#tloas

[scotkee]

ok my weird showgirl thing is i prefer it as a sociopolitical piece to a personal romantic one. it’s about living immersed within a strong current of an inherited past (x), the waters that drowned ophelia and celebrities-turned-cautionary-tales. is it possible to break out of the age-old tragedy you were born into, is it possible to be a soft living breathing creature in a culture of performance and callousness? are you just going to be another part of my story immortalized in the papers or could you be mine, here? it is so easy to be swept away in the tides of cynicism, but you have the autonomy to tether yourself to your life by choosing to love it every single day. and that is how you love the life of a showgirl, because every day is all there is. like wow. one day you swear you’re fated to die a tortured artist and then you’re dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop. life comes at you fast (or, it does when you chase after it)

[thingsisaidweredumb]

my hot take is that showgirl was meant to be great to max martin. showgirl is supposed to be "great max martin pop" not "great taylor swift pop" because she needed max and to be on his good side for songwriter's hall of fame.

it feels so very clear. ts13 is going to be so good because ts12 was barely a taylor album

[collatinggaylorproof]

ive been thinking about some stuff i dont like to say bc of how much people haaaate tloas and i dont want to be tied into that bc i really enjoy tloas

BUUT

ive been kinda going back and forth about how grammy-friendly it is. on the one hand its insanely successful and the grammys love that, and its the polar opposite of ttpd which is imo an album she knew wouldnt be capable of getting aoty bc its soo grammy-unfriendly and prob a part of why she felt so comfy releasing it when prev she might have tightened it up/kept certain songs in the vault was bc midnights had just won her 4th aoty so i dont think there was Any possibility ts11 couldve got one no matter what. on the other hand tloas is such a devisive album with so many people saying its a massive jump down in Quality from her prev work and while i like tloas a lot, the grammys rewarding something sooo heavily derided would be a pretty big knock to their reputation for many people (every non-tv since folklore has had an aoty nom tho and its so popular and she so beloved by the grammys i cant see it not being nommed)

And Also

heres the data:

non-nom, won, non-nom, nom, won, non-nom, non-nom, won, nom, won, nom, tloas

imo:

she knows a 5th aoty is pushing it, given no artist has done that before. if she wants the opportunity to do that, she has to be tactful. imo pushing for more than a nom 2yrs in a row is kinda pointless bc like it or not the grammys are political, and i cant see her not wanting ts13 to get aoty

again. i like tloas. this is not me saying its poorly written, But. i do think theres a lot she Knew would be recieved badly by both the gen-pub and certain fans (imo a lot of tloas feels very track-ttpd to me, in that everyone said ttpd was a shit name/sHeS nOt a ToRrtUrEd pOEt and then she spends the song making fun of herself and ends with "whos gonna troll you", and then tloas has eldest daughter and all the rick astley/nggyu refs)

But. her pet albums dont always seem to be the grammy favs: red/sn/evermore/maybe even ttpd and in my head ive always assumed ts13 would have a bunch of ts parrallels but feel like sn so maybe ts13 will be a Taylor album not a Grammy album. and Thematically tloas is Suuuuch an awards/attention album. its the magicians assistant of albums. its so flashy. shes never done a live performance. it Is the performance. what would it say if it won aoty. what would it say if it didnt. i dont knoooow. kinda wish we could have grammy discourse without people just shit talking tloas. its such an interesting album to me and shes at such an interesting place in her career and the culture

[theerastour]

For what it's worth, I think the Life of a Showgirl was a very thematically sound album. I'm of the few percentile that likes more songs than I dislike.

Objectively, I think the best is Elizabeth Taylor, but The Fate of Ophelia, Father Figure, and Ruin the Friendship are all among my favorites.

I actually quite like Eldest Daughter as well. The song itself is about being uncool, and trying her best to fit in. Lyrics like "I'm not a bad bitch; this isn't savage" sound cringy because they're meant to. That, of course, may not be everyone's cup of tea, but personally, I believe that just because they are inherently corny does not make them bad lyrics per se. (Also, I think the melody is very pretty).

I also like CANCELLED! more than most, but I can admit that the awkward lyrics don't make an impact to the storyline here. While the line "girlboss too close to the sun" is a direct reference to Candace Owens, the line "good thing I like my friends cancelled" is unfortunately too far from saving in my personal opinion. It's one of those songs that I have to be fine with being a little bad, if not a fun jam.

I hear you! I don’t hate eldest daughter like a lot of people, but yeah it is hard to get past some of the lyrics I take too seriously/litetally

[theerastour]

tlos is good idc father figure and cancelled are GOOD people just don't know how to have fun. everyone's too busy trying to cater to people who hate taylor swift for existing that they forget that to those people there is no good way to like taylor ! so let's all just listen to taylor and HAVE FUN do i like eldest daughter not really but am i gonna tell everyone it sucks? no! also the photoshoots were some of the best ever!

The photoshoot for this album had me so hyped not gonna lie

[theerastour]

I think my main problem with the whole album is that it's supposed to be this album where she's talking about how happy she is, but a lot of the happy songs just fall flat in their apex of emotionality. Taylor is the expert at taking something cringe and providing meaning to it, but with Wood it just falls flat and is just... boring. I think she followed multiple albums with incredible lyrics with this, and it just looks so much worse than I imagine it actually is. Though, I'll say as someone who listens almost exclusively for lyrics, I think this album is SO bad. Even my favorite song has moments lyrically where it's like, "UGH why??? This section could have been better!" One of the most insightful things I saw someone write about this album is that this is her victory lap, Taylor worked so hard for all of this, and THIS is what she worked so hard for? This is the world she wants to make after she wins? Taylor made the fatal mistake not of being cringe, not of being vulnerable, not even of being controversial. She made the fatal mistake of being fucking boring.

Damn…that is a take

[theerastour]

I just meant that she used the word bitch but now out of the blue if you look closer, it does have some deeper meaning according to the context of the whole song (honey)

yeah!

[theerastour]

Okay so for me TLOAS was a good album! However, I am not a fan of Eldest Daughter, lyrically it kind of makes no sense -- and I am not a fan of Ruin The Friendship either. But I adore Fate of Ophelia and the rest. My fave though is Cancelled!

eldest daughter doesn't make sense to me either

what do you like about cancelled? I think I associate it with Brittany mahomes too much