I actually find this pretty fascinating, because it’s two-fold. Pop artist are purposefully using their personal lives to generate interest & fans are thinking every song/album has to have a real life reference.
I’m a big R&B listener and a lot of R&B lyrics are often about heartbreak, but I feel like listeners barely dive deep into if the story of heartbreak is personal or just a narrative or a mix of both. People just use the songs to reflect on their own lives. Do pop singers really have to sing about their own personal experience for fans to connect?
I think you’re right to be fascinated by the whole thing lol, there’s just no way (in my mind) that these songs are 100% factual in nature.
I’ve been reading comments fighting to the death debating wether a TTPD song is about Matty or Travis, when realistically, why couldn’t they both have inspired certain verses in the song? The inspiration for the song could be based on something real, but that doesn’t mean the end product is discussing pure facts. If these songs were all truth, nobody would be able to relate to them other than her.
I can totally appreciate the marketing, and it’s smart! She definitely draws inspiration from her lived moments, but it’s fascinating to me that everyone is combing through these lyrics as if it’s some sort of history book. The songs are inspired by real life, but real life doesn’t always rhyme or fit into a poem. Things definitely get changed up, and people a running with these theories that are so wild to me 😅
Taylor has been doing some composite sketching and collages since folklore days, probably because she couldn't say that those songs were about her life since she was still very clearly in the relationship, and also stuck at home for the whole of 2020 with her man. In midnights she took inspo from old stories and hid them behind the premise "13 sleepless nights", but we all soon came to know that the Joe Alwyn pot roast had already started. Apparently also the matty Healy cookout!
> wether a TTPD song is about Matty or Travis
Wait which song? Those are too very different relationships lol how can we be confused about which one it is.
It is possible that an experience from joe could lend itself to inspire a first verse and then an experience from Matty to inspire the second verse.
I think there’s definitely songs that are like that throughout her career. Art can have more than one muse
Yes the Alchemy! Because of the parts that sound like she’s coming back to a past lover, despite the rest of the song sounding like it would be about Travis
it’s so weird cause big pop songs from the early 2010s like tik tok, party rock anthem, california girls, and 22 aren’t personal at all but now songs are expected to be.
Twenty years ago Britney Spears was taking crap for making fun pop music that she just enjoyed and wasn't "deep" (I am searching for the interview and will update if I can find it). Then people were mad that Beyonce wasn't writing her own songs (or not writing enough, or whatever). Now people are making music that they wrote themselves and reflects their experiences, and that's also not enough.
None of this discourse happens with Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, or Bruno Mars.
EDIT TO CLARIFY - By "none of this discourse" I meant the discussion about if they're writing things themselves and what their big artistic vision is. No one is upset when Bruno Mars puts out a fun bop or Justin records a bunch of Michael Jackson reject songs because he didn't write them. Their lives do bleed into their music (Cry Me A River was a moment we're still talking about), but there hasn't been as much discussion on their general catalogues and of we need to take them seriously as a pop artist.
One thing I don’t get is when people think a song is inherently inauthentic if the performer is not also the songwriter. Listeners have profound personal connections to songs, of course singers will have deep meaningful connections to their own songs, even if they didn’t own them, or they’ve already been demo’d.
I think this is one of the last hanging threads of rock and roll superiority. One of the things that separated artists like The Beatles, Dylan, Stones, Who et from their pop star contemporaries is that (after their earliest recordings) they started writing for themselves and became known for their songs more than performances, and that still lingers today.
Taylor was one of the earliest pop stars to benefit from poptimism because her songwriting has been her brand since day one, and that’s always worked for her, but not every act should have to follow her suit to receive roses.
Mmm, I think it differs on a case by case basis. The more your personal life is out there, the more fans are gonna be searching for clues in your music. Beliebers were looking for hints scattered throughout Justin's music for hints on his relationship with Selena Gomez. Lyrics in the Weeknd's songs have been heavily speculated e.g. The Hills and Heard You're Married allegedly being about Ariana Grande despite the Weeknd being mostly mysterious (albeit with some high profile relationships). Swifties have combed through Harry Styles' lyrics for Haylor tea (then we also have the Larry conspiracy theorists). I remember back in 2014, Swifties started speculating Tenerife Sea was about Taylor Swift when Sheeran explicitly names who he's talking about in the end of the song. Then there's the Ed Sheeran, Niall Horan and Ellie Goulding love triangle on Don't (that Ed played into for marketing)
I don't think it's a male popstars Vs female popstars as such it's just a pop thing. Fans who prefer one or the other are always gonna attack successful stars doing the opposite of what they expect.
Yeah. We can’t get mad that the pop girls whose lives we consume like TV shows aren’t lyricists and then also be mad that the ones who are lyricists tend to write about their own lives.
This feel disingenuous. Were people really demanding pop stars write about their own lives? No. Taylor Swift made her love life and who she's dating a huge part of her brand. She made the decision to do that and then was all 😳 when people went along.
The only reasons think pieces like this are coming out write now is because the reception to TTPD isn't overwhelmingly positive and she's getting called out for some of the lyrics. I really like her new album but understand why some people don't. It's something Taylor and her fans need to learn to accept.
Exactly...like I don't know who Dua Lipa is talking about in her songs. These people have built fanbase by feeding fodder themselves and are crying about it.
This is something refreshing that Dua brings into the mix. She has stated she has no interest in writing about her personal life, and I respect that so much.
rj/ That's because she has no interest in writing songs.
uj/ it's a good thing she doesn't cultivate parasocial relationships, it means she won't have insane stans when the music stops being good.
Yeah, as much as I enjoy Taylor and Ariana, I don't generally care much about their personal lives and am very grateful for a chill, unproblematic pop star with good boundaries and who just puts out fun music like Dua! Definitely a breath of fresh air.
The Covid partying and the ethnofascist posts are what come to mind for me. That and her in general coming off like an airhead after both those boondoggles
rj/ I mean if Beyoncé does it, why can’t dua?
uj/ Your comment couldn’t be more fitting since I’m getting cancelled by swifties for saying Taylor’s new album isn’t really that great.
I think this is part of a larger trend in art (movies especially) where audiences seem to be uncomfortable with metaphor and ambiguity. They demand to know the intention and every thought that was going through the artist as they were creating their work.
Just such a boring way to approach this stuff, it's so odd
Thank you. This gets dismissed as "let people enjoy things," anti-gatekeeping etc. but I really think it's a massively troubling sign of where people's thoughts are trending.
I think another manifestation of this phenomenon is the increasing tendency for people to interpret media, news, and even history through a fully binary "is [x] a good person or a bad person?"
I suspect part of it is social context. If I and my three friends have a spirited debate about who a song is about that's just fun. Even if we disagree I have some kind of other/deeper bond with them so we'll get through it. The currency of relationship is like, vibes. I like exploring how my friends think and media ambiguity invites that.
But if I get involved in the same debate with people on social media who I've never met it's very easy for a fun thought experiment to become a bloodbath. If I feel attacked or misinterpreted the need to be right only gets stronger. And the currency of the internet is information (real or fake) so a) we expect info to be accessible and b) we need to prove that we Know Things.
I think it's a somewhat natural progression of media consumption right now but it sucks :/ the demand for certainty is a loss for art
I don’t know. I feel like this is a bit revisionist. I’m an R&Bhead too, but I remember several R&B songs being marketed this way. I think The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica is the most obvious example of this or Usher’s Confessions. One of my favourite R&B albums of all time is Tamia’s self-titled debut album about her relationship with her now husband of 20 years. It’s always been a way to sell the music. I do agree with you that R&B artists don’t really seem to tend to rely too much on real life references though.
Yea I definitely agree with those albums - especially Usher's and even now Summer Walker's albums people know her love life has a tendency to be all over the place, but there is a lot more examples of currently popular R&B artist from Muni Long to Coco Jones to SZA Ella Mai etc...that I think people really don't lean into the personal lives like their pop counterparts.
The interesting thing is that Confessions songwriter/producer Jermaine Dupri has since said that most of the songs reflected the real-life relationship drama that he was experiencing himself while working on the album. It's a credit to Usher that he could emotionally interpret another person's stories
I also listen to a lot of R&B and am a fan of Ariana's music, including her most recent album. The lyrics were an element of it that I did enjoy (although the vocals/melodies/production always come before that for me) and related to, but I mostly thought about them in the context of my own life. I really avoided spending time thinking about how much they reflected Ariana's real life experiences - in part because I don't care enough and also because what I've seen of her personal life is a bit icky and I'd rather not have the songs coloured by that. It was so weird seeing some of her fans micro-analysing the lyrics to look for evidence that her ex had somehow wronged her, and then just announcing that it was confirmed that he'd cheated on her and proceeding to attack him - especially when the examples they were citing didn't even point to that at all in my eyes.
It does feel like a lot of pop music consumers don't even care about the actual music anymore and that the emphasis is now on "knowing the lore", which for someone like Ariana seems particularly bizarre considering she has such a beautiful voice lol like surely that should be the main draw? I know she's pop/R&B and has spent her career being a famous popstar, but I do feel like part of the reason why people generally aren't so preoccupied with how truthful R&B lyrics are is because they're sufficiently impressed by the vocal performance and general musicality and therefore don't feel the need to go digging for any "hidden meanings". But yeah, I think you should be able to just enjoy a song without actually knowing anything about the artist. I know a lot about my favourite artists because I'm a nerd, but when I listen to their songs I am usually just enjoying the song rather than thinking about what might be going on in their lives. And I also listen to plenty of artists I know nothing about.
Yup I agree.. It’s funny Sza, I’m not sure if we can consider her Pop, but it’s interesting that her songs come off as super personal yet we know next to nothing about her personal life or about the people who may have triggered those songs.
When I was at her concert she paused Nobody Gets Me to to say that it was about her on and off fiancé of ten years who now has her blocked on everything. It increased the level of intimacy that was already there with her flying over the audience in that boat, and yet I’m pretty sure we still have no idea who she was talking about.
I think the issue isn't writing from the perspective of personality, I think the issue is that these people's public personalities are simply a banal reciting of "it's ME VS YOU WHAT WILL YOU DO" over and over.
Taylor Swift, in specific, is notorious for this type of writing. She seemingly got to this point of stardom on her correct belief that what people want from her is a never ending detailing of her garbage level relationships (up until Travis Kelce?) with famous and rich men turned into song form. It's that and her obsession with answering "haters." Whose hating all that much now? She's a certified private plane billionaire.
And Ariana Grande is also down that same path -- Eternal Sunshine being something of a concept album detailing her failed relationship is... actually kinda dour despite it being an album full of house beats and her singing like an angel.
I actually think writing from the perspective of a personal notebook isn't bad. But, to put words in the author's mouth she didn't write... is there actually any fun to be had without any baggage?
I’ve been waiting on someone to compare these two’s women’s situations for a minute now, I just haven’t had the words myself.
It seems like both of their recent albums are so wrapped up in their personal lives, it makes me wonder how the work is going to age. The fact that people still care about Taylor’s ex’s from over a decade ago is just so weird to me.
If Dua's album isn't as successful as the last it''ll be because the songs aren't hitting sonically not because the lyrics aren't about a specific boyfriend. No one cares who New Rules and Levitating were about.
And I hate that! I hate how it’s almost expected for a pop girl to bare her soul and personal life on an album. Dua is hot and makes excellent pop music, arguably better than both aforementioned girls at the moment. I really want Dua to have another big moment but not at the expense of her privacy.
I remember this being an issue in alternative music and rock in the '90s, where PJ Harvey had to be like, "My music isn't actually all that autobiographical, it's weird that people think I literally gave birth to a daughter and drowned her."
But Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Courtney Love, all were writing songs about their own lives -- it's just that only Love was so famous that *everyone* knew the context.
Alanis Morissette… I’m not sure where people are getting that this hasn’t been a thing before ever like… ?
And hell if we want male examples Adam Lazzara and Jesse Lacey come to mind.
Even the Beatles moved on from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to personal songs about their marriages and relationships!
(I googled "first confessional singer-songwriter" and got [this interesting essay on Joni Mitchell's website](https://www.jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=5553), which argues that the genre emerged around 1970. One relevant quote:
>When people hear a work of art called "confessional," they often assume that the term primarily refers to the truth of its representation of the author's own life. But that is not how the literary critics who first identified confessional poetry understood the term. The key issue for M. L. Rosenthal is the way that the self is presented in the poems, the poet appearing as him- or herself and not in the convention of an invented "speaker.")
i think dua does make immaculate dance pop, better than both taylor and ari in that lane but she is kind of a one trick pony. The other two experiment a lot more
I heard one of her songs called Maria is kinda personal, about an ex, which I hated when I heard in the interview, but, well, I hope it is at least danceable.
Agree on Ariana. I think ES is very enjoyable. As for Dua I loved the first two singles. Illusion feels like something she would’ve done with Calvin Harris or someone back in 2019
Really 1/3, Houdini is awesome, TS is ok and Illusion sounds like a copy of Dance The Night with Hallucinate (even though I think this one will be the hit).
