music and food are my only joy

hi! i'm Shelby, and i eat too many waffles.

[pughflorence]

RAYE 📷 by Aliyah Otchere

[wafflesforleslie]

so stressed out that i'm posting on tumblr.com but i've had the keys to my new apartment for less than a week, am already in a feud with a neighbor, and am so uncomfortable being here my lease is for a YEAR but i can't calm down i'm so stressed out and nobody cares, i vented to my PILATES teacher today before class like i'm just so l o n e l y

[maryoliveoil]

THINKING ABOUT HER

[vintage-tigre]

[wafflesforleslie]

31 May 2025

the first day that reputation (taylor's version) isn't being predicted

we are finally free

[freshmoviequotes]

The Outrun (2024)

[muse-central]

[wafflesforleslie]

Charli XCX retroactively changed all her previous album covers to the aesthetic of brat last summer, and I’ve been stewing about it ever since!! Combined with Tate McRae’s album cover flip flop this week, I think there’s genuinely been a shift in how artists and marketers approach album covers, and we should talk about it:

To be absolutely clear: I have no issue with the brat album cover. It’s iconic, it’s a clear departure from Charli’s previous work befitting her - extremely belated - breakout album and a shift away from the industry’s current trends. Its visual identity is probably an outsized factor in the album’s success. The issue I have is retroactively erasing the aesthetics of past eras in the service of selling a new one.

Read on my newsletter, refrigerator light!

[wafflesforleslie]

The Pop Music Struggle Between Fiction and Autobiography

On folklore, evermore, Maggie Rogers, and the panopticon of modern fame.

"When your every outfit, comment, and movement is dissected and tracked, but you make art that is, in her own words, “excruciatingly autobiographical,” it does feel like there has to be a breaking point. The lean towards the plausible deniability of fiction, in this context, reads as almost an act of self-preservation. It allows the artist to avoid publicly confronting the emotion or less or idea or situation in their art for what it is to them personally, because it’s just a story! It becomes a way to distance The Artist from The Human Person, like there is a clear border to draw between the two. Taylor and Maggie have wielded this distinction like a shield, protecting their privacy when the art they make can so often lay them bare. Ariana Grande called her latest, eternal sunshine, a “concept album,” although aside from heavily pulling inspiration from the movie of the same name, it’s still unclear what the concept was, aside from another layer of protection from the invasive scrutiny eschewed by Taylor and Maggie through similar means."

I hope you really like this one, I looked at how modern fame is changing the ways pop music artists frame fact and fiction this week in the newsletter

subscribe or read past issues on substack

[sansgod]

Our mother Jenny Slate

[wafflesforleslie]

I listened to a new (to me!) album every single day last year, and as we start the new year I wanted to share my experience. This was one simple, fulfilling act of discovery that filled my year with new music and I adored the challenge.

My rules for the challenge:

Listen to a new (to me) album every single day. I was trying to only listen to LPs, but a few longer EPs did sneak through.

If I missed a day, I could make it up by listening to multiple albums another day. I actually ended up not using this rule, but I wanted to allow myself some grace on bad days.

These albums could include songs I had heard, as long as I hadn’t actively listened to the album in its entirety.

I didn’t make myself any quotas, but I wanted to make sure I was listening to a variety of genres from diverse artists and different time periods, and making an effort to listen to smaller artists.

Taylor’s Versions count as new albums. It didn’t come up this year, but I still made the rule. I also decided not to count soundtracks, since my focus was on Albums as works of art. I still listened to the Wicked (part 1) soundtrack plenty, don’t worry.

Read more on substack for how I approached the project, and what a few of my favorite albums of the year were. I’m planning on writing my music newsletter once a week this year, I hope you follow along!

[sailor-moon-rei]

by 178kz_boy

art republished with artist’s permission

[deathbyadyke]

my favorite genre of photography

[perfectday1972]

maggie rogers via instagram

[wafflesforleslie]

I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum's Taylor Swift Trail this weekend and had lots of thoughts about mixing high- and low-brow art!!

Alongside deeply understanding the fanbase they were targeting with the trail, the V&A also took a lot of care when deciding where and how to place these displays, putting each Taylor era in conversation with their permanent collection’s themes and inspiration. You wind past an Edward Burne-Jones designed-grand piano from the 1880s before entering the room with the folklore moss-covered piano and cardigan, surrounded by which stand in the center of a room full of landscape oil paintings. Between folklore’s woodsy cover, inspiration from William Wordsworth, and “The Lakes” Taylor wrote about running away to, the album is at home in a room that already pays homage to the English countryside, in any form. The effect is heightened by very quiet piped in nature sounds and parts of “Cardigan,” filling a stereotypically quiet environment with music.  

Read more about my visit this weekend! And please if you're a Swiftie in London this summer, this is well worth a visit and sit in the V&A courtyard for me 🎉

[wafflesforleslie]

I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum's Taylor Swift Trail this weekend and had lots of thoughts about mixing high- and low-brow art!!

Alongside deeply understanding the fanbase they were targeting with the trail, the V&A also took a lot of care when deciding where and how to place these displays, putting each Taylor era in conversation with their permanent collection’s themes and inspiration. You wind past an Edward Burne-Jones designed-grand piano from the 1880s before entering the room with the folklore moss-covered piano and cardigan, surrounded by which stand in the center of a room full of landscape oil paintings. Between folklore’s woodsy cover, inspiration from William Wordsworth, and “The Lakes” Taylor wrote about running away to, the album is at home in a room that already pays homage to the English countryside, in any form. The effect is heightened by very quiet piped in nature sounds and parts of “Cardigan,” filling a stereotypically quiet environment with music.  

Read more about my visit this weekend! And please if you're a Swiftie in London this summer, this is well worth a visit and sit in the V&A courtyard for me 🎉

[wafflesforleslie]

I got bored, wrote about brat and kamala and music and voting. please read.

There was another video going around this week that featured Harris exiting a record store, showing off the albums she’d bought (and to pander to small business owners). There’s palpable joy about sharing music she likes with whoever’s behind the camera, and it really struck me. There’s so little joy allowed in buttoned-up politics - see every video making fun of her laughter - that it’s no wonder that young, music-loving people have lit up at the prospect of someone new in a presidential race that has felt like a death march for months.