#idk why I decided to write an essay about 1989 now but idk it’s such a good album I revisited it and she really tells this story so well

[midnightsslut]

what gets me about 1989 is that it’s such a tight, cohesive narrative that it almost feels like you’re looking at a character and not taylor herself. this young woman moves to a big city for the first time and embrace the change with bright-eyed enthusiasm. she’s been hurt before, but she wants to leave that all in the past. we quickly get to know about her reputation: she’s powerful enough to get any man she wants, but her emotions make people think she’s crazy, so she becomes jaded instead. there is one man she keeps going back to, though. the world wouldn’t let them be together. eventually, he didn’t keep his side of the bargain and left her. she said she’d put her broken heart in the drawer, but she clearly hasn’t yet. wait, no, now she has. she doesn’t care what they say anymore… but she still wants him to come back. yes, she knows their desires may never align, but every night, she dreams about him anyway. her blind optimism in the first song seems to dim. she’s been betrayed, and she isn’t afraid to speak up. she still falls in love intensely, but she just hopes to be remembered fondly after this ends, because nothing lasts forever. oh wait, he DID come back. maybe they were meant to be after all! she promises to hold his hand forever; outside forces won’t tear them apart this time like they did eight songs ago. they’re successfully hiding now… except they’re being recorded this entire time. all of this back and forth, she feels depleted and alone. there’s nothing left to do. this love feels dead after all. she screams for help, but ultimately, the only one who can save her is herself. she starts and ends the album by embracing a new life on her own. the only difference is that, in the beginning, she felt excited to become a new person, but now, she almost feels like she has no choice. in that desperation, her life feels in control again, and she’s finally clean.

#idk why I decided to write an essay about 1989 now but idk it’s such a good album I revisited it and she really tells this story so well #1989 #clean #1989 tv

[animallover4000]

1.how did you start listening to taylor?

3.whats your favorite album?

4.whats your favorite era?

9.whats your favorite swiftie inside joke?

Hiiii tysm for the ask!!! so sorry I completely forgot about it HAHAH <333

1:

Oohhh, okay so I was always quite neutral about her music, I think lwymmd and Lover were the first 2 songs I remember actually like liking more than just casually hearing it on the radio and thinking "oh that's nice". But I only really discovered how much I love her music like about 2 years ago when the girl I was in love with at the time (awkward story hahah) said she liked her music and I ended up listening to her music for a few nights straight while writing an essay for school, and after that I just kinda found out how much I love her music and her :) Now the girl and I don't talk anymore, and I'm a bigger fan than she ever was so thank you to her for making me discover my swiftie self HAHA. Also New Year's Day was I think the first song that really made me realise I love her music way more than other artists, so that's why it's my favourite song of hers :) (i'm sorry this was an insanely long answer HAHHA)

3:

Okay my album top 3 is folklore, Lover and reputation, my mood decides which one is my favourite atm haha

4:

Hmmm I wasn't around for many of the eras cause I joined quite late, but the og 1989 era sounds so fun, with all the social media presence and stuff. There was a lot of bad shit going on in 1989 era too though so I'm not really sure. I love the era we're in now too :)

9:

Oooh, uh I like the no it's becky thing HAHA. Also the letting her bejeweled thing. Also idk if these counts but 123 lgb and come back to me eli are iconic HAHA

[cosettepontmercys]

I totally agree with everything you said about rerecordings. I honestly forgot about Sweeter Than Fiction but I like your idea too. It makes sense..and ya it was probably cuz they had cowriters or how she maybe she doesn't agree with the message of Drama Queen anymore. For a while, Ive been thinking about how it would be fun to listen to each rerecording differently the first time. For the first two, I listened in order but then for Speak Now, we went with vault songs first..and now for 1989 I was thinking I will listen on shuffle for the first time..and see how the vault songs mix in with the original songs. I've never done that but think it might be cool to experience since I've heard these songs a lot..and 1989 especially has her most popular songs. Idk though..cuz I know Rep seems like it must be listened in order..then for debut I don't hear the full album all the time so I might just play that in order too. So this is my last chance..and I wonder if it will make me feel differently about the songs haha. That didn't really happen with the Speak Now vault songs though..they just felt pretty separate or like just added to the album. What do you think? How do you usually listen to them? I know sometimes people choose favorites first.

Oh that makes sense about the Roman Holiday musical..and maybe it was hard to translate to stage too. Since it's an old movie, I guess it kinda makes sense to use Cole Porter songs but I can see how that didn't really add anything.

