Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Has Taylor Swift Finally Peaked? Why Billionaires Can't Make Good Art

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON!!!!!!Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine, to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co    Over the past two decades, Taylor Swift has dominated the pop charts and risen to the pinnacle of mainstream fame. She has amassed a $2 billion fortune, won 14 Grammy Awards, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, headlined the highest-grossing concert tour in history, and built a vast real-estate and music catalog empire.But lately, the backlash to Swift is growing louder. She has been criticized for her silence on major political issues, for palling around with Trump supporters, her carbon footprint, and many are calling her latest album a flop. All of this raises the question, has Taylor Swift peaked, not just in popularity, but in cultural authority? Or is this just another cynical reinvention that she'll use to amass even more money and power? Journalist and Swiftie Kat Tenbarge joined me to discuss it all. If you like this video, please support me on Patreon!! https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz     https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0    https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz 

It does show that she can't speak on things that actually matter with all of her wealth and all of her power and alleged goodwill. Like she can't do anything in this case that actually helps anyone in the world besides her. Over the past two decades, Taylor Swift has dominated the pop charts and risen to the pinnacle of mainstream fame. She has amassed a fortune estimated at over $1.6 billion. Won 14 Grammy Awards, including a record-breaking four album of the year. wins, sold more than a hundred million albums worldwide, headlined the highest grossing concert tour in history, and built a vast real estate and music catalog empire. Swift has always had her detractors, but lately the backlash is getting louder. She has been criticized for her silence

on the genocide in Gaza, for paling around with Trump supporters like Brittany Mahomes, and climate activists have attacked her extensive air travel and carbon footprint. And now, many are calling her latest album a flop. All of this raises the question, has Taylor Swift peaked, not just in popularity, but in cultural authority? Or is this just yet another cynical reinvention that she'll use to amass even more money and power? To discuss all of this, I have Kat Tenbarge here, author of Spitfire News, a newsletter covering internet culture. Kat, welcome to power user. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, so I want to start off by asking, do you consider yourself a Swifty? I do consider myself a Swifty.

I feel like it would be lying if I said that I wasn't. But I also think that, like, she is just so popular that most people either fall into the category of, like, casual listener or, like, full on Swifty. Truly, I would argue she is the most popular musician on the planet right now. Like, I don't know if that's true in terms of, like, exact music streams or not, but certainly, I mean, her concert tour, like, sold out records. And I think if you look at the rise of her career over the past like 20 years, it's sort of just been up and up and up.

Yes. And I feel like by the numbers, and if you look at that extensive period of time that she has been such a huge mega pop star, it's like she certainly is the most consistently popular musician over the past like 10 years. Because even 10 years ago, it's like she was the most popular musician. She was 1989. That era was so humongous. so like culturally dominating.

And still to this day, she's culturally dominating. So she's had like a generational, like never before seen run. I feel like in a lot of ways, but especially in the modern era. I want to run through her eras super quickly for people that might need a refresher or kind of aren't as familiar with her rise. So Taylor Swift really comes onto the scene in 2006 with her debut album, Taylor Swift. She follows it up with fearless and then speak now. This is like sort of her early country day.

She's coming out of Nashville. She's got like the curly hair. And I feel like it's like when we were first introduced to this like young girl known as Taylor. Taylor Swift's pop career, I feel like really rose in the 2010s alongside the rise of social media. Yes, she used platforms like MySpace and then Tumblr, of course, to cultivate this huge fandom. She had like listening parties where she would have people from Tumblr over to her house. And Tumblr undeniably like gave her that boost. But I feel like by the mid-2010s, we're talking 2014, 2015, 2016, 2016.

She's also leaning into Instagram. Her Twitter account's getting big. And she's just like developing this mass parisocial fandom all across the internet where it's not confined to just Tumblr. And this is when you start to see people really criticize her about like using her platform effectively. I feel like one big moment was in 2016 when she didn't endorse Hillary Clinton. Yes.

