Damn, The Swifties Are Really Hating Him, Huh? The Way She's Gonna Push Him So Hard In The Public. I

“And now I send their babies presents” 😭

(x)

god i still can’t get over how she’s wearing the vsfs ring during this clip

Taylor singing Dress to Karlie 

The gaylor of it all. 🥹😫

https://twitter.com/vox_fantasma/status/1654713075025727488?t=wZObQm5tbHEuWKLTnSCB7w&s=19

Damn Taylor 😭😂😂

Twitter

Seven (Taylor's Version) on Twitter

“@lenaluthorxs”

👀 are there other clips of this out there because it sounded like a he on the livestream i was listening to

From 5 holes in the fence I bring you the sequel 13 holes in the bench

🎃 Imagine this. You are on the balcony of an ice castle. Pushing and pushing against the railing, slowly trudging toward a horizon that never seems to get any closer. Smashing against the frozen structure that is so solid it feels like glass, so solid it feels like it will never break. The time draws near, springtime sunshine causing small drips and fractures. You strike a match and blow the smoke toward the structure that shelters and protects you. Suddenly, you hear a crack, a crunch, a whoosh. There is a sudden give beneath you, and you tumble through the broken, melting hole in your palace. You have FINALLY smashed through the ice castle! It was so slow, and then suddenly so all of a sudden! You'd thought it would take much longer to arrive in this moment! However, in this suddenness you find yourself still somehow underprepared, kicking yourself for the time you squandered by wallowing in the seeming endlessness of your predicament. All this time spent inching toward a finish line. No time at all spent readying for an end. Shit. In midair, you scramble for a parachute. You will reach the ground either way, whether you float like a feather or freefall like a meteor. But after all this time, you decide you'd like to land softly, rather than crash in a tangle of broken limbs and fiery shock. Dear reader, I'm sure this tale has raised a question...? Why would someone you believe to have wings need a parachute? 🎃

Here is 🎃 earlier message today.

"This is the rainiest rain show that ever rain showed, ever, ever, ever. Oh my god. We have every single person on the stage—is this going to work? It’ll be fine. I hope it works. It’ll be great.—all of my fellow, like, dancers and everybody else on the stage is just sort of like, ‘Oh my god,’ no one ever expects you’re going to basically perform like in a shower. It’s really very exciting. Yeah. Are you having a nice time too? So you know, you’re standing in the pouring rain with people, and you just kind of feel like this romantic sense of camaraderie. I was thinking about what song to play with you tonight and I was thinking, there’s this song from Midnights that I love so much, and I haven’t played it on this tour, or ever, so I figured, that could be fun to play with you. And I just—oh my gosh, this is insane—I kind of just feel like telling you, I don’t know, I have just never been this happy in my life, in all aspects of my life, ever before. And I just want to thank you for being a part of that. Like, you know, I don’t know, it’s not just the tour, it’s like. I don’t know, I just sort of feel like my life finally feels like it makes sense. And so I thought I’d play this song, which brings me a lot of happy memories."

— Taylor before playing Question...? (guitar) in Foxborough, MA on May 20th

🎃 Imagine this. You wander through the woods. Deep in this Enchanted Forest, your delicate fairy wings are crippled and weak. You haven’t come this way in a long time. You’re not sure you’ll be able to find it. You trip over overgrown roots and foliage that looks suspiciously like clawing hands in the dying light. A howl sounds in the distance, pushing you closer to your destination. Watchful eyes in the birch bark feel more leering than protective. Your ripped and muddied gown is caked in dandelion fuzz. You limp over uneven ground, smiling at the pain of the shark bite with each excruciating step - replaying the satisfying splash as you finally chose her over the world. As you grabbed the enemy and dove into the infested waters. You squint to make sense of your surroundings through the fog, cherry red eyes glowing in the bushes. Just before you nearly give up, you see it ahead. The wooden door standing sovereign in the middle of the forest. Deeply cut claw marks mar its surface. Glittering flecks of what could be light filter through the crack beneath it. The best and worst part of it all - the lock lies broken, scorched, down on the ground. To put it plainly, your limits are now your own courage. Nothing more, and nothing less. All your life you have been afraid. Afraid of ghosts, shadows and raindrops on tin roofs. It is a fear that has paralyzed you. And yet, now, in the face of something actually worthy of your fear, you find peace and courage. You step forward. You place your hand on the doorknob, the metal cold against your fiery skin. Insecurity and hope pound in your ears in tune with your heart beat. Never in your wildest dreams did you actually believe you would arrive here. “Human, human, human.” The darkest parts of your mind chant. It burns like hot coals. But the longer you stand there, hand on the doorknob, the softer the voice becomes. Not softer in volume - if anything, the voice is louder now - but softer in tone. Who doesn’t love a good key change?  “Human, human, human.” It no longer sounds like the weakness it used to. It no longer sounds like a flaw. Your heart beats red and hot and furious in your chest. Isn’t that a magnificent thing! A knock sounds on the door from the other side. You smile at the signal as your feet squash the forest carpet of clovers and daisies. With the deepest exhale of your life so far, you slowly twist the handle. 🎃