For Paradise Square, i did not know much about it either. I guess there has been an issue of being unable to release their cast album. So the composer has posted a few clips of the musical and songs on his Instagram to appreciate the show and I was watching them yesterday. It seemed pretty good and had a lot of dancing. Haha that Smash comment! Ya it seems pretty in demand..which makes sense. Also your comment about the green light with staging would be totally cool.

Oh ya..maybe that's why they were kinda similar and because they were both based on books. But ya..I still love Love Simon and it's soundtrack but I never read that book either. I really think this one could have had more potential..the movie was fine to me but it just didn't make me feel anything. It could've been more maybe but I also see a lot of people loving it too. I saw someone say that the book has a lot of pop culture references I think so I get why you would say that about when it was written but I'm still always curious about differences from the book to the movie. Apparently you said they cut a whole character..and I'm just like what? Haha. And yes of course to the buddy read! I hadn't thought about it but I think I have time for some reading today so maybe I'll restart it. But I also saw you had a lot of books on your list already so I wasn't sure. There's no pressure and I'm afraid I'll be horrible at keeping up with it lol. I'm not sure if it's like we read a couple chapters then we can talk about it as we go or if you have something else in mind but let me know! I hope you're doing well too and also your dog is the cutest!!!

hi friend!! i am terribly, terribly sorry about how long it has taken me to get around to replying to this </3 i keep meaning to sit down and write an essay reply to your other ask but i have simply not had the time/energy to do so! i treat little women very seriously so it will be a very long essay-answer just so you are prepared! but i did not want to let this ask sit in my inbox longer than it already has </3 and i also just missed talking to you!! how have you been? i would love a behind the scenes documentary/something that gives us more insight into why taylor picks the songs she does from the vaults/how she decides which ones she wants to release/not, and which era she wants it on! i usually listen in order, ending with vault tracks, but i think it'd be fun to shuffle it around! you'll have to let me know which listening experience you enjoyed most 🤍 !! i cannot believe in about two months time, we'll have 1989 tv. i also think that roman holiday is one of those stories that would just not work today! and i think that despite the musical still keeping it in the 1950s, it still felt very ... modern? i don't know how to explain it! i think it was a case of them trying to writing so they could fit in cole porter songs, rather than fitting in cole porter songs to support the script/character development/writing/etc? if that makes sense! i just saw the outsiders is going to broadway, which i'm super stoked to hear more about! ( i know nothing about the outsiders musical, i'm just intrigued) between the outsiders, the notebook, merrily, and then i just saw nycc is doing titanic, i have a better feeling about next season than i have in the past! and then smash in 2024-2025 in theory... i'm just excited! here's a question for you: if you could adapt any book as a musical, what would it be? and if you could revive any show on broadway, what show would you choose? they cut a couple important characters in rwrb, which made me really upset but it is what it is! (+ all the other issues i have with the movie) i do maintain that the book is much better (although not perfect, obviously) but i'm glad that a lot of people seem to love the movie 🤍 it simply is not for me and that is okay!! and yes, still down to buddy read!! i can either match your pace (you can just tell me how much you've read when and i'll read up to where you are), i can read at my own pace and then we can discuss, or we can do a set number of chapters/pages/etc. every x days! let me know what you want to do, i'm flexible 🤍 and thank youuu!! i am doing okay! it has been a rough couple of days over here (family/health stuff) but things seem to be looking up here! 🤍 and my dog says hello!!! hope you're doing well too, friend!

#post: answered #🩷 anon

[jonismitchell]

hey!! i haven’t talked to you in forever i hope you’re doing well. idk if you’ve answered this recently, sorry- top three on every album (totally put why if you want to, i love hearing people’s different opinions on this)

ahhh hey! i’m doing okay (as well as can be considered given the state of the world). i have not answered this question since folklore came out, so here’s a short opinion piece by yours truly. (under the cut because i never learned to shut up)

debut:  - our song: listening to taylor swift sing from the “man’s perspective” for the first time is something that can be so personal. i’m pretty sure that this is also the first taylor song i ever heard (in 2012) so i have some degree of emotional attachment to it.  - invisible: cause i just wanna show you! she don’t even know you! visceral flashbacks of playing this on loop while watching ever after high and harry potter videos in, like, fifth grade. truly describes my pining for every single person i’ve ever liked oops - should’ve said no: she’s so righteously angry and i love it. also the country accent is so strong here and i am absolutely obsessed with that.... legends only. anyway this is your reminder not to get back with your scumbag ex.