It was also like juxtaposed with the fact that in this era of her life, she was in her like mid-20s. She had moved from like Nashville. to New York City and that was reflected in her music. For the first time, she, like, referenced, like, being gay in a positive way. When she was, like, a country star, she, like, talked about being gay as, like, an insult. But then when she released 1989, she identified as a feminist. She started to identify as, like, more socially liberal. And so there was a lot of criticism around her and a lot of scrutiny of, like, okay, she's

leveraging these things that were working really well on social media at the time, like, on Tumblr, being a feminist, that was popular. And so she was glomming onto that identity, but she was not going so far as to actually take an overt political stance. She's doing what she's always done very well, which is like playing all sides at once and not alienating anyone too much, but also not actually like substantively getting involved in politics. I mean, this is a time when also you started to see these other microcontroversies.

There was a lot of conversation about her weight, her appearance, like her fashion. and then also who she was dating. Of course, this has always been like a big fixation of like her relationship status. And she started to lean on a lot of that feminist rhetoric of like, why so much hate for women? Like, why can't women date around when men can date around? Like da-da-da-da-da-da. 2016, Trump is elected. And I feel like very quickly there was this like criticism of her that really started to take hold of like,

okay, had you endorsed Hillary Clinton, maybe she would have won, right? They always say this because she has such a huge platform. In her movie, Ms. Americana, she talks about her decision to ultimately endorse this Democratic political candidate in Tennessee. In 2020, she eventually endorses Joe Biden for president. And amidst all of this in 2017, she also releases reputation, where she's sort of like clapping back at, I think, some of these perceived haters.

I feel like at this point and throughout her whole career, whenever Taylor Swift has leveraged politics, it has always been in a way that's just going to help her grow and become more popular. Like, in this case, she's only taking these steps when it's safe to do so. she was not acknowledging any of this stuff at a time when it was genuinely divisive or unpopular. Someone made a joke recently that she's always like four years behind. And the reason for that, it's not that she's not aware. She's very, very savvy.

She is waiting to do things at the point when they have already become acceptable because she doesn't ever want to be the one who's like getting the most heat for something. So retroactively, she's talking about how anti-Trump she was after he had already been elected. and then this whole era of like feminism that she embraces, which I was very like enthralled by at the time as like a college student listening to reputation. And I still enjoy that album a lot. But I don't think that it should be controversial to say that it's like the epitome of white feminism because she only started to embrace quote unquote feminist themes specifically when she could use them to deflect from media criticism.

And some of that was legitimate like the fixation on her and her relationships and the rhetoric her whole career was obviously very sexist. And later she'll lean into this more as her like aesthetic identity. Yeah, I feel like she definitely, I think reputation and took advantage of that like Trump resistance movement throughout Trump 1.0. Then you have her sort of like indie shift. She releases lover in 2019. COVID hits. She goes into the woods releases folklore, Evermore, these sort of like moody albums, Midnights in 2022. This is very much I would say like her billionaire era. You just. start to see the like Taylor Swift machine, like 2022 on, then you had tortured poets department,

of course, 2024. She goes on this era's tour, which just becomes like massively popular and global, becomes this like global phenomenon. And of course, now we have the life of a showgirl. And in this album, which she announced on Travis Kelsey, her fiance's podcast, she talks about how she produced it with Max Martin in the 2010s. And she recorded and produced this entire album also while on the era's tour, which is crazy to me. So the album comes out.

it's hotly anticipated and the reviews are not like what I think she would have probably wanted. Like in one sense, it is successful. It is still one of her highest grossing albums of all time. But it is also her lowest rated album. And I feel like the discourse around this album and the launch is so radically different from previous Taylor Swift album releases. Like this was an album that I saw people like normally you're so scared to even say Taylor Swift or like talk about her in a negative light.

And here I saw people. like that were even self-identified Swifties talking about like, okay, I can no longer defend her. So I want to sort of like walk through some of the backlash to the album. First tell me Kat as a Swifty. Like when did you listen to the album and what were your first impressions? Every time Taylor Swift releases an album, it inevitably gets leaked the day before. So I saw people discussing the lyrics and I like heard a taste of this album on Thursday the day before the release. And my first impression was not good.

I didn't really have super high expectations for this. album just because I feel like she has been releasing music so quickly over the past few years, that it has been consistently hit or miss. And that is also my take on The Life of a Showgirl. I don't think it is as disastrously bad as like some people's takes would have it seem. I think that there are like a couple, a few good tracks on this like 12 track album. But there should be like eight good songs on this album. Like she's Taylor Swift.

