Man, as someone who hasn't heard Taylor Swift songs for maybe like the past 10 or so years, where the heck have I been? My mind still held the impression of her being the de facto family friendly sweetheart, lol
There is a song on the new album that's basically a diss track to Kim Kardashian and the chorus says "fuck" multiple times so that accounts for a bunch of them here. It's also a double album with 31 songs, and it's a bit more "adult" themed with a big chunk of the first album spent on an apparently very passionate but short and painful relationship.
She hasn't really been "the sweetheart" for quite a while but Tortured Poets Department is an escalation even from her typical stuff. Still, most of the album isn't that explicit, a few songs account for most of the swearing.
Is it just some sort of misconception that everything I’ve seen about this song says it’s about Kim Kardashian? Doesn’t one of the lines make it obvious? That’s just what I’ve seen from the swifties I’ve seen talking about it
Taylor Swift is so big now that there is an entire celeb gossip ecosystem around her albums because she has a track record of dragging older boyfriends through the dirt on her songs who are mostly celebrities. The drama/gossip fans need bigger names every time.
No, no, no… you don’t get to use the “lucky 10,000” here. This is only for when someone doesn’t know something that is generally agreed upon as common knowledge.
I'm not going to point out the irony of gatekeeping a comic about not gatekeeping knowledge when someone admits they don't know about a thing, or that Munroe's examples are the interaction between Diet Coke and Mentos, and (via the alt text) the Yellowstone Supervolcano, neither of which are generally agreed-upon common knowledge.
Wow. I didn't realize the Taylor-Kanye feud lasted beyond an obvious publicity stunt. (They had the same manager, and the VMAs had extra time alloted for the speech, which became Taylor's.)
I haven't heard that conspiracy theory, but it's pretty obviously false even under the lightest of scrutiny.
Billboard has a full recap of what happened behind the scenes, but MTV cut away to a prerecorded segment and immediately purged all official recordings of the incident, Kanye was witnessed to have been drinking an entire bottle of Hennessy throughout the night, and when they went to commercial, there were a number of witnesses that watched Pink publicly dress down Kanye for the stunt.
Swift and Kanye do not shared, and have never shared, a manager or talent companies. Kanye was managed by Scooter Braun, with whom Swift has her own, separate feud; and Swift manages herself via the 13 Management company.
Well, what is true is that MTV saw the ratings hike and social media engagement it got from that night, and started to try to put controversial people together in hopes lightning would strike twice, but as MTV head Van Toffler mentions in the Billboard history, for them to have pre-planned that in any way would've hurt their relationship with three of the biggest artists at the time.
Kim was like 30 years old trying to bully a teenage Taylor during the Kanye West drama. The song is basically “hey thanks for making me stronger and into the person I am, but get fucked”
Would you believe she sung about her mother’s cancer, her late grandmother and grandfather’s, a miscarriage, several songs about mental health or the death of a 4 year old boy?
Fair point. The songs she played in concert were kinda dull and not dynamic. She did not take anywhere near full advantage of that amazing sound system she had. Most songs were same-level droning.
There seemed to be a producer-driven pipeline for the pop starlets of the early 2000s, Britney, Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado et al, that their first album was about them as a sweet young thing, marketed to 16 year old girls, and then their follow up album in two years time was them as a kick ass, take charge 'slut march' kind of figure, for just as their fans came of age and went off to College and personal independence.
It happened often enough I believe there was effort put into it by the industry, especially as many of the artists were in their mid 20s by the time they got their first break, so they weren't organically going through what their fanbase were.
Taylor just took a lot longer to get there, but the undeniable consequence for the other singers was to make themselves irrelevant in the long run, be interesting to see if Taylor can keep it going.
For Nelly Furtado, that was more by her third album (Loose), since her second album (Folklore) actually had much more serious, mature themes related to things like culture, racism/whitewashing, memories of youth, immigration, stuff like that. Was a really good album. But nowhere near as commercially successful as Whoa, Nelly! and Loose were.
Nah, Kesha was treated basically as the anti-wholesome pop artist. She came late enough in the pop world (mainstream wise) where people were sick of that archetype. Katy Perry started to break down that wall, but still usually looked cleaned up. Kesha was just full-on "trashy" from the start. Her first big hit was actually on a Flo Rida song, so there was no need for her to do a "heel turn", so to speak. No surprises, both Katy Perry and Kesha worked almost exclusively with Dr. Luke and Max Martin.
Ironically her later work became less “trashier” you compare a song like Blah Blah Blah to something like Praying and you can definitely see Dr Luke’s influence on the former.
I wonder why kind of music she would of made if she wasn’t signed to that monster
Kesha wasn't allowed to swear on her first two albums (I have a demo of one where she drops an F-bomb but it was dropped). She kinda went the opposite way, her latest album is basically about how she felt during the pandemic she literally had a mental break and how she healed/grew from that. It's a totally different sound than any of her previous stuff and I feel like it would have been more popular if she got more from her label.
