Every Single Album - 'Midnights' Follow Up Mailbag | Every Single Album: Taylor Swift

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

A little over a week out from the release of 'Midnights,' Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard answer a few more questions about the album. They talk about which songs they have changed their opinions on the most (1:55), whether this could be considered a concept album (29:50), and which songs they most desperately need to hear live (53:11). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leslie Golden was a pole dancer in small town Texas with a teeny Instagram following, until a whirlwind weekend in L.A. where she blew up online. From there, she entered a new world, one where partying in L.A. mansions, jet-setting to Thailand, and getting glammed up for brand campaigns was all part of a day's work. Leslie is just one of many influencers who got famous on the internet and then tried to flip that cloud into a whole new life. On this blew up, I'm going to show you how social media stardom is made. from the spawn con to the content houses and how it all adds up

to a new kind of fame that's not always as glamorous as it looks. When attention is the ultimate currency, what lengths will you go to to get it? And who's going to want a piece of your success? From the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Melissa Beresnack. You can listen to this blew up on Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, every single album listeners, it's Nora. You are about dear a pod that Nathan and I recorded on Monday, October 31st, where we did a Q&A breaking down more about Midnights and how we're feeling now that we've had over a week to digest the album. But as you probably know, Taylor's going on tour, the ERAs tour, which she announced Tuesday morning unhelpfully after we'd recorded. Come on, Taylor, throw us a bone. But in the later half of this pod, we do talk a lot about what Midnights is going to be like live and how the album affects her touring strategy.

Most of it, I think, holds up. But keep in mind that the announcement wasn't out yet when we taped. when you're listening to that part or just laugh at us for getting clowned. We're going to have more related to tour coming sometime soon for you guys. But for now, here's the pod. Hello and welcome to every single album, Taylor Swift. I'm Nora Pinciotti. As always, I am here with Nathan Hubbard.

Nathan, a week plus after the release of Midnights, how are you doing? Not as well as all of the individual tracks that are dominating the Billboard Hot 100. She's got all 10 in the top 10, Nora. It's actually out of control. I saw a tweet being like, for the first time ever, there are no men in the top one in the top 10. I was like, yeah, that's because it's all Taylor Slip. She wants us to know, though.

I mean, there's no, and it's okay. We don't need to, you know, walk on eggshells around the fact that she cares about these numbers. She cares about the massive sales numbers we saw this week. She cares about these traditional metrics for whatever reason. She's only cryptic and Machiavellian and taking up all 10 spots. Yeah, she likes trophies. She wants trophies on the mantle. And there are a lot of them.

We're going to talk about that. We wanted to get together with a little bit of time passed since we went through midnights, potted about it, got a chance to think about it, had a chance to process. Yes, I think I'll speak for myself. I've caught up on sleep a little bit since then. So hopefully we're both a little bit more coherent. But we wanted to just revisit some thoughts about the album, keep talking about it, and figured the best way to do that was to involve everybody else in the conversation. So we've collected a bunch of your guys's questions from Twitter and Instagram.

And when I say a bunch of, who am I kidding? I mean 13, obviously. So we're just going to bat him around and have some fun. You ready to get started? Yes, I am. OK-dokey. So question number one is from Tevi. who asks, what has been your biggest change of opinion slash revelation since the last pod was recorded?

Everyone wants to know what you're going to say about this. I have to say, not much of my thinking about this album has changed. The thing that has evolved for me, I can't figure out if this album is striking the general public in the heart or not. All of these numbers are in sin. And it feels to me like this is Taylor's army at work. I mean, there's a difference. You know, Nora, we were somehow this podcast was quoted in the Wall Street Journal twice this past week. Good job by us. I'm now licensed to give financial advice. That's what that means. Yeah.

But like, it occurs to me that like the only other two online fan bases that I think are remotely comparable are Beyonce. and BTS's fan bases. But the difference... I just, I think it's one. I think it's BTS. Beyonce is a different thing. And different does not mean worse.

Beyonce is more culturally significant as trendsetter is not a meaningful enough word. But as someone who defines the way that we think about culture, Beyonce is in some ways more meaningful. In terms right now of like scope and reach, I think Taylor and BTS are the only two.

Well, the difference for me is that I think Beyonce and BTS's fan bases sort of have a mind of their own. Like, you know, when BTS bought out the Trump rally, BTS's army did that. But like Taylor, Taylor is the general of her army. She directs her fans what to do.

She literally gave them a calendar, a visual daily planner telling them each day of this past week what to do. And they have responded in kind. So I am just thinking a lot about and still curious about whether this album has actually grown her fan base or whether her fan base is just so intense and so engaged and so ready to take her exact instructions

and ride or die for her, and we'll talk about the vinyl sales numbers, which are the biggest indication ever, that they, you know, are doing that. Is this album just a manifestation and a sort of indication of the insanity of the Swifties? Or has this album actually grown her fan base and struck at something larger in culture? I don't know the answer. What do you think? So this sort of gets into what my biggest change, if you want to call it, that has been.

Because I think like you, I feel the same about most songs. The songs that I loved, you know, there's certain things like, I'm really hammer and play on glitch right now because I just think it sounds really cool. There's stuff like that where they're not like the huge songs. So in the first, I don't know, 20 listens, they didn't stand out as much and they're starting to now that I'm getting to spend even more time with it.

In general, though, the songs I loved are the songs that I love and the songs that didn't hit as hard still aren't, you know, know, there's been nothing that I've flipped 180 on. But the question that you're getting at about whether or not this is an album for the core fan base, or if this is an album for sort of like everybody, you know, the entire planet. Which you think a pop album might be. Well, so it's a pop album. What you just said is the important thing, right?

Like almost all of these songs work on radio. They work in a lot of different contexts. They're fun to listen to you. play them in the car, you could play them in a party. So there is something that's very, you know, lowercase D democratic, broad, broadly applicable something for everybody on this album, which I think kind of masks the fact that ultimately it is an album for the fan base. Because the thing that has solidified or become more and more clear about like truly

what Midnights is to me with some time is just how much of a career retrospective. it is. Because I don't think that in the way that the songs that musically match up with other songs mean that they're about the same moment. Like I think if you go track by track that doesn't really work. But I just think that this album is

her processing kind of her entire life. And one of the songs, probably the song that's really done that for me as you're on your own kid. And people have done a good job like making TikToks of this and stuff, but like the literal lyrics chronologize all of her different eras. And you can go through from something different bloomed writing in my room. I play my songs in

the parking lot. I run away. Debut. Something different bloomed. From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes, I called a taxi to take me there. Fearless. She's living on her own. She's becoming a celebrity. You're on your own kid. You always have them. Speak now. She does it all by herself. It's an album where she gets to the end of the line and knows that the people that got her that got her that far got there with her couldn't go any further by her side. You're on your own kid. You always have been. Then sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this. Red, this album, she wanted to be a crowning achievement. I hosted parties and starved my body like I'd be saved. by a perfect kiss. That's 1989. The jokes weren't funny. I took the money. My friends from home don't know what to say. Reputation. I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and I saw something they can't take away. Love her.