She's allowed to have like a dud here and there. But like she should really be making like top form pop music. She can make that kind of pop music. And I think at this point, my reaction and a lot of fans' reaction is like she seems to be almost phoning it in because I don't think she has to make good music anymore to be successful. And you see Swifties have this take, even the ones who are defending her. Yeah. I think one thing that this album seemed like so much to me is just a nymph.

naked cash grab. Like she started immediately releasing like all these different like acoustic versions, like whatever remix versions, like all of these different versions that people would have to buy the album multiple times and make it chart and make her even more money. Like I saw people tweeting like it gets to a point. And maybe it's just off the Ares tour too and just the merch that you know, she's selling for $47 or like the mint, I saw somebody tweeting about this like $125 like fake fur like mint Taylor Swift like jacket or something like I think the like naked consumerism and like the money making aspect of her music is just sort of more and more overt maybe. And it seems to come through in this album maybe because the album isn't as artful.

It might be easier to appreciate some of these pop songs if we knew that it wasn't this giant money making scheme, I guess, which of course pop has always been. But like you said, it's like she is such a global pop superstar. She's asking for so much of our money, whether it's like touring, merch, buying this album like five times over in five different ways. Like she needs to deliver. and she didn't deliver. It just feels like hyper consumerist content.

So a lot of my good friends are also Swifties. And so whether I liked the album or not, I knew I was going to go to that movie, that like listening premiere launch thing at AMC theaters. I ended up going twice because I have so many Swifty friends that I ended up going twice. And both times I was just like, she really has got me like I am in the trap

gnawing my own leg off because why am I watching these whole horrible lyric videos. And this is not even like a hot take. Like Swifties agree. The lyric videos that she put out as this like quote unquote movie that was like $13 at AMC. They're not even good quality lyric videos. You end up watching the fate of Ophelia music video twice. They just play it two times at this thing that you've like paid money to go to. So it's like being a billionaire, being a quote unquote artist, she could have done like a Beyonce lemonade style like I made 12 music videos and that's what you're watching, but she didn't do that. It felt so lazy and so cheap. And meanwhile, not only is she a billionaire, the first person to become a billionaire

through like music alone, not only is she a billionaire, she doubled her net worth over the past couple of years. She went from a billionaire to a 2.1 billionaire. Like she's made such an enormous amount of money from this merch, which is not high quality, but is so overpriced. from selling these movies and like doing all of this cash grabby stuff. And I think that that is so worthy of critique in a way that like people will often say, oh, well, everyone does variance now and everyone is trying to sort of hop on like the Taylor Swift train and like everyone's merch is bad quality now. Even if that is true and I think it is to some extent, like Taylor Swift does stand alone

because of just like the fact that she is not even comparable to these other pop girls. terms of like net worth or the amount of money that she is making from all of this. There was also I saw some like promotional videos too that like potentially used AI or they were like released poorly done graphics like the whole thing just seems sort of sloppy. And it also just made me feel like, God, this thing is such a machine, right? Like she cannot go a year or so without like releasing new music and and it feel like she has to sort of like constantly feed this like beast. And we'll get into all this later of like whether she should go away for a while or not.

But I want to talk about the lyrics and the actual sort of content of the album. as well. Like, I feel like Taylor Switch is always known for her lyrics. She's considered like a poet by her fans and and also considered like one of the best lyricists of our time. But these lyrics are kind of bad. I mean, I was listening to the album and I know the song Wood is like so corny, but there's a bunch of them that are just like, they're just really corny lyrics. And I feel like people on TikTok were like tearing it apart. They were like, these lyrics are almost parody level essentially. And especially the content of the lyrics also seems kind of like in Congress with her current life. Like, she sings about the small town living or like, you know, settling down and, and having a basketball hoop in the driveway and stuff. Again, when she's this like multi-billionaire with like properties, you know, all across America. So I guess like what are your thoughts on sort of like the lyrics of this album in contrast to sort of like the lyricism on some of the previous albums? And like, do you think it's just poor writing or is it the actual themes being discussed in these songs that sort of like fall flat? I think it's a little bit of both.

