inat40 - Tumblr blog

inat40 · 6 years

Video

I wrote a blurb for this but backed out of submitting it because I wasn't sure I felt my thoughts were fully formed enough/unduly harsh. Oh well:

What a load of old nonsense, in more ways than one. But at least Charli XCX seems to know that. What separates this from Anne-Marie's effort is the latter's sickly over-earnestness. "1999", in contrast, is fun-focused, and not necessarily intended to be sung by the people singing it. The borrowed nostalgia for the over-remembered 90s is laughable and possibly gives the lie to both artists' image of Just Loving Pop Culture, as opposed to producing it, selling it and enjoying it at a remove. But if it wasn't the case that 99% of all pop cultural appreciation took place at a remove, this song wouldn't exist. [6]

Could we have coped with two "Losing My Edge" references?

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CHARLI XCX FT. TROYE SIVAN - 1999

[4.76]

We love hate have mixed feelings about the ‘90s…

Tobi Tella: I wasn’t even alive in 1999. Neither of the artists behind this were over the age of 7, but that doesn’t mean they can’t channel the feeling back to the audience. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t here for 1999, the song manages to make me feel the same playful nostalgia as it does for people who were. I think this is a lot more clever than it seems on the surface (a Charli staple). Also closest I’ve ever come to liking Troye Sivan, so points for that! [8]

Alex Clifton: There’s so much that I want to say – about the power of nostalgia, about the fact that the 1990s have come to signify for millennials the last full safe time we had before 9/11 and global wars and financial catastrophes, about how delightful it is to hear queer boyhood represented through Troye’s fantasies of Justin Timberlake, about how incredibly loving the video is with its treatment of '90s fads, about how catchy that Eurodance piano is (my ultimate weakness!), about how I’ve not been able to get this out of my head for a week – but all that pales in comparison to one thing: I no longer have to fight Ed Sheeran. Charli did it for me. This is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. [10]

Vikram Joseph: The deep and widening chasm that Charli XCX has forged between her mixtapes and her singles is remarkable and quite possibly unprecedented. She’s found a way to explore the extremities of her musical identity – glitched-out, bracing, exhilarating avant-pop at one end, tongue-in-cheek strobe-lit bangers at the other. Firmly in the latter camp, “1999” is remorselessly daft – in its wildly misplaced nostalgia for a year in which the contributing artists were 7 and 4 respectively, and with an interpretation of the boundaries of the year 1999 loose enough to make Anne-Marie blush. But the minimum you’d expect from Charli is fun, and this is fun. There’s pinball synth-bass, stabs of nu-Balearic piano which actually sound like 1999, and Charli taking a ride through her old neighbourhood (erm, the genteel Hertfordshire market town of Bishop Stortford). Troye Sivan, god love him, doesn’t do a great deal, but makes up for it in the video with his Leonardo Di Caprio makeover (although Charli’s Steve Jobs steals the show). It’s not her best single of the year (hello, “No Angel”!), but it’s a party. [7]

Thomas Inskeep: Sung by a pair of people who barely lived through '99 whose only vision of the year is from Britney Spears videos or something. The thudding Eurodance beat doesn’t help. [1]

Anthony Easton: You can tell a lot about someone when they tell you what their favorite Britney single is. “…Baby One More Time” is the answer for people who do not understand the era’s nihilism was really “Toxic.” [3]

Crystal Leww: I am known to be a Charli XCX stan at times, but so much of her output could use a clear filter of quality control. No one is willing to admit it, but this is a cheap version of the critically-derided “2002,” which in the face of this comes out sounding like a straight up banger. This is pandering, aesthetic-driven nonsense, and I wish that someone could tell every (extremely talented) artist involved in this to cut it out. [2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: “2002” for people who consider themselves real pop music fans. [3]

Iain Mew: 1999 is a more evocative phrase, time, everything, to refer to than 2002. “1999” actually sounds like a version of 1999, albeit one via Calvin Harris. “1999” is right on time for doing Rina Sawayama but with subtext turned into text. At the broadest scale, “1999” works. But that can’t take it far without the details working too, and they don’t. Air guitar on the roof is no better than dancing on the hood of an old Mustang at sounding like anyone involved is actually invested in the memory. [5]

Will Adams: This gets one point on “2002” for at least getting the year of “Baby One More Time” correct, but that’s it. If Charli XCX and her co-writers unabashedly don’t give a shit about the lyrics reflecting her or Troye’s own experiences, then whatever. But that’s not the problem with “1999.” As with “2002” and “Big When I Was Little” and “I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker” before it, the problem with this type of nostalgia-dump song is that it resorts to historical flattening in the hope that you’ll relate to something, anything, but leaving nothing but emptiness. This isn’t Charli’s fault, of course; this is the way our pop culture memory works. Just as YouTube Rewind agonizingly recaps the most inane moments of each year, entire decades – the '90s and the '80s and the '70s – have been compressed into single nuggets of memory via VH1. There’s no effort to incorporate the nostalgia into anything resembling human; instead these songs and shows rely on signifiers to evoke a feeling of escapism, but there isn’t any. Charli’s gone on record numerous times about how much she hates “Break the Rules.” I’ll give that Sucker hasn’t aged very well and comes off as a cautiously fun album plagued by major label stipulations. But as far as music cynically made to relate to as many people as possible goes, is this much different? [2]

