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cults of personality have always formed around any sufficiently prominent pop icon, particularly female solo acts. there's a sort of collective mania where they are idolised as the queen or mother or goddess to fanatics who devote themselves to supporting everything they do, unable to see them with any nuance or acknowledge their fallibility. they are unable to produce a bad song. they are always right in everything they do, from corporate deals to their love life.

that devotion can mean offering their dedicated unpaid labour in promoting the artist's various releases, to ensure they top the charts or break records, serving as loyal foot soldiers in even the pettiest of their personal disputes and going to war with other groups of fans to tear their own blasphemous idols down, or attacking anyone who blasphemes against their immaculate ascent.

this one feels a little different, in the scale of her dominance has exploded. Swift has become the biggest artist in the world, and it doesn't feel like there are many competitors. she entered the mainstream in an era of peak Rihanna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Shakira, Kelly Clarkson and others, and even a Britney resurgence. who meets her on her level now? it feels that she has become the mainstream pop star, consolidating the audience under her rule.

that has led to the mania going mainstream. Swifties have become an influential demographic to be courted or feared, and credited with influencing events in other industries like sports by voting with their phones or dollars. objective critique has been replaced by publications allowing self-proclaimed Swiftie journalists to review every album in tones of worship. it is now not unusual to see her most basic lyrics praised as genius, or even see her lauded as the greatest songwriter (or perhaps writer!) of all time. posts with even the gentlest of criticism are met with instant abuse in the replies.

I think that Swift is a perfectly decent pop artist. it's good that she's actually an artist, writing her own songs which draw from her authentic life, rather than some previous icons who just read the lines they were given. she's prolific, and has shown real longevity and the ability to span genres. she's clearly not averse to standing up where required and has made some strides for others in the industry. she has produced a lot of catchy songs which I've enjoyed.

but no artist is perfect, and there are flipsides to everything. such a quantity of songs can lead to a slip in quality. there's a fine line between being earnest and cringe-inducing. her willingness to pick public fights and settle grievances through her work has tainted it with some petty digs. Swift has always been a little awkward, which has been part of her charm and leveraged to great effect in the past, but the sort of teenage break-up poetry which was endearing as a young country singer breaking into the pop world sounds different as the commercial product churned out by a billionaire in her mid thirties with every advantage afforded to her.

the above rise to ubiquity doesn't seem particularly healthy, either for the people involved or the people who aren't, or even for Swift's development as an artist. her re-releases have done numbers. her 'vault' releases, rejected album tracks from years ago, have done numbers. everything she touches turns to gold, and that has to make you lose to sight of what was and wasn't gold beforehand. when you're infallible, there's no incentive to work harder, or hold yourself to a higher standard. you'll be number one with anything.

her music has never been polished, always a little raw and personal, and that's been part of the appeal. but when you're the biggest star on the planet with all of the studio time and support you could ask for, it's harder to ignore ham-fisted imagery or awkward rhymes shoehorned into place (rhyming the same word with itself, disguised with a 'hey!' or 'ooh!' afterwards? stretching the pronunciation of certain words to breaking point?) when you're not just a singer-songwriter working out of your bedroom. it might help her continue to resonate with the next generation of teenagers, but the rest of us have no business pretending it's more sophisticated than that.

it's not that she's not allowed to write about heartbreak. many other songs draw from that well, and Swift as as entitled as any given her much publicised love life. but her growth seems to have stalled amidst this era of dominance. if I look back at the poetry I wrote as a teenager I cringe in embarrassment, both for the tone (so edgy! so self-pitying!) and the clunky attempts at artistry (forcing two words to rhyme, or finding two that do and trying to jam them into a sentence where they don't make sense! spewing thesaurus babble which nobody would ever say!). Swift has had years of people telling her it's all genius, the good and the bad, and I don't know if she knows the difference anymore.