Because there were pages turned with the bridges burned, folklore and Evermore, these storybook albums that were her next chapter after that. Everything you lose is a step you take. re-recording all her albums. So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it. You've got no reason to be afraid. Midnights, this thing that looks back on literally everywhere she's been.

So one, and she talked about this a little bit on Friday when she was on the Graham Norton show, it is completely no mistake that as she was doing this work of re-recording her old catalog, this was the type of original album that would come out of that same period. It's something that's very personal to me

and it's a lot of work, but it's like, it's really fun and rewarding for me, and I can't believe people have actually gotten behind it the way they have. And two, to me, the takeaway from that, that's sort of forward spinning

is I have no idea what she's going to do next. I don't really think that you can look at this. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. If she does, it's a secret. Because I just don't think that, you know, it's my instinct to look at an album and go,

okay, what's on here that is the next album appetizer that tells us sort of where the arrow might be pointing. I think all the arrows on Midnights are pointing backwards. I think this is someone who's done a lot of work on herself, wanting to revisit a lot of moments with that fresh perspective. And because of that, I do think that at its core, it's an album for the people who were there through those moments. and get it. And now she is to, it's always going to be a little bit hard to decipher that just

because, one, the people who have been there for all of those moments, that adds up to a lot of people. She's got a lot of core fans who know all the injokes and are going to make the TikToks and do all of that stuff. That's not a small group as evidenced by not just the number of people who are streaming this thing, but the number of people who are going to the lengths of buying the vinals and participating in those higher barrier entry ways. And then plus, it is a kind of mainstream pop-sounding thing. So it's just accessible enough, I think, to come off as, oh, this could be for absolutely anybody.

You don't need to know a thing about Taylor Swift to get this album, to like this album. You don't need to know any of her old songs to get these songs to like these songs. But I do think the real meaning of it and the real value of it lies. in being able to look back knowing where she's been on this thing. And I think I heard a little bit of that on the first few listen-throughs. We obviously talked about the sonic influences and how it feels like she's sampling herself and how she literally is sampling herself in certain cases.

But I don't think that I initially got quite how much this was about everywhere she's been up to this point, more so than it even is about where she is now and where she might be going. Question number two? Yeah, question number two. I mean, what could I add to that? So this is from, that was cathartic for me. This is from Florentia, who is asking the question that we were getting a little bit at at the top.

Business stats question, what do you make of the incredible success of this album, even selling more than 1989, and how does this correlate with the campaign that many fans criticized and the folklore re-recording projects. Let's start with the first part just about the scope of the success of this record so far. What did fans criticize about the campaign? That it asked a whole lot of people. You had to stay up till midnight. It wasn't always clear what the Easter egging was.

It was, I complained about it. I was tired. Well, we did get tired. That's true. Yeah, I mean, look, she cares about the numbers. And what she did with this campaign was she let, look, she is one of the biggest direct-to-fan consumer brands in the world. And that was the essence and core of the campaign. The videos that we got, she understood the power of TikTok as a platform.

So she started most of the videos that she created on TikTok, and then they sort of percolated out to other platforms. So it was a very digital sort of forward-looking next-generation platform campaign. But if you squint, you can see that she threw a bone to all of the traditional retailers or platforms that have historically driven these, let's call them sort of traditional old numbers of album sales. She announces on MTV. that my brand new album comes out October 21st. She gives an exclusive song to Target, which, by the way, when that thing is buried, we'll have that conversation. Oh, we'll talk about it. Yeah.

So she takes care of Target. She talks a lot about the indie records. She goes on late night television. We are so great to see you. You look fantastic. Thanks for coming back. Thank you so much. That was really nice, guys.

I mean, yeah. which nobody watches anymore, but she did that sort of traditional camp. She gave Spotify some exclusive stuff around lyrics. She really touched all of the bases here that you would do in parallel to speaking directly to her core fan base. And I think those two things together are what drove the end numbers. I think she's finally learned how to do an album campaign effectively on her own.

Right? She, when she got out of Big Machine, big machine ran all that stuff in the beginning. But she got out of Big Machine. She got into Universal. They obviously know how to run a big campaign. But she's the CMO. She's the CEO of this business. And what we saw after she dropped Folklore and Evermore was there was a lot of content

that was on top of one another, right? And it was pretty clear that Evermore got lost in the shuffle because of how quickly it followed Long Pond, how quickly that followed folklore. you know, how the fearless single love story and everything else, the fearless re-release came quickly. That's why she did the campaign that she did with Red. And why Red did so well was it felt like she had a long runway and all the games that she put us through quite literally

to get into the vault and decode everything, all that, was, I think, part of the learning experience of how to really set up an album. And I think she took all of that and applied it to this campaign. And they did it because they care about the numbers. I mean, you know, little birdies have whispered to us that they really do. They wanted to drive the best sales that we've seen since like 2017 and 2015, right? Since Adele in 2015, I think. Did you think this was possible?

I figured it would do well. I just, there are some numbers here that I don't know that it seemed like just in terms of how streaming works, how music consumption works. I'm surprised by how well it did, which it does not speak to how good of an album, I think it is. I just didn't think that albums sold in this way anymore. I'm less surprised by it because it felt like the vinyl in particular was geared to drive these numbers.

And for as cute as it was when she sort of hugs the wall and says, it's a clock. But what I wanted to show you is that if you put all the back covers together, She's a clock. It's a clock. It's a clock. It makes a clock. What I really want to know is what's the average number of vinyl purchases per fan who bought vinyl? Because I bet it's north of two.

