Cruel Summer

And on that point, I want to reiterate how I wish she were given more credit specifically for her work in synthpop - it's so perfectly suited for her and her voice. If you crunch the numbers, not that I'm that much of a nerd to have already done this before but I totally am, then even limiting her chart and consumption success to just music that can safely be regarded as synthpop rather than electropop or other subgenres, I'm pretty sure she still comes out as the biggest synthpop artist (commercially) of all time, or very close. And it's because it fits her so well! So much of TTPD (standard) for instance is synthpop in a more direct and obvious way than most pop girls do it, like the title track is a great example of one that draws heavily from the genre's history and legacy (and it's severely underrated IMO, but maybe that's just me). Pop girls in general don't get quite enough credit for their work in that space - Gaga being another excellent example, like how some people heard elements of Yaz's song Only You in Gaga's immaculate How Bad Do You Want Me. Which, coincidentally or not, others also compared to Taylor. Not to mention legendary bops like Dance in the Dark. Honestly those two women really got me waaaay more into the genre than I ever was before when I started to think about this. I'm so glad that I know artists like Yaz, that I was able to reignite my love for modern artists like Chvrches, that I discovered deeper cuts by icons like the Eurythmics - all thanks to pop girls dabbling in synthpop more.

I love how you can tell from the last page that this thread is where people who hate her anyway flocked while everyone else stuck to the album thread, wonder how it'll look after this smashes like it deserves

To take my personal assessment of enjoyment out of it, I do want to observe that these songs (especially Patient Zero and Pink Clouding) sound a lot more like things like Lover, Midnights, and the 1989 vault than most of the original album does, despite still being produced by Max and Shellback. I think there's something there - she has a sonic center of gravity when she makes pop music without explicit country or alternative influences, and I think it was largely formed by her work with Jack. She'll deviate from it, but she always goes back to that kind of space in how she writes melodies and in the instrumentals she leans toward.

Album ranking: TLOAS (+3)

I hid it with Safari's Hide Distracting Items feature - it took three different objects to get rid of the main ad. And then it immediately came back when I went to a new page, someone wants us to buy this mac and cheese so bad

So I love all the new stuff and it's genuinely elevated my evaluation of the whole album, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm kind of fantasizing about a whole album-that-never-was full of Ruin The Friendships and Babylons

So much so that I am genuinely convinced that she was undergoing some kind of episode during the original recording sessions after this

Hey so Apple I was listening to that, could you put it back

Some of the insanely hyperbolic takes already Let it all out besties!

Please be serious for once, there's no world in which these are as bad as things like Dumbest Daughter

Gonna be honest, I'm not tracking how you can hate Babylon. To each their own, but it's so incredibly early Taylor coded. It just fits so well with all the things that made me love her in the first place. I love it!

I'd join you but for me it would genuinely be these in the top five with RTF somewhere in there, then Ophelia right after Either way it's so nice to spend the evening actually enjoying something our fave released!

Aka either a global smash or my most played song of all time, the way I won!

Babylon wtf??? Taylor ******* Swift omg you're back, where did you go for the original sessions because girl the way they impersonated you and smeared your name

Oh the Red style guitar pop, Babylon about to slay me like Ruin The Friendship did