The Tortured Poets Department: Holy Writ

featuring Khalid bin Ya'qūb

Emily Dickinson’s sixth cousin thrice removed, tortured poet Taylor Swift.

It’s late, but it’s thorough! Khalid (good friend, Taylor fan, and host of the podcast Subliminal Jihad, an investigation on all things sus) and I dove deep into what will eventually be regarded as one of Taylor’s best albums. We discuss the album highlights and flops, the critical reception, and what this album represents for Taylor at this particular moment in her career. Khalid compares Swift’s lyrics to Arabic poetry and makes an astute comparison between Bright Eyes’ Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and TTPD. Let’s waste no time, because this is extremely important (and long).

Is TTPD a successful Taylor Swift album?

KbY: It is potentially the best ever. Leaving nostalgia/era relativism aside, folklore and evermore are the only albums that could be better, on the whole. Annihilates MIDnights. 

CD: I agree. I think it even usurps evermore for me. It’s definitely a correction from MIDnights, the most disingenuous album she’s ever put out (you can read my Midnights essay here.) It’s crazy how much MID lacked concept, lyricism, and substance. Judging by the way she announced TTPD while winning AOTY— already erasing Midnights at the apex of its success— makes me think she knows it too.

Now that we’ve established the fact that contrary to public opinion, TTPD is a great album, tell me your favorite songs and/or lyrics.

KbY: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”— Taylor has been trying to make this “I’m a crazy witch out for revenge” song work for several albums now and this is the first one that truly works. Like I love “Look What You Made Me Do,” but anyone who listens to this song (the imagery; the pathos; the sweep and the depth of the writing and performance) and is pining for “You, said the gun was mine / Wasn’t true / No I don’t like you” is crazy or dishonest (I’m thinking of that Paste review) when there is this:

So tell me everything is not about me… BUT WHAT IF IT IS?

“The Prophecy”— Maybe my favorite lyrics on the album. I think the aesthetic palette of this song is perfectly balanced between the pagan (on this album in particular, Hellenistic/Romanticist) and Abrahamic motifs, supporting the theme of faith. A complex reflection on what lies beneath the patina of the Joe/Matty angst. 

“Clara Bow”— when she says “Taylor Swift” on this song is like when Tim Kasher says “this is the latest from Saddle Creek” on Burst and Bloom by Cursive lol. 

I think those are my top three, but really, there are a lot of great songs on TTPD: “loml,” “Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” (I find the ‘asymmetric’ musical structure of this one very interesting, and I love the lyrics that ride the big swell), “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” (I usually would not like a “Bejeweled”-esque song like this, but I think Jack’s bag of tricks actually served this one— the “1, 2, 3, 4,” the echo of the Miss Americana cheer vocals on “while the crowd was chanting MORE”)

“So Long London,” “How Did It End? (An actually justifiable instance of Taylor taking a stock phrase and making it into a hook cf. “Down Bad,” “Hits Different”) “Florida!!” (The first tolerable manifestation of Taylor’s interest in true crime), “But Daddy I Love Him”— her dipping back into a country idiom for this is fascinating. There is something “Old Taylor” about this song in that it seems to “say something” about much more than just the Matty drama. That is to say, in the Fearless era for instance, many would comfortably say that “the phenomenon” of Taylor Swift “says something” about “society” or whatever— taking her agency out of it. This song, I think, makes a claim, if not a totally transparent one, that *she* as an artist— not “the fact of her popularity” or w/e— is saying something. It’s a very deep piece.) 

“The Black Dog,” (the nuance of her writing within the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus formula). Even “Fortnight” and the eponymous track 2— which seem to have struck a blow to some ppl’s expectations on first listen— I liked right away and still like. The ones I left out are not really “mid,” they are mostly good. Even the songs I’m going to discuss under the next topic are not total groaners like “Me!” or “Vigilante Shit.” They are listenable. 

CD: I’m adding “Bejeweled” to the total groaner category… lol.