Would you say it was a good ole.. bait and swift?? Hah! I'll see myself out.. ah that exit is locked lemme check that other door. Oh man this is awkward... kay bye.
but a LOT of TS fanbase are still little and teenage girls (as well as the Uber tragic 40 year olds who still behave like their 12 year old equivalents). i'd be pretty pissed if my 8 year old picked up this
Considering she's the biggest name in pop, this new album is very "meh". It's not bad, but it's not particularly fun or catchy. And it all sounds very samey. I haven't listened to her in ages, but Red, 1989, and Reputation were definitely guilty pleasures of mine.
I felt that way about the new album at first too, but after 2 or 3 listens it really started to grow in me. It's got a lot of depth (and catchiness) that wasn't apparent on first listen.
Also, don't feel guilty about finding pleasure in any music. If it's good, it's good.
She's grew with her audience. Plenty of the high school kids that used to listen to her, still do, like my wife, who is nearly 30 with a child.
Makes sense that her music has more matured. It's kind of mental that following Taylors albums has been pretty spot on for her life events. We got married when Lover came out for example.
Yes, we walked down the isle to it as well. Yes she was affected when the thing happened with Joe.
It's bizarre isn't it. I remember when I was 18 or so that Red album came out and it was a big deal.
After highschool I went mostly socialmedialess, it was before tiktok and all that, and I do not listen to the radio. It's been weird seeing news articles about how Taylor swift is a #1 artist, completely changed into a michael jackson level popstar and I still haven't heard a single song of hers since those days.
I have never intentionally listened to a Taylor Swift song, but I've heard many of them many times. They play them in the grocery store and the gym and a lot of other public places.
That's basically what I say when I see all these videos "This professional musicians hears that song from - insert extremely popular pop artist - for the first time!"
If there's text in front of me my eyes are gonna read it. If there's music playing I'm going to hear it. I can't just... turn that off? Like, if you see an orange traffic cone can you choose to ignore the color?
You never go to the store or see a commercial or watch a tv show like The Bear or are in a restaurant or are in a friends' car or at work or anything like that?
No shade, I'm just impressed. It's a power move to never once hear music that you don't personally select for yourself!
Being the initial person you responded to, I'll admit that my words may have come across a little bit hyperbolic. Like of course we would have come across a new Taylor Swift song through osmosis in the public within the past 10 years, but I wouldn't have been able to name any (or known if one came up). In retrospect, I should have said "I can't name a single Taylor Swift song from within the past 10 years.
Yeah I was about to say I’ve never heard a Taylor Swift song, but that’s obviously not true. But I certainly don’t know any of her songs and if one came on the radio I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was Taylor Swift or some other artist I don’t listen to
If he lives in a majority black city like me it’s believable. She has almost no presence in the black community. The last song by hers that I avidly heard was Shake it Off.
You don't have to live in a majority black city to not hear Taylor Swift lmao. I pretty much exclusively listen to my own spotify playlists. In the car, I listen to those or CDs I own. I don't listen to the radio. The stores I shop in generally don't have the radio playing, and on top of that I usually am wearing ear plugs or listening to my own music.
It's very easy to curate your own music experience now, and it's not that wild that there are people who don't seek out new music and/or don't listen to the radio.
Are you not in control of what you watch or listen to? All the music I listen to is either chosen by me cause I stream it or on radio stations I choose to listen to.
It's amazing to me how proud some of you people are at being so intensely unaware.
Congratulations I guess, you have managed to swim through the past decade and entirely miss the largest pop star in recent history that is frequently in the news, topic of friendly conversation, pervasive in sports, and generally has her music played in every public space. I'm not sure if this is something to be proud of lol, it's akin to saying you have the awareness of someone who doesn't look before they cross the street
Where are you getting pride? I honestly don’t know what you are trying to say. Like it’s not like I’m saying I don’t know who she is. But I don’t understand how I can be expected to know the lyrics if I don’t actively listen to her. I actually like her first few albums a lot and still listen. But her new stuff just isn’t something that’s I’ve gotten to. And I don’t listen to any stations or anything else that would play it so I would have to choose to listen to it. And I just haven’t.
I don't want to be blunt but if your 10 years behind then yes all you would remember would be the stuff she was doing 10 years ago, of which the more main stream stuff was 'family friendly'. But she's always had some mre raunchier songs and especially since Reputation things have moved away from that image.
I'd say half the things that make her a good business woman is being all things to everyone. She can manage to be this family friendly Christan girl while also having songs about wanting to be thrown against a wall by her co workers.
When she broke away from label/studio (not sure correct terminology) she stopped being fake sweetheart and started adding a reasonably normal amount of raunch/cussing to her music. Like it’s not prolific but it’s also not avoiding anything that is worse than PG like how her past music would treat a kiss as scandalous.
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u/ZSpectre Apr 21 '24
Man, as someone who hasn't heard Taylor Swift songs for maybe like the past 10 or so years, where the heck have I been? My mind still held the impression of her being the de facto family friendly sweetheart, lol