7 minutes ago, YellowRibbon said:

Mind you, this was announced like 3 days ago meanwhile the standard album had like 2 months to farm presaves... This debut just proves what I expected, people stay invested in her regardless of what the current online uproar is

At this point I think nearly all her actual consumers are people who will never give a **** about headlines, critics, stan twitter weirdos, or TikTok conspiracies, because her ability to just drop a song and slaughter the charts is completely untouched

8 hours ago, YR. said:

Let me publicly apologize to @Vespertine because you were completely right about that man. I settled for the minimum (like Taylor did) and praised him for respecting her. Now I see the social climber and gold digger he is since that trashy wedding where people couldn't sit and had to wait in life for food. Oh and the honeymoon on the republican state right after

My sister married that man as a gotcha for Matt and now we had to listen to that ****

Thank you dear! I appreciate that.

The righteous shall ALWAYS be redeemed in the end! They killed Vespertine first because he feared the worst.

The album thread is so overly negative ugh I hate it here.mp3

The Patient Zero bridge would be ok if it wasn't for the borderline run-on sentence that opens it. The first time i heard it , i was like, is she going to take a breath? Lol

Just saw a Stay x3 stan praise Cleveland!... the way even the songs I least expect have stans blows my mind ngl. What a legendary discography.

It's the "bathing in your reflected light" part that kills the bridge completely for me. When it comes to these stumbling sections you either choose to be dorky and conversational or wordy and metaphorical. I really am sick of the run-on rambling thing she's been doing on a few songs over the past few albums but this particular bridge is the worst of its kind. Being able to fit an entire sentiment into as little words and syllables as possible to fit some kind of rhyme scheme and rhythm is a vital part of songwriting. The rambling is lazy.

Despite the bridge, P0's pre-chorus has the most ear wormy part of any song on the Encore. Stuck in my head.

2 hours ago, By the Water said:

Ok now that I had some time with these tracks, let me get into it.

Patient Zero - Love it, my favorite for sure. Love the chorus and verses, production is cute but Hack would have ate this up ngl. The bridge is so anti-climatic though.

Cleveland! - I actually really like the chorus. The verses and bridge are mostly atrocious though. It's giving London Boy-levels of cringe.

Pink Cloud - Cute. Best bridge out of these. Lyrics are fine, melody is fine, production is fine. I wouldn't skip it, but I don't love it either.

Babylon - Nice chorus. Also nothing crazy good or bad about it.

Overall, I feel like these tracks don't do much to elevate the album like I was hoping. PZ, PC and Babylon are very different from everything from the standard album in terms of lyrics and production but even PZ is top 5 on the album at best, definitely nowhere near Ophelia. PC and Babylon are ET-tier I'd say and Cleveland! is right next to Wi$h Li$t towards the bottom, right ahead of ED. The bridges are the biggest disappointment here. I think my takeaway is that Taylor needs to go back to having more than two producers per album. Imagine if we got some 3AM-level tracks from Aaron instead of songs like ED, Wi$h Li$t or AR.

It's a shame this will be her farewell to pop, which gave us 4 of her weakest albums but just gave her one her very best songs. Looking back, so many of her worst songs were pop and there weren't as many career highlights (y'all will never convince me songs like Style and Cruel Summer even come close to some middle-tier country songs like TOSOTD, CBBH or Mean). I just hope her return to country is much better than IKIIKY. She needs to reheat rwylm's nachos

I think this discourse is interesting because it highlights a weakness I think that has plagued Taylor since post reputation.

Taylors style of writing has always carried well into pop but its clear as day she has a much easier time writing hooks for guitar driven midtempos and ballads that is very often tied to country/indie. It was very apparent early on that when she had no inspired and coherent soundscape and production to work with, her writing in pure pop kinda gets all over the place. The only pop albums where I think she truly shined writing wise were Midnights, 1989 and rep, the albums where she tries a little bit of everything like in Showgirl and Lover, where she goes from this funky pop sound to doing a Christmas tribute song like Opalite (and even Cleveland!) or how she does jazz and country on Lover. It becomes all over the place.

Shes at her best writing wise when her production is consistent as well imo and I think thats why Showgirl is so bad… she did not have a clear vision for what the album was supposed to sound like, just '12 really good pop songs' ???

Patient Zero and Babylon are clearing all of the Showgirl standard tracks for me, minus Father Figure, right now.

Patient Zero and Babylon are ultimately quite the lovely pop songs which have an infectious beat to it, but because they're plagued by the Standard Edition people aren't event willing to listen to them for what they actually are.

I think TS13 should be titled Windwhirl, a perfect word to describe her career.

1 minute ago, Mezik said:

Patient Zero and Babylon are clearing all of the Showgirl standard tracks for me, minus Father Figure, right now.

Patient Zero and Babylon are ultimately quite the lovely pop songs which have an infectious beat to it, but because they're plagued by the Standard Edition people aren't event willing to listen to them for what they actually are.