I do think some of her best lyrics EVER are on this album. “Guilty as Sin” goes crazy (“We’ve already done it in my head / If it’s make believe, why does it feel like a vow / we’ll both uphold somehow?”) — it’s bold, it DGAF and, similar to what you said about “But Daddy I Love Him” being an instance where Taylor herself is really taking a stance (and not in a fake Miss Americana-documentary way), this is Taylor…. making a choice to paint herself in a particular light. Being that it’s literally about her getting off to Matty Healy while she’s with Joe… poor Joe, what’s the opposite of a muse?

As you know, the first time I heard “But Daddy I Love Him” I thought it was more ironic than it actually is— like I initially interpreted “Too high a horse / for a simple girl / to rise above it”) as her inability to separate herself from her fatalist romantic fantasies, and so initially found the song to be profoundly sad. Until I realized no, it’s a pretty honest, ballsy song.

I’m not as into “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” as you are but I adore the line you pointed out and agreed, it’s the most successful version of THAT type of Taylor song. “The Tortured Poets Department” has a soberness and a lightness about it that I really appreciate, where she pokes fun at the “tortured poet”-ness of the rest of the album and, for one of the few times on it, rises “objectively” over her emotions. (But not in the bridge lol--

You told Lucy that you’d kill yourself if I ever leave

and I had said that about you to Jack so I felt seen

Everyone who knows us knows that this is meant to be

Cause we’re… craaaaaazzzzzyyyyy…

That slaps…

“Down Bad” — “Did you take all my old clothes / just to leave me here naked and alone? / in a field in my same old town, that somehow seems so hollow now / they’ll say I’m nuts if i talk about / the existence of you” reflects perfectly what it’s like to be down bad about someone you have no business being down bad about, and everyone being like “Girl…Whattt…?? That’s an aliennn….” The alien metaphor works for me more than the Big Bad Wolf metaphor/Circus imagery of “WAOLOM.” People have complained about her voice not sounding its best on this album, which I agree with— I went back to listen to folklore yesterday and the Dessner-ness of it all makes her voice sound so crisp and angelic. I’d argue that the dullness of her voice on “Down Bad” works, and really sells her being “down bad.” It’s a mood.

I’m with you, that “Taylor Swift” on the third verse of “Clara Bow” was nuts. I had an out of body experience the first time I heard it lol. We always hear her say “Hi, I’m Taylor” but never her full name. It breaks the fourth wall at the perfect moment. I love the way time marches relentlessly forward in this song— the choruses feel built into each verse, there’s no room for meditation. And I love how any time a star is mentioned (Clara Bow, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift) it’s only as a reference to someone in the past, and the current “starlet” is never named. But even within this linearity her POV is floating around in time, from someone who was destined to make it but hasn’t yet, and then again from her present haunt, looking forward at what will come after her. It’s a quintessential Taylor song, and an instant classique.

From The Anthology side, “I Hate it Here” is a standout, with the exception of the first and last lyrics (will mention them below when we get to flop songs and lyrics). The defiance of this:

I’m lonely but I’m good
I’m bitter but I swear I’m fine
I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life
and I’ll get lost on purpose
This place made me feel worthless

This song flips the sentiment of Lover’s“The Archer” where, rather than her achilles heel, her untouchability is her refuge instead. And she does not care, she clings to it. I love it so much. 

And finally, I know “So High School” is so gratuitous but I love it. Anytime it comes on I think it’s a song from 2003. It doesn’t seem like an accident that the intro sounds so much like “She’s So High” by Tal Bachman to me, the song titles are so similar. Despite nostalgia being like, her brand, she’s never really written a song so pointedly nostalgic until this one.

And speaking of nostalgia, the line “When I picture my hometown / there’s a bronze, spray tanned statue of you” from “thanK u aIMee” is iconic to me, personally. I love how she’ll never stop putting her bullies on pedestals. She stays heated by rising them up to her level. She’s like a boxer.

Next— TTPD flop songs and/or lyrics?