And I think that like theme wise, she has. has consistently over the course of her career conjured up images that speak to kind of what she's talking about now. But I think that like she's done this sort of like heel turn where if you go back to the very beginning of her career and a lot of people have been doing this in wake of the album, it's like she was singing about getting married and having 10 kids at some point in her life back when she was making country music, which is a very conservative genre. And her persona at the time certainly leaned conservatively. But as she got older and did this whole like, I'm embracing feminism, she would do lyrics that were like, he wanted a bride, but I was making my own name. And like, they want this like 1950 shit from me. They want me to be a wife, but I'm not.

She did this as recently as Midnights, which was just like two years ago. And now she's done this big heel turn, which she acknowledges. She says, like, when I said I didn't believe in marriage, that was a lie. And now she's going back to the like having a bunch of kids, having a basketball hoop. And I think for me, there are two. two sort of issues here. The first is that she is capable lyrically of so much more, and she has proven that. I think that, like, if you look at songs on Evermore, songs on folklore, obviously, you can see very clearly that she is talented and that she has, like, this ability to do

lyricism that is both, like, very poppy, like, top-charting type of lyricism that appeals to casual listeners, as well as like deeper, more vocative lyricism that appeals to like serious fans. On this album, I don't really think she's doing either. I think that she's trying to go for a more like mass appeal, broad appeal, but it still doesn't compare to albums that she was doing that had that mass pop appeal a decade ago. So that's really disappointing. And a lot of people have speculated that she doesn't really get edited anymore. Like she doesn't have another voice in the room, like pulling her back from like, you.

you know, kill your darling's perspective. Like she's kind of just throwing everything at the wall and people are letting it stick. And then theme-wise, I also think that like when she does this stuff, when she talks about living in a small town, being at the bus stop, growing up on a farm, she's trying to sound more relatable because at this point in her life, nothing about Taylor Swift's lifestyle is relatable to anyone in the world. Like she is a singular sort of figure. And so she has to kind of lean in and pretend.

And she's also leaning into this like red blooded Americana. A lot of people have called this her trad wife album. And I want to debate whether this is her trad wife era or not. I mean, some of these themes she's talked about since the days of her country album, right, when she was leading more conservative or like seeing about more conservative themes. And also she was a teenager or like pushing this idea of like falling in love, right? And like suddenly down with a good man one day. And now I feel like there's just this like criticism of her music.

And in one sense, it's like it's understandable that this woman, who's allegedly like fallen in love with the love of her life, this American football star is like this downhome of Kansas City like American and she wants to sing about this life that she's starting with him, whatever. But there's something dark about it that feel like she's pushing these themes in this time of like rising fascism when women are losing their rights. And also just like it feels very trad wifie. Like you can't deny that there is like a trad wife like element to this content. And even in the rollout of this content, she talked about like in her new heights interview, how she just like loves saying, you know, baking sourdough all day. And she's not really

online, which I don't believe for a second and we'll get into that later. Like, she's painting this picture that she's just this like down home, trad wife, basically. This has become a particularly inflamed point of discussion online because a lot of Swifties are really defensive of like, how dare you call her a trad wife. She's an unmarried, 35 year old billionaire. And I'm like, well, yes, but also the argument that I would make, and like I wrote about this in my newsletter, is these tradwife figures who we associate with this culture today are people like Hannah Nealman of Ballerina Farm and people like Nora Smith. And these women have more in common with Taylor Swift than they would have in common with like a real quote unquote trad wife. Because the trad wife is just an like an aspirational

ideal of what a woman should be under patriarchy. A woman should be submissive to her husband. A woman should stay at home. A woman should cook and clean and raise her kids. And none of these women do that. All of these women are extremely wealthy. Taylor Swift is a multi-billionaire. Hannah Nealman and Narrah Smith are multi-millionaire. They are entrepreneurs. They create content. Taylor Swift is an artist. Hannah Neelman and Narra Smith are both like content creators. Like they own these little media empires. They are not childwives. They are ruthless, cunning girl bosses, if anything. And the only that is like quote unquote trad about them is that they are cosplaying this ideal. They are cosplaying this idea. A lot of these women aren't even from like the Midwest or the South.