fearless: - love story: this is a classic! this is literally a classic. god the forbidden love, the happy ending, this implications of this being one of the biggest hits of her career.... it is The Ultimate Taylor Swift Song and we all just have to respect that. also a healthy dose of “the man’s perspective.” she SAW that film before and she changed the ending!! i cannot :) - come in with the rain: her vocals on this song are so dreamy and the song is really sweet. i think it manages to be lowkey and straddle how fucking dramatic being a teenager is with a lot of class that most of fearless doesn’t access. it’s a good song! - you belong with me: hey it’s the lonely hopeless romantic anthem! yes i know i’m citing the two biggest hits from fearless... they got popular because they’re super good okay! i would argue that the songwriting here is very classic taylor and it’s also super sweet :) 

speak now: - last kiss: ugh this really is an amazing breakup ballad. it’s full of amazing one-liners like “you can plan for a change in the weather and time but i never planned on you changing your mind.” i can’t believe how brilliant the whole song is and it’s even more impressive when you remember she wrote it alone. cannot wait to hear the updated vocals but the shaky breaths in the original are perfection <3 - enchanted: okay this is actually my favourite speak now song but i thought i’d shut up about being a lonely romantic for more than five seconds! anyway i have projected this onto so many people... it’s so relatable and yet it’s super general and YET it makes no sense when you think about it... that’s my style of taylor swift song  - the story of us: i love how blatantly unhinged taylor was while writing speak now it really speaks to me. i didn’t really like this one so much before but i went through a Thing and binge listened and now i am obsessed. love love love the lyrics and i think the production suits it well too 

red:  - holy ground: this is my ALL TIME FAVOURITE taylor swift song. i genuinely think these are the best lyrics she has written in her whole career.... “we blocked the noise with the sound of you and for the first time i had something to lose?” no one is doing it like her they simply aren’t. this song is absolutely perfect.... i don’t really have words to describe it i just need everyone to appreciate my taste for a minute - treacherous: gay little taylor swift. the whole idea of forbidden love crops up again here and i have to say i love it. i swear to god the vibes... the quiet confessional on the verses that explodes into this huge ranting bridge? that’s it that’s it that’s one of the best songs of all time man miss swift is an icon - state of grace: love is like a religion, perhaps. this contains such a wonderful extended metaphor and utilizes a bunch of different writing tactics so well. i sound like a broken record at this point but this is a good song! and yes i project it onto lucas (i’m fine to say that no one is reading this much)

1989:  - wildest dreams: oh just say you’ll remember me! it’s the songs about doomed love that always get me, something forbidden, something you have to keep private for fear of it being destroyed. side note, everyone who thinks a song as good as this is about harry styles can fight me. taylor pulled this out of my personal diary in sixth grade and it hasn’t stopped being relatable since - wonderland: oh you guys know i love a literary reference and wonderland is so good. haven’t you heard what becomes of curious minds is also really gay so the song works well for me. oh and a special shoutout to everyone who removed a tattoo because of this song, i hope you’re doing real well - style: very happy that i never think of anyone in particular when i listen to this banger and instead just enjoy it like a normal person <3 i remember not understanding the hype until binge listening to 1989 one day in eighth grade and being like “oh i get it now” so there’s that (shoutout to this love for nearly being on this list)

reputation: - dancing with our hands tied: this is another one of my all time favourites! the pining, the gay vibes, the love that dies in secrecy... it basically goes through my list of how to be a good song and ticks my requirements off one by one. i love how anxious the production is and her emotion while singing it on rep tour. karlie kloss fucking fight me challenge. - new year’s day: this quiet subtlety of this love ballad gets to me... it was my favourite when i originally listened to reputation and hasn’t fallen out of the top three since. i think it highlights taylor’s songwriting abilities and her ability to make me cry, both very important aspects of music - delicate: this is another hopeless romantic pining song! how many are we up to now? i really think delicate is the essential crush song that describes basically every feeling i’ve ever had. and unfortunately, up to this point, it has all been delicate :/ at least i have the solace of sharing problems with a talented millionaire