William John: I didn’t give any points to a song with a very similar conceit to “1999” earlier this year, mostly because I found the way the said conceit was represented, in that case, wholly unconvincing. Nostalgia for childhood’s alleged simplicity, especially when it’s flaunted vapidly, isn’t my favourite pop songwriting trope. I think the difference between “1999” and “2002” – aside from 3 – is that I can believe that Charli XCX – who’s genuflected to Britney in interviews and on social media since the early days of her career – was enthralled by “…Baby One More Time” as a seven year old, and that there is a true romance in reminiscing for that time. On the other hand, I still find the notion of Anne-Marie dancing in a forest to songs that did not yet exist too ludicrous to swallow. There’s also a good sense of camp to “1999” that I’m endeared by – frantic house piano stabs, hurried and dramatic mumbling from Troye Sivan, bratty babbling at the end of the second verse – and Charli’s always charismatic vocal, which seems to be elevated rather than diminished by AutoTune, provides further gloss. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: In 1999, Home Improvement was about to end and thus Jonathan Taylor Thomas was past his MTV prime. The last time JTT was on MTV, in 1997 for the due-for-a-reboot Rock N’ Jock Basketball, Troye Sivan was two, at least a decade too young for a breathy sharp-focus “and he’s right there” musical-sexual fantasy. But it doesn’t matter, since the video director can’t tell “JTT” from “JT” and dresses Troye up like Justin Timberlake instead. That’s about the level of detail we’re dealing with here. Like “2002,” “1999” presents a flimsy version of its year, free of rock, R&B, and non-Eminem rap. Absent, too, are the massive hits from 1999 that are still influential today: “No Scrubs” (Raye fodder, shape of “Shape of You”); “Believe” (autotune ur-text, delivered by the beloved star of Mamma Mia 2); “All Star” (except every meme goes different), or a certain other famous song, re-released in 1999. Did Prince’s estate object? I’m assured there are lawyers and musicologists approving these major-label nostalgia grabs, so the credits are weird. Charli’s interpolation of “…Baby One More Time” is the exact same interpolation as “2002” in word count and similarity to the original melody – none, probably on purpose – but this time the writers aren’t credited. Nor is Max Martin, who suggested to Charli that brilliant lyrical addition that’d soon show up in an Anne-Marie song; our supposed all-seeing chessmaster of pop is actually two thousand and late. But the writers we do have are Oscar Holter and writer Noonie Bao, a Cameron’s Titanic-sized step up from Benny Blanco and Ed Sheeran. And crucially, their song isn’t nostalgic for 1999 but for 2009: the year of steely electropop, of “Sexy Bitch,” Beyonce’s “Sweet Dreams,” Kid Cudi’s “Day 'n’ Nite,” Lady Gaga and Keri Hilson’s silicone-sleek voices, and Charli’s own pop demos on MySpace. That nostalgia, I share. Extra point because Troye pre-emptively clowned this with his “2012 Song” and “2013 Song.” [6]

Nicholas Donohoue: If there is one strength to the paper-thin “2002,” Anne-Marie at least kept her nostalgia fixed to a year she was indeed in youthful longing for. This however does not change the fact that the early 2000s suck, while the late '90s were… maybe not great, but there were things to form strong attachments too (hence why the '90s kids memes did have such an overlap with people whose formative years were not in the '90s.) On that alone, “1999” has the better reason for existing. It’s also better production, more exact references, a pophead’s dream pairing… and yet, at the end of it all, even pretending to be in 1999 sounds more exhausting than joyous. [4]

Alfred Soto: If Sivan and Charli want to evoke those frisky go-go late Clinton years, they could use tougher beats and something else besides that jackhammer piano. Sivan himself is light as meringue, so I assumed he and the sentimentality would be a better mesh. Charli, who boasts the more powerful voice, has proven impervious to nostalgia – I can’t imagine her in any era but the present. On the evidence of the friction-free songwriting she provides no convincing reason to go back either. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The narrow focus in Charli XCX’s memories doesn’t bother me so much – if she was 7, she’d remember the hits of 1999 that were most to her liking, and Britney and Eminem are pretty obvious standard-bearers. What bothers me is the sheer banality of her writing and the hyperactive but bland performance. She doesn’t create something compelling by evoking these artists, she’s just using them as a soundtrack within her narrative of the most clichéd childhood memories. Adult life is complicated and childhood was carefree! How interesting. There’s no real excitement in her nostalgia for the pop of yore or any sense of longing for simpler times. It’s just Charli XCX Doing Charli XCX with her 5am Party Voice with a tepid verse from Troye Sivan. I bet the two of them would have the time of their life driving around at night pumping “…Baby One More Time,” and I would definitely watch that on YouTube sooner than listen to this. [4]

John Seroff: Charli’s “Focus” might end up being a top ten single of the year for me, and Sivan’s Timberlake thirst is kinda cute, but the emblematic lyric “no money / no problem / it was easy back then” is the sort of flimsy, privileged, rear-view optimism I imagine Republican party nominees of 2040 running on; lest we forget, '99 was months after the lynching of Matthew Shepard. Additional points docked for the video’s T-Boz and Chilli erasure, daring to co-opt a title that Prince owns outright, and for mostly forgetting to make the song to accompany this meme. [2]

Jessica Doyle: American Beauty was rancid from the get-go: Chris Cooper’s character was a collection of nasty stereotypes, Annette Bening’s character was one nasty stereotype, and the movie concluded by asking you to feel good about the guy who decided not to sleep with his teenage daughter’s vulnerable best friend. Why taint your exercise in nostalgia with callbacks to the likes of that? Or, for that matter, anything about 1999 from the point of view of a gay man: the best case for the year is that it wasn’t 1998 (the year Matthew Shepard was murdered) or 1996 (the year the Defense of Marriage Act was passed) and, hey, only 15,000 deaths in the United States from AIDS that year! (2015: less than half that.) And again: hasn’t the whole point of all the conversations of the last five years, all the call-outs and call-ins and cancellations and general spread of bad feelings, that we might know better and do better? That we should? That as fashionable as it is to run around declaring how terrible everything is (we were doing that in 1999 too, trust me), a sense of perspective is not only wise but necessary? What’s the exercise in shallow self-indulgence and pointlessness: “1999,” or all the rest of it? [0]

Taylor Alatorre: One of the songs that defines my memories of the '90s is “Wanna Be a Baller,” released as a single in 1999. Lil’ Troy was the Dirty South DJ Khaled, assembling four Houston rappers whose skills ranged from dependable to middling, and one local hook singer who with six resonant lines cemented his immortality. Of course, when the song was crossing over to the Dallas-area pop stations that year, I didn’t know any of this; I was 6 years old and most of my music came from Radio Disney. Yet there’s something primordial in my attachment to this song about blunt wraps and 20-inch rims, as if it imprinted on me the first time I heard it. Did that happen when my dad left the dial on KISS-FM for a few minutes too long, or was it so ubiquitous at the time that it simply permeated the North Texas air? At its core, “1999” is a song about listening to “Wanna Be a Baller” (or “…Baby One More Time,” or “My Name Is”) and imagining yourself as being much cooler back then than you actually were. Yes, of course Troye Sivan wasn’t actually fantasizing about MTV heartthrobs as a preschooler, and I at least hope Charli wasn’t really playing air guitar on the roof, but that’s the entire point. It’s not about actual childhood memories but rather the mediation of those memories through years of identity formation and constant social conditioning. There’s a reason they both pronounce it “ninety-ninety-nine,” because Ninety-Ninety-Nine is a time and place that doesn’t exist; it’s anything you want it to be. In that sense it’s pandering, but the Mustardized house-pop production makes that clear from the outset. This is a populist, revisionist dance party where everyone (within a certain age range) is invited, no matter how early they fell asleep on Y2K Eve. You don’t need to believe in the Fourth Turning to realize that someone was going to make this song eventually. Don’t be mad at these guys just because they got there first. [9]