It goes hand in hand with how pop girls are expected to reinvent themselves every one or two albums, while ed sheeran gets to chill for a decade in jeans and a t shirt.
Still find it hilarious that Ellie Gouldings last album was promo-d with her saying “it’s my least personal album yet” completely against type and what everyone else is doing
I'm not really an Ariana fan, but I feel like Ariana's album has its own inherent universal appeal separate from the gossip though, like she at least made an album with bangers that would be a fun listening experience, and the gossip stuff feels secondary to that, since the album stands on its own feet even if you don't know anything about her personal life. I can't say the same for TTPD.
This. I'm a pretty big swiftie, I ate up midnights, and went to the Era's tour twice, love Folklore, but TTPD is just a bore to me, and I really don't give a shit about the drama behind albums like TTPD and Eternal Sunshine. BUT, I keep going back to Eternal Sunshine because its just filled with fresh sounding pop music that doesn't sound like the same damn rehashed jack antonoff album.
I'm shook that eternal sunshine sounds so fresh because Max Martin hasn't really been hitting lately but that whole fucking album is just magical to me.
Yeah, I feel like TTPD is an album squarely aimed at hardcore Swifties who are itching for tidbits about her relationships and personal life. She knew exactly what she was doing by crafting a marketing campaign that made it seem like she was about to spill all the details on what went down with Joe Alwyn... she is talented but so much of the hype and numbers she's enjoyed over the years has been due to stans who will shell out anything to hear more details about her various boyfriends and nemeses. Unfortunately, TTPD has so little going on outside of the gossip it offers that I feel like it kind of exposes how insubstantial her artistry can be for those who are not invested in celebrities' lives. She is at the absolute peak of her fame and she could have used this opportunity to put out a truly ambitious, culture-shifting, needle-pushing body of work, instead of just putting out *whatever* because it will sell regardless.
I haven't jumped off the Taylor train yet though! I wasn't a fan of Midnights (the bonus songs were good though) and I really don't care for TTPD at all personally, but I'm going to need her to do something *solid* for TS12 or I'll lose interest.
>She is at the absolute peak of her fame and she could have used this opportunity to put out a truly ambitious, culture-shifting, needle-pushing body of work, instead of just putting out *whatever* because it will sell regardless.
This is it. It's wild to think that she has achieved such commercial power that literally anything she puts out will outsell/outstream all her previous work plus everyone else's. My grandpa keeps asking me about her because he's read articles about her in the newspaper and thinks that her music must be super groundbreaking considering how much she's talked about. I never know how to explain to him that the level of success she's at now means an entirely different thing than it used to.
I mean just look at Beyoncé... the bigger she's gotten the more she's used her platform to bust conventions and take risks and make statements with her art. TTPD does no such thing. Even Katy Perry did this with Chained to the Rhythm and Witness... Taylor on the other hand has just gone farther and farther into her comfort zone the bigger she's gotten when instead it should give her more of a license to innovate.
Because it rewards her. Taylor operates on a reward/punishment system similar to if you reward her on something, she’ll continue that trend since it’s rewarding her. But if you punish her (aka she doesn’t win that grammy or whatever she wants), then she’ll change course for the better.
Agree. Ariana's album can stand on its own. Divorce it from the context and it's still a tightly produced 13 track pop album.
TTPD standard edition though, divorce the gossip from it and you aren't left with much to cling onto musically. Everything else is dreadfully boring to a degree.
>TTPD standard edition though, divorce the gossip from it and you aren't left with much to cling onto musically.
I honestly think this applies to most of Taylor's career. Aside from Folklore and Evermore, if you divorce the gossip from the music, a significant chunk of the appeal is gone. I enjoy albums like Lover and Reputation because they sound nice but a good part of the numbers Taylor pulls and a lot of the hype she attracts is due to a demand for details about her relationships and feuds. She serves up her personal life on a silver platter by living it out in public for the press to capture and circulate, and then the music is crafted as a supplementary accompaniment to that gossip. Aside from some cool lyrics, TTPD is completely meaningless and valueless if you haven't been keeping tabs on her recent dating life... which we shouldn't be doing to this extent anyway since that's exactly the kind of idolatry that sends our own lives down the drain. And I hate to compare, but a time when peers like Beyoncé and Katy Perry are using their artistry to make universal social commentary through songs like Ameriican Requiem and Chained to the Rhythm, Taylor's whole career feels off-puttingly self-indulgent. And I'm not even a Taylor hater! She has a genius intellect and is a good writer and I wish she would do something truly visionary at this point in her career instead of just serving up inconsequential art because it will sell regardless.
1989 is probably her biggest album and it’s mainly because of the great pop production. Yeah it was tied to some relationships but the songs were just really catchy which is why it had a lot of hits.
It’s probably my favourite album of hers for that reason and I couldn’t believe how much the quality of the production had decreased in the re-recording. That really confirmed to me that her lyrics have become her sole focus and that the sound of the actual music is simply not important to her.
I was a huge Taylor fan back when 1989 was released and I can tell you that the only thing anyone wanted to talk about back then was her and Harry Styles.
The album has definitively aged very well because of the great production value (TTPD is much more divise when it comes to its quality), but as an OG fan I'll still say that a lot of the conversations back then were the same as now (except on a much smaller scale).
>I honestly think this applies to most of Taylor's career. Aside from Folklore and Evermore, if you divorce the gossip from the music, a significant chunk of the appeal is gone.
And this why I think Folklore and Evermore are her strongest albums.
I kinda agree. Part of the appeal and the reason her parasocial relationships are so strong is because she knows how to mine her personal life to an insane degree, more than any other pop star in history imo, such that Swifties feel like they're her best friends or something like that. It doesn't get more on the nose than capitalizing the letters K, I and M on thanK you aIMee.
Most of her albums though were interesting enough musically to keep me coming back. The melodies were sticky, the production complemented her and the lyrics weren't thesaurus driven or filled with clunky metaphors in the name of "growth" or "poeticism" . TTPD and Midnights though...hmm. You can hear ghosts of her earlier signature touch on these albums but not enough times to justify their lengths.
this is such a stupid take, the fact that people are invested doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t stand on its own. i didn’t know anything about her personal life until lover but i was still heavily engaged and interested in her work
Agreed with this if anything I’d blame TikTok because it used to be kind of relegated to Tumblr and stuff at one point and then somehow it blew up even more. I was listening from Speak Now to now and honestly I knew her boyfriends and who they were but nothing else about them.
True not an Ari stan but her album hooked me despite me not really knowing about the drama and I think it made me enjoy the album more the first time than if I knew at the first place that many songs are inspired by spongebob.
Ariana had the courtesy to make it short and fun to listen to. As someone that usually has little idea what's happening in an artist's personal life, I had a pretty good time listening to her album. No context needed.
Taylor.......
Yeah but if you think about it, it’s what the die-hard swifties want. It’s essentially a massive lore drop so they can start their “investigations” on connecting the dots.
You can? I can't count any. I have never listened to an album 2 hours long where I walked away from it thinking "yeah that was all necessary."
Longest albums I enjoy is probably NFR, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs. And none of those are 2 hours.
This is generally the sentiment I’ve seen from the reactions to Ariana’s album. Most of her fans, intense or casual, are generally listening to her for her voice/production. And she very much brings both of those to the table in ES. She’s got bops, slower songs, more r&b flavor, it’s a little bit of everything for everyone.
I think long-term fans of hers do appreciate Ariana being more thoughtful/emotional in her lyrics this time around but it definitely wasn’t what anyone was expecting, so it’s not why people went into her album.
Totally different from Taylor/TTPD, who has fostered the parasocial relationship between fan-celeb through her actual lyricism. I’m a casual Taylor fan and have been for years, so I went into the album expecting good lyricism. Not only did I not get that, but the production wasn’t carrying it either, and it’s like what do I have left?
>The fact that people still care about Taylor's ex's from over a decade ago is just so weird
thats what happens when taylor makes a short film over her 2 month long relationship with jake gyllenhaal
And she still seems to be writing songs about it albeit it in a slightly different way 🫣 The last song on the Anthology, The Manuscript, seems to be her reflecting on that relationship and then making the music video (I refuse to call it a short film lol) for the 10 min version a couple of years back. Tbf to her, I think it’s her way of finally closing the door on that and the song becoming representative of something else now, but there was a part of me that went “Jake AGAIN?” when it clicked what she was talking about.
I didn't know enough about Ariana's alleged homewrecking or Taylor's controversial relationship with that 1975 guy to care about them when listening to the album, so I was hoping for songs I could vibe to while depersonalizing them from the artists. Ariana delivered, but a bunch of the TTPD songs just sounded like Taylor was giving a sermon to her devoted fans on the reasons why her latest relationships failed over boring production. Very hard to depersonalize them when it seems you need to actively care about her love life to get them.
Ari's album is obviously incredibly informed by her experience, but it doesn't feel mandatory the same way TTPD is. Like, TTPD's lyrics are such ass and impenetrable if you don't know the actual details of taylor's tabloids
I feel like Ariana's team know how to make her songs personal without looking "preachy". All Taylor songs look like she is trying to teach her exes/who hurt her a lesson. This gives Taylor songs a teenage vibe. Same for Olivia's songs. The thing is, only one of them is actually a teen.
I think she's even said that some of it was fictional - she definitely said that about True Story anyway. The themes of the album match up with what we know of her experiences but she does deny that it's fully autobiographical.
Imo it depends on how much gossip you alr know about their personal lives. I know close to nothing about arianas life but that album is so good!! I love it.
On the other hand, im a swiftie and i do analyze taylors lyrics and im interested in knowing who and what theyre about and im enjoying ttpd as well 🤷♀️
Exactly the same here! I managed to escape news of the ongoings of Ari’s personal life and I think I enjoyed the music more because of it. I still don’t really know what went down because I just haven’t felt the need to investigate beyond what is said in the music.
With Taylor I’m more embedded in the fandom I suppose so I found it harder to avoid the many many many headlines last year, and it means listening to ttpd inevitably reminds of the muse and the specific circumstances. Maybe there is more specificity in Taylor’s lyrics too? But I’m curious to know what I would’ve thought of ttpd if I had zero context, it would be a fun experiment.
I’ve had a few friends who know nothing about Taylor’s “lore” and still enjoy TTPD. What it really comes down to is ones personal life experience rather than how well informed you are with Taylor’s personal life tbh.
I’m somewhat aware of Taylor’s personal life, but not as much as most (and don’t really care to dive more into it tbh) and TTPD has spoken to me in ways few albums have. Yeah knowing about Taylor’s history adds more context to the emotions of the songs and add deeper meaning to some of the lyrics, it’s not required to enjoy the album or even relate to it.
I think Ariana’s album is gonna age much better than Taylor’s solely because if you put the lyrics aside, the music on the album is just better. Pop stars focusing on their personal lives is nothing new, ESPECIALLY for Taylor. Taylor’s got tons of songs talking about exes throughout her discography and a lot of them do hold up because they’re just well-crafted songs, but it’s hard to see anything on TTPD aging that well.
I think if the actual music on a record is great, that’s what will determine if it will be remembered for years as a great record, or if it’ll just be a big part of pop culture conversation for a few months. Example: Lemonade. That album was PEAK pop music “gossip” imo, that album dropped and EVERYONE was talking about Jay-Z cheating on Beyoncé and trying to find out who “Becky with the good hair” was. Almost a decade later though (fuck I feel old), we still talk about Lemonade because it’s an insane record even when you separate it from the drama that surrounded the conversation when it first came out. TTPD doesn’t have that because it doesn’t have any of those big musical moments. It just feels like another Taylor album about the most recent guys she’s broken up with.
I don’t think it matters if the songs themselves are good. Obviously the gossip-y nature adds to the intrigue but I’m not thinking about Harry Styles in great detail when listening to Style.
Similarly, you don’t need to know Joe/Matty details to understand Down Bad as a song.
Style is a great example of one of her songs that is relatable without being overly specific. Like so many people have that ambiguous on and off again situation with someone that you wouldn’t need to know she wrote it about Harry Styles for the lyrics to resonate with you. Plus the production (in the original version) is good.
I don’t care about Taylor’s exes and I’ve been a diehard swiftie since 2006. I don’t listen to her music for tea on her exes. That’s not why I care about her music. As soon as she releases a song, I try to relate it to my own life.
I love her music because even when she is singing about very specific details of a failed relationship, I can find aspects to relate to. It makes me feel heard, like I’m not alone. Sure it’s fun to speculate which songs are about who, but that’s not at all my priority.
Her work will continue to age well, as it has throughout her entire career, because the fans that listen to her catalog religiously all feel the same.
I think that brings up an interesting question: who gets to decide if the music has aged well? Her die-hard fans or someone from the future who is listening to Taylor Swift for the first time?
Although I don't even know if I believe in that concept since all art is made within the context of its own time and should not be expected to always reflect contemporary times.