I think unfortunately the only way internet bubble types will give her another chance and critics will get back on her side is 1) the moment of her being by far the biggest pop star on earth has to pass and 2) she has to do a hard pivot in terms of sound, away from pure mainstream pop and into country, alternative, or entirely new-to-her spaces. Ultimately people who care will look back on songs like these two fondly and for what they are, but not for a while yet. It's kind of sad for some of the detractors really - like imagine just having fun with some pop songs instead of turning everything into, like, a whole big thing.

6 hours ago, YR. said:

The yellow score on metacritic is sending me. EGG ON YOUR FACE

Red is coming btw

Can you ******* shut up already? We get it, you don't have anything enjoyable in your life right now. Thanks for sharing.

45 minutes ago, Timeless said:

The album thread is so overly negative ugh I hate it here.mp3

It's aggravating. The new material is mostly really nice, but gays & critics alike are latching onto Cleveland being slightly mid so they can point & be like "Look! TLOAS is still garbage!". They did the same thing with Wood last year, and I Hate It Here the year before, but it feels more intense every time. And you'll get downvoted into oblivion for acknowledging it as an inorganic, hate-fueled thing

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Kurt Hummel

My overarching question since the start of this era (and TTPD) has been WHERE IS THE QUALITY CONTROL???

Like seriously the momentum of the og album was completely ruined by Eldest Daughter and it didn't have any business being included. And now we have this wordy bridge for Patient Zero which drags down an otherwise great record.

Taylor needs a team exclusively dedicated to being objective and honest about her output before it releases to the world, or fire the current team if she has one. The fact that majority of Swifties have the same feedback about the bridge goes to show that it was a completely avoidable misfire that someone on her team should have caught.

Sorry for the rant my feelings are just genuinely hurt because I was really vibing with PZ before the bridge

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by dman4life

mind you, the fans and the critics will hate ts13 too. it doesn't matter if the album is 100/10

the fake fans always want to be music snobs and want to be like "look!!! i can drag her music too!!!! i'm objective!!!!!"

and the haters are going to be nonsensical about her.

Pink Clouding is everything Afterglow isn't despite Afterglow being strong song on its own.

She is human, aware of the flaws, she channelled Getaway Car energy here in terms of character(s).

And the production is great.

It really is fully on Taylor Swift song, all shiny and emotionally honest.

Love the little home video cameo of Travis in the lyrics video for Cleveland. She is so happy and I've been wanting that for her since 2014.

The way these meltdowns everywhere make me laugh. Imagine if she had the Eras boost during the ME! - YNTCD - The Man - Beautiful Ghosts - Only The Young run

1 hour ago, Vespertine said:

Thank you dear! I appreciate that.

The righteous shall ALWAYS be redeemed in the end! They killed Vespertine first because he feared the worst.

You really had the tea from the start

Yall I cant see what's wrong with these songs like i get shes a cornball on Cleveland but isn't that the point? And the stayx3,me, yntcd, shake it off, London boy chauntess has always embraced it. I feel like people forget that's just a part of who she is

That said, theres so many songs on this album that would've been amazing with an editor. Her folklore midnights ttpd run fits the wordy style but not her pop stuff. So many lines that could've been cut that would've made so many songs so much better

On topic of extramusical stuff at hand, of course the hate is forced, but I am not sure why anyone actually entertains that at all.

You people need to understand one simple thing: 80 % of people "trashing" her are just fans of musical acts that were her contemporaries while ago and are washed up now and they just want their lick back purely because she happened to outdo them in the spotlight.

It doesn't help the fact that she simply washes newer acts too. She can't be everyone's favorite.

But large part of this is due to pent up jealosy and rage.

These certain people do not care about music or its supposed quality (they grew up and still listen to acts that were always trashed in the music press if we want to go down that route, so…)

Cleveland is not Mirrorball, but then again This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things is definitely not Pink Clouding level of craft, so there is that.

This particular output is not far away from who she has always been as musical artist in core.

The domination and certain type of monopoly she has is not going to be just accepted. And she knows this too. The push back is all irrelevant in the end.

I'm so happy Taylor clearly doesn't care

17 minutes ago, Sasori. said:

mind you, the fans and the critics will hate ts13 too. it doesn't matter if the album is 100/10

the fake fans always want to be music snobs and want to be like "look!!! i can drag her music too!!!! i'm objective!!!!!"

and the haters are going to be nonsensical about her.

this just isn't true and ultimate copism

like why would her fans want to hate her music?

yall keep bringing up new #1 records, who cares about that if the songs are mid
this person can write (happy) love songs like call it what you want, king of my heart, and invisible string

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by sophiesunscreen

2 minutes ago, punisher said:

this just isn't true and ultimate copism

like why would her fans want to hate her music?

They stretched it, but it is kind of true.

Once she stops being both contemporary viable and legacy act she will be "studied" less… passionately.

She needs to be more cooled down in her dominating aspects of industry to be looked at less heatedly.

Her status is surely clouding some of the people's minds. Until she remains iron hot popular, the contrarian tide won't let up much.