When you watch Miss Americana, it’s obvious that what you’re getting is not, in some new way, the “real Taylor.”2 I don’t mean it’s false,3 more that “Taylor Swift, the unguarded person” is something only a small group of people experience. In every other part of her life, Taylor already lives like she is on a hot mic. Inviting a camera crew in doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s still the public Taylor, telling the story she wants to tell about her life. I would rather listen to her songs.4 Taylor Swift is never going to be the subject of a documentary that is interesting on its own …

Read more

To my mind, this question is really three questions:

• Should this famous person talk about politics (because they’re people who should be able to participate politically, like everybody else)?

• Should this person talk about politics (because they should feel free to speak their mind)?

• Should this famous person talk about politics (because their fame means they have a lot of influence over events)?

The answer to the first two questions is yes. The answer to the third question is no. If you think famous people should talk, or at least feel free to talk, about politics for reasons of principle, that is one thing. But if it’s a matter of pragmatism, that is a di…

Read more

And I don’t really think that these talking points are getting much purchase. It’s more that there are a lot of them and they keep popping up. But ever since the affair of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni I have felt a bit suspicious of anything where suddenly a lot of people all seem to dislike a woman for constantly shifting reasons.

So I am just going to say this: I don’t think this reaction is organic. I think somebody is see…

Read more

Celebrities mostly benefit from this exchange, though. It makes them famous and it makes them rich and maybe it makes some of them crazy, but, well, that’s the deal. But there are a few big exceptions. One, naturally, is Taylor Swift.1

Read more

At The Substack Post, I have reviewed a recent album from niche Pennsylvanian indie artist Taylor Swift:

The Substack Post

You wouldn’t be here for someone else

Editor’s note: Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl has dominated charts, airwaves, and social feeds alike—including Substack’s. We asked essayist and critic BDM to make sense of the album and Swift’s singular ability to drive the discourse…

Read more

6 months ago · 10 likes · BDM

tl;dr: My verdict is that The Life of a Showgirl is a fun album, but it’s not a great album. I would rank it with Lover and Midnights. It’s probably one of the only Taylor Swift albums where there’s no song I skip the moment it starts… but there’s not a song I feel compelled to listen to over and over either. Sticking to album cuts: there’s no “London Boy,” but there’s also no “I Think He Knows.” No “Vigilante Shit,” but no “Maroon.”1 Though I also find that while if I like something I tend to continue to like it, stuff I don’t like can change up on me. In general, not just with Taylor.

Other notes: Two old posts, not by me, on Taylor’s use of language that I recommend are “i’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song” by isabel and “How You Get the World: Reflections on Taylor Swift, Pt. 5” by Dave Moore. My favorite track is “Elizabeth Taylor,” followed by “Father Figure.” It is sort of funny that what it means for this album to be reputation vol. 2 is that it’s like… “I bet my life looks pretty great to you.… And you know what? It is great. 10/10 life.” I hope all the people who have been saying “she needs to stop working with YES man Jack and start working with NO man Max” since Midnights are feeling a little embarrassed. I always wanted Taylor to write an anxiety-free love song, and now she has, and it’s “Wood.”

There’s a funny musical theater quality to this album that kind of comes in and out of focus for me. The title track, obviously. “Eldest Daughter” feels like the big second act ballad for a musical that doesn’t exist. “CANCELLED!” is like a Disney villain song. Even “Elizabeth Taylor” can feel that way, if delivered in a stripped-down manner:

Finally, I am not on the Taylor Swift “bribing critics” payroll that social media is sure exists but writing this book is expensive so… Taylor… I will stop blogging about you for at least five years for a cool million (post tax). Just PayPal me or something.

Read more

Here we are, at the release day eve of a showgirl. I bought a cheery orange sweater under the assumption that in October it would be cool, in terms of the weather. It is not cool, in terms of the weather, which is also not cool, in the slang sense of being desirable. Now what am I gonna do with this orange sweater, I ask you? This is the only weekend of the year in which it’s legal to wear orange!

As with the TTPD open thread, I am paywalling the comments section so people can feel free to be cringe if they want with a certain level of privacy. If you want to hang but can’t afford to subscribe, reply to this email and I’ll comp you. I’m supposed to review the album elsewhere, so if all goes well that will probably appear next week sometime. (I will post it here in my usual “new writing” fashion.)

