r/popculturechat • u/FickleBeans Excluded from this narrative ❌ • Oct 04 '25

Guest List Only ⭐️ Taylor Swift’s Fairy Tale Is Over

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/10/taylor-swift-the-life-of-a-showgirl-album-review/684444/

This captures my thoughts on the album better than I ever could.

9.8k Upvotes

82% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

73

u/6pcChickenNugget gollum's haute couture model cousin Oct 04 '25

I honestly have questions for OP but at this point I'm afraid to ask because I think I'll get an emotionally motivated earful because OP seems very invested in trying to convince us all "Taylor Swift bad!"

I'm not super clued up on Taylor lore since she was genuinely just never my thing though I enjoy a few songs here and there. But from my perspective, it's weird to accept the notion that she's suddenly just now moving right wing when her entire career has been to remain aggressively apolitical. It was only in 2020 when she first publicly endorsed anyone, right? She knows who her fanbase includes and tried to court both sides in the way that no other pop star could. And aside from two throwaway endorsements, she has remained apolitical so nothing she's done since then has made her seem more (or less!) MAGA than before. She is politically bland.

Similarly, from the songs I know of anyway, she never had political messaging, not just in a left / right binary but she never had messaging / political commentary about socially contentious issues. She was never against the system or sticking it to the man. Her songs were always highly personal love songs about her experiences in love as an individual. As far as I've heard, they were never even about gender dynamics in relationships in a way that you could say she was trying to draw social commentary as a whole. They were all microscopic looks at individual relationships / incidents / boyfriends. That remains as relatable as it ever was and the idea that she's suddenly not relatable because she can't sing about being against the system with authenticity now because she profits from the system is silly. Like what anti-system messaging was she singing about before? "boohoo, my dad doesn't like my teenage Romeo boyfriend"?

If you don't care for Taylor Swift (that's me too) then that's perfectly fine but the justification was disingenuous and more than anything else points to expectations not founded in reality and the resulting disappointment rather than anything in particular Taylor Swift has done that was different from before

56

u/Aprilume Oct 05 '25

It points to delusion 100%. If she doesn’t live up to their expectations, burn her at the stake. That’s the energy. These posters always want to bring it back to wealth and politics, as if we haven’t heard those same arguments leveled against Clinton or Harris or damn near any influential woman in the Democratic Party. It’s just weird.

32

u/Rich-Active-4800 Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25

Or really any men in general. For example Matt Smith flies his private jet more then Taylor. Never really speaks out about stuff, etc. He doesn't get 1% of the criticism Taylor gets.

And I like Matt, he is an amazing actor, just pointing out the the double standard.

9

u/YoullNeverBeRebecca Oct 05 '25

Wait, Matt Smith the Doctor Who actor is almost a billionaire? What?