And which is to say people bought multiple copies. And so that 550,000 sales... Probably some people bought one and some people bought all four. Yeah. And then there are the target ones and there are other ones. So, like, you could, in the aggregate, by eight, probably. Like, so what does that number look like? My guess is that it was fewer than 100,000 fans who drove 550,000 vinyl sales. I don't know.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. But it would be interesting to see. It doesn't matter because in the aggregate, if instead of sales, we had an engagement metric, I think the engagement metric would be even higher than the number of sales. Right? And that's what's so impressive about this. So I guess I'm not surprised because it just looked like they were telegraphing a campaign designed to do exactly this. And you step back and you go, like, who cares?

Why? You know what? I don't know. She's going to tell us someday, but she really cares about legacy. She cares about legacy in the business. She cares about, you know, all of those sort of trophies on the wall or on the mantles. We said they matter to her. She, does that make her competitive?

I don't know. I just, I think that this is the biggest artist in the world who's had the hardest time being taken seriously as a big artist because of where she started, because she started as a teenage girl. I think there has been a lack of legitimacy bestowed on her by lots of people in the industry, right? But now you have to step back. Historically, I think that it's been a while since that was broadly true. But historically, I agree with that. Check out my DMs from the podcast where I said, hey, we got to think about her in the context of very few people, including like Lennon and McCartney. right? We got a bunch of, well, fuck off.

No, but like, you have to do that. She's got three albums of the year. She's got, as you said, a catalog maybe as much as 200 strong of like legitimate songs that work. And she's now got, you know, from a sales figure standpoint, certainly the most

impressive numbers in an era in which it's really hard to measure these things. It's just undeniable. So I think that there is something about putting points on the board that is potential, listen, I don't want to speculate psychologically what this is about and whether it's like, you know, covering up an insecurity driven by all of the naysayers and doubters that have fueled a lot of the songs that

she's created. I'm just saying she cares and this entire campaign was about driving these numbers. Do you think that not having a single out front impacted that one way or another? I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I guess if you, if you, you know, on the spot, I think I was surprised she didn't put a single out. But in hindsight, I guess what she has figured out is that the anticipation and the buzz and the moment of everyone discovering all at once is actually more powerful than all of us hearing anti-hero for the first time. The singles just eat everything else. It just becomes, I liked it. I almost hope she just does that.

It's too... I think she's gonna. It's too tempting to read way too much into a single and do this whole, okay, this is what the album's going to be about and this is what the album is going to sound like thing that just eats the whole process. Yeah. I am sitting here however many days after hearing Midnights for the first time and not having had a lead single to sort of color how I was going to have that experience, feeling like this is the right way to do it. If you care about the album and she cares so much about the album as a concept

and as its own entity, I would rather do it this way. Yeah. Well, and I think putting out a single, by the way, eats up a lot of streams. And it makes it harder to have 10 songs in the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 if you've put out a single. And to be totally fair, when she only had nine, suddenly there were singles that were dropped on Apple Music

that you could buy this week, right? To try to fuel push, I don't know if it was question or vigilante shit or into the top 10. So this was very intentional. And I think these are the accolades that she wanted. I mean, she just this morning retweeted the Billboard tweet about the top 10 songs in the Hot 100.

Like, they cared about it and the campaign and the things that they asked the fan base to do were designed to make this happen. It doesn't make it any less impressive, but that was the point. Well, on some level, it matters for her to be so big that she's undeniable because, look, look, when you said, this is someone who's had to work so hard to be taken seriously, I do think within the pop music consuming areas of the world and of the internet and of discourse, I do think that broadly people got there and recognized that not taking her seriously was a big mistake. Now, outside of those communities, right? It was actually instructive for me

and kind of a wake-up call to see the immediate response to her dropping the visual trailer on Thursday night football, which was snarky in some areas and, like, confused in other areas and Al Michaels is going, oh, Kirk Herb Street, well, you only have sons, so your kids aren't excited about this.

But if you had teenage daughters, I'm sure they would be over the moon. Like, I don't even, like, Taylor Swift is fine. It just struck me that Al Michaels is sitting there in the Amazon booth, not understanding that they need her more than she needs them in that moment. Taylor Swift could have done that on a lot of different platforms, probably without all that much impact one way or another to Taylor Swift. Now, Amazon's a good place to do that,

but they're grateful for her being on their, air in that moment, not the other way around. And it was interesting for me to realize that there are people, smart people, in those seats to whom that is not obvious. And it is to those people that if you do have numbers like this that are record-breaking and historic, you can't argue with it in some ways. So when she's trying to be part of those spaces, and release things in those spaces, I do think that dominating sales like this has some degree of meaning beyond just being able to say,

good for me, I won. Well, she did win, and it feels like a win. I think it matters to the fan base. Like, everybody who participated in this and who followed the calendar instructions of what to do each day was, personally invested in the outcome and the results. It's a very intelligent, it's like they own equity in Taylor Swift, the company, except they don't, but that's what you generally would do is

you give equity to the employees so that they sort of have alignment. And she's managed to, you know, give out a bunch of emotional equity that has everybody do the work. And the success is, hey, look, we're number one. We're first on the leaderboard. Boom finger time. She should sell that. I think she has sold phone fingers in the past. All right. Question three is from Lily B, who asks, I'd love to hear you talk about concept albums. I think this is the first one she's called a concept album.

But in my mind, almost all her albums are so specifically themed, they could be called concept albums. Why is this more of a concept album than 1989 or reputation? What's your answer to this, Nora? So I'm really glad that Lily brought this up. To me, if she'd framed Midnights as being a concept album about memory, it would make a little bit more sense to me than the concept being Midnights. She mentioned on Graham Norton that she thought of it as like a creative writing prompt to think about the things that had kept her up at night and then write songs about those things. You could be thinking about what could have been.

You know, there's just so many possibilities. If you give that, like, if you think of that as like a creative writing prompt, which is what I did, that's where the album came from. And this album could... I think it worked. Clearly, the product, the end product, the end result is something that I really love. I hear so few scenes in the album about specifically her being up in the middle of the night dealing with one of these things. That it did confuse me a little bit initially. I still...

I don't think of it as distinct from anything else that she's done. Yeah. in a way that lends itself to, oh, well, that one was a concept album, so it sounds like this, or it deals with, you know, it tells this story in this way. So that's not something that's really tangible to me. However, if I think of it as this exercise in memory, it works a little bit better for me. I think constraints breed creativity and she gave herself a box to play in to try to squeeze whatever juice she could from this framework. And to your point, I think it worked.

