reminders many Americans ignore that rich people are not our friends and very little they do materially benefits anyone but themselves and the culture that upholds them.

People who view themselves as progressive will sit around all day laughing at gamer bros and incels for being mad that deadpool is queer and not a white supremacist, but will become extremely defensive if you point out that the hunger games had real political critique relevant to the fact that they want to spam post about taylor swift and the met gala but won't repost a single link or gofundme for refugees or those effected by any number of global crises because it "ruins their blog" or "annoys their followers" or whatever their specific reason may be. It's not that you can't enjoy the shallow aspects of a piece of media but repeated refusal to engage with one of the few easily accessed and popular vehicles of political discourse that young Americans have access to is just irresponsible. People constantly say "it's not our fault, we were never taught this" while reading dystopian novel after dystopian novel. Somehow the only one I've seen make a real impact is Handmaid's tale and I'm certain that it's because it depicts explicitly American white women in a Christian state, which is something a lot of agnostic white liberal feminists resonate with, but they never acknowledge that these sorts of things have and do happen in the real world to women that don't look like them.

Americans feel good about themselves for giving a thumbs up whenever they see something going on, the black square fiasco during the George Floyd protests being a very visible example, but won't allow allegorical media to challenge their world view, won't hold celebrities to higher standards in terms of monetary and cultural action, won't address their own biases that may effect how they engage with this sort of content, but they want all the praise for being politically "correct".

I just think we need to be a lot more honest about our reliance on fictional media as a country and how that's produced "it's not that deep" attitudes that refuse education when it's so rarely handed directly to you. If you're upset you were never taught something, teach it to yourself. If you were upset you were asked to find a deeper meaning in an author's words, ask yourself why acknowledging that depth feels threatening.

[scoatneyhall]

NGL, I mostly care because of the way this take has to actively go against the actual information the episodes deliver in order to fly. Blatant lack of media literacy. The most common mistake I've seen is that people somehow assumed it was Man City's home ground rather than a neutral place, which just makes no sense in context. 2.08 makes it blatantly clear that this is a special place of honour for all English football, that's why they go out on the pitch to take it all in, and why the commentators talk about Richmond being the last London team to make their Wembley debut. Whereas Richmond would play at Man City's home ground every season before relegation, and it would have no special meaning for them to be there, and it wouldn't be coloured freaking RED. And then 2.09 follows Beard after he says bye to Ted outside Wembley and walks off into the night IN LONDON, travels on highly recognisable London public transport like the Tube and red buses, meeting up with the pub guys at the Crown and Anchor in Richmond. It is extremely clear that the Man City FA Cup match happened a) in a huge, neutral football ground, equally special to all teams, and b) in London, close to Richmond, not in Manchester, 4 hours away. The context clues are not difficult. It is absolutely bananas to me that people writing about it wouldn't do the most basic, most swift Google search or Wikipedia or Maps check if they are seeing something they aren't sure about, especially if they're writing the specifically about the aftermath of that night and the ride back to Richmond. Excessive research is not compulsory but it baffles me that people could assume something so wrong and feel so confident in that assumption despite so much information that proves the contrary. I mean I simply can't relate to the idea of "I haven't heard of that, imma look it up quick" about anything. The lack of curiosity is a whole ass mystery to me. But since season 3 makes it VERY obvious that Wembley is just up the road from Richmond and that Man City's home ground, the Etihad, is a very different location, four hours north. I truly pray to never see this mistake again.

But I ALSO realised that the main reason it sets off my general sense of frustration over the utter lack of cultural awareness that USCentric people have about the rest of the world is also tied to the music venue thing. Because like. I know Madison Square Garden is in New York City. It is a world famous concert venue. Most people from around the world who engage with any form of Western media know this about American culture. They also have some sports played there I guess. Basketball? And apparently hockey? Unlike Wembley I guess it's specifically the home ground of some specific NY teams? But concert wise, "selling out Madison Square Garden" or whatever is universally understood. MSG is globally recognised as a New York City landmark - the name, at least, if not the actual image of the building. Given we all have to know about this, it is totally and utterly strange to me the way that Americans don't have a similar basic level of awareness about things not in America, especially when its about the UK, arguably the biggest cultural/ media influence that they'd be exposed to outside of the US. Wembley is an iconic and historic cultural venue in London, whether that's the old Wembley like Queen, Michael Jackson, and Live Aid, or current hype from the concert livestreaming era like Harry Styles and Taylor Swift. It is so fucking weird to me that people don't know things like this and don't bother to check if they don't know and fairly or unfairly, it triggers extreme annoyance to me about the bigger issue it represents, which is the utter thoughtlessness, lack of concious awareness and dearth of curiosity that USAmericans often demonstrate when it comes to being forced to consider how things there aren't universal and might be different somewhere else. That's a bigger issue than some silly fanfiction content so I won't even go further into that. But it feels like the lack of media literacy, the missed details in the episodes that has led to that Wembley mistake is tied to that same USAmerican thoughtlessness. You have to be assuming a lot of things to miss the gigantic, clear context clues the episode provided. So please, people. When you're writing about another culture, especially from the POV of a character from that culture, stop assuming thing. Make sure you've actually understood something if the thing is new to you. Give the characters the love they deserve and give their culture the respect any other culture deserves by applying some level of concious awareness to considering how things might be different and get CURIOUS about those things. PRESUME things are different. Presume that you don't know. Please. Please please please.

I finally pinpointed why my eye twitches and my entire soul aches when I read Ted Lasso fics that put Wembley Stadium is in Manchester. It’s not because I care overly much about the finer details of London landmarks or the heart of English football or anything like that. It’s because I spent hours of my life obsessively playing that one youtube clip of David Bowie & Annie Lennox performing Under Pressure live at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and it’s thus ???? unfathomable ??? to me ???? to realise that exist people in this world who didn’t have an 80s rock phase and never even watched Live Aid 1985 @ Wembley. You’re missing OUT

[witchthewriter]

hi!! i would like to participate in the shipp game, if that's okay with you! mine is level three <3

fandoms: marvel, grishaverse and stranger things

about me: well, i'm 18 and bi, my pronoums are she/her and i'm kinda short, my friends tease me about it a lot. i'm really shy and quiet, huge taylor swift fan and i play the guitar!! i absolutely love to read, books and music are 2 of my favorite things in the world, also love to bake and i really like to give little presents to the people i love, like cupcakes and poems. i love to hold hands and a big fan of hugs. i study a lot, too, really nerdy and kinda paranoid about my grades. i hate horror movies and i cry way too easily.

well, i guess that's it, thank you <3

Want one? Here be the rules 🦋

You are literally a darling! Thank you for participating and I hope you enjoy x

What each ship has in common: ⋆ soft-hearted ⋆ they love fiercely ⋆ caring  ⋆ kind ⋆ understanding

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐥

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 I ship you with Wanda! How could I not? You are literally such a sweetheart and I think she would feel this instinctive nature to protect you. She’s fiercely loyal and would do anything to make you happy. 

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・You met during the events of Civil War - you were a new recruit that needed some guidance. She was somewhat new to the group as well and you both were taught the rundwn by Natasha. You three became a good friendship group, however things changed and romance grew. 

・She likes to call you cute nicknames in her language, for example, ‘ draga  ‘ which means dear one/darling. 

・Relationship tropes: ‘ray of sunshine/can’t cope with how sweet the other is,’ ‘

・I honestly think she would LOVE cooking for you - normally traditional Sokovian food but also things that she’s learnt from her time in America. 

・You love gazing into each other’s eyes and stroking each other’s cheeks. It’s super romantic - and completely not awkward I promise. She just absolutely adores you and is so glad you’re in her life 

𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

Inej has a big heart, and she’s basically a beacon of hope for the crow club. Her devotion and faith make for great characteristics in a partner - should would never betray you or cause you harm. You’ll always be in her heart. 

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・You like braiding her hair, and she loves when you place gentle kisses along her neck

・I can see you guys coordinating outfits or something, I think that would be so cute. Or having matching rings or even daggers (she would totally gift you one of hers)

・Training with her - she wants you to be as capable as you can be, so if she’s not there to protect you than you can stand your ground

・Your relationship tropes: ‘partners in crime’, ‘both can destroy your ass,’ 

・I can see you being a healer or a less destructive Grisha. Your nature is so soft and gentle that no way would you body/the Small Science force you to go against your personality/nature 

・You get along well with Jesper; you guys have similar senses of humour and you’re usually the one to pull him back in line

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

Jonathan is a tender hearted, responsible and loyal person. He’s the first born, which automatically made him in charge when Joyce was away. This instilled in him the need to look after people, especially those he cares about. 

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・You would feel like you didn’t have to prove yourself with Jonathan; there’s no judgement, no underlying motives. You know it’s face value and what you say is what you mean with Jonathan

・He likes to lay on a blanket outside with you and stare at the sky. You guys spend hours out there; talking, holding hands, confessing things and playing games with the cloud shapes

・Relationship tropes: ‘friends to lovers,’ ‘both bi,’ ‘a flustered mess everytime/constantly praising and loving them.

・You guys have such a positive relationship - I can see it being so healthy and everyone sort of looks up to you guys. Definitely both chill, I think you would feel very safe with Jonathan.

・You get along with Will so well, oh my god. It would mean so much to Jonathan that yo utake the time to develop a good friendship with his brother. Because of all the things he’s been through, you would listen to him and get to know him. 

