#than taylor & her new album

[anna-scribbles]

in honor me turning twenty three, i give you: some old original notes about twenty three year old adrien from thirteen<3

[juniperhillpatient]

no one is more obsessed with taylor swift than people who hate her honestly

[pardonmydelays]

as an avid listener of both lmm and taylor, it's interesting to me that my interest and affection have gone down for taylor and remain constant for lin - when arguably the past 2-3 years have never been a better time to be a taylor swift fan, and never been a worse time to be a lmm fan.

both are mainstream and have mega viral songs. both have different struggles in the public eye - taylor being a woman (the 2010s were absolutely vile to her), lmm being latino (i will never shut up about how people would be so much nicer to him if he was a conventionally attractive white man). both arguably have recognizable styles that some people really don't like.

and yet. in the past few years i've grown less and less enthusiastic about taylor's music, and i think it's because she doesn't treat it like music. does that make sense? her fans aren't real people making time from their day for her, they're consumers. her album is content for sale. maybe this is unfair and just because of her marketing strategies or whatnot, but that's how i feel. and i've never been invested in her personal life, so it has nothing to do with that.

for all the heat that people give lmm, some of it justified, i don't think you can say that he doesn't care. does he act "cringey"? sure! and idgaf, because i much prefer raw, unfiltered enthusiasm than a cool idgaf attitude especially in today's age of microtrends and media. i don't think you can listen to the man talk about his projects without realizing how much he cares about what he's made.

and i dunno, that's bled over a lot to the point where i'm excited for his future projects whether or not i think i'll like them. there's trust that even if it's not to my taste, i'll be able to tell that it's been made with something, not shipped out of a factory. and i'm even moreso excited about his new musical because as much as i enjoyed moana and encanto, he's the type that really shines when he's fully doing what he wants, i think. something as nerdy and niche like an alexander hamilton musical, for example.

anon, i've been thinking about your message the whole day & i literally have nothing else to add, i agree with you 100%

[jewishbarbies]

How long do you think Travis and Taylor will last? People keep saying how they think she'll settle down with him, and that now they're making the relationship "private" or whatever. I dunno...

at least a couple months. but idk why they’d all of the sudden care about privacy, it’s giving taylor everything she wants. she’s made it clear that the private life isn’t for her and she can’t function without constant applause and adoration. it’s very much for pr but I have no idea how far she’s willing to take it.

[itspileofgoodthings]

.

[yannfredericks]

being online rn is such a fucking nightmare oh my god!!!

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

As a long time fan it’s a bit wild to see Taylor at this point where she’s comfortable releasing things when she feels like it rather than feeling the need to stick to a specific schedule.

[dreaminginsteadofsleeping42]

I really don't understand why people are unfollowing Harry Styles based on the 1989 vault. Like. What new information was revealed.

[so-sick-of-17]

The mattress line change is so dumb. A teenage girl being angry and petty and getting out frustration in art isn’t feminists but also not misogynistic. And if as an adult it’s not okay than the whole song is a problem not just the one line. One line change doesn’t change anything about the song and the so called problematic message at all and just kinda ruins the song. I do really like the lyric but on its own not as part of Better Than Revenge. And I get that’s it’s her version and she gets to do what she wants and that she has been slut-shamed and doesn’t want to do it and has grown up and blah blah blah blah. I don’t care! Let the 19 year old girl rage out even if it’s gone now!

[probablygayattorneys]

the tortured poets department -> miles edgeworth, ace attorney

[likeadevils]

A friend of mine is listening to speak now for the first time today(!!!). What do you think she should know beforehand?

oh this is such a wonderful question oh my god um.

i think speak now is one of the rare albums where knowing who it’s about can actively ruin songs. if your friend is curious after listening then go ahead and tell them, but i think listening to it and applying it to your life and building your own storylines out of it is essential to your enjoyment.

the one thing about her personal life that’s important to know is that she wrote it when she was a teenager; one who was being simultaneously infantilized and forced to grow up even more so then the average teenager. she was running a company and dating men in their thirties while simultaneously not being allowed to shake her hips too much on stage and singing songs every night that she wrote when she was 14. and that’s a through line on the album, the push and pull between wanting to grow up faster than is healthy and stay innocent longer than she was able.

another through-line that’s fun to look out for is memory. it’s littered all throughout her career, but in speak now she’s on this interesting precipice. on her next album, memory will be something hurtful and deceptive, but on speak now it’s almost exclusively comforting. the melancholy comes from how one can’t get back to something once it’s gone, but there’s triumph in how time turns flames to embers— once things are gone you’ll remember the positives and forget the things that hurt. and she’ll recontextualize the present moment as a memory all the time, obviously in mine, which she wrote after a first date with someone, but also in sparks fly, and mean, and the story of us. it’s such an important theme that she ends the original album with “we will be remembered”

the other big theme is light— specifically how things will flicker and burn out fast, but every once in a while she’ll find something that shines. my personal favorite is the city lights on the water in mine, how you’re looking at a reflection of a real thing rather than the thing itself, and the reflection causes the image to flicker and break, much like how the song is a daydream about a relationship that would go on to fall apart rather than a real event. there’s a reason fireworks became such an iconic imagery associated with the album, it’s just such an interesting and important through line that ties the whole thing together.

i think that’s about all that i’d want to tell a first time listener, but you know your buddy better than me! have such a fun time

[ummmyum]

i always forget that my tumblr is not private like my twitter is and i am nearly too quick to share my thoughts on things that would get me eaten alive by ppl who don’t know me and care more than i do

sorry abt the egregiously long tags. i have feelings abt the title track

[gayfranzkafka]

i just wish the new taylor swift album had come out BEFORE beyonce because beyonce's is the highlight of my year meanwhile i KNOW taylor's is going to be the worst of her career YET I will still be strapped in listening clockwork orange style. so wish I could have gotten that out of the way and then had this album as a reward alas we suffer

[penguin-in-a-box]

I'm not sure why everyone says Renegade is about Joe and uses this as ammunition towards Taylor to prove she's insensitive towards him when it's... So clearly a result of the conversation she and Aaron Dessner have in the Peace section of the Long Pond Sessions about anxiety and Aaron's own insecurities about how a partner may interpret his struggle with anxiety?

Like maybe it's not that deep y'all. Maybe it's based off that experience of fearing how a partner would react to their own mental health issues. Maybe it's harsh because it's what they're hearing in their heads.

I have never seen anyone on tumblr ever consider that take despite?? It feeling kinda obvious??

If there's some lore I'm unaware of by all means lay it on me.

[spiderfreedom]

Not a fan of most of the album of the year noms but midnights is definitely not the album of the year

[theamazingannie]

I’m a sucker for musical parallels and referencing an old song in a new song but I feel like this TTPD lead up is not just a “this is how I used to feel and now I’m using those themes to show how I feel now” and more of a “those feelings were never real and actually those love songs that were so beautiful before are actually about a bad relationship and full of red flags” cuz it’s honestly ruining my feelings on those old songs. Like Taylor’s whole thing is letting us interrupt the songs and apply them to our own lives and now it’s like even she is encouraging us to only see them through the lens of her most recent breakup and it really sucks tbh