It does not... I mean, I will say that reputation, you'd say, was a concept album about what? About her journey through anger

and being hurt as a public... Lover was... Yeah, I don't really... I can hear the argument that Lover is an album about love in its many forms. Yes.

Reputation tells a story, but I don't think is a concept album. Yeah, and I don't think... I don't think... 1989 is either. I don't think there's a common theme across it. And to your... your point, like, I would, like, this is an album about reflection. And it would have made a little more

sense as a concept if you did that. But look, whatever it takes, give me more Andy Hero and Mastermind. Yeah. Like, I'm in on whatever process we went through. If this is a concept album, fantastic. The concept album thing, I think, has to do pretty much only with, like, she's Taylor's if she can do anything in the world. like you said, constraints breed creativity. She needed to put some guardrails on the thing and be like, okay, how do I choose what I'm going to do next when I could do whatever I want? Here's this concept for how I'm going to start this work and narrow down the box I'm going to play in.

I don't think it comes through as a concept album on the record. I've had moments where I've been like, wait, I thought this was a concept album. I don't totally get it. I don't think it's super significant, but I'm glad Lily brought it up because that had crossed my mind as well. Yeah, and I will say this, whatever she decided to do by calling it a concept album did give her a very clear filter for what was on and what did not make, like what was on and what was off the album in terms of the volume of songs that she created. Like it feels pretty clear to me why the seven songs that didn't make this album got left

on the, on the, not really cutting room floor, but got left for three hours until she released them on top of us. Like that, I think, was an interesting prism to make those decisions. And I think sonically, there's a nice consistency. So if this was her way of saying, I'm going to create something that's succinct, that fits nicely into a box that does not whipsaw you back and forth, again, mission accomplished. Can you, so what do you, where are the lines there? Like, what are the songs from the, I don't, frankly, I don't get that. I don't hear a lot of, And I think people really differ in this. I don't hear all that much on the 3am tracks

that wouldn't have fit on the normal. I'm not saying that I think that there should have been swaps, but I just, I don't hear that many distinctions between those two. So I'm curious what the ones that you do are. Well, I think the Desner tracks sound pretty different to me than the stuff that you do reject to begin with. So then we're down to five. And glitch, I understand, like just from a tempo.

standpoint. I mean, Paris Paris feels like a somewhat distant cousin of karma, not like sonically, but just sort of energy wise. Do you... Yeah. A little, yeah, and maybe a little bejeweled. Sure. I just think

bejeweled was... Bejewed is a really big song, and that continues to feel to me like one of the highlights of the album. But Glitch felt like an experiment, right? And she was working... Lavender Hayes made the album. but glitch it felt like maybe it didn't fit in the tempo and sort of flow of the album.

Because really the only time... Go ahead. So that... I'm not saying I think these songs are better than the ones that made the original 13 and should have been swapped. I don't feel like that. I just don't hear them as any less about the Midnight's concept than the ones that are on the original 13. And she's said that they are. She's said that the 13 makeup.

the concept album, and then the 3 a.m. tracks are different. I don't know what she means by that, which is fine. It's not a, this is not something that she talks a lot about midnights in the 3 a.m. tracks. Right. I don't, I don't hear that. I'm curious how she would describe that if she ever dove further into it. But maybe we'll find out. Like, I have my theory about what have, could have should have as just like, it has to be on 3 a.m. otherwise it eats up so much oxygen. I think that's right. I don't know that they it's hard for me to pinpoint a place where one song from the

3 a.m. section would have like interrupted the story or made the first 13 not work conceptually or would have just not fit into the idea. Okay. Well, let's see what other questions

we get about this. All right. We definitely have a couple questions about the 3am tracks. But first, I love, this question from Kayla. Would love your thoughts on how her characterization of romantic love has changed over the course of her discography?

And then she goes on to mention that she used to write a lot about fairy tales and traditional family to more of what she's doing now, which Kayla thinks has an R-house vibe, which she describes as life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy because of you. Life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy because of you.

Which actually, I love this question, but I disagree with the last part because I think what's changed is the portrayal of romantic love as something that fixes all your problems. And this end goal where you have a problem and it will be solved by to be. borrow a phrase, a perfect kiss, right? Like, in some ways now, the roles in a relationship that she is asked to play are more likely to be complicated, right? And Lavender Hayes, she's resentful of either having to be a one-night or a wife. She writes about her ambition and her career goals getting in the way of relationships. He wanted a bride. I was making my own name.

She's a knife. She seems to really not enjoy being asked to fit into a particular box as a woman or as a woman in a relationship. Whereas I think, you know, we think about songs like Love Story. It was just like, oh, you're going to find Prince Charming. And then that's who you are and everything's great. And some of that is true. fun, right? I don't think that that, like, devalues those songs, but it's fascinating to see her grow up and I think have this very sort of like millennial perspective on what's asked of women

in relationships and why those things have to be so defining when actually, and I think you hear this in the songs too, it's so much more meaningful for her to feel the depth of a partnership in a relationship, not because it's a means to an end, not because it's something that's going to fix something else in her life and make everything okay, but just because it's valuable and meaningful to her. And I do think you hear a ton of that in these songs.

Yeah, I think two things. One is this is probably one of the five hardest people in the world to be in relationship with if you're another human being because of the complications that come, with being her. And I think there is a maturity and a self-awareness about that that has evolved over the course of the last couple of albums, including Like Lover, where she understood, I think she tells us often that Joe's ability to roll with it, Joe's ability to be fine when she's writing

here in the year of our Lord 2022 still about John Mayer. Jake Gyllenhaal and all these exes and to be comfortable enough in himself and in their relationship to be to handle it. There just aren't many people who have a advanced enough emotional IQ coupled with self-confidence to be able to just handle that.

Like most of most human beings, I don't think are developed enough to be able to manage what it means to be in relationship with her. So she feels like an adult talking about love. And I think we can forgive her for maybe taking a little bit longer to get there only because, like, name another child star who's doing as well as she is. Like, who came out a function?

Timberlake. Okay. Okay. Timberlake. Who else? Like, really, if we go down the list of people who are as famous as she is now and we're famous then. Yeah, I mean, look, and this is no shade to Timberlake, but of both of these people,

have at times made mistakes in their lives. I think Timberlake has transgressed along the way in slightly more serious ways too. But I largely take your point. He is relatively speaking, seems to be thriving. Yeah, I just, I cut a little bit of slack that it took her a little while to write about love in a more sort of adult mature way because of those two factors.

