Only when your girlish glow,
flickers just so,
do they let you know:
It's hell on earth to be heavenly.
Them's the breaks, they don't come gently.
Clara Bow - The Tortured Poets Department (2024)
As for “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” Swift revealed that she wrote the tune “alone, sitting at the piano in one of those moments when I felt bitter about just all the things we do to our artists as a society and as a culture.” “There’s a lot about this particular concept on ‘The Tortured Poets Department,'” she added. “What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.”
Taylor on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” and TTPD (Variety)
Who doesn’t want a TS TTPD themed cardigan? Nofuckinbody.
Available at store.taylorswift.com while supplies last for those who get a bit chilly during our board meetings. 🤍
Critiques of Taylor Swift in 2024 are literally just like oh noooo she does her job too much!! oh noooo too many people like her!!! Oh nooooo she works too hard!!! Oh noooo she was a little too honest in her music!! OH NOOOOOO
Swift said the track is “a commentary on what I’ve seen in the industry that I’ve been in over time". "I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these architypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music."
Thinking a lot about how Taylor writes about fathers on TS TTPD (particularly in comparison to ways she has in the past). In But Daddy I Love Him, she starts out defiant but her dream is for her dad to come around and support her and her wild boy and fuck the rest of the world. And in The Bolter her father is the only one who adores her. Add that to the way she talked about dads during the seven speech last year while she making the record, and it feels like Scott may have been one her best friends last year. Just a fountain, so to speak, while everything else was draining her.
the connection between “but the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light” in peter and “remember looking at this room, we loved it ‘cause of the light / now, i just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time” in you’re losing me has me spiralling