Joshua Copperman: Fun fact – The Simpsons jumped the shark the day after I was born. I’ve spent my adolescence and early adulthood around people being nostalgic for the '90s, where apparently everything was great. According to Steven Hyden, writing half-ironically, “Bill Clinton was getting blown in the white house, and the majority of Americans didn’t care because they were in such a good mood.” James Murphy famously made fun of those with borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s, and sixteen years after the release of “Losing My Edge,” it’s the late '90s turn. And that’s when this song goes from kind of cute to horribly depressing. Charli XCX is compelling when she sounds like “the music of the future,” and Troye Sivan has been rightfully acclaimed for capturing what it’s like to be a queer young man right now. But “1999” looks to the past in a way that becomes even worse when it turns out Max Martin suggested the reference to his own song, so now it’s just Martin self-flagellating over glory days in the form of people half his age. Besides, in 1999, Charli was seven, Troye was four, and I was two. At least everyone who wrote “2002” was in the age range. It’s an ode to a past we were never in, released in a present that’s coming undone for queer people in front of our faces, and a song that won’t be remembered in the future even if we get one. [3]

Jonathan Bradley: I’m exactly the right age to purse my lips at a Baudrillardian rendering of a time period I encountered second by second and not as simulacra, but I’m also exactly the right age to remember how much Bowling for Soup’s “1985” sucked. Imagine I weren’t so churlish: this has a better hook than anything Charli’s recorded since “Break the Rules” – though that says more about her recent quality than that of this song. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Charli XCX is a pop accelerationist, taking the core of every piece of nostalgia-pop of recent vintage (“Hey, the past was good! Don’t you remember these things from then?”) and stripping away all pretensions to something more. The result is compelling and sickening all at once– it’s simultaneously in on its own joke (Charli does a Michael Jackson impression, briefly, and Troye’s dramatic, showstopping bridge ends with him repeating the phrase “right there” until it looses itself from all meaning) and too deeply enmeshed in the pursuit of pop success to actually critique it. On the whole, though, “1999” works, ingratiating itself to you by virtue of its sheer persistence in the pursuit of a flimsy past. [7]

Danilo Bortoli: In 2011, Simon Reynolds published Retromania, a study on the effects of nostalgia on popular culture. I remember the conversation surrounding it on Twitter and Facebook and the many different reactions people had while confronting it. Streaming services were in their infancy and social media itself looked, in comparison, still threatened by our old iterations of blogs. Seven years on, Simon Reynolds’s book reads as a nonsensical rambling. Partially because it ignored the fact that the internet is irony; partially because it ignored the internet itself. There are many things Retromania got wrong, but the most patent has to do with our supposed addiction with nostalgia. Instead of Reynold’s own version of aura (a hidden, metaphysical entity forcing us to look at the past hopefully), there is an outspoken preference towards nostalgia which is linked to the internet itself. That explains the absurd nature of PC Music’s existence since 2013, the rapid rise and fall of vaporwave, those infinite Bandcamp subcultures, our own concept of “bedroom pop,” and so on. Nostalgia is no longer a feeling towards something; it acts as a disposable being entirely. Whereas Retromania pictured nostalgia as an involuntary reflex, history proved there is fun in messing with the past. Which brings us to “1999”: Charli XCX’s past relationship with PC Music proved she is self-aware to the point of parody. But “1999” is actually self-aware of its self-awareness. It’s shameless. It’s idiotic, yet it is full of life (other peoples’ lives). It thrives on the gamification of its own references (incredibly, I do not want to listen to “Baby One More Time” right after the chorus). In a way, “1999” is as if the internet had turned itself into a pop song – and, sure, the masterpiece of a video does not let me lie. It’s a testament to the power that pop music has always held: the power to brilliantly and shamelessly regurgitate ideas, tear apart worldviews, shape narratives and, more importantly, offer relief and distraction. Nostalgia, as we see, can be distracting, but, as said, “1999” acknowledges its embarrassment. Mainly because these things are circular: Charli XCX is not the first to present you to things you joke about with your friends in your living room. Yet “1999” sounds and feels like an Event. The point where and when the internet, the only place nobody cares what you think of nostalgia, is condensed in a pop song, and the zeitgeist rests now again updated. The rare moment we shall say, in all caps: I LOVE POP MUSIC. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#the ones that were submitted are good though #read them

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inat40 · 7 years

Video

Well that’s a lot to take in. To highlight anything in particular would almost seem unfair, so instead, self-importantly, here’s an unsubmitted bonus blurb which I didn’t put in for a few reasons. Most specifically, I felt that it might be a bit of a refusal to engage on a level that I might do with other songs by other artists that were similarly invested in Other People’s Perceptions. It’s hard to unpick, but it is how I felt, so:

Naturally most people who've ever liked a Taylor Swift song will in no way be interested in purportedly perceived perceptions of her, but will they still be invested enough to search for a tune in this? That's the risk you run when you go down this road -- a mild one when you're so successful at present, but you're only ever a certain of number of steps from being Sarah Harding going on Big Brother to counter historic tabloid impressions of you that weigh heavy on you alone. Most importantly though, there isn't much of a tune. [4]

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TAYLOR SWIFT - LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO [4.39] Man, look what she made US do.

Elisabeth Sanders: Here is the thing about Taylor Swift: anybody that has truly loved (despite themselves) Taylor Swift has done so because of her sharp, frightening edges, because of the way in which she is the mean girl in the midst of a panic attack, because she’s petty, because she’s crazy, because she believes in things and at the same time when those things aren’t as they seem wants to crush them in the palm of her hand. Any interpretation of Taylor Swift that doesn’t incorporate this is simply bad research. In 2006: “Go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy–There’s no time for tears / I’m just sitting here, planning my revenge.” In 2010: “And my mother accused me of losing my mind /But I swore I was fine /You paint me a blue sky /And go back and turn it to rain /And I lived in your chess game /But you changed the rules every day /Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone, tonight /Well I stopped picking up and this song is to let you know why” In 2012: “Maybe we got lost in translation / maybe I asked for too much / or maybe this thing was a masterpiece / til you tore it all up.” And finally, in 2014, a culmination of the songwriting combined with the publicity–well, just listen to “Blank Space.” I can’t quote the whole thing. At the time it was brilliant, a parody that dipped just enough into the real, a joke about both media extrapolation and actual content. But we’re past the time for parody. It came, it was good, it went. The criticism still followed, for other reasons, for deeper reasons, for real reasons. Along with, I’m sure, superficial ones. But if “Blank Space” was Taylor Swift’s petty Gone Girl fan fiction, “Look What You Made Me Do” is the unfortunate chapter in which we have to acknowledge that the fiction was never that self-aware, and that an excavation of complication, when confronted with complicated times, sometimes reveals not a complex sympathetic maybe-villain, but simply a person not equipped to be making mass art right now. Taylor’s pettiness, her villainy, her strangeness, has always been her most interesting feature. Maybe, now, too many years into seeing but not seeing it, it’s just–not that interesting anymore. She’s not your friend, and she’s not your enemy, she’s just–well. As she says, “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me.” I think that might be her final truth. [3]