KbY: “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”— I feel like the Antonoffiness of it all is a real drag on this one. I just hate the “my boy *boof* always breaks his favorite to-o-ooys. *boof* to-o-ooys *boof*.” It sounds like the product of a 1989 voice memo gone wrong. So weird that this is track three, too. The central metaphor is incredibly boring. 

“imgonnagetyouback”— this is not really a bad song, but I literally can’t listen to it without thinking of the recent Olivia Rodrigo song based on the exact same double entendre. And the fact that the title is in all lowercase— is this a deliberate dig at her? An attempt to “get her back” for taking the Cruel Summer bridge? 

“Robin”— I kind of don’t like Taylor’s “siiigh you’re a just a child you don’t know the world” songs. At least I feel like she really is just fascinated by the innocence of children and doesn’t feel pressured to continue writing songs on this theme, because I don’t know if anyone wants them. 

I like “The Albatross” overall, but I haaaate “wise men once read fake news/and they believed it/Jackals raised their hackles…” hate it. Possibly the worst lyrics on the album. 

CD: You are spot on about “My Boy Only Breaks his Favorite Toys” LOOOOOL. I call that one ‘the Toy Story song.’ It’s so embarrassing, like I can imagine her directing a music video for it where she gets dressed up as a ballerina marionette and marches off a toy shelf, in the deranged style of the ME! video. No thank you. 

I do cringe anytime I hear “Quick quick, tell me something awful, like you are a poet stuck inside the body of a finance guy” on the otherwise perfect “I Hate It Here.” That “postscript” letter that accompanies the album— the poem she recites in the Amazon commercial— is a major flop to me. The line “my veins of pitch black ink” could not make me wanna kms more. People seem to be loving “The Alchemy,” but not me. It’s too much in the “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” mode of homecoming weekend imaginarium. And these lyrics from Florida!!! bothered me for a few days— “All of the bodies that have ever been on my body / And in my mind, they sink into the swamp / Is that a bad thing to say in a song?— until I realized that maybe that’s just her admitting that her boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, is so dead and gone he barely appears on his own break-up album. So yeah, I see how it’s bad thing to say in a song. Clearly written before “Guilty as Sin.”

Oh, and I need to point out that I learned new word on “Smallest Man who Ever Lived"“:

I thought she was using some Game of Thrones-type term until I looked it up. I’m mentioning it during “flop” because it’s kind of a flop word.

And finally, I only listened to “Robin” for a second time like, yesterday. Absolute flop, and almost mean-spirited. lmao.

Since we’re in agreement that this album is one of her best, what do you make of the lukewarm critical reception?

KbY: A big theme of the critical reception is that the album is too long, which is not a kind of criticism I’ve ever understood. I was reading an NYT roundtable discussion that said something like “you have to try to view the album through the eyes of her fans,” which I think speaks to the fact that few of these critics would self-identify as Taylor fans (and ofc this is not just a matter of ‘journalistic objectivity,’ which is a joke in general but especially where music journalism is concerned). I think the main affect of these reviews is one of “ughhh i have to review the new taylor swift album…” and where with folklore that same attitude resulted in a reception of “pleasant surprise,” in this case it resulted in more irritation, heavily inflected by the length of the album. For someone who HAS to listen to it, I see how the album can be a chore. For someone who WANTS to— just listen to the first half now, and listen to the second half later lol. Ofc I do understand how an otherwise good album can be bogged down by weak, cuttable songs, but I really don’t think that’s the case here. Yes, there are songs that I personally would have cut, but they’re not songs that could not conceivably be someone else’s favorite. The album certainly does feel cohesive— to the point that I can understand the description of the album as a “dreary muddle” (the Atlantic), although I would reframe this as a good thing. 

CD: Yeah, I mean, it was bound to happen. Though I vehemently disagree with critics saying that the album being 31 tracks long was a “data dump” move. Emotional dump yes, but nothing about the length of it itself seemed strategic on a marketing level to me. It really feels like she needed to purge. Taylor’s songwriting is deceptively complex on this album, so a lot of the quick-turnaround reviews (like the Paste one, though was that even a review?) felt written out of some anti-Imperial Tay principle. I understand the desire to shit on her at this moment, but I (still) wish people would treat her songwriting with more respect.

