Taylor Swift
Story Stream
The Pop Girls Ruled 2024 January 02, 2025
The Year of the Pop Girl got started early. Between March and June, the roster of veteran pop artists who released albums included Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, and Kacey Musgraves. Around that time, ascen...
Taylor Swift Is Coming for Book Publishing November 19, 2024
As a journalist covering the publishing industry and a devoted Taylor Swift fan who flew to Amsterdam this past summer to experience the Eras Tour, I took to the recent announcement of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book like a moth to the glowing orbs...
Is the Femininomenon Still Happening? November 11, 2024
Scrolling through the 2025 Grammy nominations this morning, I encountered the expected candidates: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX. At the very least, I recognized the names of almost every artist listed; I laughed seeing Khruang...
The Taylor Swift We Know Now Was Born on ‘1989’ October 29, 2024
This may come as something of a surprise, but there are really only two Taylor Swift eras. It’s OK—you can still do your group Halloween costume. And yes, there is the way in which Swift divides her 11-album discography into segments with their own d...
Taylor Swift, Harbinger of Senescence September 24, 2024
Last weekend, after Donald Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on Truth Social, my first thought was: “Who is Taylor Swift?”Of course, I jest—but only a little. Yes, I am aware of a person named Taylor Swift who writes and sings pop songs, performs i...
Born to Boss September 13, 2024
In the department of non-news, the recent revelation that Bruce Springsteen has moved from E Street to Easy Street and joined the billionaire ranks of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Paul McCartney deserves a tick. Yes, the working-class hero from New Jer...
The Power of Taylor Swift’s Politics September 12, 2024
It’s an important lesson for politicians: never give your enemies a name. Hillary Clinton did it, disastrously, with her off-the-cuff announcement about a “basket of deplorables”. Did it cost her the election? On its own, no, but it certainly didn’t ...
Why Do Democrats Covet Taylor Swift’s Support? September 10, 2024
One of the most important figures in this year’s US presidential election isn’t a politician, political operator or political commentator. It’s the pop star Taylor Swift.Her endorsement has been a long time coming, and is apparently so valuable that ...
The Sabrina Carpenter Effect September 04, 2024
What is Sabrina Carpenter, and why is she suddenly so popular? In our chauvinist past, women singers were automatically compared to other women singers, and this is worth reprising at a moment when the world is dominated by one of them. Carpenter sup...
Taylor-Made Bump September 03, 2024
The success of Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” may have earned the singer $14.7 million per show, but it hasn’t been bad for her support acts, either.Artists who have performed alongside the American singer-songwriter on various legs of the global 152-dat...
The Nabokovian Genius of Taylor Swift July 25, 2024
Taylor Swift has quietly created a cultural monopoly. Reissues of her albums dominate the charts. Her concerts are major events. Now the Hachette-owned Headline Publishing Group has announced Invisible Strings, a Swift-themed poetry anthology. Contri...
The Taylor Swift Economy Has Overtaken London June 25, 2024
Taylor Swift is in London. Even the least culturally clued-in person could not have failed to notice. The city is full of people in “Eras” merch, and social media is awash in concert footage from the tour dates at Wembley Stadium: Travis Kelce donnin...
Mama Swifties Need to Grow Up June 14, 2024
It’s been a bumper week for middle-aged journalists enthusing about Taylor Swift. Broadsheet music critics attending the Edinburgh leg of her ongoing Eras tour seemed positively high on second-hand oestrogen fumes as they filed their encomiums. And t...
Can Cricket Recolonize America? June 10, 2024
Tomorrow, New York’s Long Island suburbs will host a game expected to be viewed by twice as many people as the Super Bowl. Most Americans, however, don’t know the rules of the sport being played and would find it impossible to follow—unless they were...
The Night Taylor Swift Conquered Europe May 13, 2024
I’m just off the train at Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris, and walking down a pedestrianised avenue to Paris La Defense Arena, a hulking, 40,000-capacity quadrilateral that’s the largest indoor arena in Europe. “Welcome to New York”, sings one of th...
In 'The Fall Guy', Ryan Gosling Fakes Heroism May 10, 2024
Turning an ’80s TV series into a movie might be the epitome of Millennial mindlessness. In that sense, The Fall Guy is a perfectly idiotic product. Based on the television series that retooled The Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors as a show-business ...
How Taylor Swift Writes About Being Taylor Swift April 29, 2024
Long before anyone heard a note, Taylor Swift’s new album caused controversy among the grammarians.The fuss was about the title, The Tortured Poets Department, and its conspicuously absent apostrophe. Should “poets” not have been possessive? If it ha...
How Fleetwood Mac Got Cool Again April 29, 2024
When I was a teenager, I made a cassette tape of songs I wanted to listen to but didn’t want to admit I owned. Recording off the radio or borrowing albums from friends, I compiled a collection of bouncy pop ditties and wrote out the title in red ink:...
Enough With the 'Eras' Already April 29, 2024
Depending on who you ask, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is either “forgettable” or “an instant classic.” Among the people I would call “realistic Swifties” — not the kind of fans who would, say, gush over an eight-hour recording of her...
I Just Don’t Get Taylor Swift April 26, 2024
I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE WORLD. PLEASE, I HAVE A FAMILY.)It’s freeing to just … not care about something, isn’t it? When friends start to wa...
Taylor Swift: Why You Gotta Be So Mean? April 24, 2024
Last year, Taylor Swift broke up with Joe Alwyn, the man she thought she’d marry—and she’s not trying to be mature about it. In her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, she literally sings, Everything comes out: teenage petulance. One of her son...
The Problem With Taylor Swift’s New Album April 24, 2024
“Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all,” Taylor Swift sings on “But Daddy I Love Him.” It’s the song on which her new album The Tortured Poets Department finally gains some momentum, six tracks in. It’s also the one on which the...
Taylor Swift Strikes Out Looking on 'The Tortured Poets Department' April 23, 2024
Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammy’s stage last month to claim her award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, she saw that spotlight as an opportunity to announce her 11th studio album: The T...
Taylor Swift Makes One for Herself April 23, 2024
At a February concert in Melbourne, Taylor Swift spoke to the stadium crowd of nearly one hundred thousand strong about The Tortured Poets Department, the forthcoming album she had announced two weeks prior at the Grammy Awards. “It was really a life...
Lament for the Declining Art of Editing April 23, 2024
I don’t want to join in the critical pile-on against Taylor Swift’s new 31-song double album, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. I’ve listened to the album and find a lot to like on it, with a heavy emphasis on a lot and like (as opposed t...