One is she, she, her brain development just had to have been affected by being an object of worship for a fan base like that. Like, it just is not a now. thing for a human being to have to absorb at that age. And then secondarily, it's just really she clearly found somebody who could actually teach her a bit about what it means to be in a normal functioning relationship because it just with everything that is around her, the monster you know, lurching towards your city, the monster on the hill lurching towards your city and everybody else is the sexy baby. Like that is the story.

and the silly but real description of what it's like to be her and how difficult and weird it must be to be in a relationship with her if you don't have the sort of advanced high IQ metrics that it sounds like Joe Alwin has. It do be like that sometimes. Everybody is a sexy baby. Has it gotten easier for you to hear? I love it.

Easier. It goes down like, honey, every single time. I love that line. I think it's so funny. Like, now, do I laugh? Yes, of course I laugh. But I think it's fantastic. Yeah.

I think that's all true. The thing that cracks me up about it is she's like 32. She and Joe met when she was 26. Like, this is not a, you know, they're not the old people making out of the bar that we saw. Oh, God. Oh, I'd forgotten about that. Why would you do that to me?

It's not like she's that old. Nora. Horrible you. Yeah, that's right. It's not like she's that old. That's true. But I do think that by that age, I think people have had a more functional relationship

than the ones that she's been. Tons of people have. Tons of people haven't, right? Like, somebody having their first serious, like, really meaningful partner at 26. Yeah, not a big deal. Like, there's tons and tons and tons of people listening to that album right now going like,

not even just this album, but fans of her is going through her entire discography being like, the journey I feel like I've been on for Taylor Swift to find the love of her life at the right old age of 26. Like, you weren't frozen in amber, girl. Yeah. It's also interesting that I'm not sure she has declared him the love of her life.

which I sort of, like, she rejected a lot of the characterization of this relationship on this album. Like, she's, it just feels like she's more present and, you know, appreciative of him, but she doesn't feel the need to put a label on it or sort of create some, I don't know. It feels like they go moment to moment doing the best that they can, and she doesn't, anyway, this just feels like what she's teaching us on the album. The rejection of the wife thing was a big deal, right? Because there's been so much speculation. Is she married?

She's got to be already married. Is she having a baby? Like all that shit that at some point she just said, you know what? That's not actually even how we think about it. Well, or it's a rejection of maybe we think about it that way. Maybe we don't. I'm not telling you.

Neither is Joe. And how absurd is it that nobody can see? her in a way that can exist outside of having that information about her relationship status, right? Like, I don't think, I didn't listen to this album and be like, Taylor Swift thinks that marriage is terrible and she never wants to do it. No. I listen to this album and think, like, in the same way that people are at their Thanksgiving

dinner table with their aunts being like, stop asking me when I'm getting married. Like, I don't know. And it shouldn't be an indictment on a relationship. or a person either way. It's just not a nuanced enough way of thinking about. But we're a long ways away from Mary Me, Juliet. Like, it pulled out a ring and like that, that's gone. And she's now sort of rejecting it as an end goal in a relationship.

Well, but I don't think that it's about the relationship. Because think about the lyrics there. Mary Me, Juliet, you'll never have to be alone. Now we have one of the core songs from this album. that at a point in her life, from everything that we can tell, right, which is not, we do not have anywhere near perfect insight

into their relationship, her life, whatever. But from everything we can tell, she is, she's told us she's doing better than she ever was. They've been together for a really long time. And she's still writing a song where the core line is,

you're on your own kid. You always have been, you always will be. There's some part of us that is, that always has to, you know, be the person who's there for ourselves. And I think a pretty consistent theme here is like you can get so, so much and have this really,

really meaningful, important relationship that is solid and they could be together forever and be perfect people for each other and everything could be great. It's not going to save her from losses. people experience in life. It doesn't completely cauterize every wound from past hurt. Like, you have to love love in a relationship for the sake of what it is. It doesn't solve all your problems. Whereas I think of the past, there's this idea that like you snap your fingers and all of the sprinkle fairy dust comes and it's all good. No more fairy dust, Nora. Well, she did keep the castle.

She can afford it after all these streams and album purchases. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. There shouldn't be winning castles in bejeweled games. Buy it yourself. Great question from Audrey. When are we getting hits different on Spotify? I don't know if you have thoughts on this.

I did look up some old data. And the bad news is that with 1989, the Target deluxe tracks, including new Romantics, did not go on streaming services for months after that album came out. It came out in October. They went up one at a time in February and March. The good news is that streaming has obviously come a long way since then

and Taylor is a much happier partner with services like Spotify than she was at that time. So I don't think it'll be that long. But man, every day hits different is not on Spotify. It's a very, very difficult day for years, truly. Yeah. There's some window that just like, It takes a while for movies to come out of theaters, or it used to take a while for movies to come out of theaters onto streaming services.

Like, it's the same thing here. The deal with Target was we'll give you some exclusivity, and it's probably three to six months, and then it's going to be on Spotify. And until then, you just have to, you know, just do a search on YouTube. You'll be fine. I have another point on this, but it's going to come up into different questions. We'll save it for later.

Okay. Arushi, I hope I'm getting that right, asks, did Nora come around on the Mastermind Bridge? Oh, this is for me. Because it's truly the key to the whole album. All right.

Probably not in the way that you want me to. I am a little bit better with it now because I've just decided... It does not... Look, if the point of that bridge is for it to hit me as a true

honest, word for word, raw confession that is her mission statement for why she's done everything the way that she's done it. It doesn't hit me because she's a much more complicated person than just like, nobody wanted to hang out with me. So I did all of this stuff. It does work for me as meta-narrative. That there's absolutely truth in that. But she also knows how she's used that story to narrativize her life and her decision. and she knows that there's something, there's both something true and there's both something manipulative

about doing it at the same time. And that is the beauty of the song. And if I think about it in that way, it works for me. I'm still not, I think it is musically not the best part of that song by a long shot. That doesn't mean it's bad. That just means that there are other parts of mastermind that I think are spectacular.

And I don't think she sounds as good on the bridge as she does on the verses and chorus of the song. but I do think if I think of it as... Do you think that's intentional? Do you think that maybe she's playing a version of her younger self there in that bridge? If she...