Like Taylor's from Pennsylvania. I mean, I think of Erica Kirk even too, right, who's pushed this like hard right reactionary conservative ideal. This is a woman who's six years older than, you know, her younger husband who was killed. Like she had a full life. Like I think they got together when she was in her like later 30s. I think she settled down like when she was even 35 maybe. definitely well in her 30s. And she was on a reality show. She's an entrepreneur. She had her own clothing company merch brand. Like as you mentioned, like just so many of these like trad wives, like pretty much all of the trad wives and the people pushing these traditional family values in the media are not actually living by that. I mean, Candice Owens is another example, right? Like Candice Owens

pushes this like trad wife view while she does her like daily podcast and runs this like massive and popular media empire argues against things like maternity leave. So I feel like I totally agree with you. in terms of like Taylor Swift where it seems like she has actually a lot in common with these other trad wives, rich people basically that are pushing reactionary conservative ideals. Yeah. And it's like we're not going to see Taylor Swift pop out at like CPAC. However, she is hanging out with people who do. Like she took a picture last year with like the Bussin' with the boys podcasters and like did

a symbol that is like known to them in their fandom and allegedly told them. that she loved their podcast. And like, these are just not even adjacent. These are just MAGA podcasters. So it's like, I've seen this sort of pushback against the idea that Taylor Swift is appealing to conservatives intentionally, but she obviously is. And it shouldn't even be controversial to say that

when like these are the people who she's freely hanging out with. Well, also, I mean, you had that Jimmy Fallon clip, which I thought was absolutely wild. You didn't turn down the Super Bowl because of performance footage. No. J.Z has always been very very, very, good to me. They sometimes will call and say, how does she feel about, and that's not like an official offer or an official, or like a conference room conversation.

Like, I am in love with a guy who does that sport on that actual field. Can you imagine if, like, he's out there every single week, like putting his life on the line, doing this very high pressure, high intensity sport. And I'm like, I wonder what my choreos should be. So you can see her just kind of immediately downplaying her own, like, professional. professional accomplishments, putting her, you know, career footballer husband like on this pedestal. And also it just, it reads so fake to me. Like this idea that like, oh, you know, yeah, I'm a global pop star, superstar, but he's got the real tough job.

Like it feels so disingenuous, but it pushes that ideology, right? That like the women's career always comes second, even though she's obviously the breadwinner in the situation. That clip really pissed off a lot of people, myself included. And it's just like it is really fake and disingenuous. because this is never how she has acted about her career. And I don't believe it's how she really feels about what she does. But it is, what it is is like a conservative, almost like southern culture.

Because it reminds me when I watched this interview clip, I thought about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Show on Netflix. And the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are like religious Southern bells. Like they embody this like conservative culture. And this is how they talk about what they do versus what the football players do. They talk about how, like, they are second to the football players and, like, they're the real stars of the show. Meanwhile, for all of these women, Taylor Swift and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, they are actually the stars of the show. Like, people will tune into Taylor Swift's halftime show more than they will be tuning into the Super Bowl.

People watch the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders internationally more so than they watch the football team. So it's this very, like, conservative, misogynistic practice of women demeaning and, like, depreciating their own accomplishments to appeal to conform to this like patriarchal culture. And it honestly did, did kind of shock me that she said and did this, because I'm just like, this is so fake and this is so wrong. From that, I kind of want to get into this idea of like canceled. She has this song called canceled. The lyrics are good thing.

I like my friends canceled. Blah, blah, blah. To me, this was just so absurd also because like, it's so internet pilled, like part of it. Like, you can tell that she's just lying through her teeth when she's like, oh, I don't spend any time online. She sort of seems to hyper aware actually of online discourse. And I don't think any billionaire should even be allowed to use the word canceled. It's absurd.

You talked about in your piece how this song could be sort of alluding to multiple things. Some people have argued that it is talking about her friend Blake Lively, who is obviously the subject of this misogynist fake, hateful smear campaign. But a lot of other people think that it's actually about her friendship with Britney Mahomes or, you know, paling around with these MAGA people. I'm sort of more inclined to believe the latter just because she does seem to have such a chip on her shoulder about any criticism of herself. And like, she seems to want to push this idea of like, oh, you know, so I'm canceled.

Like, gosh, can a woman do anything these days? Can I take selfies with Trump supporters? Like, you guys just want to cancel me and sort of trying to like do what the right has done, which is sort of like embrace that language. Canceled and the whole, whether it's about Blake lively or not, discourse has been one of the most divisive things for like my peer group to come out of this album. Because I have a lot of people like peers and people who I follow online who are, very sure that it is about Blake Lively.

