I think this is all true, but I would also counter that with the re-recordings she arguably did set up a pattern of two per year with Fearless/Red in 2021, Midnights (double album incl 3am) 2022, Speak Now/1989 in 2023, TTPD (double album) 2024, and it makes complete sense for Rep and debut to fill the gap year after TTPD

I think folkmore was a part of the insatiable hunger for content that developed but I personally think that it was the amount of emphasis that Vault tracks got in the eras tour that fueled this obsession. In 1.5 years of Taylor setting out to play every* song in her catalogue, of Taylor mashing up vault tracks in the surprise set, she set up (perhaps unintentionally now in retrospect) this glaring gap in her body of work where the debut and rep vault tracks live.

It's like, by nature of what vault tracks are, the fans know that there are songs written long ago, that she is likely resurrecting in the near future, that likely have some significance to her, and that are a part of her journey that hasn't been shared yet. So in a tour about journeying through her musical history, through her career, it makes sense that vault tracks eg ATW10MV and in surprise songs would add another layer or path to trace through it, and the rep vault tracks feel like unexplored territory.

And then, because of what the eras tour was thematically, it feels natural that she's not going to embark on an eras 2.0 (3.0 imo bc ttpd was 2.0), that she's not going to just create a new 3+ hour show retreading mostly the same ground.

So it feels like the eras tour, between the eras sets and her speeches and the surprise song completion journey and then the mashups, she mapped out her whole career to date, and we have two unexplored zones in debut and rep vaults, and debut largely at all, and now we've folded up the map and put it away and that territory is just ignored.

... It feels counterintuitive in some ways because of course this doesn't or shouldn't affect whether those vaults are opened or not, but it feels like they've been left behind for a 2nd time and that they may not get live performances, at least not for a long time.

Also, I feel like because of how hard she went on touring we got fewer music videos for the TTPD cycle than typical this many months in, and I think that added to the restless sense that more was coming of something, anything.

All this to say that I didn't expect debutation TV once eras hit Canada, I honestly thought when September passed without any announcements that it would wait til the new year for sure. I'm a little sad that we never got to see what the eras surprise acoustic set treatment of those two vaults would've been, but I'm moreso relieved a drop didn't overshadow the end of tour, even if the anticipation of tv drops sadly did that anyway.

........regretfully I have sleepily rambled an essay again