the eras tour: a retrospective
Jun. 24th, 2024 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arundelsSo I went to the Eras Tour last night.
I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about the show, but as I started to put things down in words I realised that I don't have anything new to say about the staging or the music or the performances. And that all of my thoughts slant towards my own experience, and what I've taken away from the show and, frankly, from the last two decades of listening to Taylor Swift's music.
I started listening to Taylor in her pre-debut era, and in many ways I grew up with her and her music soundtracked my teenage years. I was obsessed with I'd Lie as a teen, which (for some reason incomprehensible to me) never even ended up on an album, and of the first fanfics I ever published was a songfic to that song. Fearless was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. I set an early alarm on a Saturday morning to watch the music video premiere for Mine on MTV. I remember thinking that she was so charming and so relatable. But in those teenage years my musical tastes were varied and wide-ranging, from the emo / pop-punk scene, to folksy indie bands, to both C-pop and K-pop in turn. I was exploring the world of music and I didn't want to settle into any one genre, Taylor Swift and her lovely country ballads included. So while I listened to her music a lot, I never considered myself part of her 'fanclub' and I never got deep into the theories and easter eggs.
Something shifted for me when she released 1989, an album which was widely criticised at the time as her abandoning her country roots. But I loved the pop sound, and I felt a level of defensiveness over her - why isn't she allowed to change, to experiment? I was 22 at the time, fresh out of university and about to start a six-month professional course before I started working. I could feel myself on the brink of metamorphosis, and I resented the world for attempting to deprive Taylor of the same thing. I particular remember being on holiday with my parents in Taiwan when Out of the Woods dropped. I downloaded it using a shaky internet connection, then listened to it on repeat as the tour bus drove through a mountain gorge. Are we out of the woods yet, I thought, the fear of my own future giving way slowly to anticipation, are we out of the woods yet?
I still wasn't a swiftie, by any means, but I was happy to call myself a fan. She released Reputation after the drama with Kim/Kanye, which I had followed idly but with little emotional investment. I watched the Look What You Made Me Do lyric video on my phone when it released, before work one morning, languishing in bed in the first flat my boyfriend and I lived in together. Where's the drop, he asked. Not all music needs a drop, I said, a little defensively. It's a great song. I still can't tell whether I genuinely liked the song on first listen, or whether the protectiveness over Taylor pushed me into taking such a definitive stance. I do enjoy the song now, though, as do I the entire album. But In my early to mid-20s I struggled a lot with my mental health, and Taylor's songs had started to feel too shiny and perfectly packaged to access any genuine emotions inside me. Her lyrics were maybe more clever than they had ever been, and sonically Reputation is still one of my favourite things she's ever done. But there was something lacking, and my interest in Taylor waned. (This was also around the time that Lorde's Melodrama came out, and that album took over my soul - but that's for a separate retrospective.)
By the time Lover came out, Taylor registered vaguely on my radar. I hated the lead singles she released, what felt like superficial bubblegum pop that was utterly meaningless and didn't even sound good. I was starting to get the feeling that Taylor had 'sold out', which is not really a concept that comes to mind these days. But I also liked some other songs on the album, and I didn't feel like I couldn't enjoy them. The bathroom in that same flat where I lived with my boyfriend had a huge window, and blinds that could be slanted in such a way that you could let light in without exposing all your bits to passers by. I have strong memories of taking showers and belting out Cruel Summer, bathed in warm water and pale white sunshine. I walked to work listening to Cornelia Street. But I never really talked about Taylor Swift, or thought about her. She was just one of a long list of singers and bands I listened to.
Then, folklore and evermore. Deep into the pandemic, I had gone back to Ireland with my boyfriend to stay with his family so that we would all be in the same bubble over Christmas. It had already been a few months since folklore was released, but evermore came out shortly after we arrived in Ireland. Cocooned in that house with a family that I liked but did not know very well, I listened to those two albums on repeat and it felt a little like escaping into a different world. This was Taylor like I had forgotten existed - vulnerable, contemplative, a storyteller. As someone who listened to a lot of both Bon Iver and The National, seeing the collaborations on the album excited me, and the songs themselves made me feel things that Taylor's music has never made me feel. Deep, stirring emotions. I talked extensively to my boyfriend's younger brother about exile, a song that we both loved on the album. (Oddly, it was this connection that got us talking about music, and discovering a shared musical history that included bands like Tame Impala, Foals, and Arctic Monkeys.) I have a real fondness for both these albums, and if pushed I would say that they are probably my favourites.
In recent years, though, I have become disillusioned with Taylor again - both in terms of her music and otherwise. I found Midnights underwhelming, though I liked Anti-Hero a lot, and some other songs did grow on me. And TTPD I have listened through only once (and not the extended version). There is a sameness to the music and a self-indulgence that I find has diminished the quality of her writing.