We both agree that the Jack Antonoff of it all feels phoned in. What do you think production should have sounded like on this album? 

KbY: Lol, I almost tried to say “well, is there really such a sharp quality difference between the Antonoff and Dessner songs on the album?” Then I went and looked and there totally is lol, with the exception perhaps of ICDIWABH, which could almost be a swan song for the whole Jack mega-era (epoch?) of Taylor if I had my druthers. I don’t really feel like I can adequately answer the question of what the production should have sounded like, but if she just worked with Aaron for this that might have gone a long way to fixing the problem. I’d be interested to see her work with a new collaborator ofc. It’s interesting how Taylor has taken such steps to establish herself as a music video/film director but doesn’t really solo produce her songs. Perhaps I want to explore this more on “future taylor,” but I agree with the sensibility of Matty Healy’s tweet about wanting Taylor to do “her Nebraska” or “her Blue,” but I’m not sure if someone else, especially not Matty, could produce such an album; both of Nebraska and Blue were self-produced.  

CD: Yeah, I’m with Matty on this one. (The tweet has been deleted but it said:

Taylor Swift. With an acoustic guitar. Doing her 'Nebraska'. Doing her 'Blue'. Kill me.

I mean really, kill me too, I’d love that. It’s hard for me to imagine what her sound would be like outside of Antonoff and Dessner. But as she moves away from pop (she framed Midnights as her one last shot at pop music before she’s “too old”) I’m hoping she’ll go full Dessner after this. Antonoff can take his final bow with Reputation (Taylor’s Version) and then he can go help bring Lorde back to life, or ruin Sabrina Carpenter. I do wonder if Taylor’s interested in producing her own music, and what sound she would gravitate towards. Her sensibilities, IMO, are way more aligned with Dessner’s— Antonoff is like the toxic yin to her yang. But yeah, she doesn’t want to produce her albums. She wants to direct a movie.

As I said to you, in the same way I think Fearless is a screamo album, I think this is an emo album. You said this album feels like Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and that you appreciate the "therapeutic approach" Taylor took to this album. Say more! 

KbY: While I was referring to the album’s sad synthy vibe, I feel this comparison on many levels. In 2005 Digital Ash was released simultaneously with I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, to which everyone paid much more attention and which really was the apogee of Conor Oberst’s career and his mainstream embrace (fleeting as that ended up being), but I always liked Digital Ash more. I distinctly remember that Pitchfork gave Digital Ash a 7.2 and gave I’m Wide Awake a much higher score— I just went to go look at that review, and it reminds me so much of the reception of this Taylor album: 

“It’s hard to pinpoint why Digital Ash is merely "okay." The songs are enjoyable, and if Tamborello chips in the most exciting beats, Mogis' are competitive, especially the bamboo-footed-tap-dancer rhythms of mArc of Time (Time Code)’ or the moody ‘nightmare’ sequence that launches the record. But nothing else captures such a gripping mood. Digital Ash has the claustrophobic feel of a singer locked up with a computer…”

Meanwhile, they were just exultant about I’m Wide Awake— “If Digital Ash sounds like indie kids breaking into pop, its sister disc, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, is a red-blooded folk album that's coincidentally built to be hugely, hugely popular.” In all this classically Pitchfork rhetorical manipulation, Digital Ash is positioned as the mediocre “experiment” and break from tradition, while I’m Wide Awake is somehow “truer” to what Bright Eyes has been (indie:pop :: popular:“red-blooded folk”). 