Or do you think they just screwed up the vocal and she didn't put the shoes on right? I just don't think it's screwed up. I just don't think it sounds amazing. And I don't hear it as intentional. That's an interesting thought. But it takes a lot of... It takes a lot of work

for me to go, okay, if I squint and listen to it this way, then I can interpret it this way, which feels like a more structurally sound interpretation of the song that I can get behind. And that's okay. Like, I'm willing to do quite a bit of work if it helps me hear a song that I like a lot in a way that's more compelling to me. But it's just, it takes me a lot to get there with that part of the song. But I have, I've inched closer by just sort of accepting it at, it's a little bit confession and it's a little bit wink.

Okay. Well, you know how I feel about the verse. I think it's the key to understanding the album and I think she's telling us a lot of herself. But I hear that you are still feeling like you have to do mental gymnastics to get there. All right. Here's another one. This is from Heidi. Any commentary on anti-hero being a response to the old joke people would make about Taylor writing a song called Maybe I'm the problem. I have to be honest with you, Nathan, I included this question just so that I could say, my commentary is that this is a very good point. What do you mean? Did you ever see that meme that, like, annoying people would throw around earlier in her career where it would just be like her face and it would say, maybe Taylor Swift should write a song called, maybe I'm the problem because, you know, in the era of. Right. Oh, don't write a song about Taylor Swift.

Right. Don't date Taylor Swift. She'll write a song about you. So you can get yourself to that, but not that the mastermind bridge is... I mean, I don't think it's about that. I also don't think, by the way, like, there's the whole thing about...

We got a couple questions about the anti-hero chorus being written for... So that it would be conducive to TikTok trends. This also does not bother me because I think it's good if I thought it were crappy. and crappy because it were in service of creating TikToks and having people make TikToks out of it,

that would annoy me. I don't think that that was the raison d'être for this entire chorus. Whoa! French! Settle down, Nora. Do you take my point? I also take your rolling arse. You listen to too much Paris.

I love Paris. by the few were like we were in hell. Okay, fair enough. Which, I take your point. Okay. All right. I love it. Do you know?

It's a huge, great song. It's me. It's also a huge great chorus, right? Like, again, yes. It is, like, do I think that at some point it crossed her mind and basically everybody who is involved in making the song's mind of, oh, people are going to make really funny TikToks

to the sound of this song. Because it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me. It's perfect for that. A super memeable song. They've known that for a very long time. Also, it's going to be sick live. It's really catchy.

And it's like, it's sort of one of those why use 20 words when you can use five? Like, it's simplicity lends itself to memeability, but it's also a cool part of the song. So if it were a bad part of the song,

I might have an issue with it. It's a good part of the song, so I don't. Okay. All right, here's another one about the 3-A.m. tracks, so we can sort of close the loop on that. This is from Cap. If you had to switch out one or two things from the regular album with 3-A.m. tracks,

which ones would you pick? Hits different could also be included in this. Would you swap out hits different? Yeah, I would. Man. I like thematically swapping it with labyrinth is sort of weird. It's probably what I would do just because that still is my cut. The reason I would swap it is because it's different as a real crowd pleaser song.

Like I think it's a great song. You don't need any fluency with Taylor Swift to get that song, love that song. It's super fun. It bums me out that that's the one song, even with these ridiculous sales numbers. I think some people who would love that song are not going to hear that song. And that's why I wish it were. That's why I would make it my swap if I could. Why wouldn't you swap woulda coulda should have? Because it's too powerful. It's too strong. It has to be 19th.

Lord of the Rings. We can't unleash it. Give us the precious. Seriously, though. But that's what I do. do. I mean, I, you know, I think the last minute and a half of what it could or should have is objectively one of the best moments of the entire project. Yeah, me too. It's just soaring and powerful. Like, it's terrific. And it does, however, sound different than Midnights to me. It sounds like an Aaron Destner track. It sounds like the rock album that people want her to make.

So I'm not sure that it would You know It would mess with whatever she means My Concept album But I feel about this song That it's just not going to be heard In the way that it ought to And I think it's a

I think it matters Hmm All right from Joey What song do you desperately need to hear live? Well I think you just answered that a little while ago, huh? Anti-hero Yeah I'm very excited to be in a crowd of people

being like, I'm the problem. Here we go. Here we go. So he calls me up and he's like, I love, I'm, I love to enjoy. No, we are never getting back together like ever.

No. Yeah, okay. I'm more excited about bejewled live. Dimes in my eyes. A polish up real. I just think it's going to hit harder. I think it's going to rock a little bit more. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, and I think she's going to do cool shit with the polish up real nice. And visually, there's a lot they can do with the theme. It's going to be great. The other one that I'm excited for is karma. Karma is just going to be fun. It's going to be fun to be silly altogether. There's a lot of opportunity to be silly. Do you think she's definitely going to play karma live?

I hope so. Yes. Yes, I do. Do you think she may not? Nathan! How long is this concert supposed to be? A hundred hours. Yeah, well, just going to fall over. At some point, we might need to construct our dream set lists. That's fine. That's fine. We can. I mean, we got to understand exactly the format of this tour, but... Well, so, okay, here's a related question from Blanche. Do you think an added benefit of midnight

songs sounding like previous entries in her discography means she performs more medleys on tour, i.e. I think he knows in Lavender Hays. First of all, Blanche, name from the Golden Girls, outstanding. Second of all, is she going to do more medleys? I hope not.

Yeah, me too. It leaves me unfulfilled. Like, if albums matter, I'm very sorry. Songs matter. I don't want a TikTok concert. You know?

Where I get little clips of stuff. Like, let's go perform the damn song if it mattered. And one of the things about this album, by the way, that's interesting is that all of these songs are pretty damn short. Like, she does not have 10 minute all too well, not even five minute all too well on this album. Like she gets the points across and boom, we're done in under three minutes in,

a lot of cases. But like I want to hear an entire song. So I'm not excited about the medley stuff. It just doesn't get me. It doesn't get me where I want to be in terms of seeing seeing like watching how she like I saw her do exile on stage with Bonnevera Wembley Arena.

You probably saw that. She flew there last last week and did it. I think I've seen this thing before. I'm That's your problem. Don't throw arrows at me. I think she's in such pop mode.

She really sang that hard. Like she... Yeah. She was... Over-singing is probably not the right word, but I think if she could go back and sing that again, like she'd turn down the in-air monitors,

she'd get a different mix, and she'd sing it like the way that she sang it in the Long Pond Studios, which is like... Where they melded a little bit more easily. Yeah. And she... And the tone

of her voice was softer there. It felt like she sort of showed up and sang it pop star style. Like, what else are you going to do? Like, he just put a spotlight on her in the middle of the stage. Like, I get it. You know what I mean?

