being a writer in need of an editor is the most relatable taylor swift has ever been
your Saturday culture links!
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I talked to the
newsletter about why Lorelei Gilmore is my least favorite TV character of all time, and how looking up the birth charts of Lorelei and Rory helped me tolerate and understand the series better.Kind of obsessed with this Jessica Zhan Mei Yu piece for Vanity Fair that looks at the ways Taylor Swift’s aesthetic has been influenced by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and other literary figures ahead of her The Tortured Poets Department release: “We might think of Swift’s expansive interpretation of poet style as encapsulating both the perfect plaid skirts of the student and the dramatic, corseted gowns—white as a fresh sheet of paper—of the master poet. Taken together, these two modes of dress might be a sign that she’s not quite living a double life; she’s just dressing as if she’s inspired, as all the best poets are, by the possibilities of doubleness and double meanings.”
Speaking of Taylor Swift’s style, The Cut breaks down why the singer dresses Like That (which, tbh, I found a little condescending but did appreciate the decade’s worth of Swift’s fashion that it analyzed): “Her favorite looks, and maybe her best, are easy slip dresses, or a frilly white shirt with denim cutoffs and boots, or a schoolgirl plaid skirt with a plain sweater and chunky loafers — what one Swiftologist calls ‘liberal arts student, Shoreditch dweller.’”
I am really struggling to like TTPD. For someone who fancies herself a writer the lyrics are just… bad? It all feels very one-note. I’d love to see her work with someone who isn’t Jack Antonoff tbh. I say that as a Swift fan! You gotta be able to criticize the things you love. However, I thought this review from Suzy Exposito at Vogue was quite generous, found Amanda Petrusich’s at The New Yorker to be interesting, but agreed most wholeheartedly with this takeaway from Tom Breihan’s review at Stereogum:
“On her new album, Taylor Swift would like us to know that this was an act. She wants us to know that she’s a big weirdo, a crazy-passionate self-saboteur who has come to resent the gilded prison of overwhelming fame. She’s worked so hard and done so much, and as a result, millions of people feel entitled to tut-tut her life choices. That’s the message that I’m taking from The Tortured Poets Department, anyway. That’s a pretty interesting message, but it would be more interesting if it came attached to some bangers.
Taylor Swift was writing bangers before she was old enough to drive a car. Through every stage of her career, she’s made bangers. More than anything else, those bangers are the reason why people care about Swift’s personal life. Whenever she’s encountered a transcendent moment of joy, heartbreak, anger, fear, confusion, exhilaration, or anything else, her response has been to write a banger about it. But now, the lore has come to swallow the music. With some exceptions, the songs on The Tortured Poets Department are simply not strong enough to support the weight of all that fucking storyline. It’s starting to feel like the lore is all we have. It’s not enough.”
But I screamed at this NYT headline. All the best writers need editors, it’s true! I also found a lot of the writing to be immature and very adolescent and my takeaway from that is that she needed more emotional distance from the material she was writing about, like a memoirist who is still too close to the material or not done processing it.
I love a very niche community drama with no stakes for me personally so I am obsessed with the cheating scandal that has rocked the D.C. pub trivia scene.
Like
, I love reality TV so I really enjoyed this piece about introducing her male partner to the genre: “I’d always seen my ‘expertise,’ opposite his prior ignorance of the genre, as generational and pop cultural. He’s just three years older than me, but I figured those years made all the difference when it came to the impact of the explosion of reality-TV. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the gendered aspects of my relationship to reality TV, a genre overwhelmingly watched by women.”Young women are more liberal than young men – and it's making dating difficult (including dating app profiles that list bisexuality as a red flag and an across-the-aisle relationship that ended in slut-shaming).
Kesha and Renee Rapp performed together at Coachella and updated the opening line to “Tik Tok” in lieu of Diddy’s recent arrest:
As a house and architecture nerd I am pained by the fact that Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger purchased and then demolished this historic mid-century home designed by famed architect Craig Ellwood. They remain committed to being absolutely garbage humans. You can read more about the so-called Zimmerman House here.
In happier house news, Emma Roberts’s Architectural Digest tour did not disappoint, either in decor or entertainment value (love this round-up of its best moments from
). Some quotables: “My staple drink that I make for people is pouring champagne;” “When I was younger, people would be like, ‘Aren’t you scared your dolls are gonna come to life?’ I’m like... ‘I hope that every night;’” “I feel like there can never be enough stripes or fringe or tassels in a house.” And of course:
Two stories for you this week from
by : first up is her roundup regarding the mess at NPR (for those of you not following, NPR editor Uri Berliner wrote a piece at Bari Weiss’ Substack and it was as bad as you would expect something published at Weiss’ Substack to be).And then there’s Parker’s interview with
about the publishing industry and Maris’ re-launch of , this time on Substack: “I think social media in general has gotten more toxic and digital media has gone from an industry that was booming to one that I hope is still around tomorrow. So it becomes really important to have a way to talk about books that doesn't rely all the time on those platforms. … There are so few platforms now to talk about books other than BookTok.”I am very excited for this forthcoming Netflix documentary about queer comedians:
And this is one of the most relatable things I’ve ever heard:
I totally agree with you about TTPD, which is too bad because I pre-ordered the vinyl, the CD, and the cassette. The songs are not catchy at all; I have listened to the anthology over and over and I find it kind of juvenile. At the same time, I love that Taylor is finally allowing herself to be like, “WHO’S AFRAID OF LITTLE OL’ ME” in this deranged shriek and I love that. I think she needs to step away from Antonoff and take a turn with new constraints and new explorations; this album, which is almost too big to fail (& honestly has already shattered all the records anyway so who cares about what I say), is a step away from her other albums. What that step says is something else.
I loved the NYT headline 🤣 She needs an editor desperately and new collaborators (and a praxis overhaul, which is a pipe dream). Many of the TTPD lyrics are bad (sometimes deeply so) and a lot of the songs sound very similar sonically. Also there's no reason to release 31 songs at once if they aren't consistently amazing, imo. Lastly, when I saw "thanK you aIMee," I was like, Kim... Mulkey??