But beyond that, the insane cult of personality that has been created around Taylor as a person has also been off-putting. I have always defended Taylor against critics who are cynical about her success - of course she knows what she's doing, why would it be a personality flaw that she's a shrewd business woman? But in recent years I feel like her cleverness has soured into something meaner. Her cookie-cutter white feminism is exhausting, as is her knee-jerk sense that any criticism of her is an attack, and that her behaviour is always beyond reproach. Not to mention her unwillingness to stand for anything because why take a position when you can build a perfectly inoffensive and highly marketable brand?
It is disappointing, of course, to see someone whose art has been such a huge part of your life turn into someone for whom you have lost so much respect. Going to her concert was a strange experience. There is an assumption that to like Taylor's music you must be a diehard fan, a so-called swiftie. And that you must support her, as a person. Standing in that crowd of 89,000 people, I am sure that I am not alone in feeling conflicted emotions about Taylor Swift - the woman, the celebrity, the performer, the songwriter, the artist. But at times, it sure felt like it.
As much as this concert was a retrospective on all the eras of Taylor's career, it was also a retrospective on the last twenty years of my life. How much I've changed and grown as a person, and how much Taylor - both her music and her as a person - has grown with and diverged from me. It feels a little like saying goodbye to a friend from high school, someone you were once close to before you realised that you are fundamentally very different people with in many ways diametrically opposed values. I'll look back on our memories together, and the music that has soundtracked my life, with fondness. But the Eras Tour also felt like the end of an era for me, a way to finally close the book on something that once meant a lot to me but now just feels like a figment of a past self long gone.
Anyway, I had a lovely time.
I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about the show, but as I started to put things down in words I realised that I don't have anything new to say about the staging or the music or the performances. And that all of my thoughts slant towards my own experience, and what I've taken away from the show and, frankly, from the last two decades of listening to Taylor Swift's music.
I started listening to Taylor in her pre-debut era, and in many ways I grew up with her and her music soundtracked my teenage years. I was obsessed with I'd Lie as a teen, which (for some reason incomprehensible to me) never even ended up on an album, and of the first fanfics I ever published was a songfic to that song. Fearless was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. I set an early alarm on a Saturday morning to watch the music video premiere for Mine on MTV. I remember thinking that she was so charming and so relatable. But in those teenage years my musical tastes were varied and wide-ranging, from the emo / pop-punk scene, to folksy indie bands, to both C-pop and K-pop in turn. I was exploring the world of music and I didn't want to settle into any one genre, Taylor Swift and her lovely country ballads included. So while I listened to her music a lot, I never considered myself part of her 'fanclub' and I never got deep into the theories and easter eggs.
Something shifted for me when she released 1989, an album which was widely criticised at the time as her abandoning her country roots. But I loved the pop sound, and I felt a level of defensiveness over her - why isn't she allowed to change, to experiment? I was 22 at the time, fresh out of university and about to start a six-month professional course before I started working. I could feel myself on the brink of metamorphosis, and I resented the world for attempting to deprive Taylor of the same thing. I particular remember being on holiday with my parents in Taiwan when Out of the Woods dropped. I downloaded it using a shaky internet connection, then listened to it on repeat as the tour bus drove through a mountain gorge. Are we out of the woods yet, I thought, the fear of my own future giving way slowly to anticipation, are we out of the woods yet?
I still wasn't a swiftie, by any means, but I was happy to call myself a fan. She released Reputation after the drama with Kim/Kanye, which I had followed idly but with little emotional investment. I watched the Look What You Made Me Do lyric video on my phone when it released, before work one morning, languishing in bed in the first flat my boyfriend and I lived in together. Where's the drop, he asked. Not all music needs a drop, I said, a little defensively. It's a great song. I still can't tell whether I genuinely liked the song on first listen, or whether the protectiveness over Taylor pushed me into taking such a definitive stance. I do enjoy the song now, though, as do I the entire album. But In my early to mid-20s I struggled a lot with my mental health, and Taylor's songs had started to feel too shiny and perfectly packaged to access any genuine emotions inside me. Her lyrics were maybe more clever than they had ever been, and sonically Reputation is still one of my favourite things she's ever done. But there was something lacking, and my interest in Taylor waned. (This was also around the time that Lorde's Melodrama came out, and that album took over my soul - but that's for a separate retrospective.)
By the time Lover came out, Taylor registered vaguely on my radar. I hated the lead singles she released, what felt like superficial bubblegum pop that was utterly meaningless and didn't even sound good. I was starting to get the feeling that Taylor had 'sold out', which is not really a concept that comes to mind these days. But I also liked some other songs on the album, and I didn't feel like I couldn't enjoy them. The bathroom in that same flat where I lived with my boyfriend had a huge window, and blinds that could be slanted in such a way that you could let light in without exposing all your bits to passers by. I have strong memories of taking showers and belting out Cruel Summer, bathed in warm water and pale white sunshine. I walked to work listening to Cornelia Street. But I never really talked about Taylor Swift, or thought about her. She was just one of a long list of singers and bands I listened to.