Stephen Eisermann: I’ve never been a big Taylor Swift fan – I like her music well enough, but there was always something about the details she painted and the cards she showed that it felt a bit… made-up. Still, I always had a weird feeling that Taylor and I had very similar personalities and personal life trajectories (bear with me) and this song reinforces that. When I was younger and “straight” (16-18), I was very quiet, nice to a fault, and introverted. Thanks to my name and skin color, a lot of (racist) older people always said it was hard to believe I was a Mexican teenager because I was so quiet, polite, well-spoken and bright. Much like Swizzle during the “Taylor Swift” and “Fearless” era, I was considered naive but genuine-hearted and people loved to love my niceness. However, I soon started coming to terms with my sexuality and started being a bit more open with myself and others about who I truly was, just like we saw glimpses of pure pop and more evocative lyrics in “Speak Now” and “Red.” I still built stories and a narrative that painted me as more mystery than gay, just as Taylor toed the line between squeaky clean young adult and Lolita, but I was a bit more willing to explore. Soon after, the inevitable happened and I finally had my first NSFW encounter with a man, and was even MORE willing to be who I really was. I let my gay flag fly and if people asked, I wouldn’t dance around the question, but own who I was. Taylor didn’t hesitate one bit when she announced 1989 would be a pop album in its entirety, and I didn’t so much was stutter when telling questioning friends my realization. Still, a part of me hid things from ass-backwards family members and people who I knew wouldn’t “understand,” just as Sweezy continued to play the victim card to hold on to some of the innocence that was slowly falling through her fingertips like sand on the last day of vacation. However, there is only so much sand one hand can hold and BAM – my family became aware of my sexuality and Taylor was exposed. I was at a crossroads – do I drop my family and throw out ALL the dirty chisme I had accumulated over the years at different holidays, effectively exposing the most bigoted family members, or do I keep my mouth shut and weather the hate, being all the stronger for it? I wanted so badly to be vindictive and evil, but I choose the high road for reasons I’m not really sure I can effectively communicate. Taylor, however, has opted for the darker route. “LWYMMD” lacks detail, yes, but it’s intentional. I just… I just know it. She has secrets up her sleeves she will soon reveal – nobody willingly takes the villainous role without ammo, and Taylor has been MANY things throughout her career, but unprepared is not one of them. This song is calculated, petty, unnecessary, and very much beneath her, but it allows me to live vicariously through her and I want her to drag her detractors just as I want to drag my family members through the mud they continue to think I belong in. And just as my bigoted family members will get theirs, so will Taylor’s enemies, I’m sure. [10]

Will Rivitz: “I think I have a part to play in this drama, and I have chosen to be the villain. Every good story needs a bad guy, don’t you think?” -Lorelei Granger, Frindle (Andrew Clements, 1996) [9]

David Moore: Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (Image Comics, 2015) Synopsis: Years ago, a young woman obsessed with music videos and mythic pop celebrity made a deal with the King Behind the Screen – she gave up half of herself to gain the mystical power needed to eventually lead a coven of music obsessives. Now the deal’s gone sour, and her darker, sacrificed self has switched places to destroy the coven with an ill-advised electroclash revival. [7]

Alfred Soto: Electronic swoops, piano on the bridge, lots of boom boom bap – this single could be the new St. Vincent, or, to return to once upon a long time ago, to a track from Lorde’s estimable Melodrama, a flop also largely co-written with Jack Antonoff. A skeptic of her first singles since 2009, I approached “Look…” with caution; on the evidence she’s anticipated this caution. “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me,” she sings while soap opera strings add the requisite melodrama, and for a moment I thought she sang “I don’t trust my body.” I’ve never cared about biographical parallels in any art, especially in popular art where the insistence feels like conscription; the blank space where she wants the audience to write his/her/whatever’s name is a sop to us. Less persuasive is the talk-sung part informing her audience that the “old Taylor” is “dead,” as if Fearless fans needed an 808 dug into their faces. It will sound terrific on the radio. I’ll skip it when I buy the album. [5]

Crystal Leww: The emerging narrative of Jack Antonoff as the next king of pop production is perplexing because his resume is honestly pretty thin. It’s unclear what Antonoff actually brings to the table other than an amplification factor; Antonoff’s songs have only been as good as his collaborators. This works when artists are working with a strong vision they can execute against – e.g., CRJ’s “in love and feeling like a teen again” on “Sweetie,” Lorde’s earnest wide open heartbreak on Melodrama. It is damning if artists are falling into their worst habits. Taylor Swift is a very solid songwriter – it’s nearly impossible to have the kind of career she had in country music if you’re not – but it always falls back on specificity, the emotional connection that she can forge with her fans when she knows what she’s trying to convey. “Look What You Made Me Do” fails because it’s unclear what it’s about – is this song about haters? Kim and Kanye? Her exes? The media? – and Antonoff using Right Said Fred makes it all seem very clunky. The song sounds like it could have really leaned into a psycho ex-girlfriend vibe, but it’s not self-aware, not funny, not sure of itself. Ultimately, “Look What You Made Me Do” isn’t awful, but it’s not catchy, which is its worst sin of all. Taylor Swift’s still a decent songwriter (“Better Man” was great; “I’ve been looking sad in all the nicest places” almost made up for that Zayn collab), but this isn’t even yucky – it’s just kinda boring. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: The curse continues. Maybe it’s that the past month I’ve been listening to very little but “Anatomy of a Plastic Girl” by The Opiates and “Justice” by Fotonovela and Sarah Blackwood, and here’s the exact conceptual midpoint. I’ve heard comparisons to electroclash, NIN, mall emo, Lorde, but I hear more Jessie Malakouti or Britney on Original Doll: frantic tabloid petulance, slightly updated with a “Problem” anti-chorus, but otherwise things I like. Otherwise, Swift’s style has not changed: self-referential (“actress” and “bad dreams” shuffle her images to make her the heel) and threaded with subliminals (“tilted stage” is literal, “kingdom keys” keeps up with the konsonance) Just as “Dear John” parodied its subject’s lite-blooz guitar, “Look What You Made Me Do” parodies the austere tracks of 808s and Heartbreak on, like “Love Lockdown” in curdled Midwestern vowels: trading soporific for loaded. The song has inevitably become about everything but itself. Her milkshake duck brought all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, this is garb, and I’m like, the Internet deplorables haven’t adopted this in any better faith than they did Depeche Mode; any of pop’s myriad songs about the tabloids would read as “political” if transplanted into 2017 (is Lindsay Lohan’s “Rumours” about FAKE NEWS?), and Swift’s suffocatingly prescriptive “Southern” “values” pre-Red were as politically suspect as this, and more insidious. The next salvo of attack: its rollout being unprecedentedly gimmicky and exploitative, never mind how aforementioned Depeche Mode did the same pre-order thing, or Britney Spears upholstered-carpetbombed “Pretty Girls” in everyone’s Ubers, or Rihanna’s Talk That Talk was launched with gamified “missions”, or Srsly Legit Band Arcade Fire spent months on fake Stereogum posts and fake Ben and Jerry’s. Doesn’t help that when Taylor is bad, she’s stunningly, loudly bad; the second verse, in its magnification of the cringiest parts of “Shake It Off” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” seems to last forever. (The phone call is fine, though; no one had a problem with “How Ya Doin’” or, like, “Telephone.”) It’s no good for catharsis, definitely not relatable, maybe on purpose: like being too sexy for your shirt, all you feel is cold. [6]