・Will would get you into DnD - and he would help you create a character and do mini campaigns - making Jonathan and Argyle join. (Aw like a family within a family <3 because Joyce is always at work-)

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift Starts Frenzy at Indie Record Stores With Surprise Signed ‘Folklore’ CDs

By: Samantha Hissong for Rolling Stone Date: August 10th 2020

Taylor Swift is keeping things indie. On Thursday morning, a multitude of indie record stores across America took to social media to share that signed Folklore CDs “just showed up” - as Chicago’s Reckless Records put it - at the door.

Fans were instructed that the supply was limited to one per customer and that the situation was first-come-first-served. Holds and phone orders were not allowed. According to a Newbury Comics representative, a UMG rep had gotten in touch with the store about the plan earlier this week. “Fan reaction has been through the roof,” the Newbury rep tells Rolling Stone. And that’s not an overstatement, considering that many locations sold out almost instantly.

A representative from Bull Moose, which has locations in Maine and New Hampshire, tells Rolling Stone that one of Universal Music Group’s sales reps offered his team the ability to get in on a “promotional sale for signed CDs by a major artist” late on Tuesday night. 

“I said ‘Sure, sounds like fun. Who’s the artist? and he said Taylor Swift,” the Bull Moose representative explains. “And I was pretty floored. The idea, as I understand it anyway, was to partner up with Record Store Day to give something super cool for indie stores to sell to drive some foot traffic into stores to help those affected by the pandemic.”

The short notice incited some “scrambling, overnight shipping, and a lot of online communication,” according to a representative from Zia Records, which has locations in Arizona and Nevada. 

“But Folklore is one of those titles that appeals to Swift’s hardcore fanbase and indie heads via the Bon Iver and National connections,” Zia Records rep tells Rolling Stone. “We knew it would be worth it.”

“In the end, we received copies at nine of our 12 locations,” the Bull Moose representative adds. “And it only took about two hours after I tweeted at 11:10 a.m. this morning to sell completely through. Phones rang off the hook in every store. Folks took road trips to try to get one. It was a huge deal! Honestly, I expected it to be big, but this was huger than I expected!”

“Obviously the excitement level was pretty high,” a Reckless representative tells Rolling Stone. “We posted that we had the CDs on our Instagram and they were gone in about an hour. Two of our locations received copies. Everybody was really cool about it, and it was nice to see people excited about anything right now honestly.”

When Rolling Stone asked Reckless about profit splits - and whether or not the store had to purchase the CDs, or if they were gifted - the representative replied simply: 

“We sold them like normal CDs, so we were able to make some money.”

While joyful excitement is a treasure during the monotony that is quarantine, some feared the risk of potentially spreading Covid-19. 

“That was definitely a concern of ours but everybody showed up pretty sporadically,” the Reckless representative shares. “There was never any line or anything. The most people that were in here together was a family of four.”

Some other recipients of the CDs included Portland, Oregon’s Music Millennium, Cincinnati, Ohio’s Shake It Records, Kansas City, Missouri’s Mills Records, Lexington, Kentucky’s CD Central, Brooklyn’s Rough Trade, Long Island’s Looney Tunes, Dayton, Ohio’s Omega Music, St. Louis, Missouri’s Vintage Vinyl, Arizona’s Zia Records and Grimey’s in Nashville, Tennessee. Swift previously helped Grimey’s at the start of the pandemic by playing employees’ wages for three months and providing them with healthcare.

*** You can also check out an article by Variety: Indie Record Shop Lover Taylor Swift Boosts Local Stores With Shipments of Signed CDs *** Article by AZ Central: How a Phoenix record store became the place to be for Taylor Swift fans in Arizona *** Article by Green Bay Press-Gazette: When entire box of signed Taylor Swift 'Folklore' CDs ended up in her hands outside Exclusive Co., fan does the right thing *** Read about the fan who returned the box of CDs to the store: 'I was all sorts of panicked': Meet the Taylor Swift fan from Green Bay who kept that box of signed 'Folklore' CDs safe

[kyber-crystal]

pop the question || s.r.

summary: steve goes to his old love to ask her for advice on making the most important decision of his life. 

words: ~2.5k

warnings: really nothing, just fluff and cheesy steve as always :)

a/n: this was an old oneshot and it’s poorly written i’m so sorry. post civil war au where everyone is happy and peggy is still alive hehehehe let’s keep in mind this is unedited so there’s a lot of errors. 

Upon hearing that your boyfriend was going to go visit Peggy, you immediately jumped at the opportunity and begged him to let you tag along. Hearing countless stories about the fearless woman who helped found the very organization that you had been a part of for so long made you want to see her in person. So after several days of convincing, he finally caved in and allowed you to come with him.

The room she was staying in was brightly lit and minimalistic, mostly uncluttered with the only thing on the wall being a framed black-and-white photo of her back in the 40's. A grey-haired woman lay peacefully in the middle of the bed and as you took a step forward, she stirred slightly and for a moment you were afraid you'd woken her up in the middle of her sleep.

Her eyes opened and a bright smile lit up her face, softening immediately upon seeing the two of you side by side. "Oh, do come in...And who is this beautiful lady you've brought along with you, Steve?"

"I'm Y/N. Former SHIELD agent, currently an Avenger," you explained as you made your way over to her. She reached out and gave your hand a quick squeeze, returning your warm smile. "It's so nice to finally meet you. I've heard so much about you."

"And I've heard plenty about you as well," she replied kindly, "You're even lovelier in person."

You laughed nervously and rubbed the back of your neck. "I don't think so."

"I've always wanted to get to know the woman he's fallen so hopelessly in love with."

"Peggy..." Steve felt his cheeks heat up at her statement. "stop, you're embarrassing me—"

"I can tell why he chose you," Peggy smiled, "He's a good man...I know he loves you more than anything."

"Actually, I beg to differ, he loves Bucky more than me," you raised an eyebrow in suspicion at the super-soldier. "He wouldn't pay attention to me after he got roped into an Uno deathmatch last night."

"Classic Rogers," she laughed, shaking her head in disbelief as he pulled up a chair to sit next to you, by her bedside, "a true child at heart. I see you haven't changed much over the years."

Steve took your hand in his, intertwining your fingers together and soothingly rubbing circles across your palm with his thumb. Peggy noticed the softened look in his eyes when he glanced over at you and you felt your face grow warm.

"So how long have you been together for?"

"Almost two years," Steve replied, with a light pink shade tinting his cheeks. "Our second anniversary will be on..."

"May 20th. Two weeks from now," you finished his sentence.

"That's wonderful," Peggy laughed again, "I wish you two the best in your relationship."

"You're too kind," you thanked her, "I've been a huge fan of yours for so long."

"And I, you. He always talks about you every time he visits. He never shuts up about you, so I was dying to meet you from the moment he first mentioned your name."

"What did he say?" you looked over at your boyfriend to see that he was now flushing a bright tomato red, much to both yours and her amusement. "It was all good things, I assume?"

"Of course. He tells me he's never been this happy in his life until he met you...I honestly couldn’t be more proud."

"Aww, Steve," you nudged him in the side as he grew an even deeper shade of red, "you're so sweet."

"He is a hopeless romantic," she added on. "Captain America is great with the ladies."

"Peggy!" Steve exclaimed.

"Aw, you're making him blush," you giggled.

"He is the easily flustered type, if I'm being completely honest with myself here, though one might not see that right away when they first meet him," she agreed, but then her face fell. "Y/N, would you be a dear and get me a glass of water and some yogurt from the cafeteria? You just have to head straight down the hall, then turn right. You'll know it when you see it."

"Yeah, of course," you nodded as you stood up. "Just a minute."

Once you were out of earshot, Peggy gestured for Steve to come closer so he could hear her speak better.

"I'm glad you found a woman like her to stick by your side," she said quietly, "All these years, I waited for you, and I was completely, utterly heartbroken at the idea of not being with you ever again. But after hearing you talk about her frequently and seeing your face light up every time her name was mentioned...I didn't want to take that away from you. You're still that good man with heart from Brooklyn I met so long ago, Steve, and I hope you'll continue to treat her well. She’s a real keeper. Promise me you'll keep her close."

"I will," he promised, reaching over to gently squeeze her hand. "I love her more than anything, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to make her happy."

"Good," she nodded with a smile, "you make the perfect pair with her."

After you returned with Peggy's yogurt and water, you stayed for about an hour and a half longer before a buzzing sound from your phone indicated a new text message.

Natasha: Hey, love. I'm in the parking lot right now, where do you want to go for lunch? I kicked Bucky out before he dragged us to shawarma for the third time this week, so it's your pick today. Thank me later.

You: I'll be out in a sec. Meet you outside.

Natasha: See you in a bit.

You looked back up at Peggy after sliding your phone in your purse, giving her an apologetic look. "I'm afraid I have to go now. I have a lunch date. Natasha doesn't like to be kept waiting, especially when there's food on the line."

"It's okay," she reassured you as you stood up and shook her hand again. "It was absolutely wonderful meeting you. I hope you can come and visit again soon."

"Of course."

After exchanging one last round of goodbyes with her and Steve, you slung your purse over your shoulder and pushed the doors open to head outside, where Natasha was awaiting you in Tony's Audi.

"Hey, girlfriend," Natasha sent you a flirty wink and wave. "Get in."

You slid into the passenger's seat, buckling on your seatbelt as she stepped on the gas pedal. "Hey."

"So, how'd it go?"

"It was pretty nice. She seemed to ship it pretty eagerly," you chuckled. "Oh, also, Thai food."

"Got it." She typed in the directions to the restaurant into the GPS. "That's cute, having another person who's an avid shipper of Y/N x Steve. You guys have any plans for your anniversary?"

You shook your head, "I have no idea. Usually, it's him who makes the move and goes all out for the night, but I'm not sure what either of us have in mind this year."

Oh, he definitely had something in mind.

