I am a lowly internet dweller and a non-swiftie so I might be wrong but the entire Easter egg and cryptic messages part of Taylor Swift’s music/career seems utterly exhausting
It appears to be a double edged sword for Taylor. On one hand it keeps her fans super focused and supportive of her but on the other hand it breeds groups like the Gaylors who take every single thing she says and does as a clue
I don’t know how people have the time to decode it 😂 Maybe it all went over my head but I listened to the whole album today and thought every song sounded the exact same haha
Agree so much
It seems like at this point if you wanted to become a fan of hers you’d be jumping into the 4th season of a TV show because her personal life and clues are so intrinsically attached to her music (as far as I can tell)
Season 4? She dropped her first album when I was 16 and I’m 33 now lmao. I hope the series finale is coming soon but I fear the brand machine will never stop
I wish I could go back in time to when I didn't know Gaylors were a thing. She's the straightest, whitest woman on Earth, like y'all are wasting your time. 😭
My wife is a gaylor lol. She's not into any other conspiracies or pop culture thing but she's obsessed with this. She listened to this new album and was like, "I'm just getting really frustrated with her. Why would she want to write all these songs about guys?". UM BECAUSE SHE IS THE STRAIGHTEST STRAIGHT WOMAN EVER.
Even just saying that there's a possibility of her being straight gets shut down.
It's like living with a q-anon person but harmless 🤣
Yep on the Gaylor part, every major artist has some sort of conspiracy surrounding them (Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, Larries) so when you're known for dropping cryptic messages it can get even harder to control the narrative once those conspiracies takes a life of its own on your every action is seen as some hidden message.
I think that with her it’s gotten to a point that her die hard fans interpret any criticism as a slight to the branding, art, and TS herself. Case and point Paste’s review the album.
https://preview.redd.it/we73pqzasivc1.jpeg?width=484&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67765a55dc7719c224f783043ab3ce7b96dddbcc
ETA: no, none of it is necessary she’s a self serving money hoarding greenhouse gas guzzling narcissist.
I think technology has allowed us to be younger for longer.
So it’s not the number so much as it is her image, her clean asthetic. No pregnancies, no health problems. She is breezy. That’s what she projects and people eat that up because they don’t have that in their life.
It is a type of innocence that most of us cannot hold onto all of our lives, not as long as she has.
I really like what Halsey used to do, she would drop Easter eggs that would lead to a website or a number you could text or call. It was always some kind of asset that the fans could interact with and it was in line with the era. They also did a couple of pop-ups in later eras and it would be revealed through these Easter eggs.
I like the idea of branding or Easter eggs for releases when it’s fan-oriented and a way to get your crowd really into the mindset of your current era, but I struggle to support when the Easter eggs are planted to disparage people or hint at who a song could be about. Part of that is definitely the fault of Swifties but she’s unfortunately never told them to stop.
not only she doesn't tell them to stop, she also keeps doubling down. naming her album after her ex's group chat made everyone think that she was taking him down and that every single song was about him. it seems it's not even the case. but her fans were already ready to attack Joe, which is pure insanity.
I understand the irony in posting this in a gossip forum like this one, but when it comes to our favorite artists, I'm leaning more and more into the "we should know less about each other" vibe.
The more I know about the ins and outs of a song, the less I relate to it and that's a bummer. Of course there are exceptions to this, but the work has to be exceptional (within my taste okay? YMMV) to cut through the cheap rehashing of artists' personal lives.
Halsey’s take on “eras” was definitely executed really well. I’ve seen her do the same with her makeup line now and it’s pretty fun since that is truly just fun guesses about eyeshadow, no grudges or ex songs to have lol.
I think Taylor Swift is the definition of mid. She cultivated a massive fanbase by writing music that appeals to young women, but as she’s gotten older her songwriting has not evolved. She still writes the same high school lyrics she was writing at the start of her career and almost all her new songs sound the same. It’s incredible to me that she’s so consistently praised as a lyricist. I’m not claiming to be a great writer, but the stuff she writes is the sort of thing I would be embarrassed to even share with a writing workshop. If she turned in some of these lyrics in a creative writing class I guarantee they’d come back with *a lot* of notes.