Right. But, but, um, anyway. Also, it's just very cool to see her give that song a moment. But I, I agree with you on the vocal. I had the same reaction. So look, we'll see. I am with you.

So I think there, you know, there'll be some mashups. But it's instructive to look at how she's used mashups in the past, on the reputation tour, there were four of them, right? But only two of them involved songs from the album that she was touring. What album is she touring? She's touring five and a half albums.

We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. But she did the style love story, you belong with me, mashup. Then she did the bad blood should have said no, mashup. Then there was long live in New Year's Day. Or after the party. So New Year's Day is sort of like a featured song from the era that she was representing centrally in that tour.

And then there was the we are never ever getting back together. This is why we can't have nice things. Match up. First of all, New Year's Day, song I love. This is why we can't have nice things. Song I also love and I think is super fun. Neither one of those is like delicate or getaway car. Right?

she's not even on a set list that had quite a few mashups, mostly they're enabling the concert to still feel like she's getting the greatest hits in there. And she's still allowing the show to press the button of, oh my God, I went to the Taylor Swift show and she sang a little bit of love story. And I got to hear that and I love that song and that song has so much history. And I've known it and loved it for years and years and years. And it's cool to hear that on stage. but she's not saying

here's the album that I'm on tour with and the most important songs for me to perform right now I'm giving you 45 seconds instead of three minutes right like she gives the songs their time to breathe. I don't think she'll do anything different here I do think that there will be some mashups

but I think that because she's got a lot of options on this album. Right and she can't it's I don't want to say can't but it's hard for her to do any sort of show, any sort of big show where she doesn't play some of the hits. And I think doing some mashups enables her to do that, but I don't, I think that... To check some boxes?

Yeah, and in a good way. Like, it's good to check those boxes, I want to hear those songs. Can you walk away happy hearing, like, half of love story? Yeah. Why do you even need to hear half of it? And now do we need to? Because if you went to reputation, you heard it in that format?

I mean, that's the only... That is literally the only song where I'm kind of like, ah, there's probably no way we're performing it hurts, right? Like, people love hearing that song. Yeah, 10 minutes are gone out of the show for 10 minutes all too well. So now you got to start walking back. What do we have left? you got like at most it's going to be two-hour show.

So now you got 110 minutes and divide it by five or six. And that's what she's up against. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wish you would do the Prince Springsteen thing. I was laughing at one of those Wall Street Journal pieces that quoted us being like, oh my God, what a problem she's facing. I don't know if I would call it a problem.

Yeah, it's a challenge. It's an opportunity. It's not a problem. Oh, woe is me. Right. Exactly. What are you talking about? All of my award-winning albums.

How will I perform them all? Yeah. But it is an interesting challenge, and that's what we have been talking about for a long time on this podcast, is that we are hoping that she's going to do something somewhat innovative to be able to present these volumes of songs that have not been on tour.

Nothing since the reputation tour has been played live in any meaningful way. I want to see what she does. Just to close the loop, one, I think there will be medleys, but I think that the medleys will actually not be heavy on Midnight's content. I also think slash hope. And I would not have a problem with this,

even if I went to a show where I didn't hear my dream songs to hear, I think there's going to be some rotating. Or at least I hope there will be. If I designed this, there would be like a three song, you know, little mini act where maybe there's 10 songs that are a part of that, and on any given night, she does three of them. And there's some, maybe it's sort of the more stripped folklore evermore stuff.

Obviously, this all depends on what the context is, what the venue is, how she attacks this. But if it were the stripped down folklore, evermore songs, maybe there's 10 of them that make the most sense to be part of the tour. and I'm not saying that's the only place that we hear folklore evermore, but maybe there's a collection of songs that work in that context, but she rotates which ones people here. And there's a little bit of luck of the draw,

but the benefit is that it feels a little bit bespoke and special and everything feels different and each show is unique in some way. So I can see stuff like that happening. And I actually think that that's more, that to me is more special than, taking a meaningful song that's new that's never been part of a live show and saying, well, we're going to get

30 seconds of it in this mashup. Look, I just want cruel summer end to end, okay? Everything else can fuck off. Give me cruel summer. If that shit goes in a medley with, like, Lavender Hayes, I am rioting. I think you're going to be okay. One man, riot.

I think you're going to be okay. So, this is like the, this is a section of the questions that are all about touring, because that's what people are so excited about right now. From Graham, how does Midnights change her touring strategy overall? Like, having heard the album, having spent the week since the album, where are you on, are we hearing this stuff in stadiums, are there residencies,

how does it work? Well, I don't know that it changes their strategy. It gives her a few more stadium anthems that are current, like we talked about. So we know that she's part of the touring is that. definitely going to be in a stadium. Now, where else it flows from? It does complicate things because there's just so much content. She's going to have to think hard about how to perform all this stuff. And I just, for me, it would be residences in cities across different venues. And I understand that it comes with all kinds of who gets into the smaller venues and how do you manage the

secondary market for this stuff. But I think that. the best direct-to-fan CEO, CMO in the world can figure some of those problems out, including, you know, if she was able to figure out what fans to let into her house, I think she can probably figure out how to identify some fans to let into some special smaller shows. But I don't know. A lot of the secret sessioners are out here causing problems, but overall, I take your point. Fair enough. Fair enough. Look, the most interesting thing to me about the tour was not so much.

the release of Midnights, but again, getting on stage with Boni Vair and, by the way, Aaron Dessner on piano at Wembley Arena in London. So I want to see whether I'm keeping my eyes much on her tour dates as I am on the tour dates of the National slash Aaron Dessner slash bleachers slash Jack Antonoff slash Bonnie Bear slash Justin Vernon. Okay. Actually, people ask this question separately, but I'm inserting it because getting you on the record on this has been requested a lot. Make your case for why

their availability interest in being part of this thing changes what she can perform because it's not as though you can't just have somebody else do the parts. I think that well, you can't really have somebody else do Justin Vernon's background. vocals. That's the hard

part. I think that there was something magical about those sessions and that there's a reason that they performed with her on the Grammys. There's a reason that they sat at the table with her. Like, this was kind of their thing together. Long Pond showed that.