Katie Gill: On the one hand, Taylor using the language of abusers in the chorus of her song is clueless at best and worrisome at worst. On the other hand, blatantly riffing off of “I’m Too Sexy” is a surprisingly smart choice for a chorus and I’m shocked that I can’t think of anyone who’s tried it before with this level of success. But on the one hand, for a song about how she’s getting smarter and harder, the lyrics don’t reflect that, giving us some petty Regina George level nonsense instead of anything remotely resembling depth or nuance. But then again, that snake is pouring Taylor Swift some tea and all the Taylor Swifts are beating up the other Taylor Swifts in a battle royale hahaha this video is so amazingly dumb. I guess I’ll split the difference and give it a [5]

Alex Clifton: I’ve always wanted give-no-fucks Taylor Swift, but I’m dying for context, as this album (and sing) will sink or swim based entirely on the narrative she creates. She’s clearly setting herself on fire in order to rebrand herself, although I question her self-awareness. The music video indicates yes, with a brilliant 30-second scene featuring various Taylors mocking each other. Yet “Look What You Made Me Do” is also curiously passive, with a reactionary title and a bored chorus–more a sign of privilege and status. The ambiguity between honest, wronged victim and villainous persona here is intriguing, especially given Swift’s penchant for earnestness; obviously she cannot be both, but the tension drives the song. The song itself is a mixed bag; Swift returns to the messy rapping last heard on “Shake It Off” with an equally cringey spoken-word interlude, but her voice is simutaneously delicate and confident as she comes out swinging. While I love seeing Blood!Swift writing a hitlist of enemies like an evil Santa Claus and the hint of confronting the less attractive/more honest parts of her role in the spotlight, only time will tell whether this is truly a playful new direction or more of the same old tune. (Also, what did we make her do? The answer is classic Swift, diabolically obvious: we made her write a song about it.) [7]

Jessica Doyle: A week on I still hear more self-loathing than anything else. Nothing the supposed New Taylor offers up comes off particularly convincingly; there’s no glee in her reinvention. Compare the way she rushes through honey-I-rose-up-from-the-dead when she once sounded like she was thoroughly enjoying Boys only want love when it’s torture. She doesn’t sound smarter, or harder; look what you made me do, when she’s spent the last eighteen months making a point of not doing anything. There’s no air in here, no space beyond the multiple annotated versions and multiple thinkpieces declaring her a walking horsebitch of the Trumpocalypse. Just Taylor Swift practicing telling herself to shut up, Taylor Swift wondering about karma, Taylor Swift reading Buzzfeed and taking careful notes, Taylor Swift unable to make a point about anything at all except Taylor Swift. You don’t realize, when you’re in the thick of it, that self-loathing is just as relentlessly, narrowly egotistical as any other kind of self-obsession. It gets old, finally. It wears you out. It wears everybody out. Right? Yes? Can we all agree to be worn out now? Are we going to allow her to move on? She can’t rise up from the dead if we don’t let her die first. [3]

Cassy Gress: There was a time when I thought 1989 pajama-parties-and-kittens Taylor was the “real Taylor.” I don’t know if that really was. What I do know is that trying to figure out who the “real Taylor” is, and arguing on the internet about it, is fucking exhausting. So much of her musical output has been autobiographical, or meant to sound generically autobiographical to women listeners; so much of her reads as “pussycat with claws.” Sometimes she emphasizes the pussycat side, soft and vulnerable; “Look What You Made Me Do” is the claws side. But Taylor, who we know has the ability to be nuanced and evocative, is here transmitting her intent (to destroy Kanye, or Katy, or Hiddleston, or her old selves, or just to be the cleverest sausage) like a hammer to the skull. This, like much else about her, is exhausting to watch/listen to. I would much rather close the blinds and put on my headphones and watch GBBO reruns in my jammies. [2]

Olivia Rafferty: Washing in with the arrival of her sixth album are a tidal wave of thinkpieces on Swift, all set within the context of her A-list feuds, miscalculations and politics, or lack thereof. We’ve all sifted through stories of fake boyfriends, cheap shots and oblivious colonialism, and I’m going to speak for all of us when I say we probably should just all take a goddamn break from the vortex. I’m placing LWYMMD in a vacuum for now. Reaching into the embarrassing depths of my personal history, I can draw up two different past-Olivias who would be a perfect fit for this song. I’m gifting the verse, pre-chorus and middle eight to my 10-year-old self, and the chorus to my 17-year-old self. Olivia at 10 would lap up the overly-dramatic opening lines, the “I. Don’t. Likes” and their thick punctuation. It’s served with the attitude that would have made you want to stick on a crop top and pick up one of your tiny handbags to fling about during an ill-prepared dance routine – no, Mum, it’s not finished yet! And the moment of absolute pre-teen glory is the cheerleader delivery of the spoken half-verse, “the world moves on another day another drama drama,” I can literally see the Beanie Baby music video re-enactment. All of these melodic aspects are playful but lack the precision or maturity you’d expect Swift to deliver on this “good girl grown up” song. When the chorus hits you suddenly mature into that 17 year-old whose friends-but-not-really-friends played that Peaches song at someone’s house party. You could probably embarassingly attempt a slut-drop to it in your bedroom, pretending you’re a dominatrix who’s just split some milk on the floor. But the overall impression is that if Swift is trying to be naughty, sexy or dangerous, she’s missed the mark a little. Now at 25 I’m listening and thinking that the chorus still snaps, but if this track was an attempt at sexualising Taylor in a way that’s not been done before, it’s only made it clear that she’s still got a lot of growing up to do. [6]