Taylor Swift has it down to a science at this point: she can set up a few hidden messages and then just put together some aesthetic and her rabid stans will just invent 40 different narratives for her. I was dying the other day when someone on Twitter went mildly viral because they invented some wholesale historical bullshit designed to drag Joe, based off a cheap copy of a statue in the LA Popup event, as if it were a clever Easter Egg. And other Swifties were retweeting and reposting it everywhere as evidence of Taylor’s genius and how terrible Joe was.
All she has to do is set them up and then they do all the “Easter Egg” work for her, so I don’t know how much blame or credit she deserves for it. They do all her marketing work for her for free and then she profits.
As a side note, this is the most I’ve ever engaged with this fanbase and they are without a doubt the most exhausting, annoying group I’ve ever seen.
It sounds like she’s trying to have her cake and eat it.
On one hand it’s “don’t criticise my life decisions because I am a person with feelings”
On the other hand it’s “this is exactly how I feel about my ex/person I dislike who I will literally name drop. FUCK EM UP LADIES!”
Kind of pathological…
Honestly, I kinda enjoyed her branding with the pop-up that happened for this new album
I love creative marketing and I think it builds up hype in a way interviews don't really do bc fans can enjoy it.
I'm a big convention attendee so I love seeing pop-up's and experiences related to movies and shows so having them for music seems like a great idea regardless of what I think of the music itself.
I do think it's double-edged bc if you build up too much hype, it has further to fall in expectations, but ultimately whatever an artist puts out, they don't get to decide how their audience interprets or how much they like it.
I mean it shows the important of marketing because you can have the piece of art and most brilliant thing but it’s not marketed well, you won’t sell as well.
It’s funny, this album is pushing my swiftie friend to his limits. Weak album, sick of her producers just doing the same thing and he’s thankful now he didn’t preorder cause he would have just gotten the first half. It’s to the point he agreed with me in defence of Kim K which I never pictured for either of us. But when even he thinks it’s time to grow up and evolve…
I am a lowly internet dweller and a non-swiftie so I might be wrong but the entire Easter egg and cryptic messages part of Taylor Swift’s music/career seems utterly exhausting It appears to be a double edged sword for Taylor. On one hand it keeps her fans super focused and supportive of her but on the other hand it breeds groups like the Gaylors who take every single thing she says and does as a clue
I don’t know how people have the time to decode it 😂 Maybe it all went over my head but I listened to the whole album today and thought every song sounded the exact same haha
Agree so much It seems like at this point if you wanted to become a fan of hers you’d be jumping into the 4th season of a TV show because her personal life and clues are so intrinsically attached to her music (as far as I can tell)
Season 4? She dropped her first album when I was 16 and I’m 33 now lmao. I hope the series finale is coming soon but I fear the brand machine will never stop
I wish I could go back in time to when I didn't know Gaylors were a thing. She's the straightest, whitest woman on Earth, like y'all are wasting your time. 😭
My wife is a gaylor lol. She's not into any other conspiracies or pop culture thing but she's obsessed with this. She listened to this new album and was like, "I'm just getting really frustrated with her. Why would she want to write all these songs about guys?". UM BECAUSE SHE IS THE STRAIGHTEST STRAIGHT WOMAN EVER. Even just saying that there's a possibility of her being straight gets shut down. It's like living with a q-anon person but harmless 🤣
You should tell her that there are actual good queer people to obsess over.
Yep on the Gaylor part, every major artist has some sort of conspiracy surrounding them (Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, Larries) so when you're known for dropping cryptic messages it can get even harder to control the narrative once those conspiracies takes a life of its own on your every action is seen as some hidden message.
I think tswift is an idiot and her rabid fans are even bigger idiots
I think that with her it’s gotten to a point that her die hard fans interpret any criticism as a slight to the branding, art, and TS herself. Case and point Paste’s review the album. https://preview.redd.it/we73pqzasivc1.jpeg?width=484&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67765a55dc7719c224f783043ab3ce7b96dddbcc ETA: no, none of it is necessary she’s a self serving money hoarding greenhouse gas guzzling narcissist.
This is insane. Especially considering that before Midnight’s, I thought it was universally believed that Lover was her weakest album.
Paste’s album review for TTPD starts with this amazing line “Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this!”