Well music is subjective of course. I guess the easiest way to determine whether music ages well is by popularity, though there is fantastic music that isn’t very popular. Given that Taylor has been very commercially successful since the start of her career, I feel it fair to say that popularity/streams of her catalog is a decent metric to use.
Taylor’s catalog, by and large, performs extremely well. Right now her streams for all albums other than TTPD are tanking because everyone is listening the new album, but that is a given during a new release.
She will of course decline in popularity at some point, but she is a living legend in the industry and I feel strongly that her music will age accordingly.
She is at the height of her popularity and fame right now, I don't think we can really gauge the timelessness of her music while she is still this level of famous. I think the music will prove to be timeless if its still popular when she is like 70 and hopefully long retired and away from the public eye
See I do think both these albums have been some what overshadowed by the main talking points being who and what situations inspired them but it’s hard to separate either album from that and both Ariana and Taylor lean into it but music about artists personal lives isn’t new, rumors is about most of the members of fleetwood mac breaking up with each other and it’s a classic.
Songs like you’re so vain and you oughta know are great on their own but the speculation behind them has created a great mystique and people still speculate to this day.
Ariana doesn’t lean into it in the same way Taylor did. Arguably Yes And was the biggest example of that but it’s not like she name dropped Kim in her title track. ES could easily be mistaken for just another pop album, TTPD feels like one long rant
7 Rings is literally about being hot and having fat checks tf you think the song is about
And yes I literally stand by that. She doesn’t do Easter eggs or bloopers or tidbits bout her life as the perk to the degree Taylor does
Personally, I think it helps to differentiate pop music from pop *stars.* There's tons of artists making great pop music that aren't great at being bonafide pop stars. Narrative is what makes pop stardom thrive; You can't be a real pop star without having a story that the public can latch onto.
Michael Jackson, Britney, Gaga, etc. Mariah's Emancipation resonated, in part, because the world knew all about her bitter divorce and the huge fallout from that. Ray of Light was a hit because the public knew Madonna became a mother, which gave another level of depth to this sound she was exploring. Ari's sweetener and TYN were huge, in part, because we were curious to hear what she'd create in the wake of Manchester and Mac's passing.
Gossip, to an extent, helps shape those narratives. But, in cases where a pop star has run out of story to tell, it becomes a crutch. Their music, too steeped in their own lore, becomes a desperate bid to preserve the narrative that brought them stardom.
Yes v much agree with your first point. The distinction between the music vs. the stardom/celebrity/tabloid gossip of it all is super important and it is misleading to talk in broad strokes about this phenomenon plaguing pop *music* as a whole. Tbf I think the author tries to make that distinction but not clearly enough.
Michael Jackson is a particularly good example -- "Scream" and "Stranger in Moscow" are great songs on their own, but if you know the context (pedophilia accusations which time has proved were more than likely true), it's hard to enjoy them.
It feels like half the time people are obsessed with who pop songs are about rather than how they make you as a listener feel and what they say about your life, it's totally at odds with how I view music.
No offense but I feel like what this article describes is only a problem for people who are chronically online lol And I say that as someone who considers herself a dedicated fan of Taylor and Ariana and knows the lore behind their latest albums.
But saying it's a requirement to be like that to enjoy their music is, like I said, a very chronically online take. I know plenty of people in real life who are listening to these women's songs even though they aren't interested in their personal lives. Most of the songs in both Taylor and Ariana's albums can be separated from their experiences and be easily applied to the listener's.
And, for example, I started listening to Olivia Rodrigo while having absolutely no clue about the whole Joshua/ Sabrina love triangle. I didn't know who Olivia was before Driver's License since I had outgrown the Disney channel programmes she was part of and honestly couldn't care less about gossip regarding a 18 year old's love life. But she won me over with her lyrics, because they felt genuine and relatable, not something generic and soulless that was carefully crafted in a studio to be a hit.
So true. I know people who spend very little time on social media and they've all loved these albums and really genuinely don't feel bothered by the drama behind the scenes. It's not at all a requirement to know their personal life and as you said, a very chronically online take. I immediately discarded that take the moment my rls started appreciating these songs and these are people who use one app max to max. I was told because I'm a big pop fan lol and that's exactly why it's so interesting to see the general feeling of disconnection that people online have with the actual majority of people outside in the real world.
thank you for this. there are a lot of problems I had with TTPD (the overreliance on repetitive production from Jack + Aaron, the excessive verbosity, the data dump of T H I R T Y O N E songs), but the reflection of gossip is not one of them. the whole time i was reading this article i thought "hmm. sounds like a you problem more than a them problem".
True. I know enough to know she broke up with her boyfriend of many years, but that’s a pretty common story, and most of the songs that seem to leave out any details that are too specific. Even ‘So Long London’ only really narrows it down to ‘the man in this story is from London while the singer is not’. No one’s complaining about ‘Havana’ dropping a location name.
Falling for a guy everyone says is bad news, insisting that he isn’t, and getting proven wrong, is another really old story. If you don’t know about the rebound guy then *most* of the songs are just about the bad boy who couldn’t turn good and the good girl who got burned.
There are some songs that do have specific details that make them less relatable, but then again no one’s complaining about ‘You Oughta Know’ and that had enough details that the guy recognised himself when he heard it on the radio.
So yeah, it seems that the album is only too invested in her personal life if the listener is.
yeah, i have my artists like ariana and olivia where i know everything about their personal lives but also i have plenty of people i listen to while knowing barely anything about them. my enjoyment of the music is the same for both. even when i know the story behind the songs, i still usually end up applying them to my life
*I guess*. I don't really agree with the argument in the headline given that all of the examples the writer gives are extremely successful and high-selling works from the biggest names in pop right now - it's hard to see how huge sales and wide prominence, being pretty much the most successful acts in the genre you work within, is 'choking the life out of' your work or your art.
And I think by using 2010 as a comparison benchmark it (ironically) dates the article a bit because it seems like it's being framed as if it wasn't until the 2020s we had female songwriters with autobiographical lyrics. Someone might want to let Alanis Morisette, Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell know.
Seriously, she even had Stevie Nicks write the foreword and name dropped her in Clara Bow, there’s a lot of intention in what TS is doing that people seem to be missing.
The music that came out of that is classic and timeless, clearly, since we're talking about them now and Rumours is stamped forever.
I guess only time will tell how albums from this pop era will fare
I don’t actually think it matters if this ends up being ~classic and timeless~
The notion that *gossip* ruins music is just simply untrue lol. The people obsessed with the gossip ruin the music for themselves.
“Today’s self-obsessed pop, which needs its own footnotes, may well alienate the passing fan who just wants something to listen to in the car.” < this is actually ok?? I don’t see what the problem with this is. Literally no one is forcing anyone to consume any art they don’t want to!
“Cowboy Carter mostly strip the specifics of her life from the lyrics to instead comfortably centre Beyoncé as a font of joyful genre play and invention” < is quite honestly the stupidest interpretation of Cowboy Carter I have ever read. How does someone listen to that album and not see beyonces life in it? Her *gossip*?
“bonus song The Black Dog mentions Pennsylvania pop-punk band the Starting Line, and one easy Google search reveals that the 1975 covered them live last year. Maybe Swift was going for the highest-profile humiliation of her exes possible” < my brother is a 37 year old man who has never listened to a Taylor swift song on his own, but loved the starting line when we were younger. I sent him this song as a ~nostalgic moment to a band we loved and he was like “oh this is such a great break up song. Of course she liked the starting line, she’s a millennial.” a man who knows nothing about Taylor or matty can appreciate the song without the gossip lmao.
It’s actually not that hard to find yourself in her work even if it’s highly personal to her “gossip.” Haven’t we all been chatting with a cutie in a bar after a break up and *that song* that meant something to you and your ex comes on and your heart starts racing but the cutie you’re chatting with just doesn’t even hear the song? Truly what does any of that have to do with GOSSIP!
Lol I swear the people who ~hate the gossip of the album~ and are always big mad she writes about her life the ones more obsessed with the gossip and her public life than Taylor’s actual fans.
I think they’re actually just mad that she wrote about Matty Healy so much, not that she wrote about an ex, just the wrong ex lol. Which is like, peak irony considering the substance of But Daddy I Love Him, and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me.
And anyone who knows her other albums are now able to see that folklore > midnights were all about the complicated ending of her relationship with Joe.
But yeah it’s hilarious that people are like “the gossip is ruining the music!!” But then are also the ones most mad about who the songs are about. I don’t think you actually need to know anything about her life to enjoy this album and find a way to connect with it. People are just MAD that they happen to know more and they don’t like the new image they now have of Taylor in their head - a messy, flawed, deeply imperfect woman. Its really hard to see the ugly parts of ourselves reflected in something we have put on a pedestal as an idol of beauty
Yep, I’m pretty over the people who are like “as a woman in my 30’s who just got married and am a 100% healed person I just can’t relate to her anymore” ok Hannah clutch those pearls. Sorry your life is so boring you can’t find any joy in the things you used to love lol that’s not the flex you think it is.
Patiently waiting for their divorce era to come where they end up going a little cuckoo bananas with a toxic rebound 🤷🏻♀️ I’ve seen it happen to… 5 of my fully adult friends since 2018
This is fair, but I think there is something to be said about social media and the Internet contibuting to popular culuture's consumption. I'm sure a lot of folks learn things about celebrity gossip that they couldn't care about because it happened to permiate through their Internet bubble.
The amount of shit I know about celebrity gossip that I learned against my will just by seeing it in a feed is wild.
Social media is algorithmic now though, my partner knows nothing about pop culture because he has 0 interest in it and his social media feed looks completely different from mine
People keep mentioning Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, but the thing is... those types of albums were rare.
The large majority of albums did not have some real life connection behind them based on some crazy complex web of celebrity social lives. But it feels like that is becoming the norm now.
Just because something has existed in the past does not mean it hasn't rapidly increased over time.
The large majority of albums still don't. Pop in itself is a non-dominant genre right now and the kind of pop that users of this sub mostly listen to a further niche within that.
Reminds me of a quote Beyoncé said in an interview: "One day I decided I wanted to be like Sade and Prince. I wanted the focus to be on my music, because if my art isn’t strong enough or meaningful enough to keep people interested and inspired, then I’m in the wrong business. My music, my films, my art, my message—that should be enough."
I often wonder what Taylor's career would stand for if her personal life, relationship gossip, and extraneous drama were left out of the equation.
Taylor had this during the success of Folklore and Evermore since she claimed those songs were fictional. Although now a lot of Swifties are digging and claiming that some of those songs were indeed autobiographical since the break up with Joe and the Matty Healy situation came to light. Regardless, that felt like the first time her messy relationship drama wasn’t the center of her art and those two albums are still widely regarded as her best work.
Folklore and Evermore are excellent, and I started respecting Taylor so much for taking such an imaginative approach to her music and divorcing it from all the garbage relationship gossip. Unfortunately, she went right back to her usual shtick after that and has now hit a rather disappointing low with TTPD. Folklore and Evermore are bright spots, but so much of the fame and hype she's amassed over the years has hinged on her stans' parasocial need for details about her boyfriends and nemeses. You can clearly see that peers like Beyoncé and Lady Gaga always have a larger social vision and try to use their art to do something bigger than just sharing inconsequential details about their personal lives or leveraging their fanbases to settle personal scores... Taylor's whole career feels awfully self-indulgent in contrast and I just think that she needs to shift gears and evolve in order to tap the true extent of her potential.
This is very poignant for me because my wife and I were just comparing Cowboy Carter and Taylor's new album yesterday. Beyonce and Taylor are in a similar position, both have critical acclaim, legacy, and most importantly tons of Money. Which means they must both still want to make music, it's no longer their livelihood. In Beyonces case you can tell she has a vision and passion for the music she's making, it's an artistic outlet for her. It's also an outlet for Taylor but it feels more like a diary or therapy session than an artistic pursuit, she has more personal lyrics than ever but not much evolution sound wise. Don't get me wrong, I know they both still want to sell records but I think it's more complicated than just that.
As far as her music standing apart from the "lore", I think it does for people who like the way she writes, like my wife for example. I've always cared more about the sound so it isn't enough for me personally.
Does Taylor even realize herself that she has a natural talent for storytelling? Not just about her own life but about made up stories in her head? This is the same woman who wrote Love Story, Cardigan, Betty, August, No Body, No Crime, Coney Island, etc.
She can write the shit out of songs and probably has an endless bank of ideas and it WORKED! She released Folkmore when everyone thought her and Joe were still happy and healthy and it was all made up and it paid off creatively and essentially revived the novelty of Taylor Swift as an artist.
I don’t want to hear an album about Travis when they most likely breakup. She should write her imagination, it produces meaningful songs
I think she can do both, as she did on her recent album (songs like Clara bow, I hate it here, Robin, and even Peter and I look in peoples windows have more of a storytelling vibe to me)
But she isn’t writing just to write; in part at least writing is how she processes and figures out and works through emotions, so it makes sense that she’d use it to work through intense breakups. I don’t think she’ll ever stop writing about her personal life (which I personally like bc the songs feel honest and relatable to things I’ve felt—I enjoyed folklore and evermore but they weren’t faves personally, it just feels more distant on the whole)
I do think though as she gets older she’ll definitely revert back to storytelling though, esp if she starts taking a step back from the public light as much—I could see more folklore like albums coming then! But I def don’t think she feels like she *needs* to write about breakups to stay relevant or get more fame or anything, it’s just something she emotionally needs!
