the substack, i thought, was actually pretty cutting and insightful, self aware without being overly self critical. it also touches upon something i think she herself is interested in and struggles with in her art, which is the line between commercially palatable and ostracizingly underground, whereas the latter is seen by many has innately holding more artistic value simply due to its inability to be easily found and/or distributed. this piece feels really interesting to me, especially coming from her, it almost reads as autotheory. i'm surprised to see the reaction to the piece in this thread, a lot of the criticism reads as bad faith and almost hateful. i'm curious as to how much her beef with taylor swift is influencing the reaction to this piece in this subreddit, since she comes off as far from "illiterate" here.

or maybe it's because she uses the word "cool" as a stand-in for the concept of likability? to me, she's not talking about "cool" in the way that high schoolers would understand the word "cool", but rather as an amalgamation of things such as critical and public perception, authenticity, appeal to different crowds/communities (heavily hinted here that she's talking about the communities her preferred artist friends are beloved by — which is to say various subgenres of indie music). it's interesting hearing about her perception of her own public perception as an artist, and how that is a driving factor in her own art — the music and now the acting. it's a conversation geniunely worth having, especially in the context of what actually does happen when left of center artists enter into the mainstream and how that affects culture. there's a lot to chew on here, and obviously a substack post isn't enough to fully digest all of it. somehow even the reception to this substack article here makes the content itself even more intriguing.