Joshua Copperman: From the first bar chimes sound effect, I was worried, and I suppose my feelings didn’t improve by the time the “tilted stage” line happened. On “Out Of The Woods”, Antonoff and Swift brought out the best in each other (Jack’s big choruses, Taylor’s specific references), but on “Look What You Made Me Do”, they bring out the worst (Jack’s obnoxiousness, Taylor’s pettiness.) Antonoff can do flamboyant earnestness, especially when it blends with Lorde’s self-awareness and quirkiness; he just can’t do dark and edgy. Or even campy, apparently: the glorious video mostly takes care of that, giving the song an intensity and glamour that it doesn’t have nor deserve on its own. Yet even the video often misses the humor inherent in moments like the terrible rap in the second verse, or the already-infamous lift from “I’m Too Sexy”. The ultimate effect is like John Green praising a burn of himself without realizing why the burn was deserved in the first place. In this case, it’s one Taylor saying to another Taylor “there she goes, playing the victim, again”, even though the preceding song couldn’t even play the victim or villain well enough. [4]

Mo Kim: There was a time in my life when I looked up to Taylor Swift. I was eighteen once, clearing my throat of all the doubts that haunted it, and the only way I had to express myself was through songs about slights that exploded like firecrackers. But a voice with that strength comes with responsibility. Sometimes you need to stop reveling in the volume of your own speech to see the platform of power you stand on; otherwise you might build a version of yourself on the rickety foundation of innocence only to find it crashing down. On “Look What You Made Me Do,” she’s still trying for the pottery shard hooks that once made her so important to petty queer kids like me. It works in bits and spurts: that second verse is a bucket of water and an emergency siren to the face, and the pre-chorus utilizes a sinister piano and eerie vocal production to great effect. Too bad, then, that the flimsy chorus and winky-face lyrics cave in on themselves more easily than almost anything she’s written before (like a house of cards, some might say). That it so blatantly abjects responsibility onto her audience, however, is the biggest point against it: instead of personability, or at least the pretense of it, there’s just layer after layer of metanarrative. Instead of a telling that acknowledges her history – a complicated, troubling, rich one – there’s just Queen Bee Taylor, sneering over a landfill heap of old Taylors before she discards of all her past selves. I used to hold stadiums in my chest as I listened to the stories Swift spun; now I feel like the lights have finally crackled out, and here she is, dithering in the debris of her crumbling empire, and here we are, looking down. [5]

Josh Love: If Taylor wants to go in, that’s her prerogative, but because this is a song that none of us plebes can actually relate to, it’s only fair to judge it solely based on whether it goes hard, and I’m sorry to report that Taylor has no bars. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Shake It Off” seemed like wild stabs at first too, but they possessed an inclusivity that’s curdled into Yeezus-level petulance here. There’s nothing here to suggest she’s capable of making Reputation her Lemonade. At least the video gives me some hope that maybe she realizes she’s a complete dork. [3]

Anthony Easton: This is the hardest for me to grade, because I still don’t know if it is good, but it is constructed in such a way that people like me (critic, liberal elitist, homosexual) are pressed to have opinions. It steals with such quickness, and with such weirdness that the opinions give birth to other opinons, somewhere between a snake hall and the ouroboros she already quotes. It sounds like Lorde, it samples Peaches, it plays with electroclash, which was a genre that was already heavily recursive. It tries to be without feeling, but it feels all too deeply. That is enough to spend time with, that is enough to unpack. It sounds like Lorde because they are both working with Jack Antonoff. Who is cribbing from who here? Is Lorde playing like Swift, is Swift cribbing Lorde’s lankness, are both pulling outside of their influence, by the commercial, mainstreamed weirdness of Antonoff? Swift was always pretty; her main skill was using guile to a stiletto edge. This edges on ugliness, but it is still “ugly.” Women like Peaches or the cabaret singer Bridgett Everett know how to sing, have the ambition to sing well, but chose to reject good taste for social and political power. Taylor playing with being ugly, with being flat, with kind of half singing, with no longer being the cheerleader, is not a formal refusal of beauty as a political means but has the louche boredom of a hanger-on, with maybe a bit of anger at not being cool enough. It’s a capital blankness that raids and doesn’t contribute. Part of the ugliness of Peaches, part of the joy of electroclash, is not only how it absorbs the amoral around it–Grace Jones, The Normal, Joy Division, Klaus Nomi–but that the sex of it works so hard. The fucking is less pleasure than hard work–the grit of dirt and sweat and bodies. When Swift quotes Peaches, she is quoting the reduction of pop to a stripping down of bodies through a formal aesthetic choice. When she quotes noir, it is an attempt to self-consciously think of herself as a body who is capable of doing real damage. Swift flatters herself as someone whose suicide could be a nihilist aesthetic gesture. She flatters herself as a fatale. She’s still the kid who does damage, and plays naif. You can’t be pretty and ugly. You can’t be a naif fatale. You can’t pretend not to care about gossip and make your career about what people think of you. You can only be so much of a feminist and rest on your producers this much, and you cannot play at louche blankness if it is so obvious how much work you are doing. This might suggest that I hate the song, but I can’t. Swift doing an “ugly” heel turn fills me with poptimist longing, and I want to hear more. [9]

Eleanor Graham: There is a bit in an old Never Mind The Buzzcocks where Simon Amstell says to Amy Winehouse, “We used to be close! On Popworld, we were close.” And Amy Winehouse runs her hand down his face and says, half-pityingly and to thunderous laughter, “She’s dead.” I don’t really know why I’m bringing this up except to illustrate that a woman killing off her former self, against Joan Didion’s worldly advice, has a kind of power. The crudest hyperbole. Like Amy in Gone Girl. You don’t like this thing about me? You wish I was different? Well, guess what – I’M DEAD! This line, which Swift delivers with the manic kittenish venom of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Big Little Lies, is the only redeeming feature of “Look What You Made Me Do.” And yet – even as someone who has openly thrown politics to the wind in the face of such forever songs as “Style”, “State of Grace” and “All Too Well” – this single is too hallucinatory to be a flat disappointment. Quite aside from the Right Said Fred debacle, the “aw” is reminiscent of Julia Michaels, the second verse of a lobotomised Miz-Biz era Hayley Williams, the production ideas of a mid-2000s CBBC show, and the whole thing of a middle-aged man in a wig playing Sky Ferreira in an SNL skit. Disorientating. Almost euphorically horrible. Say what you want about T Swift, but who else is serving this level of pop Kafkaism in 2017? [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Weirdly, everything works for me sorta kinda with the second verse. The percussion thuds in the distance just a little more effectively, and Taylor’s whining drone of a rap screams up into that high-pitched melodrama, only to crash and burn into an anemic “Push It,” as written by someone who forgot Lady Gaga once could fool us into thinking she was funny. Past that subsection and prior, however, the record truly never clicks. You get the sense that Swift, someone so eagerly to seize the moment, doesn’t realize that the horror campiness plays her hand too hard. [2]