There was a burning question sitting in the back of his head and had been doing so for as long as he could remember. Right as he was prepared to leave half an hour later, he decided to ask Peggy and get it off his chest.

"Could I ask you something important?"

"Of course."

"I, uh..." he fiddled with his thumbs nervously for a few seconds before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a tiny, cubic box encasing a gorgeous diamond ring inside. "Because our anniversary is coming up soon...I wanted to pop the question. How should I do it?"

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Peggy clasped her hands together excitedly. "Well...I'd suggest you go over-the-top for this occasion, it's a big, life-changing moment so why not? Don't be afraid to go all out, be romantic."

"What should I do, then?"

"Hmm. What are some things she enjoys?"

"Laser tag, crushing her opponents and beating them to a pulp in fights, Tom Cruise, Italian food, and Taylor Swift. She’s a popular pop singer these days."

"Ah, I see," she laughed, "She's a woman who enjoys variety."

"Exactly."

"A nice candlelit dinner would help set the mood very well, but if you're not wanting to pop the question in front of a crowd, you could always set that dinner up at home. Are any of you good cooks?"

"Bruce makes good pasta, and Vision's the baker of the compound."

"Back when my husband and I were still dating, he'd always surprise me with nice little fancy dinners at home. I believe that is the way to a girl's heart; sometimes you do not need to be extravagant to win her over. And you said she likes Taylor Swift, yes?”

“Yeah...”

“Take her to a concert! I heard from my niece that she’s in town right around the time of your anniversary...so you’re in luck. Get tickets, and take her there.”

"Thank you so much, Peggy. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Anytime, Steve."

...

"So," Natasha spoke up as you were on your way back to the compound after lunch, "it's been two years since you finally got off your asses and admitted you were in love with each other, how do you feel?"

"I honestly don't know," you shrugged, "but I guess I have you to thank, right?"

"Damn right you do," she smirked, "I've been rooting for you two since we were called in to take down SHIELD, and I started suspecting things during the Battle of New York."

"That was three years ago! And New York was five!"

"I know!"

You let out a long sigh, a wistful look appearing on your face. "I wish Mom and Dad were here to see where I am right now. You know, they always pushed me to get back into the dating game once I got over my nasty breakup in college...before I got my level 8 SHIELD promotion."

"Didn't they always tell you that they wished you'd date Cap?"

"They did, actually," you chuckled, "and here I am now. Their dream has become my reality."

"I always loved your mom. Remember when we were having dinner at their house? She snuck me extra cookies under the table. Being your best friend for over six years has its perks, you know."

"And she'd fangirl over Thor."

"Ho, boy. Yup," she shook her head as she thought back to that chaotic family dinner.

Two weeks went by in a flash, and before you knew it, it was the day of yours and Steve's anniversary. Strangely enough you'd been prevented from seeing him all day, with the team making extra efforts to keep you separated.

After a fancy home-cooked dinner, you found yourselves curled up together on the couch as you absentmindedly watched Tangled - one of your favorite Disney movies of all time. Your head was resting on Steve’s broad shoulder as he traced patterns on your arm, feeling his breath gently  fanning over your head. 

But partway through the movie, you noticed he seemed to be fidgeting a bit as well, glancing between you and his pockets frequently.

"Hey," you placed a gentle hand on top of his, still staring ahead, "are you okay?"

"Huh? What? Yeah, I'm fine," he blinked a couple times before snapping out of his daze.

"Okay..."

Several more minutes passed in silence before he decided to speak up again. “...If I recall, you’re into Taylor Swift.”

“Oh yeah! Why do you ask?”

“An insider told me she’s going to be in Brooklyn this weekend for a throwback tour. I managed to snag last-minute tickets for the two of us...what do you say?”

“YES,” you practically squealed, jumping out of your seat and throwing your arms around him. “You’re the best! I love you.”

“I know, darling, I love you too,” he laughed, one hand rubbing your back as the other was absentmindedly fiddling with the box in his pocket. You blew it, Rogers...

...

You were nearly bombarded by paparazzi as soon as you stepped out of your Audi with Steve by your side, reporters flooding your path. The guards at the main entrance were quick to notice, however, and led you aside so you could enter through a different route. 

“This feels so surreal,” your voice echoed across the walls as you made your way down the hall hand-in-hand. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment ever since I was a kid.”

“I’m glad I was able to make that dream come to life.”

“This is why you’re the best person ever.”

“Not because I always have your back during missions?” he raised a brow.

“That too, but also because of the fact that you got me tickets to the concert of one of my favorite artists ever.”

He chuckled. “I get that.”

You ended up standing right in front of the stage - so you had not only a close-up view, but could hear everything beyond fantastically. As Taylor came out on stage and began to sing, Steve couldn’t help the look of adoration that crossed over his features at the sight of your brightened eyes and glowing complexion. You truly looked like an angel - and he knew for sure in that very moment, you were the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. 

His train of thought was interrupted at one point by you grabbing his hand and squealing excitedly. “My favorite!”

Steve recognized the familiar, soothing tune as Love Story. He recalled you and Natasha drunkenly dancing around on karaoke night to this very tune - heads thrown back in laughter as you exaggerated your movements, making everyone laugh. You’d explained that the reason why you were so attached was because listening to it made you long for a happy ever after - a perfect future. A girl could dream. 

Romeo, save me, I've been feeling so alone I keep waiting for you, but you never come Is this in my head? I don't know what to think He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring And said, 

You were too busy jumping around and singing your heart out to notice the spotlight was now shining down on you, and it was only when the crowd started shrieking in excitement that you turned around to see-

Steve was down on one knee, holding up a tiny velvet box with a beautiful diamond ring nestled in the very center. Taylor was grinning down at you two as she continued to sing, the audience chanting for you to say something.

"Marry me, Juliet You'll never have to be alone I love you and that's all I really know I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes"

“Yes! Yes,” you nodded, choking on a happy sob as you put a hand over your mouth, letting him slide the ring on your finger. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

He stood back up and wound his arms around your waist, pulling you in for a passionate kiss to your lips. 

Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh 'Cause we were both young when I first saw you

...

if your name is striked out, that means i couldn’t tag you for some reason

general tags: @yoomum @captainchrisstan @sandystoriess @naomiiiiiiiiiii04 @patzammit @rynhaswritersblock @capcapcapsicle @wheresmyjae @thinkingofbuckybarnes @carryonmywaywardbucky @musicalkeys @buckybarnesthehotshot @zaddychris @optimistic-dinosaur-nacho @sylvie-writes @sis-it-dont-add-up @tonystankschild 

permanent tags: @sandwitch-god @renaissancecherub 

steve/chris tags: @marvelfanatic16 @angrybirdcr @speechlessxx @epiphanybucky @smokeandnailz

[justafairytailofinnocence]

heyyy i was hoping for a marvel matchup?

i’m sapphic with a preference for men and i use she/they pronouns!

i’m very spiritual and mainly practice green witch craft, i just love nature, moss and mushrooms are just so pretty to me! my favourite crystals are carnelian and moss agate, and my big three and venus sign are Aquarius sun, Libra rising, Scorpio moon and Capricorn venus.

im a huge huge HUGE Taylor Swift fan, my favourite songs right now are Haunted, last great american dynasty, Wonderland and my tears ricochet. my favourite movie (aside from anything marvel related) is Dead Poets Society!

i study english literature and history, i absolutely ace those classes and i also do a lot of public speaking. i also do higher level science :)

i mainly prefer contemporary literature, although Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare is an all time favourite of mine! my favourite romance trope (i love romantic tragedy) is ‘right person not enough time’.

i’d consider myself to be pretty nurturing, although im really sensitive and reclusive at times? i’m sarcastic and easily annoyed sometimes but i really try to control it because i know it can be a little bit of a mood killer. aside from that i’m really imaginative and a great communicator, i’d like to think of myself as being decently well spoken and charismatic.

i’m an ISFJ as well! my main love languages are touch and quality time, although words of affirmation are cool too!

i’m extremely hyper feminine, i love lacey dresses and camisoles, gold and pearl jewellery, designer, vintage clothes, vanilla perfume, lip gloss and blush. i think its all so cute and it makes me feel so pretty.

i’d also like a theme song too if u dont mind <3

sorry if this is too much info! <3

Hello welcome of course we have another ship today:

I ship you with

Captain America🇺🇸

And

Loki💫

- so the reason I did this was because I felt as though you would have a strong connection with Loki meanwhile dating the famous captain America.

- the love triangle was when after Steve tried to ask you out on a mission to which later down the track Loki took an attraction to you.

- you are a secret goddess living amongst humans. Goddess of nature gaining the nickname "mother nature's daughter".

- your power is nature so in a way you can make trees or plants listen to your every need. If you get hurt the forest will try to protect you.

- Steve loves your calming energy almost as if you have a strange effect on him meanwhile Loki loves your looks and discovers the fact your a secret goddess.

- you were discovered by Loki first as he proposed to you as his queen. However you left not liking his ways of mischief and killing.

- you believed in kindness so you and Steve developed a natural relationship. He fell in love with you.

Steve: so sapphic I was wondering if you would go out with me sometime

Sapphic: oh dear Steve of- *hears someone behind them*

Loki: sapphic my dear are you truly yearning him, end up with me I have power and you as my queen

Sapphic: no Loki stop trying to manipulate me

Loki: *appears* very well my dear however I will keep fighting for yoy

Steve: wait Loki?!? How did you

Loki: oh foolish Quim don't you know who she is

Steve: uh...my girlfriend *holds you protectively*

Sapphic: stop it Loki don't frighten the poor man *begs him and holds his hand*

Loki: foolish mortal she is my queen...a goddess like me

Sapphic: Loki why?!?