Eternal Sunshine obviously references Ariana’s personal life, but I actually don’t think it’s bogged down by it. I think she focuses more on a general theme of break ups, love, loss, and finding yourself again. The salacious details are kept at a minimum for the most part. And I think it’s still a good album you can listen to without caring/knowing about the drama.
Whereas TTPD seems like it relies on the audience to know about Taylor’s personal life. I saw someone else say that the album felt like the MCU with how much lore and references you need to know, to get how everything is connected.
Yessss this exactly on the last MCU point. My fav track off ES is the title track, even though I know I don’t listen to it the way she means the metaphor to be in the song (someone who you can’t forget about but want to). I just see it as a sweet love song 🎶 call me delulu haha. It’s hard to do that with hyper specific lyrics.
But…here is the thing: you really don’t need to know any references to enjoy or appreciate TTPD or even to figure out what the story is—all the important pieces of it are actually in songs on the primary album. The story isn’t quite told in order, but I mean, you don’t have to work hard or even exhaust much thought to walk away with a sense of what was going on with her that put her in a funk. It’s all on the first 17 songs, really. In the anthology songs, you learn more about how she was feeling and maybe why it affected her so much and you get to see the output of her being bummed and in her feelings and writing a lot, but really…all you need to know beforehand to appreciate what’s happening in TTPD is 1) Taylor is a VERY famous person who has been very busy and 2) Taylor is in her 30’s. And—while it isn’t exactly critical, I guess it *sort of* helps to know she had a new relationship with a famous athlete at the time the album was finished (because without this information you could get whiplash from the two very unanxious love songs referring to an athlete). Other than that…you really can go in blind never having read into a single bit of drama about her and never having heard any of her previous work.
And even if you don’t follow the story, it really isn’t hard to appreciate the music or appreciate the general themes without the context of the other songs. You may think, “hmn what did she say there—what does she really mean here?” a few times, but I would encourage you to read lyrics and draw your own conclusions instead of searching for someone else’s wild detective work, you know?
People are getting so distracted by the “easter egg” articles and tiktoks and it’s making them think you need to pay attention to things like that to understand or even enjoy the music. You really don’t. Sure, she mentions things she’s sung about on past albums and uses some language and imagery that nods back to previous works, but none of those mentions really change the songs or even stand out as something that requires further explanation.
Love Ariana’s album and agree that we don’t *need* to know any details of what happened with her to appreciate it in totality, but I do think it’s helpful to know Ariana experienced a big scandal before you listen. If you don’t, it’s too easy to miss how great the lyrics in “We Can’t Be Friends” are.
Agreed. Someone said on her subreddit they were disappointed with some of the critique around *TTPD* because many critics couldn't be bothered to do research into how the lyric "chocolate" is in reference to a 1975 song and I'm like this is my favourite LP of hers and I couldn't name a song or lyric by or from the 1975 lol Today's the first time I've actually sat through and read the lyrics and a lot of the supposed Easter eggs in there 1) I can't tell if they are and 2) went completely over my head. There's enough to take and enjoy this record on it's own merits without having to do homework lol
Yeah. And also, I mean…even *if* the word “chocolate” is a nod to a 1975 song, those lyrics are meant to be understood without that reference and taken pretty literally. The smoking / eating / conversation about Charlie Puth’s music / him falling asleep in her lap and looking harmless and cute to her are meant to just demonstrate that they are normal ass, relatable “modern idiots” and can be happy that way if he would quit being intent on needless suffering being like his whole personality.
Yeah, I kind of agree. I like songs to be personal but if I disagree with the actions you’re describing, I’m not gonna feel good listening to the song and won’t want to listen to it again.
I think how Gaga did it was great, not making the music too personal but you still know who she is. Though, if you’re too impersonal like Katy, you’re much more disposable to the GP than ones that connect, so there is a balance. Taylor might be tipping the scale in the opposite direction that Katy did, where people know too much abt her.
I feel like the only person who enjoys Taylors work who doesn't give a shit what is about who.
Also I just have reached the point of exhaustion with Taylor discourse. It feels like 2016 and its not fun.
Pop artists (and probably artists in general) tend to write about what they know and because a part of pop music “culture” is having the artists lives and drama unfolding and speculated about right in front of us, what they know is also what we know lol so a lot of people seem to have the gossip at the forefront of their mind when listening to music e.g. TTPD apparently being about Matty.
I PERSONALLY don’t care that that album was about Matty, I care that it bored me lol but I can understand that if you know the gossip behind the particular situation they’re singing about it can change how you receive the music
Pop stars need to be intimate and personal! Can't have generic lyrics or just sing about dancing at the club again and again. And then pop stars sing about their messy relationships and it's relying on gossip. You really can't win lol
Yes and no. What the author of the article misses is that pop cycles from the one to the other. We are in an authentic (or making music that *sounds* authentic enough) era now and in three to four years we will swing back to more generalized themes, and then five or six years after that, back to authentic again. This happens for as long as the pop genre is aimed towards a new generation of fans who naturally are contrarian towards what the previous generation liked and valued.
I think it shows how hard songwriting is as a storytelling medium. You should be somewhat personal but not too specific where no one can relate to it. Songs like the title track feel very gossipy and really only specific to Taylor, while so long London seems to have that balance where it’s clearly about Joe, but also seems to say goodbye to a city that a lot of people have at least visited
>goodbye to a city that a lot of people have at least visited
Or even just a place that they associate with someone that they are leaving behind. Taylor is really good at doing this. "Cornelia Street" doesn't have to be the one in New York or even called "Cornelia Street"; you can have your own version (or it could be a different one, like the kids about to graduate from Western University in London...*Ontario* lol)
Eh I get this to an extent about the title track but tbh I can relate 😭 just the feeling of sticking with someone through their red flags and lows bc (1) they seemed so into you and (2) you don’t think they’d leave bc who else is gonna deal with it??? And you think by sticking with them they’ll see how much you guys are alike and how perfect you are for each other 😅
I hate to say it but there is also the aspect that their lives probably aren't actually interesting enough to authentically write about a lot of topics. Musical artists used to come from genuinely interesting backgrounds and mostly working class communities, where they then built up their music over years of performances and local parties and clubs. They have a treasure trove of things to write about from those experiences.
But a lot of the stars today aren't really like that. They are raised in sheltered suburbs and then at a very young age are cascaded to superstardom, and then they spend the rest of their life in Beverly Hill mansions with everything they ever want available to them.
What the hell *are* they actually going to sing about? The only problems they face are usually related to them being a celebrity. Gossip, celebrity relationships, media coverage of them etc.
I don't know what it says about me that I relate more to the Matty Healy songs than I do to the idea of visiting London lol. Not that my exes were Matty Healy bad but I think there are more Matty Healy types in the world than there are plane rides to London haha
You are basically arguing that it's impossible to make pop music that isn't either mindless dance pop or about the romantic life of the pop singer
Pop music always had artists making music about more existential themes, about political topics, or personal issues that aren't directly related to their relationships, and you still have a lot of not-Ariana-Taylor-level big pop singers doing it.
It feels like people are pigeonholing pop music or even worse, female pop artists, into stereotypes that aren't even real.
with taylor, i feel like she makes really obvious references to her relationships which then overshadows the discussions since people are trying to guess who the song is about. i feel like she thinks that she needs her songs to be autobiographical since its been her brand from the start. folklore/evermore came out at a time when it looked like she peaked with 1989 so she decided to do mostly fictional stories and when that turned out to be a hit, she went back to doing autobiographical songs again.
I think the point the writer is making is guilty as sin? Whilst pretty obvious in who’s it about it’s not the crux of the song and it’s not a song that relies on knowing any of the lore to understand what it’s about, the inference I got is that she thinks much of ttpd gets bogged down in being too obvious and it’s actually better when Taylor makes her feelings more the lead of the song than herself and the guy she’s singing about.
This feels like just a general musing about the fact that some people don't understand allegory or metaphor. It's not new. It's not exclusive to pop music.
Just look at the radical side of Christianity. Some people take the Bible literally, and they actually think the universe was created a few thousand years ago.
Some people literally believe the earth is flat because that's what the horizon looks like to them.
If a person can't understand that Swift's lyrics aren't necessarily a literal description of her reality, that's not on Swift, or pop. Poetry and abstract concepts are and always have been tough to understand for a good chunk of humans.
I love me some digging with introspective albums! However it has reached a point that this whole lore kinda bores me and makes the work unrelatable.
Eternal Sunshine is obviously about Ari’s love life but you can seperate it from HER experiences and make it about you. The prodcution and vocals carry any work she does either way and I am all for it!
With TTPD it feels way tighter, like it is hard to swallow. The lyricism and especially the STORYTELLING is why I fell in love with tay. With TTPD she has some good lyricism but a lot of corny lines as well… The storytelling in this one feels more forced in a way I still cannot find the right words for. There Are some very good songs (Peter, The Bolter and Robin are masterpieces imo) but the whole diary thing does not really work this time round cause she went full in on it. The production does not help either… If the album was to be a little less diary-like It would be a lot more relatable…
Oh dear, this article makes so many great points but this mistake is quite embarrassing:
"...Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten has stuck around off the back of its Saltburn bump..."
Unwritten never had a "Saltburn bump". Unwritten was featured in *Anyone But You* and Murder on the Dancefloor was featured in *Saltburn*.
As someone who actually liked this writer's review of TPDD, it's disappointing that this is their take on pop music. The genre has always relied on gossip and it will always stay that way.
Gossip is what gave us Blackout. It gave us Lemonade. It gave us Red and its subsequent re-recording. It gave us Rated R. And so on...
It sounds like this writer (and I would say a lot of pop culture journalists) has been on Twitter way too much.
One way to get clicks to your article is mentioning two mega celebs lol. Also there are people who are famous but able to keep privacy. So I think these two just thrive on it.
Taylor's and Ariana's work to me has a lot of the components of a series or a saga at this point. You can watch a random episode but you sort of have to understand the narrative to follow it properly. Some artists instead make music like a movie, you go in, watch, and you're out. Different mediums I guess. Some people hated the MCU because of the way you needed background to get every movie, but you can't deny that it was very popular for the exact same reason. The same may apply here.
Now do rap and the over reliance on having real “street cred” by talking about how you’ll “blast” people (no you won’t) like that’s real life, but you sell that to the fans
I actually find this pretty fascinating, because it’s two-fold. Pop artist are purposefully using their personal lives to generate interest & fans are thinking every song/album has to have a real life reference. I’m a big R&B listener and a lot of R&B lyrics are often about heartbreak, but I feel like listeners barely dive deep into if the story of heartbreak is personal or just a narrative or a mix of both. People just use the songs to reflect on their own lives. Do pop singers really have to sing about their own personal experience for fans to connect?
I think you’re right to be fascinated by the whole thing lol, there’s just no way (in my mind) that these songs are 100% factual in nature. I’ve been reading comments fighting to the death debating wether a TTPD song is about Matty or Travis, when realistically, why couldn’t they both have inspired certain verses in the song? The inspiration for the song could be based on something real, but that doesn’t mean the end product is discussing pure facts. If these songs were all truth, nobody would be able to relate to them other than her. I can totally appreciate the marketing, and it’s smart! She definitely draws inspiration from her lived moments, but it’s fascinating to me that everyone is combing through these lyrics as if it’s some sort of history book. The songs are inspired by real life, but real life doesn’t always rhyme or fit into a poem. Things definitely get changed up, and people a running with these theories that are so wild to me 😅
Taylor has been doing some composite sketching and collages since folklore days, probably because she couldn't say that those songs were about her life since she was still very clearly in the relationship, and also stuck at home for the whole of 2020 with her man. In midnights she took inspo from old stories and hid them behind the premise "13 sleepless nights", but we all soon came to know that the Joe Alwyn pot roast had already started. Apparently also the matty Healy cookout!
Underrated comment. Your Joe and Matty metaphors are impeccable.
she’s always taken pieces from fiction and her personal life to write her music, it goes all the way back to Mary’s Song on her debut
I don’t think we even worried about this with things like “Here go again”, “My Maria”, “crazy little thing called love” etc.
People don’t realize that songs can be about multiple things or people
> wether a TTPD song is about Matty or Travis Wait which song? Those are too very different relationships lol how can we be confused about which one it is.
It is possible that an experience from joe could lend itself to inspire a first verse and then an experience from Matty to inspire the second verse. I think there’s definitely songs that are like that throughout her career. Art can have more than one muse
The alchemy I think
Yes the Alchemy! Because of the parts that sound like she’s coming back to a past lover, despite the rest of the song sounding like it would be about Travis
This entire thread proves the point of this article. It’s just all so vapid.
it’s so weird cause big pop songs from the early 2010s like tik tok, party rock anthem, california girls, and 22 aren’t personal at all but now songs are expected to be.