Then, folklore and evermore. Deep into the pandemic, I had gone back to Ireland with my boyfriend to stay with his family so that we would all be in the same bubble over Christmas. It had already been a few months since folklore was released, but evermore came out shortly after we arrived in Ireland. Cocooned in that house with a family that I liked but did not know very well, I listened to those two albums on repeat and it felt a little like escaping into a different world. This was Taylor like I had forgotten existed - vulnerable, contemplative, a storyteller. As someone who listened to a lot of both Bon Iver and The National, seeing the collaborations on the album excited me, and the songs themselves made me feel things that Taylor's music has never made me feel. Deep, stirring emotions. I talked extensively to my boyfriend's younger brother about exile, a song that we both loved on the album. (Oddly, it was this connection that got us talking about music, and discovering a shared musical history that included bands like Tame Impala, Foals, and Arctic Monkeys.) I have a real fondness for both these albums, and if pushed I would say that they are probably my favourites.
In recent years, though, I have become disillusioned with Taylor again - both in terms of her music and otherwise. I found Midnights underwhelming, though I liked Anti-Hero a lot, and some other songs did grow on me. And TTPD I have listened through only once (and not the extended version). There is a sameness to the music and a self-indulgence that I find has diminished the quality of her writing.
But beyond that, the insane cult of personality that has been created around Taylor as a person has also been off-putting. I have always defended Taylor against critics who are cynical about her success - of course she knows what she's doing, why would it be a personality flaw that she's a shrewd business woman? But in recent years I feel like her cleverness has soured into something meaner. Her cookie-cutter white feminism is exhausting, as is her knee-jerk sense that any criticism of her is an attack, and that her behaviour is always beyond reproach. Not to mention her unwillingness to stand for anything because why take a position when you can build a perfectly inoffensive and highly marketable brand?
It is disappointing, of course, to see someone whose art has been such a huge part of your life turn into someone for whom you have lost so much respect. Going to her concert was a strange experience. There is an assumption that to like Taylor's music you must be a diehard fan, a so-called swiftie. And that you must support her, as a person. Standing in that crowd of 89,000 people, I am sure that I am not alone in feeling conflicted emotions about Taylor Swift - the woman, the celebrity, the performer, the songwriter, the artist. But at times, it sure felt like it.
As much as this concert was a retrospective on all the eras of Taylor's career, it was also a retrospective on the last twenty years of my life. How much I've changed and grown as a person, and how much Taylor - both her music and her as a person - has grown with and diverged from me. It feels a little like saying goodbye to a friend from high school, someone you were once close to before you realised that you are fundamentally very different people with in many ways diametrically opposed values. I'll look back on our memories together, and the music that has soundtracked my life, with fondness. But the Eras Tour also felt like the end of an era for me, a way to finally close the book on something that once meant a lot to me but now just feels like a figment of a past self long gone.
Anyway, I had a lovely time.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-25 05:39 pm (UTC)but when reputation came around, her appeal had started to fade for me. looking back it was likely influenced or at least subconsciously guided by the internet turning against her, the way it does when women become cosmically successful. i didn't even hear about lover coming out. people have said this before but her decline in success and cultural favorability during the reputation-lover era probably gave her some much needed breathing room and pushed her to shape/refine her craft with folklore and evermore, which were released almost like....an afterthought? or a gift. and then it launched her into the stratosphere she thought she'd never be able to reach again, let alone exceed. the post-folklore/evermore success seemed like a crossroads for her and now it feels like she chose the wrong path. her winning times person of the year in dec 2023 further soured my opinion of her and my swiftie friends who would fervently repost the article and all the taylor+travis gossip but stay silent on the palestinian genocide. nothing about her feels genuine or human or sweet anymore.
i still have her songs on various playlists on spotify, and i still listen to the ones i already like. but i'll never look at her with the same fondness i did back when i rounded all of my friends up in our college dorm living room to watch the all too well 10 minute music video, just like when my middle school friends and i would huddle right after the school bell rang to watch an mv off 1989.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-24 03:55 pm (UTC)"the post-folklore/evermore success seemed like a crossroads for her and now it feels like she chose the wrong path" - this is so astute and I really agree with the sentiment! I think things like her breakup with joe also mirror this, and the fact that joe was so heavily involved in writing folklore/evermore feels like a parallel of something to me, idk. I feel like she's bought into her own mythology and it's turned her into something that no longer feels authentic.
I'm glad at least that we have the same experience... with how the world seems divided into swifties or taylor swift antis, it can feel isolating to have this sort of complicated relationship with an artist who was once very important to you but whose path has diverged from yours in a way that can no longer be ignored... thank you for sharing your thoughts!