Loki: because dear I value you as my bride

Steve: yeah goddess or not I still love her

- the two would try to fight while you would basically try to turn down Loki as Steve would be trying to win you over.

- Loki and your bond are quite strong meaning your both soulmates essentially.

- depending on who you choose per say Steve would marry you in front of the helecarrier with the avengers. Your child would be a demi god with your hair and his blue eyes. They become the next captain America.

- Loki's wedding would be in his dimension where you rule his side. He adores you to bits. Your child would be a god of foxes a mix of nature and mischief. With his hair and your eyes.

- sapphic and Steve's theme song:

- sapphic and Loki's theme song:

Anyways that's all I have for now:

Ta Ta💫

[toshootforthestars]

From the essay by Ryan Cooper, posted 16 Nov 2020:

...in Vietnam, there is no raging coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to swift action from the government, that nation squelched its initial outbreak, and has so far successfully contained all subsequent infection clusters before they got out of hand. Its figures at time of writing (which have been confirmed as reliable by outside sources) show a mere 1,283 cases and 35 deaths, and no community transmission for the last 75 days. Life for Vietnamese people has returned to normal, with a few sensible precautions. If their success holds for a few more months until a vaccine can be deployed, Vietnam will have dodged the pandemic nearly perfectly.

Given Vietnam's high population and very high density — it has over 96 million people crammed into an area about the size of New Mexico — numerous long borders, including one with the country where the pandemic started, and relatively impoverished economy, it has turned in arguably the most impressive performance of any country in the world. Most of the other star performers, like Taiwan or New Zealand, are rich islands and hence much easier to isolate from the world (though nearby Thailand has done nearly as well).

Meanwhile in the self-appointed "land of the free," on Sunday the seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths was 1,148. The same seven-day average of new cases has increased from about 82,000 on November 1 to over 150,000 on Sunday — numbers that are certainly a large underestimate, because, with very high test positivity rates across much of the country, many cases are being missed. Total recorded deaths in the U.S. are over 250,000, which again is a large under-count. There are many more future deaths already baked in, and infections are mounting exponentially in almost every state. Unless something changes, and fast, the coronavirus pandemic will surpass the Second World War to become the greatest American mass casualty event since the influenza pandemic of 1918.

The bleak irony of American life is our boastful and hyperbolic national conception of liberty has left us as one of the most unfree peoples on the globe. There can be no freedom without government, a lesson currently being inscribed in blood, and stacked up in the mobile morgues that are overflowing with corpses in more cities around the country every day.

As an American, the months since March have felt like living in Airstrip One, the miserable police state formerly known as Britain in George Orwell's 1984. In that time I have seldom left my house for fear of catching the virus, or worse, spreading it to someone who is at risk and killing (or permanently disabling) them. I have not seen my family since October 2019 for the same reason. In a best-case scenario, I will not see them until the middle of next year — something like 2 percent of my entire lifespan, optimistically speaking. It looks like even the occasional outdoor dining I savored as a small bright spot over the summer will be shut down soon, with cases spiking badly in my home city of Philadelphia.

All the political freedoms I supposedly enjoy as an American citizen are useless in the face of this unending tsunami of death and misery. The plain fact is that the average resident of Vietnam — under a repressive dictatorship, let me emphasize — has more freedoms in the places where, for most people, it really counts: the freedom to leave the house, the freedom to see and touch one's family and friends, the freedom to go to a restaurant or a bar or a movie or a concert, and simply the freedom from constant grasping fear of invisible death.

Let me be clear: The point of the comparison here is not to say that authoritarian rule is necessary for containing the virus. On the contrary, part of the reason the virus escaped in the first place was because authoritarian officials in China tried to hide it at first (though they later turned things around, as I will discuss below). And as noted above, Taiwan and New Zealand are democracies and have also done very well. South Korea, Australia, and Japan have struggled somewhat more than Vietnam, but thus far have also kept the virus largely in check. A few European democracies like Finland and Norway have done fairly well, and while most others on that continent are suffering a catastrophic second wave (worse than I predicted, alas), they have recently adopted a second lockdown which is beginning to slow the spread.

The point is that the United States is getting rinsed in providing liberty to its citizens — supposedly the entire point of its existence, according to its founding documents — by a bunch of dictatorial Communists.

The United States, once again, stands virtually alone among nations with its obdurate refusal to do anything about the galloping pandemic at the national level.

Now, part of that is President Trump's singular incompetence. Since surviving the virus — thanks to cutting-edge experimental treatment only he could get at the time — he has progressed from not doing anything about the virus to effectively trying to spread it personally. He held dozens of huge campaign rallies, even after one in June infected hundreds of people. An election night watch party recently became the second super-spreader event hosted at the White House.

Even halting, timid efforts to stop hospitals from being utterly overwhelmed at the state and local level are running into stiff resistance from reactionary lunatics.

Almost every single Republican governor has preemptively refused to follow President-elect Biden's guidance on imposing mask rules, even as their own operatives and elderly representatives fall sick from the virus. New York Governor Cuomo's weeks-late and unenforceable order banning gatherings larger than 10 people inspired a Republican New York City councilman to gleefully announce on Twitter that his Thanksgiving celebrations would have more people than that. The order is an "odious infringement on personal liberty," moaned the libertarian writer Robby Soave at Reason.

In South Dakota, where the hospitals are already full to bursting with new cases still accelerating, the blithely apathetic Governor Kristi Noem insists that masks are a matter of personal choice. Newly elected QAnon nutcase Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) boasted of refusing to wear a mask during congressional orientation.

In short, while it is a minority movement, the most fervent, dedicated, and effective political mobilization in this country is organized around stopping the government from saving the lives of its citizens.

As I have previously written, the signature American view of liberty emerges from a cramped and extreme version of 19th-century liberal theory. American conservatives and libertarians often assert that one has liberty when the government is not "interfering" with whatever one feels like doing, regardless of circumstance.

[saoirseunaronan]

why taylor should come to latin america: the ultimate post

ok, so i decided to make this post, ‘cause i just have a lot to say, so here we go with the reasons why Taylor should consider performing in Latin America this tour! @taylorswift @taylornation

1) Records

We are very dedicated fans and we’ve broken some records here of Taylor’s albums and songs! “Fearless” peaked at 18 in Brazil and 37 in Mexico. “Speak Now” was certified Gold in Brazil, peaked at 8 in Mexico. “RED” peaked 4 in Mexico, was certified Platinum in Brazil and Gold in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. “1989″ was certified Gold and Platinum 3 times in Brazil and Mexico, peaked at 3 in Brazil and 1 in Mexico. “reputation” peaked at 4 in Mexico and was certified Gold in Brazil and Platinum in Mexico. “Look What You Made Me Do” was also certified Diamond, “End Game” was certified Gold and “Delicate” was certified Platinum in Brazil. Also Taylor has won and was nominated for several awards here as well like MTV Millenial Awards, held in Mexico, and for Argentina’s, Mexico’s, Brazil’s and Colombia’s KCA Awards (x x x x x x x x x x x x).

2) Fans

Taylor also has a lot of fans here! Just thinking about this objectively “Taylor Swift Brasil”, one of the few brazilian fanbases here, has over 100k followers on twitter (x). Other fanbases like Mexico (over 4k - x), Uruguay (over 9k - x), Chile (over 21k - x), Peru (over 7k - x) and Argentina (over 6k - x) are also very big.

3) Energy

Latin American fans are very well-known for their energy and, as someone who’s been to concerts here before, I gotta say we are on another level of dedication when it comes to screaming (lol). A lot of artists have chosen us as their favorite crowds, because, when we do love someone, we bring everyhing to the table. We’re just a bunch of excited babies and I would love Taylor to see it live, it’s amazing! Also we’ve been holding our breaths for 13 years, these concerts would be wild!!

4) Stadiums

Another aspect that people like to point out is that Taylor is a huge performer and she demands huge stadiums. Well... I gotta tell ya, we got them! Here’s a little list for ya of our biggest stadiums!

1) Chile (Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos - 48665 people); 2) Argentina (Antonio Vespucio Liberti - 66000 people); 3) Brazil (Maracanã - 78838 people); 4) Mexico (Azteca - 87000 people); 4) Uruguay (Centenario - 60235 people); 5) Paraguay (General Pablo Rojas - 45000 people); 6) Colombia (Deportivo Cali - 52000 people); 7) Peru (Estadio Monumental - 80093), etc.

Taylor, if you see this, please know that we love you and we cherish you and we really want this chance to show you our love!!

[bananaofswifts]

Around this time of year, the Taylor Swift anniversaries come at you thick and fast.

Nine years since her third album, Speak Now, every note of which was written entirely by Swift, hit the shelves. Five years since she released her mould-breaking pop album, 1989, and went from the world’s biggest country star to the world’s biggest pop star overnight. Two years since her Reputation record saw her become the only musician to post four successive million-plus debut sales weeks in the United States. And so on.

But today, Swift’s mind is drawn further back, to the 13th anniversary of her debut, self-titled record, and the days when her album releases weren’t automatically accompanied by mountains of hype and enough think-pieces to sink a battleship. Her journal entries from the time – helpfully reprinted as part of the deluxe editions of her new album, Lover – reveal her as an excited, optimistic teenager, but also one with a grasp of marketing strategies and label politics way beyond her years, even if she was reluctant to actually take credit for her ideas.

“It always was and it always will be an interesting dance being a young woman in the music industry,” she smiles ruefully. “We don’t have a lot of female executives, we’re working on getting more female engineers and producers but, while we are such a drastic gender minority, it’s interesting to try and figure out how to be.”