Edward Okulicz: Saved from being her worst ever single by an out-of-nowhere, brilliant, Lorde-esque pre-chorus (and the existence of both “Welcome to New York” and “Bad Blood”), this is pretty thin gruel for the first single off a first album in three years. Remember how dense her songwriting used to be? See how clumsy it is on this. Taylor Swift’s devolution from essential pop star to somewhat annoying head of a cult of personality is complete. At least there’ll be better to come on the album. I hope. [4]

Rachel Bowles: I am guessing (and hoping) that “Look What You Made Me Do” is Reputation’s “Shake It Off,” a comparatively mediocre introduction to what is ostensibly a good album with some timeless songs (“Style” in particular on 1989). Functionally the same, both songs have to reintroduce Taylor in a new iteration to a cultural narrative she cannot be excluded from, both heavy on self-awareness and light on her signature musical flair. Where “Shake It Off” felt anodyne and compressed, “LWYMMD” is beautifully stripped back, chopping between lowly sung and rhythmically spoken word over a synthesiser, strings or a beat – verses, bridges and middle 8’s passing, though ultimately building to nothing – the chorus of “LWYMMD” being the swirling void at its centre, one that cannot hold, however fashionable it is to build then strip to anti-climax in EDM and pop. What did Taylor do? The absence of her critical action, the bloody, thirsted-for revenge, can only leave us unsatisfied, like watching a Jacobean tragedy on tilted stage without the final release of death for all. What’s left is a painful, public death of media citations of Taylor, played over and over, joylessly. [5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: 1989 is Taylor Swift’s worst album, but that shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a bad thing. For an artist whose vocal melodies were able to effectively drive a song forward, it was a bit odd hearing her rely so heavily on a song’s instrumentation to do all the heavy lifting. Additionally, the painterly lyrics that drew me to her work in the first place were mostly abandoned for ones more beige (simply compare the most memorable lyrics from 1989 and any other album and it becomes very obvious). It didn’t work out for the most part, but I was fine with the mediocrity. And considering how stylistically diverse the album was, I very much saw it as a stepping stone for a future project. Which is why I’m completely unsurprised by the doubling down of “Look What You Made Me Do” – it’s a lead single that’s heavily tied to her media perception, finds her abandoning any sense of subtlety, and utilizes amelodic singing to put greater emphasis on the instrumentation itself. It’s conceptually brilliant for all these reasons, but it doesn’t come together all too well. Namely, the lyrics are almost laughably bad and distract from how physical the song can be, and her calculated attempts at announcing her self-awareness have reached the point of utter parody. That the music video ends with Swift essentially explaining the (unfunny) joke only confirms this. [3]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Every new Taylor Swift single is Vizzini from “The Princess Bride,” letting us know that she knows that we know that she knows that we know that she is Taylor Swift, and since she knows that we know (etc. etc. etc.), she can be confident drinking the goblet in front of her, since she knows that she switched around the goblets when we weren’t looking, and she’s laughing like she’s clearly outsmarted us, but little does she know that we’ve been building up an immunity to her odorless white poison for years. [2]

William John: The hyper-specificity is gone. There are no references here to paper airplane necklaces or dead roses in December or in-jokes written on notes left on doors. In their place, platitudes abound, choruses are forgotten, “time” rhymes with “time”, and “drama” with “karma”. The latter is pursued with a maniacal intensity, the parody spelled out rather brilliantly in “Blank Space” quickly undoing itself. Rather obviously, “Look What You Made Me Do” does not exist in a vacuum, and the timing and nature of its release are what render it particularly dismaying. Its author, not playing to her previously demonstrated strengths, is seemingly at great pains to fuel fire to certain celebrity feuds, all the while insisting on her exclusion from them. It wouldn’t matter so much were she to denounce some of her new fans with the same fervour, but for some reason this era she’s opted out of interviews, perhaps at the time when some explanation driven by someone outside her inner circle is most needed. It’s one way to forge a reputation, indeed. I do like the way she screams “bad DREAMS!” though. [3]

Leonel Manzanares: An auteur whose entire schtick is about framing herself as a victim, now emboldened by the current climate to address “the haters” using the language of abuse, embracing villainhood. No wonder she’s considered the ambassador of Breitbart Pop. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: “Don’t you understand? It’s your fault that I had to go and become a mean girl!” Yeah, okay, whatever, Ms. White Privilege. [2]

Anjy Ou: For the woman who singularly embodies white female privilege, it’s kind of embarrassing that she doesn’t have the range. [2]

Will Adams: If you had asked me three months ago, “Hey, between ‘Swish Swish’ and whatever Taylor Swift ends up putting out this year, which is the more embarrassing diss track?”, I wouldn’t have thought I’d need to think about the answer this much. [2]

Anaïs Escobar Mathers: “Taylor, you’re doing amazing, sweetie,” said no one. [1]

Sonia Yang: With an artist as polarizing as Swift, it’s easy to make the conversation a messy knot about the real life conflicts she’s had, but I find it more interesting to tune that all out and focus on the simplicity of her work as a standalone. “Look What You Made Me Do” is Swift at her most coldly bitter yet, but betrays the resignation of long buried hurt. It’s “Blank Space” but with none of the fantastical fun; it toes the line between wary irony and jadedly “becoming the mask.” Most telling is the dull echo of the song title in place of a real hook, which is actually a favorite point of mine. Reality doesn’t always go out with a bang; it’s more likely for one to reach a gloomy conclusion than stumbling upon a glorious epiphany. Musically, I’d call this an awkward transition phase for Taylor – it’s not her worst song ever, but it’s admittedly underwhelming compared to the heights we’ve seen from her. However, I’ve sat through questionable attempts at reinvention from my favorite artists before and I’m still optimistic about the potential for Swift’s growth after this. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: There is nothing Taylor Swift does better than revenge, and this is not that. This is the first Swift single that exists only in conversation with Swift’s media-created persona – even “Blank Space” turned on internally resolved narrative beats and emotional moments – but it offers little for those who hear pop through celebrity news updates, not speakers or headphones. Compare “Look What You Made Me Do” to “Mean,” a pointed and hurt missive that scarified its targets with dangerous care; this new single, however, barely extends beyond the bounds of Swift’s own skull. “I don’t like your little games,” levels Swift, her voice venom, “the role you made me play.” The central character – the only character – in this narrative is Swift, and she enacts an immolation. Her nastiness is the etiolated savagery of Drake in his more recent and loutish incarnation: lonely and lordly, “just a sicko, a real sicko when you get to know me.” “I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time” could be Jesse Lacey on Deja Entendu but sunk into the abyss of The Devil and God – only it’s delivered over ugly, the Knife-like electro clanging. The line that succeeds is classic Swift in its brittle theatrics: “Honey, I rose up from the dead; I do it all the time.” The spoken-word bridge – the song’s most blatantly campy and deliciously gothic moment – acts as a witchy incantation, walking most precariously the line between winking vamp and public tantrum. Swift has brought her monstrous birth to the world’s light; contra the title, what it is we’ve made her do isn’t even apparent yet. [8]