But even though sonically Digital Ash was to an extent a departure from preceding Bright Eyes albums, lyrically and thematically it was in very close in continuity with, for instance, Fevers and Mirrors (still the best one). I guess this is the “emo” of it all— like Bright Eyes isn’t “emo” in the same way Mineral or Taking Back Sunday is emo, musically they are “folk,” but in high school we all understood that bright eyes is above all “emo.” While the exact dynamic of two aesthetically distinct albums isn’t present with TTPD— a lot of the reception has pivoted on the notion that Taylor is in her “Imperial Phase,” on a sense of dissonance between what they felt Taylor should deliver at this time and what she did deliver. Basically they wanted “I’m Wide Awake” and didn’t get it, but I personally still think that was the worse of the two albums anyway. (Btw as I was writing this I discovered that Conor put out a “companion” to digital ash with more acoustic arrangements in 2022, which is kind of cool). Anyway I suppose that’s also what I meant by the “therapeutic approach,” more specifically an autotherapeutic approach— like on “But Daddy…”, she is focused on what she wants to do, not what others want from her, although I do agree that the two can become blurred, as you’ve suggested. 

I'm particularly interested in the adolescent references on the album. (The Starting Line, So High School, “Fresh Out the Slammer” sounding like like Third Eye Blind), and curious what you make of this-- whether you think the sonic references are more like siren calls to Matty Healy and the type of music they both share an affinity for, or if it's about something else entirely. 

KbY: This is a very interesting question. I feel like there is something fundamentally ‘adolescent’ about rock and pop music— as a teenager, I would voraciously consume and seek out new music in a way I absolutely do not anymore. My interest in Taylor, which, as we’ve discussed in the past, began as somewhat ironic, really started at the tail end of my YA-hood, at the close of that relationship to music that I used to have. If I’ve “gotten into” music since, it’s mostly been like, out of a historical or academic interest, not being emotionally transported in the way I was when listening to “All Too Well” for the first time at 22, or listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Okkervil River, Bright Eyes, or Cursive as a teen. My relationship to the songs I listened to during that time in my life persists— seeing Cursive during their Ugly Organ reunion tour is still, in the words of my HS friend who went with me, “my only ‘transcendent’ concert experience.” This is all to say that— speaking for myself, I’m curious if you’d agree— I will never relate to music like I did to those songs at that time. One could say that those songs are now “intertwined” with a certain “magic or tragic fabric” that can’t be unstitched. 

I’m thinking of pre-modern Perso-Arabic poetry and belles-lettres as an example, although really the idea is fairly universal, and arguably common sense: on one hand people like poetry about partying, carousing, and desperate love, but, on the other hand, there’s a sense that this kind of thing is for young people. This doesn’t mean that old people don’t write about it, but they write about it through nostalgia. This is from the poet Ibn ʿĀṣim, writing in the 9th century CE (gonna use Hilary Kirpatrick’s translation for time’s sake): 

How sweet the days I spent in my youth, 

obedient to love, gazing on beauty, 

On that gorgeous garden and convent, 

which aroused my fervent longing and memories. 

Quick, boy, fill the cups and forgive me. 

I’m drunk from the wine of your gaze. 

The Pleiades in the sky 

are like a bejeweled crown. 

Drink to the meadows’ beauty! Sing! 

Gaze at the dark-eyed, sweet-voiced cupbearer. 

Life’s days may be few. But I may 

have foreseen something not predestined. 

I like how this poem crosses from memory to experience. Compare Taylor, which seems to move across the same line, but in reverse: 

Quick, quick, tell me something awful, 
     like you are a poet 
          trapped inside the body of a finance guy. 

Tell me all your secrets, 
     all you'll ever be is 
          my eternal consolation prize. 

You see, I was a debutante 
      In another life, but 
          now I seem to be scared to go outside. 

If comfort is a construct, 
      I don't believe in good luck 
          now that I know what's what. 

I hate it here, so I will go to 
      secret gardens in my mind 
that people need a key to get to; 
      the only one is mine. 
I read about it in a book when 
      I was a precocious child.
No mid-sized city hopes and small-town fears. 
      I'm there most of the year, ’cause I hate it here. 
I hate it here. 

