Taylor Swift - Lover (August 23, 2019) Album • Page 29

but also after coming around to most of reputation i'm just here for whatever this taylor swift record is instead of what i want it to be

 

1989 is soooo good though.

 

LYYN-NERD SKIN-NERD

 

I agree. I don’t think there’s a complete win-win here.

 

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen

 

Taylor Swift can never win, honestly. It doesn't matter what she does or how she presents it, someone is always ready with the op-ed about how she's the worst person alive.

I fully think that Taylor has been grappling with and writing about her sexuality for years and that she isn't straight. She likes to talk about putting easter eggs and clues all over, and these are the ones I've found and connected with. It made a lot of her absolutely bonkers public persona make sense to me. Of course, I could easily be wrong, but I think she's either bisexual or gay and has been laying the foundation to come out longer than we could possibly be aware of. What she's doing right now is a BIT of a miss if she is planning to stay in the closet or is in fact straight, but given what I know about her, I like to give her some credit that she knows what she's doing. Time will tell.

 

The pivot to pop has definitely stripped away some of the things I think were really impressive about her writing, but she's still found ways to keep (most of) her songs substantive and interesting.

 

So I genuinely ask, if this were to be the case, what do you then make of the large body of music from her career that is written about relationships with men? It's just chalked up to a front? Or what her team pushed her to write about?

 

I dated men for years before I realized I was probably closer to gay than anything else. It's not uncommon and this kind of question is probably part of why she would be so reluctant to come out. You are asking with good intentions, but if she came out her word needs to just be enough.

 

I wouldn't ever question anyone's declared sexuality. I do think Taylor has shown how much of a genuine person she is offstage and has nothing but good intentions. But the music doesn't translate those possible hidden signs to me and feel that if it were the case, her heterosexual history wouldn't be as much of a prominent focus in her work up until now (unless the team of people behind her or the studio she works with influences that, which would be very bad and also unsurprising sadly.) Though from what I see in here, she is one of few major pop stars that writes their own songs completely? Which I didn't know before reading this thread.

 

She works with co-writers, but I believe she had a hand in writing every song she’s ever put on an album. Speak Now has no co-writers at all.

 

Truthfully, I don't follow her closely enough to feel like I could tell either way so I am trusting those that do here, but I can speak to what it can feels like to be in the closet - without even realizing it - for so long. Especially as a woman, and especially as she is a woman who has been both adored and scrutinized publicly for years. I imagine that is a lot of pressure and may not have left a lot of room to explore things comfortably for a long time.

Writing songs about men = / = straight. It's really the assumption of heteronormativity that society writ large passes onto everyone that would even be the reason that 1) we assume every song she has written has been about a man and 2) we would even be having a conversation where we parse the use of pronouns in her music and what that can mean for her overall sexuality.

 

Someone can probably answer this question better than I can, but to my knowledge, she has a heavy hand in writing all of her songs. The writing credits seem to have grown over the years as she's transitioned into pop (which is funny, because i think that's when her songwriting has taken a bit of a step backward), but I don't think she has ever just had a song handed to her in the way that a lot of pop stars do.

I have no opinion one way or another about her sexuality, I guess, nor do I feel comfortable making a judgment one way or another on the "does this help or harm" the community, being a straight white male (cue Bo Burnham.) I liked the video and enjoy the song, but reading the counterpoints here and elsewhere are interesting.

 

Where Is Taylor Swift Going With This? by Craig Jenkins

"Advocacy requires poise; Taylor Swift campaigns are freight trains."

 

If I can just clarify my thoughts in a nutshell in case I’m not articulating them very well..

If that is the case with Taylor I hope she does find an avenue of comfort to come out and not feel the need to hide that due to public scrutiny. Absolutely no one should. And if it is due to being a part of the mainstream music industry, then I hate it even more than I already did.

 

Craig is a great and level headed writer and I think this is pretty spot on.

 

I feel like the “shade never made anybody less gay” wasn’t saying hate doesn’t force people to stay closeted so much as it was saying giving someone shade for being gay, isn’t going to change them.

 

Honesty if you added “shade never made anybody less gay” to that song from Popstar i would not suspect it came from a different song.

 

Are they all written about men or did we assume so because of the PR machine surrounding her entire image? I think the smartest thing Taylor ever did was convince everyone that every single one of her songs was “ripped from her diary” so to speak. I don’t think half of her songs are about who she says they’re about and honestly, many of them are probably more fictional than she’d ever be willing to admit.

Love her or hate her, she has a singular power to get people to pay attention and take her at her word. That’s how she had people convinced “I Knew You Were Trouble” was about Harry Styles when it was released before she even met him. She plays up narratives to get attention and sometimes it works, sometimes she falls on her face. I think there are also so many of her songs with gender neutral pronouns or last minute lyric changes that it could easily be assumed her songs about men might not actually be inspired by who she says they were.

For instance- “drew” replaces “you” in “tear drops on my guitar.” The original lyric in “love story” was reportedly “this love is different” as oppose to “difficult.” We can see from her behind the scenes that the original lyric in “gorgeous” was “I’m so curious,” not “furious.” I actually do not see any heterosexual explanation for “dress” when she was on the cover of Vogue declaring Karlie Kloss her number one best friend forever.

I don’t know her and obviously again this is all my personal speculation, but I remember being in the closet and facing the same “why is this so important to you” questions and being a little too loud for a “straight” ally. I also find it hard to believe someone as precise and thoughtful as Taylor could truly be so tone deaf as to do ALLLLLL this for years and not be hinting at something. She has also used inclusive language before (see: presenting Ruby Rose’s GLAAD award - “no one can judge us, no one can stop us.”)

I also don’t know why she’d be inviting all this attention and media speculation (do a news search for “Taylor swift gay” since this promo cycle started) when her image has been so carefully calculated for over a decade. She’s made it clear she does everything deliberately and on purpose. What else could it be?

 

Maybe not internally, but it will change their level of comfort in being able to talk about it and will present itself mentally as shame. “Shade” is too broad of a term and it includes all the situations that Craig listed in his review of the song.


Also got to thinking, why did she need to include her reconciliation with Perry in this video? Couldn’t that have waited until the next single? Ending the music video with that felt like a takeaway from the song and its message.

 

And of course, if Taylor ends all this by clarifying that she is in fact straight, I will drop it forever. But sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire lmao.

 

I would.

 

She did say as recently as yesterday that she’s an ally and I don’t really feel comfortable speculating someone’s sexuality

 

I was on the fence before I saw the MV but now that I've seen it, that actually felt appropriate to me. (To be clear, I'm queer.) It felt like an admission on her part that she also has historically needed to calm down.

 

Oh absolutely. I was just saying I took that lyric to be directed at the “shade giver” and not as a broader concept. But I obviously see how the vagueness can lead to a lot of interpretations.