And some of the like clues and like potential Easter eggs led me to think that maybe they're right. But I ultimately think it doesn't even matter because when I first heard this song as someone who has covered the Blake Lively stuff extensively, my first thought was not that this song was about Blake Lively. My first thought was that this song is like a conservative anthem, whether that's how Taylor Swift feels about it or not. because conservatives have co-opted the term canceled and have co-opted and weaponized the idea of cancel culture to such a degree that it's almost ridiculous to think that conservatives wouldn't like this song. And it's funny because I was discussing this with my fiance and she was like, they might literally play this song at CPAC or the RNC to like celebrate the fact that like Taylor Swift is on their side. And I totally think that they will because I'm already seeing conservatives co-op this album.

I'm already seeing conservative influencers and pundits like celebrate this album for all of these reasons. And that was intentional on Taylor Swift's part. I've also seen it co-opted. Of course, it's been co-opted by, you know, people across the right, but also Zionists. I'm thinking of this post that I put in our group chat with Matt Verenstein by this account Jay Tilch. She posts this like carousel and it says if being canceled is the price of standing with Israel of being unapologetically Jewish, then we'll wear it like couture. And it's just this like the most. One of the most unhinged slide shows I've ever seen where it sort of like tries to tie like the release of her album to October 7th and saying like, you know, actually people like when we supported the genocide, people tried to cancel us.

And then it says, but this song, a savage three minute long glittery pop anthem sounds like the clapback we've been waiting to scream. If you listen closely, canceled isn't just about fame, gossip or petty Hollywood drama. It's about scars, betrayal and what it means to be pushed out, lied and refused to disappear. Sound familiar. And then they have this really unhinged, like, walkthrough of how, like, canceled lyric by lyric, like, actually relates to, like, the IDF. The most unhinged slide, which is, I would argue, is the last slide, which I cannot get over. It says, quote, but if you can't be good, then just be better at it.

Everyone's got bodies in the attic or took somebody's man will take you by the hand. And soon you'll learn the art of never getting caught. And then it says, the truth is every country has bodies in the attic. Every army has made mistakes. But somehow only Israel is dragged to trial in the court of public opinion. Again, this is a country that is actively committing a genocide that even since the ceasefire announcement has continued to slaughter innocent Palestinians that just murdered another high profile journalist. And you're talking about like this Taylor Swift canceled album as like, I don't know, the idea of like bodies in the attic when like the IDF like has racked up like so many killings and then saying every army has made mistakes. It's crazy.

It's so grotesque. This has like thousands of likes and people are like cheering for it. I just can't get over it. No, it's, it's so obscene. And it's like, I don't think Taylor Swift could have predicted this interpretation of canceled necessarily. But I do think that what she did with this song and what she does with a lot of her lyricism and her public persona is that she creates this like reasonable doubt around everything that

she does so that you as the listener or the audience member can interpret it as you. see fit. And this is a marketing tactic at its core that is so successful for her and has totally contributed to why she is so successful, which is that like she is like a relatable stand in for whoever you as an individual are. And so you see this manifest in all kinds of ways. This Zionist example is a really good like way to see this like play out in action. Other ways that people do this are like the Gaylor conspiracy where people think that Taylor Swift is gay. And I've like written and talked about this a lot because it's really common in fandom, but Taylor Swift particularly like has created this world where it's so easy for people to say like,

oh, I know what she's really singing about and no one else does and she's singing about the fact that she's gay. Or like I've seen communities for people who think that Taylor Swift is singing about getting high. Like I've seen communities of people called like Weedler who think that Midnights is like a stoner anthem. So it's like you can draw so many ridiculous interpretations of what she's doing. But that is like kind of, in my opinion, the genius of what she's doing. It's just like, it's not a morally good genius.