Lauren Gilbert: I was 18 when “Fearless” was released, and listened to it on repeat my first term of undergrad, feeling freedom and joy and hope. I listened to “We Are Never Getting Back Together” on repeat in an on-again-off-again relationship that should have ended years before it did. I listened to 1989 over and over again after recovering from a nervous breakdown and for the first time, really, truly focused on choosing a life of joy. I should be Here For This. I am not. Pop music thrives on specificity, and Taylor Swift in particular has made a career of writing about hyperspecific situations. This is… generic; it could be sung by Katy Perry, by a female Zayn, by Kim K herself. Taylor offers no hooks to her own life here, and perhaps that’s not a flaw; female songwriters have the right to choose not to expose their own lives, and to write the same generic pop song nonsense that everyone else does. But as someone who bought into the whole TSwift authenticity brand – even while I recognized it as a brand, even while I knew that she was a multimillionaire looking out for her own interests first and foremost, even as she was the definition of a Problematic Fav – I can’t really say I care that much about new Taylor. I could fault Taylor’s politics and personality – and I’m sure other blurbs will – but the primary failing here isn’t Taylor’s non-music life. It’s that there’s no feeling here; it feels as cynical as the line “another day, another drama”. Next. [4]

Andy Hutchins: “I’m Too Sexy” + “Mr. Me Too” - basically any of the elements that made “Mr. Me Too” compelling = “Ms. I’m Sexy, Too.” [4]

Tara Hillegeist: Let’s leave this double-edged sword hang here for a minute: Taylor Swift’s personhood is irrelevant to the reality that she is a better creator than she ever gets credit for. Since her earliest days of the demo CDs she’d like to keep buried, Taylor Swift has never been less interesting or more terrible on the ears than when her songs are forcibly positioned as autobiography. For a decade she has cultivated an audience of lovers and haters alike that never felt her–or truly felt for her–because she never wanted them to know her, driven to own her brand even as she’s deliberately averred to own up to what lies behind it. Witness the framing of an Etch-a-Sketch of a song like “Look What You Made Me Do”: she releases a song about vengeful self-definition mere weeks after finally winning a years-long case against a man who sexually assaulted her and tried to sue her to silence over it on the sheer strength of her own self-representation, and the air charges itself with intimations that she instead meant it for Katy Perry, whose flash-in-the-pan “friendship” she publicly and memorably disowned in a bad song about bad blood an entire album ago, or perhaps Kim Kardashian-West, a woman whose “feud” with her arguably began with Taylor Swift’s attempt to paint herself as the victim in an argument with Kim’s husband but ended inarguably and decisively in Kim’s favor. To claim someone would mangle her targets so ineptly even the conspiracy theorists have to resort to half-guesses and deliberate misquotes to draw out the barbs is a claim it’s especially ridiculous to pin on a musician like Taylor Swift, a control freak who once built a labyrinth of personal references into an album full of songs about protagonists nothing like herself just to prove a point to anyone listening to them that closely about how sturdy the songs would be without knowing any of it. A public conversation that misses the point this drastically can only occur if there’s a deliberately blank space where any sense of or interest in the person it’s about could exist. There is a hole where this most powerfully self-determining popstar lives where a human life has never been glimpsed–because she cast that little girl and her frail voice aside years ago in search of something altogether more influential than such a weak vessel could ever hold. The girl who cajoled her family into spending enough Merrill-Lynch money to cover for her inability to sing until she had enough professional training to sing the songs she wanted to put to her name was never the girl who could truly be a flight risk with a fear of falling, was never the girl who never did anything better than revenge. But she wanted to be the girl who sang the words for that girl, who put her words in that girl’s mouth, more than anything else in the world. She staked her name on nothing less than her ability to capitalize on the reputation she acquired. The Taylor Swift of Fearless and Speak Now was a Taylor Swift who believed she could be someone else in your mind, a songwriter dexterous enough to slip between gothic pop, americana-infused new wave, and pop-punk piss-offs without shaking that crisply machine-tooled Pennsylvania diction. A decade on, she’s learned a lesson enough women before her already learned it’s shocking she wasn’t ready for it: when you’re a girl and you make something about being a girl, everyone thinks you just had yourself in mind. The proof that she was more than that–more than the songs on the radio, you might say–was always there; it wasn’t hidden, it wasn’t obscured. But from Red onwards that Taylor began to die; a straighter Taylor Swift emerged in more ways than just her hair, all the kinks ironing themselves out in favor of her remodeling herself into a different sort of someone else’s voice. Where once stood a Taylor Swift who sang for the sake of seeing her words sung by someone else’s mouth back to her, there now stood a Taylor Swift who sang everyone else’s words about her back to them. Tabloids cannot resurrect a life that a woman never lived, and no amount of retrospective sleight of hand about the girl she might have lied about being can hide the truth that neither can she. Conspiracy theories only flourish when people treat the mystery of human motives like a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be solved–ignoring that she already made it clear that was, still and always, the wrong answer to the questions she wouldn’t let them ask. She wanted fame, she wanted a reputation; she wanted them on terms she defined; she never wanted anything else half as much as she wanted that. She has used every means available to her to earn them. Her awkward adolescence took a backseat to her life’s dream of conquering America’s radio. It’s no shock, then, that all this gossip-mongering rings as hollow as a crown. The messy melodrama of Southern sympathy and thin-voiced warbles that defined the sweethearted ladygirls of generations before her and beside her and will define those that come after her, the sloppy humanities of Britney and Dolly and Tammy and Leann and Kesha Rose; these fumbling honesties, these vulnerabilities have never been tools in Taylor’s narrative repertoire the way she uses the white girlhood she shares with them has been. She owned her protagonists’ anxieties; but those songs have never defined her. This was always the moral to the story of Taylor Swift, to anyone–condemning or compassionate–who cared to really hear it: behind her careful compositions and obsessive pleas, Taylor Swift was never interested in making herself a real person at all. That would have cost her everything she ever wanted. And we, the Cicerone masses, ought very well to ask ourselves, before we let that double-edged sword finally fall: would it have been any more worth it, to anyone, if she had been? [2]

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