And, of course, when Swift started out she was, as she points out, “an actual kid”.

“I was planning the release of my first album when I was 15 years old,” she reminisces. “And I was a fully gangly 15, I reminded everyone of their niece! I was in this industry in Nashville and country music, where I was making album marketing calls, but I never wanted to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, that promotions plan you just complimented my label on, I thought of that! Me and my Mom thought of that!’

“When you’re a new artist you wonder how much space you can take up and, as a woman, you wonder how much space you can take up pretty much your whole period of growing up,” she continues. “For me, growing up and knowing that I was an adult was realising that I was allowed to take up space from a marketing perspective, from a business perspective, from an opinionated perspective. And that feels a lot better than constantly trying to wonder if I’m allowed to be here.”

In the intervening years, Taylor Swift has released six further, brilliant albums, growing from country starlet to all-conquering pop behemoth along the way. She takes up “more space”, as she would put it, than any other musician on the planet: a sales and now – having belatedly embraced the format with Lover – streaming phenomenon; a powerhouse stadium performer; an award-garlanded songwriter for herself and others; and a social media giant with a combined 278 million followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (which would make the Taylor Nation the fourth most populous one on earth, after China, India and the US).

But her influence on music and the music industry doesn’t end there. Because, over the years, Swift has also become a leading advocate for artists’ and songwriters’ rights, in a digital landscape that doesn’t always have such matters as a priority.

In 2015, she stood up to Apple Music over its plans to not pay artist royalties during subscribers’ three-month free trials (Apple backed down immediately). She pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify in 2014 in protest that its free tier was devaluing music, sending Daniel Ek scrambling to justify his business model. When she returned in 2017, it was a crucial fillip for the streaming service’s IPO plans.

More recently, her ground-breaking new record deal with Republic Records contained clauses not only guaranteeing her ownership of her future masters, but also ensuring Universal Music will share the spoils of its Spotify shares with its artists, without any payments counting against unrecouped balances. And when her long-time former label boss Scott Borchetta sold Big Machine to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, taking Swift’s first six albums with him, the star publicly called out what she saw as her “worst-case scenario” and stressed: “You deserve to own the art you make”. She may yet re-record her old songs in protest.

In short, Swift has, for a long time now, been unafraid to use her voice on industry matters, whether they pertain to her own stellar career or the thousands of other artists out there struggling to make a living.

All of which makes Swift not just the greatest star of our age, but perhaps the most important to the future development of the industry as a more artist-centric, songwriter-friendly business. Hers is still the life of the pop phenomenon – she spent today in Los Angeles doing promotion and photoshoots (or, in her words, “having people put make-up on me”) as Lover continues to build on huge critical acclaim and even huger initial sales. But now, she’s kicking back with her cats – one of whom seems determined to disrupt Music Week’s interview by “stampeding” through at every opportunity – and ready to talk business.

And for Swift, business is good. The impact of her joining streaming, and the decline of traditional album sales, may have prevented her from posting a fifth successive one million-plus sales debut, but Lover still sold more US copies (867,000) in its first week than any record since her own Reputation. It’s sold 117,513 copies to date in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company.

Even better, while Reputation – a record forged in the white heat of a social media snakestorm over her on-going feud with Kanye West – was plenty of show and rather less grow, Lover continues to reveal hidden depths. Reputation struck a sometimes curious contrast between the unrepentant warrior Swift she was showing to the outside world and the love story with British actor Joe Alwyn that was quietly developing behind closed doors, but Lover is the sort of versatile, cohesive album that the streaming age was supposed to kill off.

It contains more than its fair share of pop bangers (You Need To Calm Down, Me!), but also some gorgeously-crafted acoustic tracks (Lover, Cornelia Street), some pithy political commentary (The Man, Miss America & The Heartbreak Prince) and the sort of musical diversions (Paper Rings’ irresistible rockabilly stomp, the childlike oddity of It’s Nice To Have A Friend) that no other pop superstar would have the sheer musical chops to attempt, let alone pull off.

“Taylor’s creative instincts as an artist and songwriter are brilliant,” says Monte Lipman, founder and CEO of Swift’s US label, Republic. “Our partnership represents a strategic alliance built on mutual respect, trust, and complete transparency. Her vision is extraordinary as she sets the tone for every campaign and initiative.”

No wonder David Joseph, chairman/CEO of her long-time UK label Virgin EMI’s parent company Universal Music UK, is thrilled with how things are going.

“Love Story was a fitting first single release for Taylor here – she’s loved the UK from day one and has engaged so much with her fans and teams,” says Joseph. “She really respects and values what’s going on here creatively. To see her go from playing the Students’ Union at King’s College to Wembley Stadium has been extraordinary. Taylor is an artist constantly striving for perfection, and with Lover – from my personal point of view, her most accomplished work to date – her songwriting has gone to a new level. I adore working with her and whilst it’s been more than 10 years this still feels like the start.”

And today, Swift is keen to concentrate on the present and future. She has a starring role in Cats coming up (and a new song on the soundtrack, Beautiful Ghosts, co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber) and, after a spectacularly intimate Paris launch show in September, festival dates and her own LoverFest to plan (UK shows will be revealed soon). Time, then, to tell the cats to calm down and sit down with Music Week to talk streaming, contracts and why she’s “obsessed” with the music industry…

Unlike with Reputation, most of the discussion around Lover seems to have been focused on the music…

“Absolutely! One of the ideas I had about this record, and something I’ve implemented into my life in the last couple of years is that I don’t like distractions. And, for a while, it felt like my life had to come with distractions from the music, whether it was tabloid fascination with my personal life or my friendships or what I was wearing. I realised in the last couple of years that, if I don’t give a window into distraction, people can’t try to look in and see something other than the music. I love that, if you really pour yourself into the idea that an album is still important and try really hard to make something that is worth people’s attention span, time and energy, that can still come across. Because we are living in an industry right now where everyone’s rushing towards taking us into a singles industry and, in some cases, it has become that. But there are still some cases where clearly the album is important to people.”

Does it matter that some new artists won’t get to make albums the way you always have?

“It’s interesting. Five years ago I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and said, maybe in the next five years, we would see artists releasing music the way that they want to. I thought that each artist would start to curate what is important to them, not just from an artistic standpoint but from a marketing standpoint. It’s really interesting to see different release plans, if you look at what Drake did and then what Beyoncé does, incredible artists who have really curated what it is to drop music in their own way. We all do it differently, which is cool. As long as people dropping just singles want to be doing that, then I’m fine with it, but if it feels like a big general wave that’s being pressured by people in power, their teams or their labels, that’s not cool. But I do really hope that in the future artists have more of a say over strategy. We’re not just supposed to make art and then hand it to a team that masterminds it.”

Were you worried about putting an album on streaming on release day for the first time?

“Well, there are ways that streaming services could really promote the [whole] album in a more incentivised way. We could have album charts on streaming. The industry follows where they can get prizes. So you have a singles chart on streaming services which is great but, if you split things up into genre charts for example, that would really incentivise people. It’s important that we keep trying to strive to make the experience better for users but also make it more interesting for artists to keep wanting to achieve. But I really did love the experience of putting the album on streaming. I loved the immediacy, I loved that people who maybe weren’t a huge diehard fan were curious and saying, ‘I wonder what this is like’ and listening to it and deciding that they liked it.”

You’d resisted streaming for a long time. Have you changed your mind about the format now?

“I always knew that I would enjoy the aspects of streaming that make [your music] so immediately available to so many people. That’s the part of it that I unequivocally always felt really sad I was missing out on. There wasn’t ever a day when I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m really glad that multitudes of people don’t have access to my music!’ So I always knew that streaming was an incredible mechanism and model for the future but I still don’t think we have the royalties and compensation system worked out. That’s between the labels and their artists and I realised that me, to use a gross word, ‘leveraging’ what I can bring to cut a better deal for the artists at my record label was really important for me.”

How big a factor were things like that in you signing to Republic/Universal?

“That’s important to me because that means they’re adopting some of my ideas. If they take me on as an artist that means they really thought it through. Because with me, come opinions about how we can better our industry. I’m one of the only people in the artist realm who can be loud about it. People who are on their fifth, sixth or seventh album, we’re the only ones who can speak out, because new artists and producers and writers need to work. They need to be endearing and likeable and available to their labels and streaming services at all times. It’s up to the artists who have been around for a second to say, ‘Hey guys, the producers and the writers and the artists are the ones who are making music what it is’. And we’re in a great place in music right now thanks to them. They should be going to their mailbox and feeling like they’ve got a pension plan, rather than feeling like, ‘Oh yay, I can pay half my rent this month after this No.1 song’.”

Did you have more creative freedom making Lover than on your previous albums?

“In my previous situation, there were creative constraints, issues that we had over the years. I’ve always given 100% to projects, I always over-delivered, thinking that that generosity would be returned to me. But I ended up finding that generosity in a new situation with a new label that understands that I deserve to own what I make. That meant so much to me because it was given over to me so freely. When someone just looks at you and says ‘Yes, you deserve what you want’, after a decade or more of being told, ‘I’m not sure you deserve what you want’ – there’s a freedom that comes with that. It’s like when people find ‘the one’ they’re like, ‘It was easy, I just knew and I felt free’. All of a sudden you’re being told you’re worth exactly, no, more than what you thought you were worth. And that made me feel I could make an album that was exactly what I wanted to make. There’s an eclectic side to Lover, a confessional side, it varies from acoustic to really poppy pop, but that’s what I like to do. And, while you would never make something artistic based on something so unromantic as a contract, it was more than that. It was a group of people saying, ‘We believe in what you’re making, go make what you want to make and you deserve to own it too’.”