Somebody else could play the parts. They could. It just will feel like a little bit of a different experience if it's just her and not Desner doing his thing because so much of that music was from his hard drive. So when you say, is she going to get Aaron Desner and Justin Vernon to come out on tour with her because that tells us if she's going to be doing the stuff that they worked on together, what you're saying is, like, that's grounded in, you think that's what she would want to do

because you think that those experiences were meaningful. She'll play those songs if those guys can't come out on tour. she'll find her band can play anything for crying out loud. If we've seen it, all the guest stars, like, they can figure it out. That's not the problem. I just wonder if there is a more interesting in it. Here's the truth. Boney Vair's not coming out on a tour with her unless the band opens for her, right?

Because he doesn't, he's not involved in enough songs for it to be a good use of his time. It's really desperate. You imagine a Taylor Swift's Stadium door. I don't know. Opened by the dad rockers. You never know. you never know. Listen, if she was going to do a lover fest today,

I guarantee you she'd have a side stage that had a whole lot of Dad Rock Island. So weird, but so, like the chaotic energy of that would be so spectacular. I can't even imagine it. Yeah, well, she's going to, she has a lot of power with her fan base. Like, she just has to decide

where she wants to point the hot white light. And I promise you that more people listen to Boni Vair and the National than did before the folklore and Evermore projects, right? So she's got the ability to do that. Let me not say that they won't... Sorry, I'm going to use a bunch of double negatives.

Let me just say it directly. She will play folklore slash Evermore songs on this tour, regardless of the availability of those guys. I just think it becomes a real moment if in an intimate setting with horns and strings and the original players that they're actually doing it. Time. Give me no compasses.

Give me no signs. With the clues I didn't see. Got it. And the other point about Justin Vernon's vocals is meaningful. Like her band can play anything. There is nobody else in the world that sounds like that guy. No. So there's some of that I think does matter.

All right. Taylor's version asks, Is there a song off Midnight's you think will be her tour opener? What do you think? So I think it's probably the album opener. I think Lavender Hayes works in that context, too. But my Dark Horse would definitely be be jeweled. Really?

For me. You don't think she just would have opened the show by saying, hi, and then go into Antihiro? It's me. It's me. Hi, I'm the, no. Antihero is too big of a day. You can't, like, I am so excited to hear Antihiro live.

that if it's the first thing when it's over, it'll be sort of like, oh, it's over. Like, I don't want to lose the anticipation for that moment immediately. It's like, I went to see Mumford and Sons

and they played, I will wait the second song out of the gate. It was like, holy shit, where do we go from people? I wanted to wait a little bit more, guys. Yeah. All right. There you go.

You think it's anti-hero? As an opener, that's what I would, think that they just because of the it's me high yeah exactly exactly that she would appear and or you'd hear it and then boom you see her and they go into it i don't know i if see i think you could do you could have just as much fun with the like best believe i'm still bejeweled i'm back i'm on stage i'm doing a big concert i'm taylor swift i've got cats okay let's speak french my God, I bet they do speak French.

They probably have the, like, bilingual nanny situation. What else we got? All right. Last question. And then we'll log off. This is from Abby. How soon is too soon for the next re-record. Her birthday is not too soon.

It's coming. I don't know. Does it speak now because of the Bejewled music video? I mean, I think based on everything that we saw in that video, it would be weird if it wasn't. All right. I'm just saying I tiptoed into the waters of my

the speak now lawsuit is actually causing real problems take before. Yeah. If we could speak now Taylor's version before 1989, Taylor's version, I think that's why.

Just because it really seemed like 1989 was coming. And no skin off my nose. I'm excited to hear both. I don't care what order they come in. I'm just saying, If speak now comes first, there's got to be a reason, and that is the most obvious reason why. I think it's because she's still in negotiation trying to get her masters back, and that once she drops 1989, it's over?

Yeah, it significantly crushes the value. Generally speaking, I don't totally understand why they aren't all out right now, other than, I think, maybe the fearless red contrast is what shaped it, which is that even though you're putting it out there, you've still got to create a campaign around it to get people to swap out on their own individual playlists and that that's probably what drives a lot of the streaming of her catalog. And so she needs some time to build it up. But like, hey, if the objective is take the money away from those people

and put the money and the ownership into my own pocket, then again, the strategy you would think would be, let's get it out as quickly as possible. And we know that 1989, at least most of it, if not all of it is in the bag. It sure looks from the bejeweled video that... I almost said the bedazzled video. The bedazzler.

You need bedazzled. The bejeweled video that speak now is next. And I hear you say that you think it's a copyright lawsuit. I think it's about leverage in the overall conversation. That has to be, whether hot or cold in any given moment, it has to be a continuing dialogue because... she's going to get that catalog back someday. She is.

You think so? I think it's the inevitable outcome. You just can't work outside of her, given all of the energy that we have seen and the engagement from this fan base. Do you want to go to war with that? And so anybody... I mean, no.

Of course not. But at a certain point, it's... No, no. The people... I do kind of think that she can... win this without getting them back. Maybe, but I think she wants them back. She still wants them back. She wants, and she talked about it on Graham Norton.

She wants them back. And yes, she decided, well, I did it before, I'll do it again. It's a matter of principle for her. Yeah. And so she's going to do whatever she needs to do to get them back. And look, these people who own these things, they're financial investors. They deeply understand the meaning of a sunk cost. They are not emotionally invested in this catalog at all.

And so if the value of it is going to go down and get smaller out in time, they are very, very interested in selling it right now for more money. That is their only job is to generate a return. And so once she puts out in 1989, the value of that asset goes way, way down because it just, it streamed a lot more than speak now. So then what? We heard all those snippets of songs as sort of like, hey, I can do this. I can do this at any time. I've got it in a bag. Absolutely. It feels like shots across the bow.

Now, if she wants to make it cheaper for her to buy, you would think 1989 would come out now because it would devalue the catalog and she'd go. But I think that there is something very strategic about the order of these things, and it has to be driven in part by what's going on behind the scenes. But Nora, one of the things that's going on behind the scenes is this copyright lawsuit.

All right. was 13 questions. I'm adding a bonus from me and then we're going to go. Who's doing Bev on tour? Bev is doing Bev. Nice boy Ed is going to do Bev. Bev.

He wanted a comfortable I wanted that pain. He wanted a bird I was making my own thing. All right. This has been every single album of Taylor Swift. Every single album is here. I'm Nora Princeati. That's Bev. Thank you for listening. Thank you. As always, to the wonderful Kaia McMullen for production on this episode. And to you for listening. Stop it.