Now I just want to start off by saying that I've never been a Taylor Swift fan/stan, but I genuinely have more faith in her as a creative than this.

I don't think she's dumb by any means. Maybe she genuinely doesn't care anymore, 12 albums in, she just wants to piss people off at this point with randomly insufferable music (and still maintain some hits like The Fate Of Ophelia, which is a great song).

It almost feels like an intentional move to disappoint people before TS13, which obviously is an important number for her and blablabla, even as a nonfan I know this. So would it be safe to say that TS13 may just be the creative / artistic perfection we are looking for. Or is Taylor truly tone deaf on a creative level at this point.

What does ATRL think?

everything is frivolously calculated but 2 things can be true at once

and the industry is incredibly arbitrary and corrupt but they are finally rating her according to her talent

The intention to turn people off sounds like major copium to me because the real question is when it goes up again. I mean she deliberately released a deluxe for #that album

Here are some of my current Taylor related thoughts:

Even if it is not for me, I respect that she is making the music she wants to make.

I don't think she is trying to troll people or be bad on purpose, but if I was in her position, I would absolutely troll people on purpose.

Tortured Poets is perfect and iconic.

I think she can still make a great album, but I don't know if she will ever have a well received album again. Or for at least a long time. Which sucks because, again, Tortured Poets is her best album.

I thought I had more to say, but I think that's it for now.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by Onion Girl

No her voice is just really bad and bland so when the production and melody can't carry the song, she's doomed

No, she genuinely lacks the taste and discernment to refine her own artistic output and she's in a wealth bubble surrounded by yes men.

No, she's just been incredibly overrated and a great beneficiary of poptimism. TTPD is just as bad as Showgirl if not worse. Half of Midnights is also on the same level. So is Lover and half of Reputation. People just looked at her with rose coloured glasses on, including myself

Maybe she wants to become a victim again

Nope. She's lost in the sauce

She wants to rise from the ashes and the muck with a new album.

No. She has always been talentless. Majority of her albums have always been trash.

I don't know if you could call it a "downfall" when she was never up that high creatively to begin with. She just had tighter melodies back then to disguise her average. She knows how her milquetoast is buttered and how her pockets are lined. Taking real creative risks for her would disturb swifties thus, interrupting that cash flow.

Billions and billions served.

I dont think it was on purpose but i think she needs to take a break.

Its great that her fans are blessed with new music so often but the quality started to suffer, not only the melodies but the lyrics too.

In my opinion i think she should go back to country, I for one really liked I knew it I knew you a lot!

She may be calculated and pretty damn smart but I've heard this theory before and I think the truth is just more plain: she's coasting on success and phoning it in

"What our goal is as entertainers is to be a mirror." - Taylor Swift

This is who she is. Her attempts at being playful are usually awful.

It's not intentional. I think she's in a very stable, traditional part of her life where nothing is actually unique or interesting. She has nothing worth writing about anymore, and so she turns to her past, but is looking at everything from this, again, very traditional and boring lens. I sadly don't think she'll release a good album until something major happens to her, whatever that may be.

i don't understand these reactions to her music being mid like it hasn't always been mid ??

y'all make it sound like she's some kind of beethoven when she's always just been the dorky corny horse girl who makes disney channel music for 12 year olds, why did we expect that to change in the 2020s ?

She was always better at being a pop star/businesswoman than musician. It's very easy to deduce why nobody wants to tell the only person to make billions off of their music alone that her **** sucks, music is a business and you can't argue with results like that. It's created a feedback loop where the further she drifts from where she should be, the more praise she gets; her worst music is the stuff that the tastefully challenged sect of her fanbase who don't listen to any other artists gobble up the most, so it's what she keeps making. They love the age regression, the platitudes, the victim complex, etc. Her slow and simple compositions are comforting to them and don't challenge or overstimulate.

Her other mpg legend peers like Madonna, Gaga, Bey, etc, all have reputations for being immensely creative on their own, but they're smart enough to know where their strengths lie and frequently rely on co-writers and their producers to prop up their musical output and can focus on other aspects like performance and worldbuilding. Taylor Swift doesn't have those things to fall back on and her whole career and image are riding on being the biggest, most consistently successful pop star of this generation, who does all the music herself. For as bad as her album is, if she released a great body of work with credits that looked like a Beyonce album, she would be crucified. It would be seen as below her to not write all the music, and she doesn't have the talent to execute on the creative and performance aspects of a Beyonce era that make her so legendary.

The industry and public need to unlearn the singer-songwriter propaganda, it's a marketing gimmick invented by The Beatles and unless you have Prince or Stevie Wonder type talent, it's very easy for it to cause a spiral into narcissistic garbage music. Taylor isn't the first artist to experience this, the last 40 years of music is full of examples of this same issue happening to men. Collaboration is a good thing. Music has been collaborative since humans invented it. It's really not a coincidence that the quality of her albums took a sharp nosedive the second she became the most powerful woman in music.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by Sheep

No, I think it's a quality control issue because she's afraid of not being in the spotlight for more than a month.

Taylor is more than capable of writing absolutely gorgeous songs. But for years now, it's like she's going with the first draft and never tweaking anything and sorting out what isn't working. I can't take another song with self-aggrandizing lyrics that don't properly fit the melody.

I'd rather have 9 amazing tracks over 50 mediocre ones.

I think she's just a bit out of touch and has spent so long pumping out music that she doesn't really have a musical point of view anymore. But she still has a rabid fanbase that will vacuum up anything she puts out. So, where is the drive to strive for improved quality?

Her goal has always been commercial success, which she gets in abundance. The only way she'd start focusing on quality again is if her success starts to diminish. But with how her fanbase is, I don't really see that happening.

Think she 1. needs a break; she's releasing way too fast. These sound like early concepts, not finished songs, and 2. she's run out of things to talk about. If Showgirl had more songs about being a showgirl (e.g., I Can Do It With A Broken Heart), it would have made for an interesting album.

The 'I love Travis' songs doubling as 'F the haters/other women' songs is also bizarre and low-key makes me question how truly happy she is with him. We learn NOTHING about Travis via these songs other than she likes him (we'd hope) and he has a big ***** (we didn't need to know)

lmfao no its not she thinks showgirl is one of her best. i do not agree with this narrative that shes been on a downward slope since evermore though, ttpd is genuinely top 3 of her career w evermore and red tv. midnights is also great imo just not aoty worthy. the real tea is that even though showgirl is a clunker, it wouldve been well received if any of her peers released it. also, taylor is judged by critics and the public almost solely upon how her celebrity is being perceived during the time the album is released rather than the quality of the album (i.e. ttpd being received negatively when its an opus, people lifting great lyrics out of context in order to clown her, trying to call her an actual nazi over a very milquetoast love song about gemstones). that being said showgirl is a bottom 3 taylor record, she is above it at the point, and the deluxe was entirely unnecessary so let her get the negative feedback hopefully she course corrects

I tend to like most of Antonoff's production with other artists, same with Max Martin. I think she has just become so big that she doesn't allow more talented musicians to inform her music. So they're there to do what she wants them to do (mind, I think that's her right) but it has come at the cost of quality.

No one is purposefully releasing "bad music" to set themselves up for redemption later. You're giving her way too much credit when the simpler explanation is more likely: she stands by this music and thought it was worth releasing.

No, she just seems to have reached a state of complacency given she has the biggest fanbase on earth backing her every move and fight her battles for her at the slightest criticism leveled against her. The more they rally behind her and blindly consume everything she ever puts out, the bigger and more insular she gets, and the less incentivized she feels to pull herself out of her comfort zone and make something that's creatively stimulating or rewarding.