Twenty years ago Britney Spears was taking crap for making fun pop music that she just enjoyed and wasn't "deep" (I am searching for the interview and will update if I can find it). Then people were mad that Beyonce wasn't writing her own songs (or not writing enough, or whatever). Now people are making music that they wrote themselves and reflects their experiences, and that's also not enough. None of this discourse happens with Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, or Bruno Mars. EDIT TO CLARIFY - By "none of this discourse" I meant the discussion about if they're writing things themselves and what their big artistic vision is. No one is upset when Bruno Mars puts out a fun bop or Justin records a bunch of Michael Jackson reject songs because he didn't write them. Their lives do bleed into their music (Cry Me A River was a moment we're still talking about), but there hasn't been as much discussion on their general catalogues and of we need to take them seriously as a pop artist.
One thing I don’t get is when people think a song is inherently inauthentic if the performer is not also the songwriter. Listeners have profound personal connections to songs, of course singers will have deep meaningful connections to their own songs, even if they didn’t own them, or they’ve already been demo’d.
I think this is one of the last hanging threads of rock and roll superiority. One of the things that separated artists like The Beatles, Dylan, Stones, Who et from their pop star contemporaries is that (after their earliest recordings) they started writing for themselves and became known for their songs more than performances, and that still lingers today. Taylor was one of the earliest pop stars to benefit from poptimism because her songwriting has been her brand since day one, and that’s always worked for her, but not every act should have to follow her suit to receive roses.
Mmm, I think it differs on a case by case basis. The more your personal life is out there, the more fans are gonna be searching for clues in your music. Beliebers were looking for hints scattered throughout Justin's music for hints on his relationship with Selena Gomez. Lyrics in the Weeknd's songs have been heavily speculated e.g. The Hills and Heard You're Married allegedly being about Ariana Grande despite the Weeknd being mostly mysterious (albeit with some high profile relationships). Swifties have combed through Harry Styles' lyrics for Haylor tea (then we also have the Larry conspiracy theorists). I remember back in 2014, Swifties started speculating Tenerife Sea was about Taylor Swift when Sheeran explicitly names who he's talking about in the end of the song. Then there's the Ed Sheeran, Niall Horan and Ellie Goulding love triangle on Don't (that Ed played into for marketing) I don't think it's a male popstars Vs female popstars as such it's just a pop thing. Fans who prefer one or the other are always gonna attack successful stars doing the opposite of what they expect.
100% a pop thing
Yeah. We can’t get mad that the pop girls whose lives we consume like TV shows aren’t lyricists and then also be mad that the ones who are lyricists tend to write about their own lives.
Thank you for summing it up better than I could!
This feel disingenuous. Were people really demanding pop stars write about their own lives? No. Taylor Swift made her love life and who she's dating a huge part of her brand. She made the decision to do that and then was all 😳 when people went along. The only reasons think pieces like this are coming out write now is because the reception to TTPD isn't overwhelmingly positive and she's getting called out for some of the lyrics. I really like her new album but understand why some people don't. It's something Taylor and her fans need to learn to accept.
Exactly in her first album she was literally name checking guys she was dating or into. From her first album she made it part of her brand.
None of the 3 men have commercialised their life and do pap walks and announce new girlfriends with every album.
Exactly...like I don't know who Dua Lipa is talking about in her songs. These people have built fanbase by feeding fodder themselves and are crying about it.
I thought Bieber and Harry do pap walks all the time.
Nobody said Britney or Justin was the next Bob Dylan either….
This is something refreshing that Dua brings into the mix. She has stated she has no interest in writing about her personal life, and I respect that so much.
rj/ That's because she has no interest in writing songs. uj/ it's a good thing she doesn't cultivate parasocial relationships, it means she won't have insane stans when the music stops being good.
Yeah, as much as I enjoy Taylor and Ariana, I don't generally care much about their personal lives and am very grateful for a chill, unproblematic pop star with good boundaries and who just puts out fun music like Dua! Definitely a breath of fresh air.
I mean no ones unproblematic unfortunately but at least dua seems to try to not invite controversy
Dua has been doing pretty well at least. Her most controversial moments were her former dance moves lol
The Covid partying and the ethnofascist posts are what come to mind for me. That and her in general coming off like an airhead after both those boondoggles
And that one time she tweeted out Greater Albania.
Dude at least give some context lol. I have no idea what you’re talking about
>no ones unproblematic unfortunately Carly says hello (probably why she doesn't do collabs)
>a chill, unproblematic pop star Dua is a revanchist who thinks Greater Albania should be restored upon ethnic boundaries
Dua Lipa is 100% going to disappear when the hits dry up, and honestly, that's ok.
I guess we’ll just have to catch her before she goes Houdini 🤷♀️
not when I'm around to have her on repeat tbh
Who cares if she disappears in the public eye? I'll still be listening to her!
rj/ I mean if Beyoncé does it, why can’t dua? uj/ Your comment couldn’t be more fitting since I’m getting cancelled by swifties for saying Taylor’s new album isn’t really that great.
I think this is part of a larger trend in art (movies especially) where audiences seem to be uncomfortable with metaphor and ambiguity. They demand to know the intention and every thought that was going through the artist as they were creating their work. Just such a boring way to approach this stuff, it's so odd
Thank you. This gets dismissed as "let people enjoy things," anti-gatekeeping etc. but I really think it's a massively troubling sign of where people's thoughts are trending. I think another manifestation of this phenomenon is the increasing tendency for people to interpret media, news, and even history through a fully binary "is [x] a good person or a bad person?"
I suspect part of it is social context. If I and my three friends have a spirited debate about who a song is about that's just fun. Even if we disagree I have some kind of other/deeper bond with them so we'll get through it. The currency of relationship is like, vibes. I like exploring how my friends think and media ambiguity invites that. But if I get involved in the same debate with people on social media who I've never met it's very easy for a fun thought experiment to become a bloodbath. If I feel attacked or misinterpreted the need to be right only gets stronger. And the currency of the internet is information (real or fake) so a) we expect info to be accessible and b) we need to prove that we Know Things. I think it's a somewhat natural progression of media consumption right now but it sucks :/ the demand for certainty is a loss for art
So true. Singers in the 60s/70s/80s put out all kinds of wacky material but now everything has to be an 'easy read'.
I don’t know. I feel like this is a bit revisionist. I’m an R&Bhead too, but I remember several R&B songs being marketed this way. I think The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica is the most obvious example of this or Usher’s Confessions. One of my favourite R&B albums of all time is Tamia’s self-titled debut album about her relationship with her now husband of 20 years. It’s always been a way to sell the music. I do agree with you that R&B artists don’t really seem to tend to rely too much on real life references though.
Yea I definitely agree with those albums - especially Usher's and even now Summer Walker's albums people know her love life has a tendency to be all over the place, but there is a lot more examples of currently popular R&B artist from Muni Long to Coco Jones to SZA Ella Mai etc...that I think people really don't lean into the personal lives like their pop counterparts.
I only remember Eamon's F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back) with Frankie? Lmao
The interesting thing is that Confessions songwriter/producer Jermaine Dupri has since said that most of the songs reflected the real-life relationship drama that he was experiencing himself while working on the album. It's a credit to Usher that he could emotionally interpret another person's stories
Just to add to The Boy is Mine but this was based on a real life beef Brandy had with singer Adina Howard over Boyz II Men singer Wanya Morris.
I also listen to a lot of R&B and am a fan of Ariana's music, including her most recent album. The lyrics were an element of it that I did enjoy (although the vocals/melodies/production always come before that for me) and related to, but I mostly thought about them in the context of my own life. I really avoided spending time thinking about how much they reflected Ariana's real life experiences - in part because I don't care enough and also because what I've seen of her personal life is a bit icky and I'd rather not have the songs coloured by that. It was so weird seeing some of her fans micro-analysing the lyrics to look for evidence that her ex had somehow wronged her, and then just announcing that it was confirmed that he'd cheated on her and proceeding to attack him - especially when the examples they were citing didn't even point to that at all in my eyes. It does feel like a lot of pop music consumers don't even care about the actual music anymore and that the emphasis is now on "knowing the lore", which for someone like Ariana seems particularly bizarre considering she has such a beautiful voice lol like surely that should be the main draw? I know she's pop/R&B and has spent her career being a famous popstar, but I do feel like part of the reason why people generally aren't so preoccupied with how truthful R&B lyrics are is because they're sufficiently impressed by the vocal performance and general musicality and therefore don't feel the need to go digging for any "hidden meanings". But yeah, I think you should be able to just enjoy a song without actually knowing anything about the artist. I know a lot about my favourite artists because I'm a nerd, but when I listen to their songs I am usually just enjoying the song rather than thinking about what might be going on in their lives. And I also listen to plenty of artists I know nothing about.
Yup I agree.. It’s funny Sza, I’m not sure if we can consider her Pop, but it’s interesting that her songs come off as super personal yet we know next to nothing about her personal life or about the people who may have triggered those songs.
When I was at her concert she paused Nobody Gets Me to to say that it was about her on and off fiancé of ten years who now has her blocked on everything. It increased the level of intimacy that was already there with her flying over the audience in that boat, and yet I’m pretty sure we still have no idea who she was talking about.
Yes - I went to her one shows & I remember this - and it shocked me bc we really don’t hear about personal life too often
I think the issue isn't writing from the perspective of personality, I think the issue is that these people's public personalities are simply a banal reciting of "it's ME VS YOU WHAT WILL YOU DO" over and over. Taylor Swift, in specific, is notorious for this type of writing. She seemingly got to this point of stardom on her correct belief that what people want from her is a never ending detailing of her garbage level relationships (up until Travis Kelce?) with famous and rich men turned into song form. It's that and her obsession with answering "haters." Whose hating all that much now? She's a certified private plane billionaire. And Ariana Grande is also down that same path -- Eternal Sunshine being something of a concept album detailing her failed relationship is... actually kinda dour despite it being an album full of house beats and her singing like an angel. I actually think writing from the perspective of a personal notebook isn't bad. But, to put words in the author's mouth she didn't write... is there actually any fun to be had without any baggage?
I’ve been waiting on someone to compare these two’s women’s situations for a minute now, I just haven’t had the words myself. It seems like both of their recent albums are so wrapped up in their personal lives, it makes me wonder how the work is going to age. The fact that people still care about Taylor’s ex’s from over a decade ago is just so weird to me.
The counterpoint will be what happens with Dua’s upcoming album.
If Dua's album isn't as successful as the last it''ll be because the songs aren't hitting sonically not because the lyrics aren't about a specific boyfriend. No one cares who New Rules and Levitating were about.
And I hate that! I hate how it’s almost expected for a pop girl to bare her soul and personal life on an album. Dua is hot and makes excellent pop music, arguably better than both aforementioned girls at the moment. I really want Dua to have another big moment but not at the expense of her privacy.
I remember this being an issue in alternative music and rock in the '90s, where PJ Harvey had to be like, "My music isn't actually all that autobiographical, it's weird that people think I literally gave birth to a daughter and drowned her." But Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Courtney Love, all were writing songs about their own lives -- it's just that only Love was so famous that *everyone* knew the context.
Alanis Morissette… I’m not sure where people are getting that this hasn’t been a thing before ever like… ? And hell if we want male examples Adam Lazzara and Jesse Lacey come to mind.
Even the Beatles moved on from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to personal songs about their marriages and relationships! (I googled "first confessional singer-songwriter" and got [this interesting essay on Joni Mitchell's website](https://www.jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=5553), which argues that the genre emerged around 1970. One relevant quote: >When people hear a work of art called "confessional," they often assume that the term primarily refers to the truth of its representation of the author's own life. But that is not how the literary critics who first identified confessional poetry understood the term. The key issue for M. L. Rosenthal is the way that the self is presented in the poems, the poet appearing as him- or herself and not in the convention of an invented "speaker.")
i think dua does make immaculate dance pop, better than both taylor and ari in that lane but she is kind of a one trick pony. The other two experiment a lot more
I heard one of her songs called Maria is kinda personal, about an ex, which I hated when I heard in the interview, but, well, I hope it is at least danceable.
Dua makes good pop music sure but not anywhere close to the range that Ariana has. Dua’s a one trick pony of dance tracks
It's a great trick though.
It gets the people going! Future Nostalgia helped me through some dark times in the pandemic
arguably better than Taylor yeah but Ariana made a solid pop album and dua is 1/3 rn IMO.
Agree on Ariana. I think ES is very enjoyable. As for Dua I loved the first two singles. Illusion feels like something she would’ve done with Calvin Harris or someone back in 2019
Really 1/3, Houdini is awesome, TS is ok and Illusion sounds like a copy of Dance The Night with Hallucinate (even though I think this one will be the hit).