It's like a complete, like, chaotic genius, like that she knows that she can do this. One song that I do think we know what it's about is actually romantic, which is supposed to be about Charlie X, X, X.X. And I want to get into that specifically, too. I think it's interesting also to, you know, like Charlie and her brat album were so synonymous with like the Kamala. campaign as well. And I've seen people claim that this is sort of like a clapback and like I feel

like it feeds into this like reactionary world even more. Not to say that she shouldn't criticize Charlie like obviously pop girlies can criticize each other all day. But it's just like interesting in the context of this like tradwife sort of baga pivot to also be criticizing Charlie who is so synonymous with like LGBTQ culture and like progressive culture and like leftist culture. And who has spoken up about the genocide in Gaza and things like that. It feels like this kind of like pointed attack. Yes. And I felt like when I saw the lyrics, the lyrics for actually Romantic got leaked the day

before the album. They were one of the first things to get leaked and to get really hotly debated. A lot of people didn't even think that they were real. Like a lot of tweets that day were like, you guys are also stupid for believing that these are the real lyrics. And they were 100% the real lyrics. And my initial take on it was I was like, oh, this is just not a good enough song to measure up to just like the musical accomplishment of Brat and

Sympathy as a Knife, which is the song that Taylor is like responding to. It's like Charlie's album is actually really, really good and really like boundary pushing and just like critically acclaimed for a reason. And so to make a song that just sounds like a very tired, very bland cookie cutter like 2000s pop rock sound and it's just so like cliche. And I think her lyricism in this song is really cliche. And I feel like on a political level, I don't think that Taylor even so like sees it. Because I feel like for Taylor, everything is so personal to her.

And this to me feels so rooted in Taylor's previous relationship with Maddie Healy and how mad she is that like Charlie remarked on that in her album and in her in her song. It just feels like really like juvenile beef. But the fact that like Charlie, for example, posted about Israel and Gaza after actually Romantic came out, and Taylor would never do that. And it just looks so bad for Taylor because it's like, it does show that she can't speak on things that actually matter with all of her wealth and all of her power and alleged goodwill. Like she can't do anything in this case that actually helps anyone in the world besides her. Yeah. I don't know. And there's all these discussions of like pitting these women against each other. like, I mean, Taylor's intentionally, like, clapping back at Charlie here, but you see this, like, discourse. I saw a really funny tweet that was like, we're about to get like not like us, but for white women or something.

And it was like a picture of the Charlie posted in the studio. I think it's also interesting just like watching the way that Taylor Swift has sought to position herself in the context of the rise of more kind of like progressive, female pop stars like Chapel Rhone and Sabrina Carpenter. Chapel Rhone obviously speaks openly about being LGBTQ lesbian. And then Sabrina Carpenter is just like so overtly sexual and has had to actually like, defend herself and defend her sexuality and like spoken about yes, my shows are sexually explicit, but also kind of like been able to wield her sexuality and and seem more almost like authentic than Taylor. And I guess this brings me to the song Wood on Taylor's album where she's talking

about Travis Kelsey. That was another one cat where I actually saw the lyrics first and I thought they were fake because I was like there's no way these are the lyrics. And you know, she talks about like basically like comparing his to like a redwood tree and like it ends on this like phrase of like open my thighs. Like, it's just like it's poor writing, in my opinion, like, generally. But it's also interesting, like, there was this TikTok video that talked about, like, white women and sexuality and how Taylor has actually always leaned into this, like, very, like, infantilized version of sexuality, where she's never sort of overtly sexual. And it's still playing into this, like, romanticcy. And, like, she doesn't speak about these, like, graphic sexual things. And it,

this TikTok was also talking about how, like, the only way that, like, female pop stars have traditionally been able to get more explicit is by actually working with, like, black music artists or black culture because black female artists have been able to be sexually explicit, obviously because of like racism and stuff. And so now it's like she's trying to like do this pivot, but she's not authentic like Sabrina or chapel. And she hasn't partnered with some like black person, I guess, that can sort of like give her cover to like lean more into those themes, which I think is like, that's a fucked up thing that that has to happen. But it spoke to like, I guess this specific way that like white women are unable to navigate these contradictions. Yes. And I think this is a really

interesting point. And it's something that I've been thinking about a lot, which is like, the way that Taylor Swift embraces these themes of like girlhood, innocence, sexuality, being a wife. And also on this album, on the song, eldest daughter, the chorus is literally like, and she described this in that stupid movie that I paid for. And it sounded even worse when she described it because she was like, as a culture, like, you're not allowed to be like a soft woman. And I was like, false, false. Like, that's just not true at all. And in the song, she says like, but I'm not a bad bitch, like, I'm not savage. And I've seen people try to defend this, but I don't think that there is really a defense.