You’re obviously not happy about what’s happened at Big Machine since you left. But will the attention mean artists don’t find themselves in this situation in the future?

“I hope so. That’s the only reason that I speak out about things. The fans don’t understand these things, the public isn’t being made aware. This generation has so much information available to them so I thought it was important that the fans knew what I was going through, because I knew it was going to affect every aspect of my life and I wanted them to be the first to know. And in and amongst that group, I know there are people that want to make music some day. It involves every new artist that is reading that and going, ‘Wait, that’s what I’m signing?’ They don’t have to sign stuff that’s unfair to them. If you don’t ask the right questions and you sit in front of the wrong desk in front of the wrong person, they can take everything from you.”

Songwriters are in dispute with Spotify in the US over its decision to appeal the Copyright Board decision to boost songwriting royalties. Do writers need more respect?

“Absolutely. In terms of the power structure, the songwriters, the producers, the engineers, the people who are breathing magic into our industry, need to be listened to. They’re not being greedy. This is legitimately an industry where people are having trouble paying their bills and they’re the most talented people we have. This isn’t them sitting in their mansions going, ‘I wish this mansion was bigger and I would like a yacht please’. This is actually people who are going to work every single day. I got into writing when I was in Nashville and it was very much like what I read about the Brill Building. You would write every day, whether you were inspired or not, and in the process I met artists and writers. Somebody would walk in and someone would say, ‘Oh, he’s still getting mailbox money from that Faith Hill cut a couple of years ago, he’s set’. That’s not a thing anymore. Mailbox money is a thing of the past and we need to remember that these are the people that create the heartbeat that we’re all dancing to or crying to.”

You were clearly aware of music industry machinations from a young age…

“Reading back on the journal entries, I forgot how obsessed I was with the industry as a teenager. I was so fascinated by how it works and how it was changing. Every part of it was interesting to me. I had drawn the stages for most of my tours a year before I went on them. That really was fun for me as a teenager! A lot of people who start out very young in music, either don’t have a say or don’t have the will to do the business side of it, but weirdly that was so much fun for me to try and learn. I had a lot of energy when I was 16!”

Are you doing similar drawings for next year’s LoverFest?

“Definitely. And that’s why it’s still fun for me to take on a challenge like, ‘Oh, let’s just plan our own festival’. Let’s create a bill of artists and try and make it as fun as possible for the fans. I’m so intrigued by what that’s going to be like.”

Finally, when we last did an interview in 2015, you said in five years’ time you wanted to be “finding complexity in happiness”. How has that worked out?

“That’s exactly what’s happened with this album! I think a lot of writers have the fear of stability, emotional health and happiness. Our whole careers, people make jokes about how, ‘Just wait until you meet someone nice, you’ll run out of stuff to write about’. I was talking to [Cats director] Tom Hooper about this because he said one thing his mother taught him was, ‘Don’t ever let people tell you that you can’t make art if you’re happy’. I thought that was so amazing. He’s a creator in a completely different medium but he has been subjected to that same joke over and over again that we must be miserable to create. Lover is important to me in so many ways, but it’s so imperative for me as a human being that songwriting is not tied to my own personal misery. It’s good to know that, it really is!”

[ididntwanttohavetohauntyou]

a few things about me...

i figured since a whole bunch of new people just followed me, i’d kind of make a “get to know me” thing. yes, i’m a dork and weird. that’s me.

i guess since i said it already, the first thing will be that i’m a dork, so expect to see that

i’m jewish and i support israel’s existence. if that’s something you don’t agree with, you can keep following me but be aware that i do blog about that, or you can peacefully leave. if you want to, i’m also willing to have a civil conversation with anyone about israel... or literally anything else, i love talking to people

i support all races, religions, genders, sexualities, ethnicities etc. i’m really not picky about any of that. you’re a human being (i love aliens too btw, please don’t invade earth) so i pretty much like you until you give me a reason not to. and that would need to be calvin’s level of asshole btw

i do curse. just a head’s up. i do it as rarely as possible because i try to be aware of other people and i know some people don’t like it

i will occasionally ramble about something random (similar to what brought the influx of new followers) so expect some fairly random things on your dash

i’m a patriotic american and while i believe there is always room for improvement, i feel extremely lucky to live in america

i’m a first generation american, my mom is from india, and my dad’s from israel.

i’m texan (though i was born in san diego, california), 17, a girl, bisexual and a huge taylor swift fan

i’m mostly a kaylor blog, but i will reblog other things as well

as well as being a huge taylor swift fan, i’m a little mix, halsey, hayley kiyoko, king princess and 5h fan

i’m generally extremely sleep deprived, hopped up on sugar and caffeine, or somewhere in between. the days you don’t see extremely random things on your dash are the days my adhd medicine actually worked, though i think i’m fairly boring on meds. i think i already said this, but again, sleep deprived

i have nothing else interesting to say about myself, but i really wanted to make this list long enough to reach 13

and now that i’m at 13, i’m gonna go, thank you and goodnight (or good morning, good afternoon, whatever)

[oldfashionedswiftcurse]

Like Pieces into Place

Hi hi hi,

I’m working on a new fanfic that takes place near the London countryside with Taylor and Joe (during/post-Calvin, Tom Hiddleston doesn’t exist in this lol). Please let me know if you have questions, comments, feedback, etc. Enjoy!

The lush greens and reds greeted her and her Range Rover as they barreled over the rocky driveway to her cabin. She certainly wasn’t in Nashville anymore. She wasn’t even in America. Taylor had left behind the populated city life for some time away. Although Tree had mentioned that the private cabin was located right on the outskirts of London, she hadn’t specified the immense distance between Taylor and her neighbors. Other than the beautiful ranch they passed earlier, there was little sign of life, and while it would definitely allow her to concentrate fully on her next album, it gave her little to do otherwise.

           “Tree, when you said private, I didn’t actually expect a murder cabin. Just to be clear, should I call 911 during an emergency or just accept that I will most likely be slaughtered by a serial killer?”

           “Taylor, no one is going to kill you. It’s both cute and rustic, and you did reiterate how much you wanted your privacy,” Tree echoed, and Taylor admitted defeat.

           “You’re right. I guess, if a daily phone call with Adam and utter loneliness for the other twenty three hours of the day is the path I chose, I’ll just have to deal with it.”

           “Atta girl,” Tree beckoned, rustling with her phone in the background. “By the way, you can take a break with the dramatics. The Maxes will be joining you every morning for this next week, so I think you’ll manage just fine. It’ll be a great new album.”

           Taylor chuckled, hanging up the phone. As she parked the car and carried her bags inside, she basked in the refreshing feeling of doing something alone. It had been so long since she had carried her own bag or driven herself that she was glad to be doing basic chores. After unpacking slowly and memorizing the basic layout of the cabin, Taylor changed into a gray sweatshirt and leggings and walked through the seemingly endless forest. As the wind began to blow her blonde curls into her eyes, Taylor opted to cover herself with her hood as a shield.

           It was the perfect temperature, just cool enough for the wind to leave some goosebumps on her arm, but warm enough for her breath not to leave a trace in the air around her. Taylor would describe it as the perfect level of balminess. As she continued onward, Taylor spotted the same ranch from earlier. There were distant cries of laughter, and she was relieved that she was vacationing (if that was even the right word for it) near a family. Families always made her feel warm inside, and in this particular moment, she thought back to her own childhood farm as she picked pumpkins while her brother, Austin, ran through the fields.

           The ranch was massive, but still maintained a distinctly homely quality to it. The farm area was attached to a large white Victorian home equipped with a wraparound porch and a porch swing. It was the kind of home you grew old in, accepting the peaceful transition from a bustling city to a quiet town. She wondered what Christmases were like in that house and whether or not the children shared the same memories that she did from her childhood.

           “Lucky, come back! Dad’s going to have a fit, and I won’t be able to go to the festival this weekend!”

           The sound was very distant, but as Taylor watched a tiny Australian Shepherd waddle right past her, she knew that the voice would be linked to a young child. The cherubic, blonde child appeared before her, armed with a doughnut and a long leash, and frantically raced after her dog.

           “Here, let me help,” Taylor muttered, chasing after the dog and scooping it easily into her arms as the girl clicked the leash into place. “This little guy’s got a lot of power in him, huh?”

           The girl eagerly nodded, and as Taylor placed the dog onto the ground, the girl managed to take a bite of her very pink, very frosted doughnut.

           “Thank you, Miss. If we hadn’t caught him in time, he’d be gone forever, and Dad would never let me get another pet! This is Lucky, and I’m Madilyn. We live just down the path there,” she said, extending a hand to Taylor and then deciding against it due to her frosted fingers. “Are you living out in that cabin? Dad said it was about time we got a new neighbor.”

           “I am. Hi, my name’s Taylor,” she said gleefully, sliding her hood down. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Madilyn. And you too, Lucky, rebellious as you may be.”

           And as Taylor smiled at the excited puppy, Madilyn’s jaw dropped.

           “You’re…this can’t be real. Maybe I hit a boulder and fell off a cliff or something because…well, I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you before, but you look an awful lot like…”

           “Taylor Swift?” The pop sensation teased, but as Maddie’s cheeks grew pink with embarrassment or awe or a series of different emotions, Taylor couldn’t help herself. “That would be me.”

           She shrugged, and Maddie looked on in amazement.

           “Do you mind?” Maddie glanced inquisitively, reaching for her phone.

           Taylor acquiesced immediately, smiling brightly for the selfie. Her smile was authentic, unblemished by the city facades and too-bright paparazzi lights.