I think both of these examples express theories of poetic expression with much in common between them; they both demand a catalyst— whether the cupbearer and his wine or the poet/finance guy and his secrets— to draw the poetry out of them by transporting them. The idea with “The Starting Line” in The Black Dog is similar. She sees his “location,” which sparks the feeling, (“and it hits me: I just don’t understand”), and which transports her to the “location,” to the scene inside the Black Dog, and in this scene the addressee (presumably Matty) is experiencing something similar: he’s also struck by something that stirs a memory (“someone plays The Starting Line, and you jump up”). What I think is interesting is that Taylor doesn’t frame this experience (as represented by “jumping up” when The Starting Line plays) as an experience of youth, it’s the opposite— “she’s too young to know this song.” 

So, to answer your question, yes, but also yes. Idk I’d be interested to hear more of your thoughts.

CD: I love that. On TTPD, she really seems to cull genuine inspiration from being weathered, from being a scorned witch (“WAOLOM”), and from having lived enough to have wisdom in the first place (“Nostalgia is a mind’s trick / if I were there I’d hate it / it was freezing in the palace…”). The rose colored glasses are gone and a sober monochrome has set in. Compare this to folklore (2020), for example, when she sang “I knew everything when I was young”… “When they are young they assume you know nothing”…

Obviously Taylor’s special sauce is how she can articulate a basic emotion or situation (I feel betrayed, for example, or Loving him was red), and give us enough dramatic narrative in 2 verses, a chorus, and a bridge, that the listener can really focus on and live in that emotion, like really stew in it. Because her songwriting is so exact, it makes the songs that much more intense, IMHO. Her flair for drama in the context of TTPD reminds me of songs like “Cut Without the E” by Taking Back Sunday or “Seventy Times Seven” by Brand New. Spitting it out, telling someone (Matty) off. It’s “teenage petulance,” it’s shamelessly melodramatic. This album as a whole feels most committed to this mode. I’m thinking Dashboard Confessional’s “Hands Down” — “My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me / So won’t you kill me? / So I die happy?” TBT:

Let's discuss the "tortured poet" aesthetic of this album. What to make of it?

KbY: I would like to hear you say more, but I think Taylor increasingly understands herself as a literary figure (coming forward with the ‘glitter pen’/‘fountain pen’/‘quill’ framework for writing was maybe an early sign of this). I think this relates to the next question as well, in that this is how many of her fans view her, as a poet. I basically just did this myself in the last part. Ofc the whole typewritery aesthetic is a bit cringe; at least there’s some acknowledgment of this. The video of her using the typewriter is hilarious. 

CD: It’s very Taylor to poke fun at typewriters at the beginning of the album but then also use it as her main visual motif within this gothic 1900s Edgar Allen Poe aesthetic. There are so many sleeker, more mysterious ways she could have packaged this album (ahem Midnights aesthetic was so much cooler) but as you said, she’s definitely in conversation with her fans, who do see her as their bard. For what feels like her most mature album, I am kinda shocked at the aesthetic choices she made. I think if this album was presented differently (and was released in the fall….this album really is more of an October album…) the critical reception would have been warmer. But she obviously wanted to capitalize on her omnipresence and try to break NSYNC’s record, which she did. Indeed, she’s “a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy.”

I wanna get deeper into the correlation between Taylor's "feedback loop" sense of self and how it relates to her relationships (to Matty Healy, and also to her fans). We talked more about this the other day, about how it seems difficult for Taylor to parse who she is outside of those who adore her.

KbY: This was way longer ago than ‘the other day’ at this point lol, but I remember talking about how everybody’s sense of self is shaped by “external” information about oneself; at least that is experienced as external. So on one hand you could imagine someone who is always in the public eye and has to constantly consider the perception of others as having a ‘small’ sense of herself because her ‘inner voice’ is drowned out by others’, but on the other hand her sense of self could be imagined as ‘huge’ too, if we don’t distinguish between the ‘true inner voice’ and the ‘external voices’-- I think this is the idea in “Anti-Hero” and its video, with the multiple and gigantic taylors. Iirc, we were wondering whether Taylor’s interest in Matty, a piece of shit, comes from a sense that the fans want or expect her to have that kind of relationship– and yeah, maybe we do on some level, because we like her songs about pain. This goes back to the idea, which I suppose is not entirely new, that what makes good art is pain or self-destructive behavior, but only young people can afford to pursue pain or self destruction– hence the nostalgic mode. The idea that one should be continually seeking out ‘fresh pain,’ or ‘young experiences’ for inspiration as one gets old is not sustainable. Another Arabic poem in the nostalgic mode that I wanted to quote on a similar theme to that of the one above (again in Kilpatrick’s trans): 