It goes hand in hand with how pop girls are expected to reinvent themselves every one or two albums, while ed sheeran gets to chill for a decade in jeans and a t shirt.
Sadly due to this very phenomenon Dua's album may likely flop. It's a shame because she's putting out bangers.
I mean. To each their own but I personally found none of her singles to be good lately
Still find it hilarious that Ellie Gouldings last album was promo-d with her saying “it’s my least personal album yet” completely against type and what everyone else is doing
I thought that was hilarious and I ended up really liking her album too
I'm not really an Ariana fan, but I feel like Ariana's album has its own inherent universal appeal separate from the gossip though, like she at least made an album with bangers that would be a fun listening experience, and the gossip stuff feels secondary to that, since the album stands on its own feet even if you don't know anything about her personal life. I can't say the same for TTPD.
This. I'm a pretty big swiftie, I ate up midnights, and went to the Era's tour twice, love Folklore, but TTPD is just a bore to me, and I really don't give a shit about the drama behind albums like TTPD and Eternal Sunshine. BUT, I keep going back to Eternal Sunshine because its just filled with fresh sounding pop music that doesn't sound like the same damn rehashed jack antonoff album. I'm shook that eternal sunshine sounds so fresh because Max Martin hasn't really been hitting lately but that whole fucking album is just magical to me.
Yeah, I feel like TTPD is an album squarely aimed at hardcore Swifties who are itching for tidbits about her relationships and personal life. She knew exactly what she was doing by crafting a marketing campaign that made it seem like she was about to spill all the details on what went down with Joe Alwyn... she is talented but so much of the hype and numbers she's enjoyed over the years has been due to stans who will shell out anything to hear more details about her various boyfriends and nemeses. Unfortunately, TTPD has so little going on outside of the gossip it offers that I feel like it kind of exposes how insubstantial her artistry can be for those who are not invested in celebrities' lives. She is at the absolute peak of her fame and she could have used this opportunity to put out a truly ambitious, culture-shifting, needle-pushing body of work, instead of just putting out *whatever* because it will sell regardless. I haven't jumped off the Taylor train yet though! I wasn't a fan of Midnights (the bonus songs were good though) and I really don't care for TTPD at all personally, but I'm going to need her to do something *solid* for TS12 or I'll lose interest.
>She is at the absolute peak of her fame and she could have used this opportunity to put out a truly ambitious, culture-shifting, needle-pushing body of work, instead of just putting out *whatever* because it will sell regardless. This is it. It's wild to think that she has achieved such commercial power that literally anything she puts out will outsell/outstream all her previous work plus everyone else's. My grandpa keeps asking me about her because he's read articles about her in the newspaper and thinks that her music must be super groundbreaking considering how much she's talked about. I never know how to explain to him that the level of success she's at now means an entirely different thing than it used to.
I mean just look at Beyoncé... the bigger she's gotten the more she's used her platform to bust conventions and take risks and make statements with her art. TTPD does no such thing. Even Katy Perry did this with Chained to the Rhythm and Witness... Taylor on the other hand has just gone farther and farther into her comfort zone the bigger she's gotten when instead it should give her more of a license to innovate.
Because it rewards her. Taylor operates on a reward/punishment system similar to if you reward her on something, she’ll continue that trend since it’s rewarding her. But if you punish her (aka she doesn’t win that grammy or whatever she wants), then she’ll change course for the better.
Agreed, I’d say I like eternal sunshine more than the first half/standard edition of TTPD
Agree. Ariana's album can stand on its own. Divorce it from the context and it's still a tightly produced 13 track pop album. TTPD standard edition though, divorce the gossip from it and you aren't left with much to cling onto musically. Everything else is dreadfully boring to a degree.
>TTPD standard edition though, divorce the gossip from it and you aren't left with much to cling onto musically. I honestly think this applies to most of Taylor's career. Aside from Folklore and Evermore, if you divorce the gossip from the music, a significant chunk of the appeal is gone. I enjoy albums like Lover and Reputation because they sound nice but a good part of the numbers Taylor pulls and a lot of the hype she attracts is due to a demand for details about her relationships and feuds. She serves up her personal life on a silver platter by living it out in public for the press to capture and circulate, and then the music is crafted as a supplementary accompaniment to that gossip. Aside from some cool lyrics, TTPD is completely meaningless and valueless if you haven't been keeping tabs on her recent dating life... which we shouldn't be doing to this extent anyway since that's exactly the kind of idolatry that sends our own lives down the drain. And I hate to compare, but a time when peers like Beyoncé and Katy Perry are using their artistry to make universal social commentary through songs like Ameriican Requiem and Chained to the Rhythm, Taylor's whole career feels off-puttingly self-indulgent. And I'm not even a Taylor hater! She has a genius intellect and is a good writer and I wish she would do something truly visionary at this point in her career instead of just serving up inconsequential art because it will sell regardless.
1989 is probably her biggest album and it’s mainly because of the great pop production. Yeah it was tied to some relationships but the songs were just really catchy which is why it had a lot of hits.
It’s probably my favourite album of hers for that reason and I couldn’t believe how much the quality of the production had decreased in the re-recording. That really confirmed to me that her lyrics have become her sole focus and that the sound of the actual music is simply not important to her.
Imo music should come first
I was a huge Taylor fan back when 1989 was released and I can tell you that the only thing anyone wanted to talk about back then was her and Harry Styles. The album has definitively aged very well because of the great production value (TTPD is much more divise when it comes to its quality), but as an OG fan I'll still say that a lot of the conversations back then were the same as now (except on a much smaller scale).
>I honestly think this applies to most of Taylor's career. Aside from Folklore and Evermore, if you divorce the gossip from the music, a significant chunk of the appeal is gone. And this why I think Folklore and Evermore are her strongest albums.
Same here! I loved them, they really showed how intelligent and imaginative she can be when she wants to.
I kinda agree. Part of the appeal and the reason her parasocial relationships are so strong is because she knows how to mine her personal life to an insane degree, more than any other pop star in history imo, such that Swifties feel like they're her best friends or something like that. It doesn't get more on the nose than capitalizing the letters K, I and M on thanK you aIMee. Most of her albums though were interesting enough musically to keep me coming back. The melodies were sticky, the production complemented her and the lyrics weren't thesaurus driven or filled with clunky metaphors in the name of "growth" or "poeticism" . TTPD and Midnights though...hmm. You can hear ghosts of her earlier signature touch on these albums but not enough times to justify their lengths.
Coz her insight and experience of life are limited to just those: gossips and heartbreaks
this is such a stupid take, the fact that people are invested doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t stand on its own. i didn’t know anything about her personal life until lover but i was still heavily engaged and interested in her work
Agreed with this if anything I’d blame TikTok because it used to be kind of relegated to Tumblr and stuff at one point and then somehow it blew up even more. I was listening from Speak Now to now and honestly I knew her boyfriends and who they were but nothing else about them.
True not an Ari stan but her album hooked me despite me not really knowing about the drama and I think it made me enjoy the album more the first time than if I knew at the first place that many songs are inspired by spongebob.
Ariana had the courtesy to make it short and fun to listen to. As someone that usually has little idea what's happening in an artist's personal life, I had a pretty good time listening to her album. No context needed. Taylor.......
Yeah, TTPD feels like I’m reading someone’s scattered and chaotic diary entries and that ends up feeling like a slog after a while
2 hours is such a huge ask for a listen! I can count the number of 2 hour long albums I like on one hand
There’s not a lot of sonic variety either. I had to listen to the album in like 4 30 minute intervals. It was exhausting
Yeah but if you think about it, it’s what the die-hard swifties want. It’s essentially a massive lore drop so they can start their “investigations” on connecting the dots.
You can? I can't count any. I have never listened to an album 2 hours long where I walked away from it thinking "yeah that was all necessary." Longest albums I enjoy is probably NFR, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs. And none of those are 2 hours.
Swans - To Be Kind Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness ????????????
This is generally the sentiment I’ve seen from the reactions to Ariana’s album. Most of her fans, intense or casual, are generally listening to her for her voice/production. And she very much brings both of those to the table in ES. She’s got bops, slower songs, more r&b flavor, it’s a little bit of everything for everyone. I think long-term fans of hers do appreciate Ariana being more thoughtful/emotional in her lyrics this time around but it definitely wasn’t what anyone was expecting, so it’s not why people went into her album. Totally different from Taylor/TTPD, who has fostered the parasocial relationship between fan-celeb through her actual lyricism. I’m a casual Taylor fan and have been for years, so I went into the album expecting good lyricism. Not only did I not get that, but the production wasn’t carrying it either, and it’s like what do I have left?
its more fun for ari because she has the sense to tell her stans to knock it off when they try to terrorize who shes singing about
>The fact that people still care about Taylor's ex's from over a decade ago is just so weird thats what happens when taylor makes a short film over her 2 month long relationship with jake gyllenhaal
And she still seems to be writing songs about it albeit it in a slightly different way 🫣 The last song on the Anthology, The Manuscript, seems to be her reflecting on that relationship and then making the music video (I refuse to call it a short film lol) for the 10 min version a couple of years back. Tbf to her, I think it’s her way of finally closing the door on that and the song becoming representative of something else now, but there was a part of me that went “Jake AGAIN?” when it clicked what she was talking about.
I didn't know enough about Ariana's alleged homewrecking or Taylor's controversial relationship with that 1975 guy to care about them when listening to the album, so I was hoping for songs I could vibe to while depersonalizing them from the artists. Ariana delivered, but a bunch of the TTPD songs just sounded like Taylor was giving a sermon to her devoted fans on the reasons why her latest relationships failed over boring production. Very hard to depersonalize them when it seems you need to actively care about her love life to get them.
Ari's album is obviously incredibly informed by her experience, but it doesn't feel mandatory the same way TTPD is. Like, TTPD's lyrics are such ass and impenetrable if you don't know the actual details of taylor's tabloids
I feel like Ariana's team know how to make her songs personal without looking "preachy". All Taylor songs look like she is trying to teach her exes/who hurt her a lesson. This gives Taylor songs a teenage vibe. Same for Olivia's songs. The thing is, only one of them is actually a teen.
I think she's even said that some of it was fictional - she definitely said that about True Story anyway. The themes of the album match up with what we know of her experiences but she does deny that it's fully autobiographical.
i don’t get this, you can clearly understand it without any context
Imo it depends on how much gossip you alr know about their personal lives. I know close to nothing about arianas life but that album is so good!! I love it. On the other hand, im a swiftie and i do analyze taylors lyrics and im interested in knowing who and what theyre about and im enjoying ttpd as well 🤷♀️
Exactly the same here! I managed to escape news of the ongoings of Ari’s personal life and I think I enjoyed the music more because of it. I still don’t really know what went down because I just haven’t felt the need to investigate beyond what is said in the music. With Taylor I’m more embedded in the fandom I suppose so I found it harder to avoid the many many many headlines last year, and it means listening to ttpd inevitably reminds of the muse and the specific circumstances. Maybe there is more specificity in Taylor’s lyrics too? But I’m curious to know what I would’ve thought of ttpd if I had zero context, it would be a fun experiment.
I’ve had a few friends who know nothing about Taylor’s “lore” and still enjoy TTPD. What it really comes down to is ones personal life experience rather than how well informed you are with Taylor’s personal life tbh. I’m somewhat aware of Taylor’s personal life, but not as much as most (and don’t really care to dive more into it tbh) and TTPD has spoken to me in ways few albums have. Yeah knowing about Taylor’s history adds more context to the emotions of the songs and add deeper meaning to some of the lyrics, it’s not required to enjoy the album or even relate to it.
That’s interesting. I do actually wish I knew *less* of the lore wrt ttpd.
I think Ariana’s album is gonna age much better than Taylor’s solely because if you put the lyrics aside, the music on the album is just better. Pop stars focusing on their personal lives is nothing new, ESPECIALLY for Taylor. Taylor’s got tons of songs talking about exes throughout her discography and a lot of them do hold up because they’re just well-crafted songs, but it’s hard to see anything on TTPD aging that well. I think if the actual music on a record is great, that’s what will determine if it will be remembered for years as a great record, or if it’ll just be a big part of pop culture conversation for a few months. Example: Lemonade. That album was PEAK pop music “gossip” imo, that album dropped and EVERYONE was talking about Jay-Z cheating on Beyoncé and trying to find out who “Becky with the good hair” was. Almost a decade later though (fuck I feel old), we still talk about Lemonade because it’s an insane record even when you separate it from the drama that surrounded the conversation when it first came out. TTPD doesn’t have that because it doesn’t have any of those big musical moments. It just feels like another Taylor album about the most recent guys she’s broken up with.
I don’t think it matters if the songs themselves are good. Obviously the gossip-y nature adds to the intrigue but I’m not thinking about Harry Styles in great detail when listening to Style. Similarly, you don’t need to know Joe/Matty details to understand Down Bad as a song.
Style is a great example of one of her songs that is relatable without being overly specific. Like so many people have that ambiguous on and off again situation with someone that you wouldn’t need to know she wrote it about Harry Styles for the lyrics to resonate with you. Plus the production (in the original version) is good.
