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MIKE FAIST “Challengers” | 2024, dir. Luca Guadagnino

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SABRINA CARPENTER Espresso | Behind The Scene

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Poem Stevie Nicks wrote for Taylor featured in The Tortured Poets Department physical copies

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Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, We’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio.

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Sydney Sweeney as Sister Cecilia IMMACULATE (2024) dir. Michael Mohan

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beds i’ve slept in, orion carloto

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religion is one of the most prominent recurring themes on the album, and it has been present in some capacity for quite a few records now. taylor previously compared love to religion: her saving grace, her belief system, and a fated divine intervention (false god, cornelia street, and cruel summer are the best examples of this). ‘sacred new beginnings that became my religion’ and ‘we’d still worship this love even if it’s a false god’ are two of the defining statements about her philosophy on the lover album.

taylor doesn’t want to leave all of that behind on ttpd, at least not at the beginning. the first supernatural force she mentions is the spaceship on down bad, which she compares to a skylight of freedom in the epilogue. *something* has finally come to save her from her life of suffering. she doesn’t care if it’s a force of good at first; if anything, she’s just fine being taken away by aliens. she views this man as her destiny. it isn’t until guilty as sin? that taylor starts to ponder the moral implications of what she’s doing. is she guilty as sin for wanting to leave her previous religion and relationship behind? she comes to the conclusion that, even if she rolls the stone away and gets resurrected/redeemed, she cannot avoid the fallout. she is okay with the thought of having to wait, as long as both lovers vow to be together forever, just as she once did with someone else in false god. ‘I choose you and me religiously’ finishes the bridge of the song in a direct callback to cornelia street.

the next mention of religion has murkier imagery. she claims that she does not need the Lord’s help to save this man. she sees the halo that he has, and she can fix him herself. now that she feels free of her prior cage, she isn’t looking for divine intervention anymore. she wants control. she is their route to salvation.

when the relationship falls apart, she retreats back into the position of a believer rather than a divine figure. she compares him to a Holy Ghost who promised to save her and take her to heaven. instead, she is in hell in every sense of the word: she’s down bad and feels guilty for digging up the grave. he was a jehovah’s witness who promised that she could break free of the cage imposed by love without changing her religion altogether; she would’ve just had to switch denominations. she could still have a marriage and kids! she could still have a blue tortured poet! the man was different, but not the dreams they had together. the story of the first part of the album ends here. her faith has been broken, and she has only found any semblance of sanity by refusing to mention these belief systems altogether.

side b/the anthology blends the christian imagery of side a with goddesses, sorcerers, and prophecies. she bargains with these powers to let her have the future she wants (the prophecy). she doesn’t sound like someone believing in salvation. if anything, she feels cursed. she decides that the concept of divinely ordained timing will never work in certain relationships (‘the goddess of timing once found us beguiling / she said she was trying / peter, was she lying?’). this disdain extends onto her perception of other people’s faith (‘bet they never spared a prayer for my soul’). she does position herself as a prophet in cassandra, but even then, she admits that the role has hurt her. perhaps the pain in thank you aimee was meant to be, or perhaps she was just strong enough to build a legacy in spite of it, boulder by boulder. is she a martyr? does she want to be? or did she save herself?

the only real love song on this half of the album makes no mention of fate or any divine forces. it wasn’t meant to be. it’s not a supernatural invisible string or lightning in a bottle. she is just in love.

the album ends with the manuscript, which revisits an old story of a defining, formative heartbreak. as she sings ‘at last, she knew what the agony had been for’ while describing the legacy of her writing, she seems to revert to thinking about the purpose of trauma. the only exception is that, in this case, she is the one who found meaning in her pain by turning it into a manuscript. writing is her belief system now, and she proselytizes by telling her stories and thus giving up the manuscript.

ultimately, her belief in destiny has chewed her up and spat her out. she so desperately clung to her existing belief systems that she was fooled by a conman, which left her feeling cursed. religion is supposed to be with someone even in their darkest moments, but the album explains that taylor often felt abandoned. the only constant in her life was, well, herself. she’ll be okay, but her pen will be her saving grace.