lover: - cruel summer: this really is THE fucking song for me... it encapsulated my ninth grade year, it makes my heart hurt, it’s line after line of pain to me personally. i have no idea what miss swift is banging on about here (and i prefer it that way) but it really just means a lot to me! another song that sounds like my diary entry and is also completely inaccessible, i don’t know how she does it. - the archer: i love the moment where taylor swift decided that she was going to give those of us with anxiety a theme song every single album, and i think the archer is a definite highlight of her whole career. the subtle dreampop influences and the confessional vibes make it exactly what i wanted from lover, and also it hurts me emotionally in ways i can’t fully articulate.  - lover: see, i do have a heart! listen, i’m only fifteen years old but i know i want this song to play at my wedding. it is so quietly romantic and perfectly sure of its own goals. it does not seek to accomplish any other goal than being a love song. i started thinking about the lyrics while writing this and now i have to go cry in a corner. (shoutout to cornelia street for nearly being on this list)

folklore: - mirrorball: right on holy ground’s heels for the dubious honour of being my favourite ever taylor swift song, mirrorball describes my Whole Life so unfortunately i’m considering suing miss swift herself. i just think that it speaks to me in ways that would require a whole essay to explain.... let’s just not - august: here’s your mandatory hopeless romantic pining song. did i mention i nearly cried to this on the day of release? i think that she Gets It. i don’t know taylor and i don’t entertain delusions of her knowing me but man she really just plucked the core of my whole love life and said “here’s a song about it, will you shut up now?” back when we were still changing for the better... i need a minute - betty: definitely influenced by the stellar performance at the acms! or maybe i just love listening to taylor openly singing about girls.... i just have a lot of feelings about the emotional resonance about the grand romantic gesture this song builds up to! the key change! the storytelling! kissing on the porch in front of all your stupid friends! this is what taylor swift is all about (shoutout to illicit affairs, my tears ricochet, and this is me trying for nearly being on this list)

#loudwithlaughter #asking with you #this is just 1500 words about how much i love random songs

[midnightsslut]

So was taylor really cancelled in 2016 or was it more that she wasn't as popular as she was/would like to be?

oh she was absolutely canceled. buckle up because I have a lot of thoughts on this djsjsj.

if you were around in the fandom at all, you knew. things were BAD. that level of hate towards a celebrity is honestly rare these days. i would say the only thing that comes close in recent memory is like… idk, it’s actually hard to think of any because it was a combination of a few factors. it’s not that the general public decided to quietly boycott her and stop consuming her music. it’s that there were viral tweets hating on her pretty much every week. if she did anything in 2016-18, it was met with an absolutely asinine amount of criticism. twitter had a field day with things as innocent as her september cover and her post about having a good year in 2017. a lot of celebrities decided to distance themselves and take kanye’s side. there were numerous articles written about how she was finally going down and should apologize for being problematic. people were famously convinced the tour would flop and absolutely celebrated it. people literally told her she was dead. it’s genuinely difficult to explain the scope of this hate train to people who weren’t around at the time, especially because the news cycle is very different now. people get over news stories a lot quicker than they used to.

now, the main argument people use to prove that she wasn’t canceled is the first-week sales of reputation, which is sort of funny to me because all the coverage in 2017 focused on how its performance was lackluster compared to 1989. of course it still sold well compared to other artists’ albums in the first week, because there was still hype around her comeback, and most importantly, she has a huge fan base. none of the singles had longevity except delicate, which fans genuinely worked their asses off to campaign for. the radio did not play her singles like it used to, though this is due to other factors as well. sure, rep was not actually a flop, but it was nowhere near how TS6, the follow-up to one of the biggest pop eras of the decade, could’ve performed without the cancellation. it also got the worst reviews of her career, most of which generally didn’t focus on the music or the lyricism and were just mad at her as a person. yes, this sounds dramatic, considering the fact that it still got a lot of glowing reviews. the media made sure to focus on a lot of the negative stuff, although they were surprised that critics generally seemed to like it.

what’s funny is that, when she spoke about the kanye controversy in interviews in 2019, no one told her she wasn’t ‘really’ canceled, because a lot of people still hated her. they just told her to get over it. the level of hate was nowhere near pre-rep tour levels anymore, but she was still one of the most criticized celebrities, and it was widely believed that her peak had passed (people love to write revisionist history about the lover album and its performance that does not actually reflect the numbers, but that’s another story). now that more time has passed, and she’s even higher than she was pre-2016, people want to convince her that she’s actually wrong.

it’s almost insane to me to chalk up that level of hate to anything other than a cancellation. seeing articles like ‘was taylor swift REALLY canceled?’ and essays on why that’s just in her head will infuriate ANYONE who was online and didn’t hate her. none of the articles I linked here really convey the scope of that hate. taylor really played the long game and came out the other side of it, but she WAS canceled.

#yes this is long but I’ve been wanting to say this so thank you for asking lmao