I USED to love Taylor Swift. Her songs textured my 20s, and I was a “Swiftie” before the term existed – back when only American tweens and country music fans had heard of her. But as the rest of the world has become more and more obsessed with T-Swizzle, I’ve started to question if she’s actually a bit meh.
Take her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department – or TTPD – which sounds like it was written by a pretentious sixth-former. This is an artist who is supposed to be such a songwriting virtuoso that multiple universities have courses dedicated to studying her work . Yet the songs on TTPD sound like bad teenage diary entries put to the same synth beat.
Even a long-time Taylor fan like me couldn’t take her droning on over 31 songs (31?!) with word-vomit lines like: “I scratch your head, you fall asleep/Like a tattooed golden retriever”. Not exactly lyrical genius. To me, TTPD is the cringiest album of her career, and yet Taylor has reached such untouchable mega-star status that no one will dare criticise her.
It’s like The Emperor’s New Clothes, except the Emperor is wearing an “I heart TS” T-shirt. Back in 2010, I spent seven days with a then 20-year-old Taylor, after the magazine I was working for sent me to interview her. She was icily composed, intelligent and almost spookily mature.
We hung out in her hotel room, at fan meet-and-greet sessions and in rehearsals. I was even mistakenly mobbed by paps and fans when I left her hotel, as I was .