           “If you don’t mind me asking,” the girl interrupted politely, “what are you doing…here? My friend from school, Elizabeth, never wants to play here, and her mom’s only in banking. I can’t imagine an actual pop legend wanting to spend time around here when you could be surrounded by crowds and cameras!”

           “First of all, your friend, Elizabeth, doesn’t seem like she gave this place much of a try.  You should never have to convince or beg people to spend time with you in your home, especially if you have a puppy as cute as Lucky. Second of all, the fame and attention…it can be too much too often. It’s nice to distance yourself sometimes, which is exactly why I’m here in this wonderful setting as you so quaintly put it,” Taylor responded, and the girl’s wide, green eyes looked back in great doubt.

           “I’m only eight,” the girl replied succinctly, and Taylor wondered why she even tried. “I’m not sure I can quaintly put anything.”

           At that age, friendships still carried the appearance of continuity, and of course a girl just about to enter tweenhood was still tricked by the allure of fame. It was a disillusioning realization one could only come to after spending years and years in the spotlight.

           “MADDIE! MADILYN?!” A deep voice bellowed, and Maddie instantly glanced backward and then back to Taylor.

           “Is it okay if I invite some friends over tomorrow to meet you? They would die if they knew you were here!” The girl uttered, reaching once more for her phone.

           When she noticed the huge glops of frosting made by her fingers during the selfie, she hesitated and wiped her fingers on her bright red leggings.

           “I’d actually appreciate it if you kept my presence here a secret, Maddie,” Taylor muttered, and the girl’s head shot back in resignation.

           “Are you kidding? This could change my life!”

           “I’d be pretty upset if one of my friends broke my trust like that, Madilyn. I hope we can be friends.”

           Maddie’s shoulders fell in defeat, but she smiled back.

           “Tell you what, I won’t tell anyone about you if you don’t tell my dad that I almost lost Lucky. I really want Lucky to have a brother or sister, and both Dad and Granny Lu always vote me down, and it’d be a tremendous help…”

           At that moment, her sentence was cut short by the appearance of a broad-shouldered, blonde man.

           “Madilyn, how many times have I told you not to stray too far from the ranch? I knew getting a dog was a bad idea, but somehow, I let you convince me anyway.”

           He froze when he spotted the two blondes before him.

           “There you are! Madilyn Alwyn, when I say that dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, I don’t mean that we’ll wait for the princess’ grand arrival whenever she feels like stepping into the kitchen.”

           He glanced over at Taylor quizzically, then back to his daughter.

           “Now, I expect to see Lucky all washed up and you sitting at the dinner table in approximately ten minutes,” he said unflinchingly, and the blonde child shrugged apologetically at Taylor and then raced away with Lucky in tow.

           “I apologize to you if she kept you. I’m Joe, Joe Alwyn, I own the ranch just down there. And that was Maddie. She’s eight, and while I’m glad she can finally walk without a diaper or a stroller, I must confess it has proven to be a struggle to find her anywhere,” he said breathily, and the rapid inhale-exhale pattern of his chest acknowledged that he had been pretty frantic in his search for his daughter.

           “Taylor. It’s nice to meet you. She’s really a pleasure, and she does have a way with people,” she teased, extending her hand.

           Joe reciprocated the action, and the sleeve of his dark blue flannel brushed against her hand when their hands locked together.

           “She didn’t try to sell you anything, did she? I’d check your pockets too for valuables. I’d say she ranges from savvy saleswoman to common grifter depending on the day.”

           Taylor chuckled before noticing that their hands had not separated. They both glanced down, returning their respective hands back to the side of their bodies.

           “She did not try to sell me anything, I promise. She did say something about a huge blowout party tomorrow though, something about unicorns and carnival rides,” she teased.

           He rolled his blue eyes, chuckling himself. His ice-blue eyes crinkled when he laughed, a habit Taylor wondered whether or not he was aware of.

           “She got it from her mum, I swear,” he said, his bright gaze growing slightly grim. “So how long are you planning to stay around here?”

           “A few weeks, at least. I’m a musician, and I’m planning to write a bit of music while here,” she said, gesturing to the copse of trees surrounding them.

           “If you ever need someone to play a saxophone,” he whispered, gauging from her wide eyes that this plan would never come to fruition, “I’m always available. I was a pretty skilled sax player in my day.”

           “I will definitely take you up on that offer if I find myself in need of a…saxophone,” she joked, slipping her hands in her pockets. “It was nice to meet you, Joe Alwyn.”

           “You won’t be taking me up on that offer, I assume,” Joe said, scratching the back of his neck goodheartedly. “I may have slightly over exaggerated my saxophone playing abilities.

           Taylor shook her head, smiling at the ground.

           “But if you keep Lucky around, I will make every effort to see him. That Maddie is pretty special too.”

           Joe grinned back at her, and they separated with a quick wave. Taylor made her way back to her cabin just in time for her to respond to a few texts from close family and friends. She spotted a quick text from Adam and checked her hair quickly to make sure she was prepared for their scheduled Facetime call. One glance at the text, and Taylor knew it was bad news.

           Sry babe, didn’t register the time change between Sydney and London. we’ll figure this out. xxx adam

           She exhaled in defeat, throwing her hair into a loose ponytail. Tonight, she would soak in a long, hot bath and squeeze in some writing time. There were many ideas swirling around her head, and as she slipped into a restful sleep in the bath, her mind kept thinking of ways to incorporate a saxophone into her next album.

[redheadnamedabigail13]

Taylor Swift: Music Week Magazine

November 4, 2019

Around this time of year, the Taylor Swift anniversaries come at you thick and fast.

Nine years since her third album, Speak Now, every note of which was written entirely by Swift, hit the shelves. Five years since she released her mould-breaking pop album, 1989, and went from the world’s biggest country star to the world’s biggest pop star overnight. Two years since her Reputation record saw her become the only musician to post four successive million-plus debut sales weeks in the United States. And so on.

But today, Swift’s mind is drawn further back, to the 13th anniversary of her debut, self-titled record, and the days when her album releases weren’t automatically accompanied by mountains of hype and enough think-pieces to sink a battleship. Her journal entries from the time – helpfully reprinted as part of the deluxe editions of her new album, Lover – reveal her as an excited, optimistic teenager, but also one with a grasp of marketing strategies and label politics way beyond her years, even if she was reluctant to actually take credit for her ideas.

“It always was and it always will be an interesting dance being a young woman in the music industry,” she smiles ruefully. “We don’t have a lot of female executives, we’re working on getting more female engineers and producers but, while we are such a drastic gender minority, it’s interesting to try and figure out how to be.”

And, of course, when Swift started out she was, as she points out, “an actual kid”.

“I was planning the release of my first album when I was 15 years old,” she reminisces. “And I was a fully gangly 15, I reminded everyone of their niece! I was in this industry in Nashville and country music, where I was making album marketing calls, but I never wanted to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, that promotions plan you just complimented my label on, I thought of that! Me and my Mom thought of that!’

“When you’re a new artist you wonder how much space you can take up and, as a woman, you wonder how much space you can take up pretty much your whole period of growing up,” she continues. “For me, growing up and knowing that I was an adult was realising that I was allowed to take up space from a marketing perspective, from a business perspective, from an opinionated perspective. And that feels a lot better than constantly trying to wonder if I’m allowed to be here.”

In the intervening years, Taylor Swift has released six further, brilliant albums, growing from country starlet to all-conquering pop behemoth along the way. She takes up “more space”, as she would put it, than any other musician on the planet: a sales and now – having belatedly embraced the format with Lover – streaming phenomenon; a powerhouse stadium performer; an award-garlanded songwriter for herself and others; and a social media giant with a combined 278 million followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (which would make the Taylor Nation the fourth most populous one on earth, after China, India and the US).

But her influence on music and the music industry doesn’t end there. Because, over the years, Swift has also become a leading advocate for artists’ and songwriters’ rights, in a digital landscape that doesn’t always have such matters as a priority.

In 2015, she stood up to Apple Music over its plans to not pay artist royalties during subscribers’ three-month free trials (Apple backed down immediately). She pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify in 2014 in protest that its free tier was devaluing music, sending Daniel Ek scrambling to justify his business model. When she returned in 2017, it was a crucial fillip for the streaming service’s IPO plans.

More recently, her ground-breaking new record deal with Republic Records contained clauses not only guaranteeing her ownership of her future masters, but also ensuring Universal Music will share the spoils of its Spotify shares with its artists, without any payments counting against unrecouped balances. And when her long-time former label boss Scott Borchetta sold Big Machine to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, taking Swift’s first six albums with him, the star publicly called out what she saw as her “worst-case scenario” and stressed: “You deserve to own the art you make”. She may yet re-record her old songs in protest.

In short, Swift has, for a long time now, been unafraid to use her voice on industry matters, whether they pertain to her own stellar career or the thousands of other artists out there struggling to make a living.

All of which makes Swift not just the greatest star of our age, but perhaps the most important to the future development of the industry as a more artist-centric, songwriter-friendly business. Hers is still the life of the pop phenomenon – she spent today in Los Angeles doing promotion and photoshoots (or, in her words, “having people put make-up on me”) as Lover continues to build on huge critical acclaim and even huger initial sales. But now, she’s kicking back with her cats – one of whom seems determined to disrupt Music Week’s interview by “stampeding” through at every opportunity – and ready to talk business.

And for Swift, business is good. The impact of her joining streaming, and the decline of traditional album sales, may have prevented her from posting a fifth successive one million-plus sales debut, but Lover still sold more US copies (867,000) in its first week than any record since her own Reputation. It’s sold 117,513 copies to date in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company.

