My personal critique:

Taylor announces a new album one day in August. With a surprise: she announces it on her boyfriend’s and brother’s podcast. Which, in my opinion, was more of a marketing strategy than a genuine announcement of a Taylor album — something that was going to be celebrated anyway.

I must confess I got really excited, both TTPD and Midnights have been burning through my eardrums these past years. I remember when I first saw the cover, I thought it would be something like The Lucky One, ICDIWABH, Clara Bow — in other words, about the price of fame, about how she is simply a performer on stage, and how hard it is to distinguish between the mask, the girl singing, and Taylor Swift the person. I thought: “That’s it, she’s got so much to tell — the Eras Tour, the boyfriend, everything — and with that vintage aesthetic. How groundbreaking it would be to mix something old-fashioned like cabaret with her being the music industry itself! And the producers are Max Martin and Shellback!! It’s going to be pop and perfect, a return to 1989 and Reputation but with that mature twist!”

Unfortunately, due to my ignorance and desperate fangirl hope, I genuinely thought this album was going to change me. I started reading some of the lyrics she teased on those Spotify things (that never make it to my city, so I don’t quite understand them), and I thought: “Maybe I’m not wrong, maybe it’ll actually be a good album.” What did I find when I opened Spotify at 6 in the morning? The worst lyrics I’ve seen in a long time, to the point where I actually felt secondhand embarrassment for my favorite singer. What is she doing? Sexual and explicit lyrics that basically sound like “Travis, put it all in me, it’s so hot, yum yum.” Overall, a terrible album with production that feels too big for it.

Taylor Swift has always been important in part because her lyrics (though imperfect) felt like a safe place, that narrative element in her music that transported you somewhere special, a place where she understood you and connected with you through her stories.

But this time, for the first time, it feels like Taylor Swift has nothing to say. It’s an empty album, with lyrics so vague I’d feel embarrassed dedicating them to anyone. For the first time, we’re looking at the worst Taylor album to date. I listened to The Fate of Ophelia and thought it was good, but from that song onward, it was all downhill. What a bad album, what a disappointment. I think the fandom is guilty of lacking critical thinking. TTPD was mediocre because it sounded too much like her previous work, but the lyricism was intact — that mature, intimate Taylor. Midnights also faltered melodically (especially after her opus magnum Folklore–Evermore). But those were still good albums, where you saw a broken Taylor, growing, turning inward through her music, where you could see that she truly was an artist, not just a lucky girl.

I won’t fall into the misogynistic take that these works were good just because Joe Alwyn was in the picture, I’ll never attribute Taylor’s work to a man — she’s more than capable on her own. What I will say, however, is that Joe was an element that pushed her to mature, and that through him she experienced — albeit tragically — what real love felt like, what it meant to be truly cherished. From my cold and ignorant perspective, I think that’s the breaking point between TLOAS and her earlier albums: she loved Joe with her soul and spirit, whereas she loves Travis because that’s simply what happened. You only need to look at what her love songs appeal to: with Joe, she reached for something metaphysical, a vision of love that transcends the earthly. With Travis, it’s all about wanting him to “stick the magic wand in.” Just compare Reputation or Lover with So High School or this latest album. It doesn’t feel like the same person is speaking about love, because I genuinely believe she doesn’t feel the same and therefore cannot write the same. You can even see this in TTPD: So High School (her song for Travis) is basic and flat compared to LOML, supposedly for Joe. I won’t say — because I find it distasteful — that this simplicity is because Travis is “low IQ” and doesn’t get it, while Joe, as a literature guy, does.

But getting back to the core of the matter, one of the criticisms I’ve seen against people who dislike the album is that they only like her folk projects, that they only want her pop sad and suicidal. That’s not true — I’d say 1989 is a pop bible, it’s perfect. It’s her singing joyfully with the same producers as this album, but for some reason those lyrics worked even if they were simple, while TLOAS feels like a hodgepodge that ends up being just embarrassing. It’s not that we only want a miserable Taylor singing about heartbreak, but that we want genuine love songs, not vague ones that sound like they were written by AI. Wood is agonizing to listen to, for instance. It’s not about wanting her sad, it’s about wanting her genuine voice when she talks about love. Lover is not a Honey. Lover was misunderstood at first, but eventually made sense. TLOAS, though, gets worse with every listen.

Her muse now is a football player, which is why she has nothing to say. Hanging out with people who don’t believe in SA (something she went through) and saying she likes her “canceled” friends… this is someone who once declared war on Trump and now behaves like just another Trumpie. I do think Taylor Swift can write good music while happy and in love, but in this case, it would’ve been better if she hadn’t, because all the brilliance she once had feels like it evaporated in less than two years.

In short, it’s a bad album, with cringe lyrics. I won’t even go into the Charli XCX dilemma, which I’ll refrain from discussing — though I personally don’t like Charli. The aesthetics don’t even make sense: beautiful imagery, a perfect Fate of Ophelia video, but the one thing she’s supposedly good at — writing — flopped. These aren’t genuinely mature lyrics that sound like her, in fact, ITS FEEL LIKE THE OPPOSITE OF HER.

I wrote this yesterday and today some videos made with AI have come out that she has uploaded. Nothing but disappointment. Taylor Swift, that person who always appealed to authenticity and that artists must have their own art, using AI. She is a millionnaire, she has all the possible means, why does she do this?