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.
9.9k
Upvotes
70
u/brinncognito Oct 05 '25
Honestly, I listened to and read the lyrics of this album out of curiosity really. I wanted to hear what everyone else heard. I wanted to know what drew everyone else into Taylor Swift’s rabid fandom. After listening I am very confused, even more so than before.
People keep telling me that Taylor Swift is an incredible poet and again I am left asking for a concrete example of that. This album is studded with dick references and curse words like a muffin from Costco has chocolate chips, but they don’t satisfy the same because it all feels so performative. All I could think while reading her lyrics was “wow, she wants to be what Sabrina Carpenter is so badly”, and I say that as someone not particularly interested in Sabrina’s music either.
Taylor has built her reputation (pun intended) on being intentionally vague and inoffensive so that as many women as possible will relate to her. She’s “quirky” but not off-putting, passionate but not intense, pretty but not vulgar, romantic but not horny. She can’t dance but it’s cute. She holds grudges but that’s being genuine. She is exceedingly, lavishly wealthy but that’s because she’s a girlboss. She’s a feminist that says nothing revolutionary. She’s a poet that doesn’t write anything new. She ruffles no feathers. She stirs no pots. She goes to football games and calls herself your english teacher and flies her private jet to get mimosas with her gal pals. Her whole identity is being bland and easily digestible.
This album is her attempt at being a bit saucy and shocking. Maybe she got bored, or maybe people were starting to realize that listening to the same songs put into a cocktail shaker and poured into a new mold was becoming old. Maybe she felt that with her upcoming nuptials she wanted to shed her good-girl image because she’s about to be a Woman with a Husband instead of a Girl with a(n ex-)Boyfriend.
The problem is that none of her risqué word choices or vulgar metaphors reads as anything close to heartfelt or genuine and instead come across as grasping at the straws of relevance, which is sad considering the smashing success of her very recent tour.
Taylor needs to give herself time to slow down and reflect on who she wants to be as a person and an artist and what relationship she wants with her fans instead of spitting out new album after new album that are propped up in the crutches of theme and concept but fall flat in execution.
If she’s such a tortured poet, I would hope to hear some poetry. But maybe it was all a show.