folklore is the pivot point between Taylor Swift the pop star and Taylor Swift the legend. Before folklore her career had been in an objective "decline", much in line with consumption changes in the industry, with her seeing slowly diminishing success with each successive single and album she'd released after 1989, and that trend halted and reversed with folklore. US pop radio was increasingly reluctant to engage with her singles unless they were perfectly suited to the zeitgeist of the time, like Delicate was in 2018. Her streaming numbers were not terrible, but she was consistently getting out-streamed by the top new names in the industry, much of which was due to her catalogue being absent from platforms which put her on the backfoot. If she had been following a normal pop star path, then that would've been fine and it would've the beginning of her fade from the A-list. Instead, she took a hard left turn and put out folklore. It did unexpectedly massive numbers (including setting the record for the most streamed female album in the first 24 hours, which she broke two more times after that), sure, but what made folklore different was the entire narrative surrounding it. Taylor was no longer just a 'pop star', she was an indie rocker, and for the first time in a very long time, she was at the center of the celebrity discussion because of her music, and not just as a very famous person taking swings at Kanye or jet-setting with Tom. The pitchfork-indie rock dad demographic, who are the ones in the position of deciding which music is legitimate art and not just "pop music" fawned over folklore, and shifted the narrative from 'Taylor makes pop songs' to 'Taylor makes good songs' in communities that would've never seen the light otherwise. Folklore gave Taylor a massive career-jolting shock, and it set her on the path she's currently following.

In the years since, Taylor has clawed her way back to the very very top of the music industry, and with each release she widens the gap between her and everyone below her. Yes, evermore and Fearless TV didn't have the most stellar numbers, they did continue to develop her career arc in an incredibly positive way. Evermore proved to everyone with a toe in the industry that folklore wasn't a fluke, that she was capable of making "artful" music that would satisfy both pretentious indie rockers and her own fans at the same time. Fearless TV proved that Scooter had royally fucked up in his calculus when buying Big Machine, and that Scott Borchetta had royally fucked up when he assumed Taylor's career had peaked and he'd made all the money there was. It proved to executives that the re-recording project could be a success and that she could convince people to seek out the new versions, which is something we take for granted now (just look at the daily streams of each original album versus its re-recording), but was not a guarantee back then. Plus, it was Fearless TV that really lit the match and set the fire under her back catalogue, and got tens of thousands of people who probably had never listened to the original Fearless to go back and listen to her other albums from that era. The numbers weren't huge then, but that was when casual fans and locals started to re-evaluate the depths of her back catalogue. Obviously, Red TV was another step in her career progression, where she proved that a re-recording could be more than just new versions of songs for people to stream in place of the originals. She turned Red TV into a full-fledged era with videos and talk shows, and that a re-recording was able to spawn a ten minute #1 hit that wasn't just driven by fan consumption. Red TV did also act as a catalyst for her massive catalogue growth, but it wasn't the start of it. Finally, Midnights and the Eras Tour have been the true peak of Taylor's career. She's outstreaming the next 4 most popular female acts on Spotify combined. She got an album debut so ludicrously large that it exceeded even the most optimistic of predictions by a significant degree. She was even able to repair her relationship with US radio and turned Anti-Hero into her biggest and most successful song on the Hot 100 since Shake It Off. Taylor can play the pop star game and get the pop star hits and have the pop star tour, but Taylor writes lyrics that appeal to indie rock dads, wields significant power on the indie/alt music charts, and is playing stadiums with crowds so big they're more in line the biggest rocker performances ever than they are with any other pop girl stadium tour. Taylor has moved so far beyond the pop star that she was at the start of the Lover era, thanks to the pivot that happened with folklore. She can be the pop star on the micro-scale, which is seen in how well Midnights is holding up as a current pop album, but she can also be the music legend on the macro-scale, as is seen by the 14 million+ people in line for her concert presale or the immense, immense popularity of her back catalogue that complements the demand for her new music. There's a reason people have started calling this SwiftMania 😉