As far as Showgirl rollout goes, I’m hoping that Taylor’s appearance on BBC Radio 1 means we’re going to get a new set of Live Lounge appearances. Her prior appearances have been great:1

I’m going to declare this thread a leak-free zone. The album will be out in a few hours and then we’ll all be on the same page, you know? Stuff Taylor herself has done (her various lyric drops) are not leaks and are fair game. But this is my house (metaphorically speaking) and I do not enjoy leaks, so don’t mention them.2

That said, I am interested that Taylor’s approach to leaks this time seems to be more “resignation” than it has been in the past. The cover and some lyrics leaked and… she just acted like it didn’t happen! That’s new. It reminds me a lot of her approach to the Eras livestreams. There was a time (1989-ish?) where if you posted video from a Taylor concert it would get copyright struck. The landscape has changed. But certainly up through TTPD, she cared a lot about leaks, and the release styles of both Midnights and TTPD seemed designed to frustrate people who thought they could listen to the leaks and then check out—sorry, assholes, there’s a whole secret part of the album.3

If I had to guess, people who are really into leaks may just constitute a distinct subset of the audience and they don’t really affect streams or sales or roll-outs that much. But they do generate buzz, so they’re worth tolerating.4

Read more

This started its life as a draft of notes for reputation (taylor’s version) which didn’t happen. A lot of this was written sufficiently long ago that TTPD wasn’t even announced, let alone out, but… I think it’s fine? I went through and tweaked some parts, but the bulk of it I wrote in December 2023 and I wanted to leave it alone where I could. If you do not want to read Taylor Swift posts, you can opt out of this section through your subscriber settings. :)

Read more

In the newest edition of The Lamp, I have a short piece about Sydney Sweeney’s creepy Nazi fans. Is this piece also, in its way, about… Taylor Swift? Yes, obviously:

Meanwhile, the anti-Sweeney in this drama is Taylor Swift. Swift and Sweeney have been pitted against each other by spectators, including Donald Trump: Swift, who represents woke, is no longer hot; Sweeney, anti-woke, is hot. (Out with the old blonde, in with the new.) Like so many statements about both Taylor Swift and Sydney Sweeney, or, for that matter, by Trump, this one has no tether to reality, but it’s how a certain type of person wants things to be. There’s a level of personal betrayal at play here. Swift, who stays out of trouble, avoids politics, doesn’t do drugs, rarely seems out of control, and sings about love, was the crypto-conservative icon of an earlier era. Eventually, it turned out that she was not one of them. Their Brünnhilde was within another ring of fire. Now all their hopes are pinned on Sweeney.

Now, you may, after reading this piece, feeling like coming back here and saying: BDM, isn’t this piece more of a series of jokes at the expense of a bunch of weird losers than it is a piece of “reasoned analysis”? The answer is: first, yes it is and second, doing that was fun.

Read more

Anyway, for brands, there’s Christmas, Black Friday, and Taylor releases.1 These seem to be the only common points of culture left.2 One post is fun, three posts are fun. Any individual post is a person having a good time. An avalanche of posts is something else and I find myself experiencing them both as “very fun” (as a person whose attention is being directly courted) and as “very annoying.”

Read more

If you don’t care about Taylor, well, you were warned:

I think she’ll be unveiling the cover tomorrow but this thread will still exist tomorrow, for discussion purposes.

I’m going to be logged off for a few hours so, some rules: 1) be nice 2) you can reference leaks if you want but say you are doing so, since sometimes leaks are 100% wrong.

If you’re asking yourself, “why do this now? Why not wait?” it’s a good question. The answer is made me.

Stay beautiful,

BDM

Read more

Read more

And Taylor’s statement is good. As always, she knows how to treat the reader like a peer instead of somebody who is beneath her; so she says, I did my research and here’s my conclusion, but you should do your research and come to yours (and make sure you’re registered to vote). It’s a message addressed from one adult to other adults. And it puts the emphasis where Taylor really does have a lot of influence—driving up voter registration.

All of this basically fits with what I already thought would happen when she eventually endorsed. It doesn’t mean she can hand the electi…

Read more

At The Times, A Pet Peeve: Celebrity political endorsements don’t matter. They just don’t. They don’t win elections. They don’t change people’s minds! And that is because the relationship we have with celebrities is… an entirely different category of relationship than the one we have with politicians:

The fact that so much celebrity wattage produces so little social change might be at least in part because celebrities exist for us as aspirational figures, not practical ones. I might try Jane Fonda’s aerobics program because I envy her physique or join Reese Witherspoon’s book club because it will make me feel like we’re friends. But political candidates are ultimately public servants. They work for us; we’re not their fans, we’re their employers.…

[Celebrity] voices, in practical terms, should count for just as much or as little as any other individual’s voice. We shouldn’t look to them to solve politics for the rest of us — and it’s for th…

Read more

I mentioned on Notes that I was reading Alfred Habegger’s My Wars Are Laid Away In Books, an immense and comprehensive1 biography of Emily Dickinson. Anyway, I’m done with the book now.

Perhaps predictably, I found myself thinking a lot about Taylor Swift while reading it, mostly because this paragraph in Habegger’s introduction struck a chord:

One of the reasons readers at all levels respond to her with passionate enthusiasm is that, knowing something of her life and character, they approach her work with these in mind. Again and again, readers feel that, remote and difficult as she is, they are on the track of knowing her. They feel a heartbeat; they receive the words as primal and immediate, as coming straight from life. Sadly, this way of reading is generally a mistake, especially if we succumb to the illusion that we can zoom into her life and penetrate her secret being. One of Dickinson’s paradoxes is that she both invites and deflects such intimacy. …

Read more