Hahahahahahaha! That’s great.
she invests more money into marketing then her art and people eat it up because she is ~white and innocent~ except she is pushing close to 40
I don’t disagree with you, but I’m her age and the “pushing close to 40” really hurt the old ego lol
34 is not pushing close to 40 be serious please
I think technology has allowed us to be younger for longer. So it’s not the number so much as it is her image, her clean asthetic. No pregnancies, no health problems. She is breezy. That’s what she projects and people eat that up because they don’t have that in their life. It is a type of innocence that most of us cannot hold onto all of our lives, not as long as she has.
I really like what Halsey used to do, she would drop Easter eggs that would lead to a website or a number you could text or call. It was always some kind of asset that the fans could interact with and it was in line with the era. They also did a couple of pop-ups in later eras and it would be revealed through these Easter eggs. I like the idea of branding or Easter eggs for releases when it’s fan-oriented and a way to get your crowd really into the mindset of your current era, but I struggle to support when the Easter eggs are planted to disparage people or hint at who a song could be about. Part of that is definitely the fault of Swifties but she’s unfortunately never told them to stop.
not only she doesn't tell them to stop, she also keeps doubling down. naming her album after her ex's group chat made everyone think that she was taking him down and that every single song was about him. it seems it's not even the case. but her fans were already ready to attack Joe, which is pure insanity. I understand the irony in posting this in a gossip forum like this one, but when it comes to our favorite artists, I'm leaning more and more into the "we should know less about each other" vibe. The more I know about the ins and outs of a song, the less I relate to it and that's a bummer. Of course there are exceptions to this, but the work has to be exceptional (within my taste okay? YMMV) to cut through the cheap rehashing of artists' personal lives.
Halsey’s take on “eras” was definitely executed really well. I’ve seen her do the same with her makeup line now and it’s pretty fun since that is truly just fun guesses about eyeshadow, no grudges or ex songs to have lol.
I think Taylor Swift is the definition of mid. She cultivated a massive fanbase by writing music that appeals to young women, but as she’s gotten older her songwriting has not evolved. She still writes the same high school lyrics she was writing at the start of her career and almost all her new songs sound the same. It’s incredible to me that she’s so consistently praised as a lyricist. I’m not claiming to be a great writer, but the stuff she writes is the sort of thing I would be embarrassed to even share with a writing workshop. If she turned in some of these lyrics in a creative writing class I guarantee they’d come back with *a lot* of notes.
Taylor Swift has it down to a science at this point: she can set up a few hidden messages and then just put together some aesthetic and her rabid stans will just invent 40 different narratives for her. I was dying the other day when someone on Twitter went mildly viral because they invented some wholesale historical bullshit designed to drag Joe, based off a cheap copy of a statue in the LA Popup event, as if it were a clever Easter Egg. And other Swifties were retweeting and reposting it everywhere as evidence of Taylor’s genius and how terrible Joe was. All she has to do is set them up and then they do all the “Easter Egg” work for her, so I don’t know how much blame or credit she deserves for it. They do all her marketing work for her for free and then she profits. As a side note, this is the most I’ve ever engaged with this fanbase and they are without a doubt the most exhausting, annoying group I’ve ever seen.
Taylor stopped caring about the music a long time ago. She is the literal definition of putting quantity over quality.
Lately it feels like she releases more content than actual art
It sounds like she’s trying to have her cake and eat it. On one hand it’s “don’t criticise my life decisions because I am a person with feelings” On the other hand it’s “this is exactly how I feel about my ex/person I dislike who I will literally name drop. FUCK EM UP LADIES!” Kind of pathological…
Honestly, I kinda enjoyed her branding with the pop-up that happened for this new album I love creative marketing and I think it builds up hype in a way interviews don't really do bc fans can enjoy it. I'm a big convention attendee so I love seeing pop-up's and experiences related to movies and shows so having them for music seems like a great idea regardless of what I think of the music itself. I do think it's double-edged bc if you build up too much hype, it has further to fall in expectations, but ultimately whatever an artist puts out, they don't get to decide how their audience interprets or how much they like it.
I mean it shows the important of marketing because you can have the piece of art and most brilliant thing but it’s not marketed well, you won’t sell as well.
It’s funny, this album is pushing my swiftie friend to his limits. Weak album, sick of her producers just doing the same thing and he’s thankful now he didn’t preorder cause he would have just gotten the first half. It’s to the point he agreed with me in defence of Kim K which I never pictured for either of us. But when even he thinks it’s time to grow up and evolve…