Cruel Summer

If anything good comes of the reception to this deluxe, it'll be that she hopefully goes back to working with people like Bon Iver and The National and expanding that side of her musical circle and discography - and if she dares to finally convince Sufjan to do some some sessions

Even as someone who likes all four songs, I think she needs to go in completely different directions now anyway. She's done the pop star thing long enough to have lapped everyone else twice over. It's time to grow in a new, different direction and build on her legacy in a way that doesn't get tired for some listeners, which seems like the actual biggest problem here: even the most serviceable and good of all sixteen Showgirl tracks does absolutely nothing genuinely new for her, with the notable exception of Ophelia - hence it being one of the biggest and most widely well-received hits of her career.

I still think that publications hold her to a significantly higher standard than they do other pop artists, too. These new songs would be an easy 70+ from most artists but because they want Taylor to constantly clear an entirely different bar and because it's, and forgive me for this, "punk on the internet" () to hate her in this hyperbolic way that insinuates the music is as bad as the bottom of the pop barrel produced by alleged rapists, it will land around 40 or something - and that's if more favorable publications bother to review a deluxe edition, which is still not standard practice at all anyway. Just all very silly when you listen to the music and see that it's not remotely similar. Babylon alone with three tracks of nothing but wet fart sounds would clear any typical album in the 60s and below.

The way my one break from the new music so far was to stream Champagne Godblems and 'Tis The Holy Season

I'm not sure I'll touch that radioactive cesspool with a 130 foot pole, but I agree and I'm even enjoying the fourth just fine - they just don't understand that sometimes when people enjoy things it's more important to continue experiencing and enjoying them than arguing with literal brick walls on the internet

This is slander! We all know I'm actually a cheap Getaway Car ripoff, which pre-dates this song by the better part of a year - she still deserves prison obviously, but not for this.

I mean, Madonna was getting top ten hits thirty years into her career, her biggest tour was just a few before that, and the entire Confessions era came later in her career than Taylor currently is so… I think she kept doing fine!

The way they're spending their Saturday doing things like generating AI slop memes of Taylor fans and venerating some crusty old bastard who hasn't been particularly relevant since the late 70s but has just hyperbolically proclaimed her as the "APOTHEOSIS OF MEDIOCRITY" like honey that's not normal go to talk to someone

At this point, Taylor's status has gone way past simple pop girl territory and turned into a phenomenon like Beatlemania - and the internet social media era coinciding with that has yielded the unfortunate and disturbing new counter-phenomenon of a literal, actual second fanbase that thrives on negativity, trolling, and snark, using her essentially as a maladaptive coping mechanism for whatever feelings for which they struggle to find an outlet otherwise. An inverted cult of identity, obsessed with the ever-incoming downfall of someone they think is safe and acceptable to hate. You can't challenge their twisted world view without being attacked, because it genuinely means even more to them than experiencing and sharing positive feelings with music we like means to us. Sad!

Calling it now, Patient Zero will smash in the US, another multiweek #1, pop radio #1, etc secured

The absolute smashery The US numbers are kind of wild, if it has any legs here after the video and being sent to radio it's going to be massive.

not my favorite Taylor gif of all time still alive and kicking omg

soooo fun fact about the username I registered with and how I maybe kinda sorta bought four of every single format and variant of this song

I genuinely think it's already my most played of the year, I just can't turn it off, it stomps a little harder every time

the way that's... way more accurate to what people who hate her and the album act like when people like it and it stays successful

I'm on Apple, but I bought it too (I'm streaming the lossless version tho ofc) to make up for the deficit the way I'm at 136 plays already

so Patient Zero has broken my personal record for most plays in a month in under 24 hours of release mess

My personal hope for TS13 is that she's secretly been keeping tracks in the vault that she's written over the years and thought were genuinely 100% her very best, but needed a milestone project like this to earn their recording and release. Also, transparently, I want her to write, record, and produce all of it on her own, not a single other soul. I almost feel like that's part of why Showgirl was an intentional return to Max and Shellback - she's talked so much about what she's learned from them in a technical sense that I can't help but wonder if to her, it's a stepping stone toward being able to confidently do it all herself. Edit: and also there's 13 songs and it's called something like 13 lmao

Hoping her parents get sick when her mother is a breast cancer survivor whose medical status we don't know and, as far as I recall, haven't gotten an update on since a recurrence with a brain tumor is genuinely grotesque kinda behavior

Sidebar, the cadence, melody, and harmonies in the chorus of Patient Zero are spellbinding crack magic to my brain But if you wanna party with somebody who might know

Honestly, this is how I felt almost a year ago shortly after the standard edition's release. The cure for me was entirely and only to tune out what the internet was saying, focus on how I felt and whether I liked things, and have real conversations with real people again about interests like music, people who shared some of my tastes and could challenge me on others. It did help that I loved IKIIKY and these new songs I'll admit - it's tougher in the moment when the latest thing isn't something you love. But also, maybe it could help to intentionally reconnect with past albums that you know you love! Alone, on your own time, in your own ways and spaces. Remember what it's like to just love the music without regard for what other people think. It might even help your perspective on some of the material that's not clicking for you; it's a lot easier to love something corny or cheesy or dorky when you're not doing it in full view of others, in my experience, and we all know some of Taylor's work can be all of those things.

Really, I don't see how she doesn't change sonic direction after this. I do love all four songs, and I'd be happy to keep getting pop music from her - but being honest, she has to be getting a little bored, no? These songs might be a deviation, but like I've said before, sound rather like the pop songs she's been making basically from 2019 onward. Like... if you told me all these songs were from the sessions from the same album: The Archer Miss Americana Cornelia Street Death By A Thousand Cuts Afterglow Gold Rush Marjorie Anti-Hero Bejeweled Mastermind The Great War Hits Different You're Losing Me Fortnight So Long London Guilty As Sin? loml I Can Do It With A Broken Heart "Sl*t!" Say Don't Go Now That We Don't Talk Suburban Legends Is It Over Now? The Fate of Ophelia Opalite Honey Patient Zero Pink Clouding ... I could totally believe it, with a little bit of convincing. Obviously they have differences and nuances and I'm not saying they're same-y or otherwise problematically similar, but they have the same underlying thesis of what a pop song should sound like and what works best for her voice, her sense of lyricism and imagery, and the sort of artistry that she wants to be her brand. I think that's part of the fatigue for people who aren't enjoying it and part of the disconnect between people who are loving it and those who aren't. There's always going to be some undercurrent of her own particular approach and artistry that remains consistent, but I think it's time for things to change a little and I think she's aware and ready - hence courting the country side of the industry again. She knows what works well for her - further evidence of that is that two songs I didn't list here, Ruin The Friendship and Babylon, seems sonically self-referential in a different way, in that they feel like they call back to Red very actively and intentionally. The problem even with that is that, well, she's been there, done that, perfected it, and it's no longer compelling to some people. For better or worse part of what makes art worth making and worth taking in is that it's fluid and that it changes. This is the natural breakpoint at which that needs to happen. If it doesn't, I'll frankly be shocked - and we should expect critics to continue to hate her work, internet trolls to continue to circlejerk about it, and more fans to grow out of engaging with her work. I'll be perfectly fine, and I'm sure many of you will too, but that's just sort of how I feel, even sitting here absolutely loving the new songs.

I really hope that we don't have to wait a whole week for the additional versions of Patient Zero - or worse, all the way until the physical singles ship. I need to hear the other takes, the way I'm absolutely certain the piano version will slay me

Me literally all day because I actually love all four songs and wasn't sure I would:

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.