After Muḥammad ibn Ḥāzim had embraced asceticism and renounced wine, he presented himself one day at Ibrāhīm ibn Shaklah’s. They talked and ate together, and then Ibrāhīm settled down to drink. He asked Muḥammad to join him but he declined, saying: 

At over fifty, should I behave like a boy? 

White hair’s the enemy of folly. 

Believe me, old age, white hair, 

and folly don’t make good partners. 

Son of the Imam, tell me, 

will the fresh days of yore come back, 

When my hair was scarcely gray 

and the source of love ran sweet, 

When my arrows found their mark 

and my blade was keen, 

And the company and chatter 

of young beauties was balm to my heart? 

Now, when my behavior finds 

approval with the critics, 

And they’ve gotten used to my wisdom, 

should I earn blame with folly? 

I’ve sworn never to drink wine 

as long as pilgrims ride to Mecca.

The sense of self and of time is totally social. I think this ties into the fate and aging theme on TTPD. Compare “The Albatross” (“Wise men once said…”) or “The Manuscript” (“Looking backwards might be the only way to move forward,” “the story isn’t mine anymore”). On “The Prophecy,” Taylor says “It was written”— by whom? In the next lines we see the “loop,” when Taylor says “I got cursed like Eve got bitten”— a very interesting line framing Eve’s punishment as reciprocal (a bite for a bite). Is Taylor’s writing— her discourse— then the “curse” she suffers? “Pad around”— discurro—“when I get home.” These are some my favorite lines on the album: 

And I sound like an infant, 

Feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen. 

A greater woman stays cool, 

but I howl like a wolf at the moon.

And I look unstable 

Gathered with a coven round a sorceress' table. 

A greater woman has faith, 

but even statues crumble if they’re made to wait

What are the wildest Swiftie tweets/threads you've seen? IYO how do the fans drive the publicity + the backlash of Taylor? Or do you think Taylor's driving the publicity ship?

KbY: I haven’t really seen that many insane Swiftie reactions (except what you’ve shared w/ me) but I don’t really seek them out or follow many Swifties. I’ve def seen some bitterness over how Matty-centric the album is, but nothing compared to the response to the relationship itself. Which goes to the next question— on the whole I think Taylor exercises an impressive command over her fanbase that merits the “mastermind” title, but the Matty situation was an exception that I think reminded everyone, including Taylor, of the deep rupture that can happen between Taylor Swift as a social phenomenon and Taylor Swift as an individual; I think the struggle to harmonize the two is one of the “tortures” of TTPD. 

CD: Well, it must be nice to not have your Twitter feed overrun by unhinged TS tweets anytime she does anything. Following the album release a month ago, it was unhinged. There was this one where someone posited that “Florida!!” was about The Truman Show… this one about TTPD being a murder mystery concept album…There was the Kansas City Police Department posting this psychotic memo hours after TTPD came out (as we know, Taylor has a history of being buddy-buddy with the police… omg this tweet was finally deleted. Tree Paine, her mind…

…Anyways, I do find it endearing that she inspires so much freshman-level literary analysis of her songs and lyrics. Bookishness has always been a part of the package. On the other hand, the deep dives for easter eggs she’s inspired, this thirst for each song to have a file of facts and information and meaning and meta narrative behind it I think we can agree is just bad for criticism, bad for art, and bad for her reputation too lol.

IYO, how would the conversation be different had she just surprise released it like she did folklore/evermore? 

KbY: I’m not sure, but I feel like some of the criticisms of the album may actually have been more intense. Even with preparation, to digest something as massive as The Anthology has proven difficult for many. Of course, the other side of the argument might be that more hype leads to more disappointment, but, as I said above, I don’t think the people who are driving the backlash to this album are really the people who were hyped for it.