#swear this is the last TTPD content I wil reblog this week #but I’m so fascinated by her relationship with religion

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#she was cooking until this line

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AND I HOPE ITS SHITTY!!!!!! AT THE BLACK DOG!!!!!!!!

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Zendaya wearing CASABLANCA FW23 – press tour for Challengers (2024)

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I know this is the randomest ask especially with everyone focused on ttpd BUT… what’s your opinion on starcrossed being a higher rated album than deeper well?

Mental

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the funniest (for the lack of a better word) part of the TTPD release is that taylor explicitly says she’s so fucking done with our introspection of her life and with us being invasive and we wouldn’t survive if someone did that to us, but she’s also given us her most dense album to dissect and is imo the most honest and raw she’s ever been, revealing everything to us because that will set her free.

#!!!!

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WERE YOU SENT BY SOMEONE 🚶‍♂️WHO WANTED ME DEAD 😵 DID YOU SLEEP 💤 WITH A GUN 🔫 UNDERNEATH OUR BED 🛌 WERE YOU WRITING ✍️ A BOOK 📖 WERE YOU A SLEEPER CELL 🧫 SPY 🕵️‍♂️ IN FIFTY 5️⃣0️⃣ YEARS WILL ALL THIS BE DECLASSIFIED🔎 AND YOU’LL CONFESS WHY 🤷‍♂️ YOU DID IT AND I’LL SAY 🗣️ GOOD RIDDANCE 👋 ‘CAUSE IT WASN’T SEXY 🫦 ONCE IT WASN’T FORBIDDEN 🚫 I WOULD’VE DIED 🥀 FOR YOUR SINS ☦️ INSTEAD I JUST DIED INSIDE 😫 AND YOU 🫵 DESERVE PRISON 🚔 BUT YOU WON’T GET TIME ⏰ YOU’LL SLIDE INTO INBOXES 📥 AND SLIP THROUGH THE BARS 🍻 YOU CRASHED 💥 MY PARTY 🥳 AND YOUR RENTAL CAR 🚗 YOU SAID NORMAL GIRLS 👩 WERE BORING 👎 BUT YOU WERE GONE BY THE MORNING 🌅 YOU KICKED 🦵 OUT THE STAGE LIGHTS 💡 BUT YOU’RE STILL PERFORMING 🎙️ and in plain sight you hid 🫣 but you are what you did 🖕 and i’ll forget you 💭 but i’ll never forgive the smallest 🤏 man 🧍‍♂️ who ever lived 🧬

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i love the…. almost horror aspects of this album. all the references to ghosts and death…. and sonically, the unexpected shrieking in WAOLOM and the banging and screaming during “old habits die screaming” and even the way the tension subtly builds across the sixteen tracks and by the end you’re so stressed and shaken it’s like! losing your sense of self and feeling like you’ve become a monster is horror. and i’m sooooo glad she leaned into it

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It was obvious to me right away that Carole was madly in love with him. Just from the way she spoke about him. I never saw them together. I can only say that I felt she was enormously in love, and that she was going to see that this situation was handled properly on every level. As I look back on it now, I just think that she had such enormous energy, you see - that was one of her main qualities. When she would zero in on something, that was it, and she wanted this relationship. - Margaret Tallichet

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my brain is so fried with everything the happened in the last 48 hours just wanted to say I'm so glad you're giving your interpretations of the songs because so far the only two musics my brain made some sense of were WAOLOM and Clara Bow now the rest? I have no idea where am I to be honest

It is A LOT to process. The length, the red herring marketing, the content of it being completely unexpected, the re-writing/re-affirming the narrative

And this album is what I believe to be her most Taylor album. As in she self-mythologise and references the entire listen through (especially on the secret/double album), so to make sense of it you have to be familiar with the lore. If you’re a casual fan, everything from the albatross down to the manuscript is probably going to be gibberish to you LOL

I might not love the album but I totally respect the risk she has taken with it