this new album is a godsend. from the moment of its announcement, through all of the promotion, Swift seems to have recognised this this bubble and done her best to burst it. the title is so on-the-nose as a parody of that edgy aesthetic that it inspired disbelieving laughter, and had people wondering if maybe the songs might not be perfect too. the nature of the marketing and release, with different versions dropped chaotically, had people calling it a transparent attempt to juice sales in the way they didn't when e.g. Midnights came in four colours with a sticker telling fans to collect them all.

the lyrics of various songs have come in for question as well as praise. critics are cautiously calling this 'a rare misstep', always careful to couch the negatives against a backdrop of otherwise veneration. but it's a foot in the door. one day, once the illusion of perfection has been shattered, once we've seen that the goddess is mortal, we might be able to go back and acknowledge that some of the leading tracks from her previous albums (from Bad Blood to Look What You Made Me Do to Me! to Anti-Hero) have similar elements of cringe, and that she's always been like this.

perhaps we can go back to when she was a messy human being, not the frontrunner for the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'm old enough to remember when she was just another artist producing fun but cheesy pop tracks, and we were able to enjoy them for what they are, without all of this pressure to pretend they're something more. we didn't film ourselves crying performatively or claim she'd captured the essence of womanhood in each and every line. in fact, we made fun of some of the lyrics and the singing - but we still sang along and had a great time. one day, perhaps we can go back.

pretty wild that journalists are putting out reviews of the new Taylor Swift album with their names redacted, or people are redacting her name in their posts about it, such is the reputation of her fans for a) being legion and b) swarming any dissenting voice with threats and harassment. that doesn't feel healthy!

#music

[adhoption]

pretty wild that journalists are putting out reviews of the new Taylor Swift album with their names redacted, or people are redacting her name in their posts about it, such is the reputation of her fans for a) being legion and b) swarming any dissenting voice with threats and harassment. that doesn't feel healthy!

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why yes I AM making boop gifs from screen recording

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Adam Driver, after establishing himself as a mainstream leading man: wow, I sure hope I don't get typecast as the patriarch of iconic Italian brands in period biopics

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I saw this #inspirational poster and I love the idea that Salma Hayek thinks her physique has held her back in life. International sex symbol Salma Hayek thinks her body type was an obstacle to success in Hollywood. Married to a billionaire Salma Hayek wonders where she'd be if only she wasn't so deformed. Petite and curvy? You name it, she's got it, and yet somehow she perseveres.

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calling someone a 'fox' means they're attractive. calling them a 'dog' means they're unattractive. but are foxes really more attractive than dogs? furries sound off

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phrasing of this is taking me out

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do you ever say something and then think "wow this isnt even a bit. im just like this"

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REMINDER: the part of a comb jelly that looks like a mouth is in fact a mouth

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I hate that SEPTember OCTOber NOVember and DECember aren’t the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months.

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The first few comments are going viral on X again and the rage has returned

I hate that SEPTember OCTOber NOVember and DECember aren’t the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months.

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NO, CHICKEN IS NOT HEALTHY.

NO, WHEY PROTEIN IS NOT HEALTHY.

NO, GREEK YOGURT IS NOT HEALTHY.

NO, FISH IS NOT HEALTHY.

PLANTS. PLANTS ARE. PLANTS ARE HEALTHY.

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yes... unless you want to draw its attention

every young moth’s ambition is to see their name in lights, on the ‘noteworthy moths’ wikipedia of fame

#the grease moth can and WILL find you

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Why is its tail so long? Does the pygmy jerboa need to have a tail three times the size of its body?

the same reason its head is the size of the rest of its body- because it is a RIDICULOUS creature.

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the MCU will hire a dozen British actors to play Americans but then get an Australian guy to do the British accent. this is peak casting efficiency

#mcu

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a dim and grim fantasy tavern but the drinks are very colourful and fruity with little umbrellas & curly straws

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when will a rapper be brave enough to tackle the biggest issue of our time: the stigma around impotence

performance enhancing drugs got them steroids in my balls gets me flowing as she tug call that a viagra falls

is there an equivalent to that 'bad sex writing' award for music because it seems that you can basically put whatever in your lyrics and people have to pretend it isn't ridiculous

#music