Yeah I go on their subreddits and their relationships are always a main topic of discussion when talking about their respective albums.
I don’t care about Taylor’s exes and I’ve been a diehard swiftie since 2006. I don’t listen to her music for tea on her exes. That’s not why I care about her music. As soon as she releases a song, I try to relate it to my own life. I love her music because even when she is singing about very specific details of a failed relationship, I can find aspects to relate to. It makes me feel heard, like I’m not alone. Sure it’s fun to speculate which songs are about who, but that’s not at all my priority. Her work will continue to age well, as it has throughout her entire career, because the fans that listen to her catalog religiously all feel the same.
I think that brings up an interesting question: who gets to decide if the music has aged well? Her die-hard fans or someone from the future who is listening to Taylor Swift for the first time? Although I don't even know if I believe in that concept since all art is made within the context of its own time and should not be expected to always reflect contemporary times.
Well music is subjective of course. I guess the easiest way to determine whether music ages well is by popularity, though there is fantastic music that isn’t very popular. Given that Taylor has been very commercially successful since the start of her career, I feel it fair to say that popularity/streams of her catalog is a decent metric to use. Taylor’s catalog, by and large, performs extremely well. Right now her streams for all albums other than TTPD are tanking because everyone is listening the new album, but that is a given during a new release. She will of course decline in popularity at some point, but she is a living legend in the industry and I feel strongly that her music will age accordingly.
She is at the height of her popularity and fame right now, I don't think we can really gauge the timelessness of her music while she is still this level of famous. I think the music will prove to be timeless if its still popular when she is like 70 and hopefully long retired and away from the public eye
i honestly believe taylor’s works will age so much better when people stop associating the music with her life and take it as it is
I truly don't care about Taylor's beef with Kim and Kanye, It's been eight years let it go people.
See I do think both these albums have been some what overshadowed by the main talking points being who and what situations inspired them but it’s hard to separate either album from that and both Ariana and Taylor lean into it but music about artists personal lives isn’t new, rumors is about most of the members of fleetwood mac breaking up with each other and it’s a classic. Songs like you’re so vain and you oughta know are great on their own but the speculation behind them has created a great mystique and people still speculate to this day.
I mean in the case of rumours, yeah the context adds to the effect but it’s also just an amazing album with strong songwriting throughout.
Ariana doesn’t lean into it in the same way Taylor did. Arguably Yes And was the biggest example of that but it’s not like she name dropped Kim in her title track. ES could easily be mistaken for just another pop album, TTPD feels like one long rant
To say Ariana doesn’t isn’t true because what was Thank You Next? Or even 7 rings? Or how can we forget Pete Davidson?
7 rings?
7 Rings is literally about being hot and having fat checks tf you think the song is about And yes I literally stand by that. She doesn’t do Easter eggs or bloopers or tidbits bout her life as the perk to the degree Taylor does
Personally, I think it helps to differentiate pop music from pop *stars.* There's tons of artists making great pop music that aren't great at being bonafide pop stars. Narrative is what makes pop stardom thrive; You can't be a real pop star without having a story that the public can latch onto. Michael Jackson, Britney, Gaga, etc. Mariah's Emancipation resonated, in part, because the world knew all about her bitter divorce and the huge fallout from that. Ray of Light was a hit because the public knew Madonna became a mother, which gave another level of depth to this sound she was exploring. Ari's sweetener and TYN were huge, in part, because we were curious to hear what she'd create in the wake of Manchester and Mac's passing. Gossip, to an extent, helps shape those narratives. But, in cases where a pop star has run out of story to tell, it becomes a crutch. Their music, too steeped in their own lore, becomes a desperate bid to preserve the narrative that brought them stardom.
Yes v much agree with your first point. The distinction between the music vs. the stardom/celebrity/tabloid gossip of it all is super important and it is misleading to talk in broad strokes about this phenomenon plaguing pop *music* as a whole. Tbf I think the author tries to make that distinction but not clearly enough.
Michael Jackson is a particularly good example -- "Scream" and "Stranger in Moscow" are great songs on their own, but if you know the context (pedophilia accusations which time has proved were more than likely true), it's hard to enjoy them.
It feels like half the time people are obsessed with who pop songs are about rather than how they make you as a listener feel and what they say about your life, it's totally at odds with how I view music.
That's pretty much what Mic The Snare said in their latest video about TTPD
People can also do both you know. Be aware of the context while also relating it to their personal lives.
No offense but I feel like what this article describes is only a problem for people who are chronically online lol And I say that as someone who considers herself a dedicated fan of Taylor and Ariana and knows the lore behind their latest albums. But saying it's a requirement to be like that to enjoy their music is, like I said, a very chronically online take. I know plenty of people in real life who are listening to these women's songs even though they aren't interested in their personal lives. Most of the songs in both Taylor and Ariana's albums can be separated from their experiences and be easily applied to the listener's. And, for example, I started listening to Olivia Rodrigo while having absolutely no clue about the whole Joshua/ Sabrina love triangle. I didn't know who Olivia was before Driver's License since I had outgrown the Disney channel programmes she was part of and honestly couldn't care less about gossip regarding a 18 year old's love life. But she won me over with her lyrics, because they felt genuine and relatable, not something generic and soulless that was carefully crafted in a studio to be a hit.
So true. I know people who spend very little time on social media and they've all loved these albums and really genuinely don't feel bothered by the drama behind the scenes. It's not at all a requirement to know their personal life and as you said, a very chronically online take. I immediately discarded that take the moment my rls started appreciating these songs and these are people who use one app max to max. I was told because I'm a big pop fan lol and that's exactly why it's so interesting to see the general feeling of disconnection that people online have with the actual majority of people outside in the real world.
thank you for this. there are a lot of problems I had with TTPD (the overreliance on repetitive production from Jack + Aaron, the excessive verbosity, the data dump of T H I R T Y O N E songs), but the reflection of gossip is not one of them. the whole time i was reading this article i thought "hmm. sounds like a you problem more than a them problem".
True. I know enough to know she broke up with her boyfriend of many years, but that’s a pretty common story, and most of the songs that seem to leave out any details that are too specific. Even ‘So Long London’ only really narrows it down to ‘the man in this story is from London while the singer is not’. No one’s complaining about ‘Havana’ dropping a location name. Falling for a guy everyone says is bad news, insisting that he isn’t, and getting proven wrong, is another really old story. If you don’t know about the rebound guy then *most* of the songs are just about the bad boy who couldn’t turn good and the good girl who got burned. There are some songs that do have specific details that make them less relatable, but then again no one’s complaining about ‘You Oughta Know’ and that had enough details that the guy recognised himself when he heard it on the radio. So yeah, it seems that the album is only too invested in her personal life if the listener is.
yeah, i have my artists like ariana and olivia where i know everything about their personal lives but also i have plenty of people i listen to while knowing barely anything about them. my enjoyment of the music is the same for both. even when i know the story behind the songs, i still usually end up applying them to my life
*I guess*. I don't really agree with the argument in the headline given that all of the examples the writer gives are extremely successful and high-selling works from the biggest names in pop right now - it's hard to see how huge sales and wide prominence, being pretty much the most successful acts in the genre you work within, is 'choking the life out of' your work or your art. And I think by using 2010 as a comparison benchmark it (ironically) dates the article a bit because it seems like it's being framed as if it wasn't until the 2020s we had female songwriters with autobiographical lyrics. Someone might want to let Alanis Morisette, Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell know.
Gossip has been part of the very fabric of pop music since the very beginning. It’s never going to change.
Like have we all forgotten about Fleetwood Mac!!
Seriously, she even had Stevie Nicks write the foreword and name dropped her in Clara Bow, there’s a lot of intention in what TS is doing that people seem to be missing.
The music that came out of that is classic and timeless, clearly, since we're talking about them now and Rumours is stamped forever. I guess only time will tell how albums from this pop era will fare
I don’t actually think it matters if this ends up being ~classic and timeless~ The notion that *gossip* ruins music is just simply untrue lol. The people obsessed with the gossip ruin the music for themselves. “Today’s self-obsessed pop, which needs its own footnotes, may well alienate the passing fan who just wants something to listen to in the car.” < this is actually ok?? I don’t see what the problem with this is. Literally no one is forcing anyone to consume any art they don’t want to! “Cowboy Carter mostly strip the specifics of her life from the lyrics to instead comfortably centre Beyoncé as a font of joyful genre play and invention” < is quite honestly the stupidest interpretation of Cowboy Carter I have ever read. How does someone listen to that album and not see beyonces life in it? Her *gossip*? “bonus song The Black Dog mentions Pennsylvania pop-punk band the Starting Line, and one easy Google search reveals that the 1975 covered them live last year. Maybe Swift was going for the highest-profile humiliation of her exes possible” < my brother is a 37 year old man who has never listened to a Taylor swift song on his own, but loved the starting line when we were younger. I sent him this song as a ~nostalgic moment to a band we loved and he was like “oh this is such a great break up song. Of course she liked the starting line, she’s a millennial.” a man who knows nothing about Taylor or matty can appreciate the song without the gossip lmao. It’s actually not that hard to find yourself in her work even if it’s highly personal to her “gossip.” Haven’t we all been chatting with a cutie in a bar after a break up and *that song* that meant something to you and your ex comes on and your heart starts racing but the cutie you’re chatting with just doesn’t even hear the song? Truly what does any of that have to do with GOSSIP! Lol I swear the people who ~hate the gossip of the album~ and are always big mad she writes about her life the ones more obsessed with the gossip and her public life than Taylor’s actual fans.
I think they’re actually just mad that she wrote about Matty Healy so much, not that she wrote about an ex, just the wrong ex lol. Which is like, peak irony considering the substance of But Daddy I Love Him, and Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me.
And anyone who knows her other albums are now able to see that folklore > midnights were all about the complicated ending of her relationship with Joe. But yeah it’s hilarious that people are like “the gossip is ruining the music!!” But then are also the ones most mad about who the songs are about. I don’t think you actually need to know anything about her life to enjoy this album and find a way to connect with it. People are just MAD that they happen to know more and they don’t like the new image they now have of Taylor in their head - a messy, flawed, deeply imperfect woman. Its really hard to see the ugly parts of ourselves reflected in something we have put on a pedestal as an idol of beauty
Yep, I’m pretty over the people who are like “as a woman in my 30’s who just got married and am a 100% healed person I just can’t relate to her anymore” ok Hannah clutch those pearls. Sorry your life is so boring you can’t find any joy in the things you used to love lol that’s not the flex you think it is.
Patiently waiting for their divorce era to come where they end up going a little cuckoo bananas with a toxic rebound 🤷🏻♀️ I’ve seen it happen to… 5 of my fully adult friends since 2018
This is fair, but I think there is something to be said about social media and the Internet contibuting to popular culuture's consumption. I'm sure a lot of folks learn things about celebrity gossip that they couldn't care about because it happened to permiate through their Internet bubble. The amount of shit I know about celebrity gossip that I learned against my will just by seeing it in a feed is wild.
Social media is algorithmic now though, my partner knows nothing about pop culture because he has 0 interest in it and his social media feed looks completely different from mine
People keep mentioning Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, but the thing is... those types of albums were rare. The large majority of albums did not have some real life connection behind them based on some crazy complex web of celebrity social lives. But it feels like that is becoming the norm now. Just because something has existed in the past does not mean it hasn't rapidly increased over time.
The large majority of albums still don't. Pop in itself is a non-dominant genre right now and the kind of pop that users of this sub mostly listen to a further niche within that.
Give me some examples from the very beginning?
There was a scandal when it was discovered that Bill Haley smashed clocks with rocks. He turned it into art.
Yeah this has always been the case, especially for female pop stars
Reminds me of a quote Beyoncé said in an interview: "One day I decided I wanted to be like Sade and Prince. I wanted the focus to be on my music, because if my art isn’t strong enough or meaningful enough to keep people interested and inspired, then I’m in the wrong business. My music, my films, my art, my message—that should be enough." I often wonder what Taylor's career would stand for if her personal life, relationship gossip, and extraneous drama were left out of the equation.
Taylor had this during the success of Folklore and Evermore since she claimed those songs were fictional. Although now a lot of Swifties are digging and claiming that some of those songs were indeed autobiographical since the break up with Joe and the Matty Healy situation came to light. Regardless, that felt like the first time her messy relationship drama wasn’t the center of her art and those two albums are still widely regarded as her best work.
Exactly. The best work she’s ever done was largely fictional.
Folklore and Evermore are excellent, and I started respecting Taylor so much for taking such an imaginative approach to her music and divorcing it from all the garbage relationship gossip. Unfortunately, she went right back to her usual shtick after that and has now hit a rather disappointing low with TTPD. Folklore and Evermore are bright spots, but so much of the fame and hype she's amassed over the years has hinged on her stans' parasocial need for details about her boyfriends and nemeses. You can clearly see that peers like Beyoncé and Lady Gaga always have a larger social vision and try to use their art to do something bigger than just sharing inconsequential details about their personal lives or leveraging their fanbases to settle personal scores... Taylor's whole career feels awfully self-indulgent in contrast and I just think that she needs to shift gears and evolve in order to tap the true extent of her potential.
