Taylor Swift stepped out last night in NYC, her first “pap stroll” outing in months. She went to the Eighty Six, a steakhouse. Taylor really went underground following the Super Bowl, and while she has been out in New York this year, she’s only been photographed very rarely. Taylor’s sending a message here: I’m back! Talk about me! Her skirt is way too short, btw. But obviously, she loves autumn. She loves boots and cute sweaters. We’ll be seeing more of her like this in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Taylor released The Life of a Showgirl last Friday, to mixed reviews and a fanbase which seems to be growing more disenchanted by the year. There are discussions about Taylor ripping off other artists with little to no credit. There are discussions about Taylor’s problematic behavior towards other women in the industry. There’s the “Opalite” discourse about the imagery and message she uses to discuss Travis Kelce’s Black ex-girlfriends (specifically Kayla Nicole). There’s also a discourse about Taylor’s romantic history, especially when she was an adult woman literally dating a kid in high school (Conor Kennedy). Anyway, you get the idea – a lot of people are talking a lot about Taylor and her album, and there are ongoing critiques of the music and Taylor herself. Well, Taylor welcomes those discussions! At least that’s what she claimed on The Zane Lowe Show:
Taylor Swift shared her candid thoughts on the passionate range of reactions to “The Life of a Showgirl.” She thanked the fans who “immediately” got the album’s emotion and themes — but she also had words for the critics. While appearing on Apple Music’s “The Zane Lowe Show,” Swift said she “welcomes the chaos” seeing that it’s a “rule of show business”: “If it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping. And art, I have a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art. I’m not the art police. It’s like everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want. And what our goal is as entertainers is to be a mirror.”
The record has received mixed reviews from critics with some praise for its unabashed, joyful sound, while others criticize the lyrics for their perceived lack of depth.
“Oftentimes, an album is a really, really wild way to look at yourself,” Swift told Lowe. “What you’re going through in your life is going to affect whether you relate to the music that I’m putting out at any given moment.”
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter also made a revealing statement about what empowers her to make music: “We’re doing this thing for keeps. I have such an eye on legacy when I’m making my music. I know what I made. I know I adore it, and I know that on the theme of what the Showgirl is, all of this is part of it.”
Taylor talking about “legacy” is wild. I expect an artist like Beyonce to talk about her artistic legacy, and working on legacy projects (which is exactly what the Renaissance trilogy is, a transcendent legacy project). But Taylor? She’s a 35-year-old who is still singing about high school and her fiance’s redwood dong. She’s still scrapping with pop girls and gaming the charts with variants (she’s released like 20 variants already, in like the past 72 hours). But she’s right, if people are talking about her, that’s good for sales and it means her promotion is working. It’s just that I don’t believe that Taylor has a que-sera-sera attitude about people critiquing her music or her celebrity persona.
Screencaps courtesy of MagicFM and The Graham Norton Show. Cover courtesy of Swift’s IG. Additional photos courtesy of Backgrid.