Even better, while Reputation – a record forged in the white heat of a social media snakestorm over her on-going feud with Kanye West – was plenty of show and rather less grow, Lover continues to reveal hidden depths. Reputation struck a sometimes curious contrast between the unrepentant warrior Swift she was showing to the outside world and the love story with British actor Joe Alwyn that was quietly developing behind closed doors, but Lover is the sort of versatile, cohesive album that the streaming age was supposed to kill off.

It contains more than its fair share of pop bangers (You Need To Calm Down, Me!), but also some gorgeously-crafted acoustic tracks (Lover, Cornelia Street), some pithy political commentary (The Man, Miss America & The Heartbreak Prince) and the sort of musical diversions (Paper Rings’ irresistible rockabilly stomp, the childlike oddity of It’s Nice To Have A Friend) that no other pop superstar would have the sheer musical chops to attempt, let alone pull off.

“Taylor’s creative instincts as an artist and songwriter are brilliant,” says Monte Lipman, founder and CEO of Swift’s US label, Republic. “Our partnership represents a strategic alliance built on mutual respect, trust, and complete transparency. Her vision is extraordinary as she sets the tone for every campaign and initiative.”

No wonder David Joseph, chairman/CEO of her long-time UK label Virgin EMI’s parent company Universal Music UK, is thrilled with how things are going.

“Love Story was a fitting first single release for Taylor here – she’s loved the UK from day one and has engaged so much with her fans and teams,” says Joseph. “She really respects and values what’s going on here creatively. To see her go from playing the Students’ Union at King’s College to Wembley Stadium has been extraordinary. Taylor is an artist constantly striving for perfection, and with Lover – from my personal point of view, her most accomplished work to date – her songwriting has gone to a new level. I adore working with her and whilst it’s been more than 10 years this still feels like the start.”

And today, Swift is keen to concentrate on the present and future. She has a starring role in Cats coming up (and a new song on the soundtrack, Beautiful Ghosts, co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber) and, after a spectacularly intimate Paris launch show in September, festival dates and her own LoverFest to plan (UK shows will be revealed soon). Time, then, to tell the cats to calm down and sit down with Music Week to talk streaming, contracts and why she’s “obsessed” with the music industry…

Unlike with Reputation, most of the discussion around Lover seems to have been focused on the music…

“Absolutely! One of the ideas I had about this record, and something I’ve implemented into my life in the last couple of years is that I don’t like distractions. And, for a while, it felt like my life had to come with distractions from the music, whether it was tabloid fascination with my personal life or my friendships or what I was wearing. I realised in the last couple of years that, if I don’t give a window into distraction, people can’t try to look in and see something other than the music. I love that, if you really pour yourself into the idea that an album is still important and try really hard to make something that is worth people’s attention span, time and energy, that can still come across. Because we are living in an industry right now where everyone’s rushing towards taking us into a singles industry and, in some cases, it has become that. But there are still some cases where clearly the album is important to people.”

Does it matter that some new artists won’t get to make albums the way you always have?

“It’s interesting. Five years ago I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and said, maybe in the next five years, we would see artists releasing music the way that they want to. I thought that each artist would start to curate what is important to them, not just from an artistic standpoint but from a marketing standpoint. It’s really interesting to see different release plans, if you look at what Drake did and then what Beyoncé does, incredible artists who have really curated what it is to drop music in their own way. We all do it differently, which is cool. As long as people dropping just singles want to be doing that, then I’m fine with it, but if it feels like a big general wave that’s being pressured by people in power, their teams or their labels, that’s not cool. But I do really hope that in the future artists have more of a say over strategy. We’re not just supposed to make art and then hand it to a team that masterminds it.”

Were you worried about putting an album on streaming on release day for the first time?

“Well, there are ways that streaming services could really promote the [whole] album in a more incentivised way. We could have album charts on streaming. The industry follows where they can get prizes. So you have a singles chart on streaming services which is great but, if you split things up into genre charts for example, that would really incentivise people. It’s important that we keep trying to strive to make the experience better for users but also make it more interesting for artists to keep wanting to achieve. But I really did love the experience of putting the album on streaming. I loved the immediacy, I loved that people who maybe weren’t a huge diehard fan were curious and saying, ‘I wonder what this is like’ and listening to it and deciding that they liked it.”

You’d resisted streaming for a long time. Have you changed your mind about the format now?

“I always knew that I would enjoy the aspects of streaming that make [your music] so immediately available to so many people. That’s the part of it that I unequivocally always felt really sad I was missing out on. There wasn’t ever a day when I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m really glad that multitudes of people don’t have access to my music!’ So I always knew that streaming was an incredible mechanism and model for the future but I still don’t think we have the royalties and compensation system worked out. That’s between the labels and their artists and I realised that me, to use a gross word, ‘leveraging’ what I can bring to cut a better deal for the artists at my record label was really important for me.”

How big a factor were things like that in you signing to Republic/Universal?

“That’s important to me because that means they’re adopting some of my ideas. If they take me on as an artist that means they really thought it through. Because with me, come opinions about how we can better our industry. I’m one of the only people in the artist realm who can be loud about it. People who are on their fifth, sixth or seventh album, we’re the only ones who can speak out, because new artists and producers and writers need to work. They need to be endearing and likeable and available to their labels and streaming services at all times. It’s up to the artists who have been around for a second to say, ‘Hey guys, the producers and the writers and the artists are the ones who are making music what it is’. And we’re in a great place in music right now thanks to them. They should be going to their mailbox and feeling like they’ve got a pension plan, rather than feeling like, ‘Oh yay, I can pay half my rent this month after this No.1 song’.”

Did you have more creative freedom making Lover than on your previous albums?

“In my previous situation, there were creative constraints, issues that we had over the years. I’ve always given 100% to projects, I always over-delivered, thinking that that generosity would be returned to me. But I ended up finding that generosity in a new situation with a new label that understands that I deserve to own what I make. That meant so much to me because it was given over to me so freely. When someone just looks at you and says ‘Yes, you deserve what you want’, after a decade or more of being told, ‘I’m not sure you deserve what you want’ – there’s a freedom that comes with that. It’s like when people find ‘the one’ they’re like, ‘It was easy, I just knew and I felt free’. All of a sudden you’re being told you’re worth exactly, no, more than what you thought you were worth. And that made me feel I could make an album that was exactly what I wanted to make. There’s an eclectic side to Lover, a confessional side, it varies from acoustic to really poppy pop, but that’s what I like to do. And, while you would never make something artistic based on something so unromantic as a contract, it was more than that. It was a group of people saying, ‘We believe in what you’re making, go make what you want to make and you deserve to own it too’.”

You’re obviously not happy about what’s happened at Big Machine since you left. But will the attention mean artists don’t find themselves in this situation in the future?

“I hope so. That’s the only reason that I speak out about things. The fans don’t understand these things, the public isn’t being made aware. This generation has so much information available to them so I thought it was important that the fans knew what I was going through, because I knew it was going to affect every aspect of my life and I wanted them to be the first to know. And in and amongst that group, I know there are people that want to make music some day. It involves every new artist that is reading that and going, ‘Wait, that’s what I’m signing?’ They don’t have to sign stuff that’s unfair to them. If you don’t ask the right questions and you sit in front of the wrong desk in front of the wrong person, they can take everything from you.”

Songwriters are in dispute with Spotify in the US over its decision to appeal the Copyright Board decision to boost songwriting royalties. Do writers need more respect?

“Absolutely. In terms of the power structure, the songwriters, the producers, the engineers, the people who are breathing magic into our industry, need to be listened to. They’re not being greedy. This is legitimately an industry where people are having trouble paying their bills and they’re the most talented people we have. This isn’t them sitting in their mansions going, ‘I wish this mansion was bigger and I would like a yacht please’. This is actually people who are going to work every single day. I got into writing when I was in Nashville and it was very much like what I read about the Brill Building. You would write every day, whether you were inspired or not, and in the process I met artists and writers. Somebody would walk in and someone would say, ‘Oh, he’s still getting mailbox money from that Faith Hill cut a couple of years ago, he’s set’. That’s not a thing anymore. Mailbox money is a thing of the past and we need to remember that these are the people that create the heartbeat that we’re all dancing to or crying to.”

You were clearly aware of music industry machinations from a young age…

“Reading back on the journal entries, I forgot how obsessed I was with the industry as a teenager. I was so fascinated by how it works and how it was changing. Every part of it was interesting to me. I had drawn the stages for most of my tours a year before I went on them. That really was fun for me as a teenager! A lot of people who start out very young in music, either don’t have a say or don’t have the will to do the business side of it, but weirdly that was so much fun for me to try and learn. I had a lot of energy when I was 16!”

Are you doing similar drawings for next year’s LoverFest?

“Definitely. And that’s why it’s still fun for me to take on a challenge like, ‘Oh, let’s just plan our own festival’. Let’s create a bill of artists and try and make it as fun as possible for the fans. I’m so intrigued by what that’s going to be like.”

Finally, when we last did an interview in 2015, you said in five years’ time you wanted to be “finding complexity in happiness”. How has that worked out?

“That’s exactly what’s happened with this album! I think a lot of writers have the fear of stability, emotional health and happiness. Our whole careers, people make jokes about how, ‘Just wait until you meet someone nice, you’ll run out of stuff to write about’. I was talking to [Cats director] Tom Hooper about this because he said one thing his mother taught him was, ‘Don’t ever let people tell you that you can’t make art if you’re happy’. I thought that was so amazing. He’s a creator in a completely different medium but he has been subjected to that same joke over and over again that we must be miserable to create. Lover is important to me in so many ways, but it’s so imperative for me as a human being that songwriting is not tied to my own personal misery. It’s good to know that, it really is!”

@taylorswift @taylornation