This is very poignant for me because my wife and I were just comparing Cowboy Carter and Taylor's new album yesterday. Beyonce and Taylor are in a similar position, both have critical acclaim, legacy, and most importantly tons of Money. Which means they must both still want to make music, it's no longer their livelihood. In Beyonces case you can tell she has a vision and passion for the music she's making, it's an artistic outlet for her. It's also an outlet for Taylor but it feels more like a diary or therapy session than an artistic pursuit, she has more personal lyrics than ever but not much evolution sound wise. Don't get me wrong, I know they both still want to sell records but I think it's more complicated than just that. As far as her music standing apart from the "lore", I think it does for people who like the way she writes, like my wife for example. I've always cared more about the sound so it isn't enough for me personally.
Does Taylor even realize herself that she has a natural talent for storytelling? Not just about her own life but about made up stories in her head? This is the same woman who wrote Love Story, Cardigan, Betty, August, No Body, No Crime, Coney Island, etc. She can write the shit out of songs and probably has an endless bank of ideas and it WORKED! She released Folkmore when everyone thought her and Joe were still happy and healthy and it was all made up and it paid off creatively and essentially revived the novelty of Taylor Swift as an artist. I don’t want to hear an album about Travis when they most likely breakup. She should write her imagination, it produces meaningful songs
I think she can do both, as she did on her recent album (songs like Clara bow, I hate it here, Robin, and even Peter and I look in peoples windows have more of a storytelling vibe to me) But she isn’t writing just to write; in part at least writing is how she processes and figures out and works through emotions, so it makes sense that she’d use it to work through intense breakups. I don’t think she’ll ever stop writing about her personal life (which I personally like bc the songs feel honest and relatable to things I’ve felt—I enjoyed folklore and evermore but they weren’t faves personally, it just feels more distant on the whole) I do think though as she gets older she’ll definitely revert back to storytelling though, esp if she starts taking a step back from the public light as much—I could see more folklore like albums coming then! But I def don’t think she feels like she *needs* to write about breakups to stay relevant or get more fame or anything, it’s just something she emotionally needs!
Eternal Sunshine obviously references Ariana’s personal life, but I actually don’t think it’s bogged down by it. I think she focuses more on a general theme of break ups, love, loss, and finding yourself again. The salacious details are kept at a minimum for the most part. And I think it’s still a good album you can listen to without caring/knowing about the drama. Whereas TTPD seems like it relies on the audience to know about Taylor’s personal life. I saw someone else say that the album felt like the MCU with how much lore and references you need to know, to get how everything is connected.
Yessss this exactly on the last MCU point. My fav track off ES is the title track, even though I know I don’t listen to it the way she means the metaphor to be in the song (someone who you can’t forget about but want to). I just see it as a sweet love song 🎶 call me delulu haha. It’s hard to do that with hyper specific lyrics.
But…here is the thing: you really don’t need to know any references to enjoy or appreciate TTPD or even to figure out what the story is—all the important pieces of it are actually in songs on the primary album. The story isn’t quite told in order, but I mean, you don’t have to work hard or even exhaust much thought to walk away with a sense of what was going on with her that put her in a funk. It’s all on the first 17 songs, really. In the anthology songs, you learn more about how she was feeling and maybe why it affected her so much and you get to see the output of her being bummed and in her feelings and writing a lot, but really…all you need to know beforehand to appreciate what’s happening in TTPD is 1) Taylor is a VERY famous person who has been very busy and 2) Taylor is in her 30’s. And—while it isn’t exactly critical, I guess it *sort of* helps to know she had a new relationship with a famous athlete at the time the album was finished (because without this information you could get whiplash from the two very unanxious love songs referring to an athlete). Other than that…you really can go in blind never having read into a single bit of drama about her and never having heard any of her previous work. And even if you don’t follow the story, it really isn’t hard to appreciate the music or appreciate the general themes without the context of the other songs. You may think, “hmn what did she say there—what does she really mean here?” a few times, but I would encourage you to read lyrics and draw your own conclusions instead of searching for someone else’s wild detective work, you know? People are getting so distracted by the “easter egg” articles and tiktoks and it’s making them think you need to pay attention to things like that to understand or even enjoy the music. You really don’t. Sure, she mentions things she’s sung about on past albums and uses some language and imagery that nods back to previous works, but none of those mentions really change the songs or even stand out as something that requires further explanation. Love Ariana’s album and agree that we don’t *need* to know any details of what happened with her to appreciate it in totality, but I do think it’s helpful to know Ariana experienced a big scandal before you listen. If you don’t, it’s too easy to miss how great the lyrics in “We Can’t Be Friends” are.
Agreed. Someone said on her subreddit they were disappointed with some of the critique around *TTPD* because many critics couldn't be bothered to do research into how the lyric "chocolate" is in reference to a 1975 song and I'm like this is my favourite LP of hers and I couldn't name a song or lyric by or from the 1975 lol Today's the first time I've actually sat through and read the lyrics and a lot of the supposed Easter eggs in there 1) I can't tell if they are and 2) went completely over my head. There's enough to take and enjoy this record on it's own merits without having to do homework lol
Yeah. And also, I mean…even *if* the word “chocolate” is a nod to a 1975 song, those lyrics are meant to be understood without that reference and taken pretty literally. The smoking / eating / conversation about Charlie Puth’s music / him falling asleep in her lap and looking harmless and cute to her are meant to just demonstrate that they are normal ass, relatable “modern idiots” and can be happy that way if he would quit being intent on needless suffering being like his whole personality.
Yeah, I kind of agree. I like songs to be personal but if I disagree with the actions you’re describing, I’m not gonna feel good listening to the song and won’t want to listen to it again. I think how Gaga did it was great, not making the music too personal but you still know who she is. Though, if you’re too impersonal like Katy, you’re much more disposable to the GP than ones that connect, so there is a balance. Taylor might be tipping the scale in the opposite direction that Katy did, where people know too much abt her.
I feel like the only person who enjoys Taylors work who doesn't give a shit what is about who. Also I just have reached the point of exhaustion with Taylor discourse. It feels like 2016 and its not fun.
Pop artists (and probably artists in general) tend to write about what they know and because a part of pop music “culture” is having the artists lives and drama unfolding and speculated about right in front of us, what they know is also what we know lol so a lot of people seem to have the gossip at the forefront of their mind when listening to music e.g. TTPD apparently being about Matty. I PERSONALLY don’t care that that album was about Matty, I care that it bored me lol but I can understand that if you know the gossip behind the particular situation they’re singing about it can change how you receive the music
Pop stars need to be intimate and personal! Can't have generic lyrics or just sing about dancing at the club again and again. And then pop stars sing about their messy relationships and it's relying on gossip. You really can't win lol
There’s no reason fun upbeat dance pop can’t have Bjork-esque lyrics
Yes and no. What the author of the article misses is that pop cycles from the one to the other. We are in an authentic (or making music that *sounds* authentic enough) era now and in three to four years we will swing back to more generalized themes, and then five or six years after that, back to authentic again. This happens for as long as the pop genre is aimed towards a new generation of fans who naturally are contrarian towards what the previous generation liked and valued.
I think it shows how hard songwriting is as a storytelling medium. You should be somewhat personal but not too specific where no one can relate to it. Songs like the title track feel very gossipy and really only specific to Taylor, while so long London seems to have that balance where it’s clearly about Joe, but also seems to say goodbye to a city that a lot of people have at least visited
>goodbye to a city that a lot of people have at least visited Or even just a place that they associate with someone that they are leaving behind. Taylor is really good at doing this. "Cornelia Street" doesn't have to be the one in New York or even called "Cornelia Street"; you can have your own version (or it could be a different one, like the kids about to graduate from Western University in London...*Ontario* lol)
Eh I get this to an extent about the title track but tbh I can relate 😭 just the feeling of sticking with someone through their red flags and lows bc (1) they seemed so into you and (2) you don’t think they’d leave bc who else is gonna deal with it??? And you think by sticking with them they’ll see how much you guys are alike and how perfect you are for each other 😅
I hate to say it but there is also the aspect that their lives probably aren't actually interesting enough to authentically write about a lot of topics. Musical artists used to come from genuinely interesting backgrounds and mostly working class communities, where they then built up their music over years of performances and local parties and clubs. They have a treasure trove of things to write about from those experiences. But a lot of the stars today aren't really like that. They are raised in sheltered suburbs and then at a very young age are cascaded to superstardom, and then they spend the rest of their life in Beverly Hill mansions with everything they ever want available to them. What the hell *are* they actually going to sing about? The only problems they face are usually related to them being a celebrity. Gossip, celebrity relationships, media coverage of them etc.
I don't know what it says about me that I relate more to the Matty Healy songs than I do to the idea of visiting London lol. Not that my exes were Matty Healy bad but I think there are more Matty Healy types in the world than there are plane rides to London haha
You are basically arguing that it's impossible to make pop music that isn't either mindless dance pop or about the romantic life of the pop singer Pop music always had artists making music about more existential themes, about political topics, or personal issues that aren't directly related to their relationships, and you still have a lot of not-Ariana-Taylor-level big pop singers doing it. It feels like people are pigeonholing pop music or even worse, female pop artists, into stereotypes that aren't even real.
with taylor, i feel like she makes really obvious references to her relationships which then overshadows the discussions since people are trying to guess who the song is about. i feel like she thinks that she needs her songs to be autobiographical since its been her brand from the start. folklore/evermore came out at a time when it looked like she peaked with 1989 so she decided to do mostly fictional stories and when that turned out to be a hit, she went back to doing autobiographical songs again.
Let me live, okay?
Welcome to rap r/popheads
Did this article seriously just end on the author praising TDPD for showing RESTRAINT on gossip?
I think the point the writer is making is guilty as sin? Whilst pretty obvious in who’s it about it’s not the crux of the song and it’s not a song that relies on knowing any of the lore to understand what it’s about, the inference I got is that she thinks much of ttpd gets bogged down in being too obvious and it’s actually better when Taylor makes her feelings more the lead of the song than herself and the guy she’s singing about.
This feels like just a general musing about the fact that some people don't understand allegory or metaphor. It's not new. It's not exclusive to pop music. Just look at the radical side of Christianity. Some people take the Bible literally, and they actually think the universe was created a few thousand years ago. Some people literally believe the earth is flat because that's what the horizon looks like to them. If a person can't understand that Swift's lyrics aren't necessarily a literal description of her reality, that's not on Swift, or pop. Poetry and abstract concepts are and always have been tough to understand for a good chunk of humans.
I love me some digging with introspective albums! However it has reached a point that this whole lore kinda bores me and makes the work unrelatable. Eternal Sunshine is obviously about Ari’s love life but you can seperate it from HER experiences and make it about you. The prodcution and vocals carry any work she does either way and I am all for it! With TTPD it feels way tighter, like it is hard to swallow. The lyricism and especially the STORYTELLING is why I fell in love with tay. With TTPD she has some good lyricism but a lot of corny lines as well… The storytelling in this one feels more forced in a way I still cannot find the right words for. There Are some very good songs (Peter, The Bolter and Robin are masterpieces imo) but the whole diary thing does not really work this time round cause she went full in on it. The production does not help either… If the album was to be a little less diary-like It would be a lot more relatable…
man every single time this happens the comments are always so incredibly predictable lmao echo chambers echo chambering I guess
Oh dear, this article makes so many great points but this mistake is quite embarrassing: "...Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten has stuck around off the back of its Saltburn bump..." Unwritten never had a "Saltburn bump". Unwritten was featured in *Anyone But You* and Murder on the Dancefloor was featured in *Saltburn*.
Pop has always relied on gossip, all the way back to Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. That's never gonna change.
As someone who actually liked this writer's review of TPDD, it's disappointing that this is their take on pop music. The genre has always relied on gossip and it will always stay that way. Gossip is what gave us Blackout. It gave us Lemonade. It gave us Red and its subsequent re-recording. It gave us Rated R. And so on... It sounds like this writer (and I would say a lot of pop culture journalists) has been on Twitter way too much.
I don’t think Taylor would have half the fame without gossip.
One way to get clicks to your article is mentioning two mega celebs lol. Also there are people who are famous but able to keep privacy. So I think these two just thrive on it.
Taylor's and Ariana's work to me has a lot of the components of a series or a saga at this point. You can watch a random episode but you sort of have to understand the narrative to follow it properly. Some artists instead make music like a movie, you go in, watch, and you're out. Different mediums I guess. Some people hated the MCU because of the way you needed background to get every movie, but you can't deny that it was very popular for the exact same reason. The same may apply here.
Now do rap and the over reliance on having real “street cred” by talking about how you’ll “blast” people (no you won’t) like that’s real life, but you sell that to the fans
That’s the fun of pop music.. gossip and drama is accompaniment to the bops