Like, Taylor uses A-A-A-V-E and, like, uses black cultural aesthetics when it benefits her. And then in the same breath, we'll turn around and literally, like, show that she try to present herself as better, as more sophisticated, as more girlish and innocent. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when so much of this album is about Taylor finally getting the guy who's willing to marry her. and then she sings about how like she had to discard this like bad bitch savage persona to do that. And it makes me think about like cultural ideas of who's worthy of marriage and which marriages are like the most worthy, which a lot of people would be like, oh, cat, you're like taking, you're being way too deep.

You're being way too woke. Like it's not that serious. But I really reject that idea that it's not that serious because I think it's anti-intellectual to not talk about how these are very consistent themes that have upheld white supremacy. throughout like popular culture. A hundred percent. Ultimately, I guess at the end of the day, this sort of like conservatism of this album shouldn't surprise us. Because when you think about who she was as like a child performer and like the

environment that she was raised in and the culture that she initially succeeded in, it was also this like very white country, southern ideal of like innocence and purity and girlhood. And like growing up, she like, she didn't wear red lipstick. Like, that to me is so antiquated in terms of how we think of, like, female sexuality. But it's no surprise that now that she's getting married, she releases her, like, quote-unquote, like, dirtiest lyrics yet. And it is so reminiscent to me of how Christian influencers in recent years have tried to, like, bring back sexy or, like, be sexier, but only in the environment of, like, oh, I'm being sexy with my husband. And it's okay because he's my husband.

And it feels like a little bit like she's copying Sabrina Carpenter, but it's not at all what Sabrina Carpenter is doing. No, because Sabrina Carpenter has this like sex positive, like single girl like sexuality, right? Like it is so complete opposite. I think that your comparison to Christian influencers is spot on. It's really funny too because I saw this other tweet that I'm going to butcher, but it was something like Taylor Swift has one pivot left. And it's to go like full country again. And I thought of this where it's like you see these artists that like they like reach these heights, they become billionaires, they become the pinnacle of success, and they start to get

criticism or something. And then it's like, okay, what else do they have left to pivot to? Like full on, like, country back to like Americana roots. And like, you know that if she did that, like, if her next album, she's like, all right, I'm going back to my country. The cycle would be complete almost where it's like she leveraged like all of this stuff throughout the years to sort of just get back to, which is what she was always doing. Building this like career that's ultimately just this like hyper capitalist pop star. Like you are a product and you have created this product that can that sort of like has reached the most amount of people at the most amount of time and also if you do go full americana if she does release a country album like conservatives will

rally behind her that will be seen as this like as charlie kirk said when taylor swift got engaged like you know taylor obey your husband like subjugate yourself essentially i don't know i feel like she would ultimately be like conceding to those people but it could also be like the ultimate master career pivot like her for her final like era it's also wild because it's like going back to her Jimmy Fallon clip where she is kind of doing what Charlie Kirk said she should do, where she's like framing it as like, my husband's job is so much more important than mine. I don't even think Travis Kelsey, it all wants her to say that. If anything, she's forcing it in a way that doesn't even align with his persona, which is kind

of interesting to me because she even said in that clip, like, she was like, Travis isn't, like, Travis doesn't feel that way. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think he does. I think that you are trying so hard to appeal to like this conservative culture that is dominant right now. It reminds me, something I've been thinking about a lot is the arc of Kim Kardashian and the arc of Taylor Swift and like the similarities and differences between them. And the point that Taylor's at right now reminds me of when the Kardashians were really breaking out what kind of made them superstars in addition to Kim's sex tape was also when

Courtney Kardashian had her first kid. Like the ratings skyrocketed for the Kardashians TV show. And all of a sudden, they could market motherhood and they could get into. baby products and they could get into like this whole new consumer world. And now all the Kardashians have kids and it's a huge part of their brands. And I just think Taylor Swift is going to embrace that from like a capitalist perspective. But in the process of like glorifying motherhood and like profiting from motherhood, she's also almost by default going to reinforce this like conservative ideal too. Yeah, the Taylor Swift motherhood era is like, oh my God, I'm terrified to think of it.

I'm so scared. I don't even know how I'll feel because I just, I can't even imagine the psychology of growing up as Taylor Swift's first born. 100%. Well, Kat, thank you so much for joining me to chat about all of this today. Thank you so much for having me. All right, that's it for this week's show. If you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below. On my Patreon, you can get bonus episodes of power user. I do monthly live streams.

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