CD: I feel like if this were quietly dropped, it would be adored just like folklore / evermore. It is essentially her Woodvale.

"Clara Bow," echoes sentiments from "The Lucky One" and "Nothing New" from Red TV, are about feeling broken down by the industry and getting replaced once the public has "had enough" of you, once your novelty fades. There's a video, also from Red TV era, where Taylor says she doesn't want to be in the spotlight by the time people are already sick of her. But this album, one could argue, is kind of that. What will Taylor be doing 5 years from now? 

KbY: Hearkening back to your previous question, a career behind the camera as an auteur director seems to be what Taylor has in mind as an off-ramp. We’ll see how her planned feature film turns out— she may really be setting herself up for a fall there, especially since there are many who want to see her fail. 

I’m hopeful at the moment that Taylor will eventually do what I’ve always wanted her to do, which is at least one truly acoustic folk/country album in her ‘mature style.’ Huge missed opportunity if she never does. I think getting away from Jack, developing a political consciousness beyond “boys’n’boys’n’girls’n’girls”/“wise men once read fake news,” leaning more heavily into fiction would help her continue to grow as a songwriter. 

Speaking of political consciousness, this probably won’t happen, but Taylor should say something about Palestine. I’m counting on the Hadids to accomplish this. Unfortunately I’m not sure Joe has influence with her anymore (as I said over text, despite Matty apparently suggesting to Taylor that Joe wasn’t “brave enough” for her, where it actually matters Joe has shown himself to be much “braver” than not only Matty, who is complete slime, but Taylor as well). Like, Taylor, if you are so interested in the innocence of children, Israel has killed around 14,000 kids since October. 

CD: She should definitely say something about Palestine.

When we look back at this past year or so of Imperial Tay, I think it’ll be obvious that this was her acting out and leaning into where she could find love, because she was so lost and heartbroken in her personal life. Her need for adulation is insatiable, but she also does genuinely seem to desire marriage, kids, an idyllic home life— the “if onlys” of these are all over this album. It sounds like she came close to it with Joe, but didn’t get it, and so she went a little buck wild. Her fans, the general public, we were her real rebound.

It also feels as though she’s relishing in her power with the hopes that romance will soon whisk her away from it and into the next, less selfish stage of her life. I do wonder if her cinematic ambitions are tied to her desire to start a family— like, being a director could at least keeps her in one location for a year or two.

I’ve been thinking recently about that RED-era interview where she says that once people get sick of her she’ll start writing songs for other artists (IF ANYBODY CAN FIND THIS YOUTUBE CLIP PLZZZZ COMMENT IT BELOW). But seeing the way she has reacted to, say, Olivia Rodrigo’s rising stardom, I think getting behind an up-and-comer who’s essentially “coming for her job” psychologically would be too much for her. She’s too proud for that. In five years it would be great if she could find a sense of herself outside of her career, and her art, and like, stand against the murder of innocent children, for sure.

Taylor's most "controversial" albums (Speak Now, Reputation) seem to become more critically acclaimed as time passes. How do you think TTPD will age? 

KbY: My instinct is that it will age extremely well— I don’t see how any doubter who is not simply a hater could help eventually embracing this album. It depends a bit on what follows, though. If her next album is truly groundbreaking, I could see this one more easily getting glossed over as ‘transitional’ or misremembered as a ‘misstep.’ If Taylor takes the criticism of TTPD too seriously and overcorrects, and her next album is another Midnights or another Lover, then that will be a powerful spur to reevaluation among TTPD naysayers.

CD: Soooooo TRUE. It’s a very present album, and I think people will realize this about it once her “Imperial Phase” has passed. Also, TS13 is just two albums away, so I have to imagine this album is laying a groundwork for whatever she has planned.

I think we’ll look back at TTPD and recognize that this was either the start of something new, or the end of something. I don’t think Taylor knows yet whether TTPD represents a radical beginning or a mournful ending, but it’s definitely not some sludgy middle.