Guys, why are you so cynical? All it took was a vinyl release, a bunch of awful dance remixes, and moving her music video premiere to Spotify (which featured it on its front page all week). It was totally natural because of YOU, THE FANS!
What I'm kinda interested to see is if the manufactured rise will lead way to a few weeks of it staying at number one after the boost or if it's about to drop a bunch next week
This has been the first album of hers that I really just didn't care for any of the songs. I listened to the whole thing when it first came out and nothing grabbed me at all. Nothing was terrible or anything, but there wasn't a single song where I actually liked it a lot and actively wanted to listen to it. Hearing "Ophelia" whenever I put on the radio in the car for months and months, it did grow on me a little bit, and "Opalite" just came on the other day in the car and I actually enjoyed it. I think I was just a little tired of her and her music when this album came out, and I'm not quite ready to yet, but I do think I am going to give it a full listen when I'm ready and see what I think.
This album has grown on me! The complaining about capitalistic record breaking has overshadowed a fun set of pop songs. Happy it exists and I can throw on “Honey” whenever.
This to me has become the big problem with Taylor: I really like her albums upon release, and then she just beats them into the ground with this type of "capitalist record breaking." I then sour on the albums and need a few years to come back around on them. I do wonder how long this incessant "buy 50 versions of this album/song" thing will continue to work for her. Where is the tipping point? It obviously yielded huge results for Showgirl, but with quite a bit of backlash and Taylor fatigue setting in as side effects. I feel like every post from her is now filled with comments from fans who are tired of being sold to. But I still can't see a scenario where her die-hards abandon her en masse, or stop buying and rebuying and re-rebuying.
There is just zero indication from the past 2-3 years that she is reading the room, IMO. I think she's entered the tier of "too damn rich."
I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that I can just completely ignore an artist's outside persona 99% of the time. I got one variant, never going to be tempted to buy six more. I also would rather a genuinely great pop song like Opalite by gamesmanshipped to the top than to sit through "Ordinary" or "Golden" one more time.
It absolutely is. Anything off that soundtrack is better than anything on here. And I say that as a Taylor fan.
My hot take is that the best song on the KPop Demon Hunters is one of the ones that no one seems to talk about ("Free"). I quite liked that movie/soundtrack, and also think it's gotten to be a bit overrated at this point, which maybe speaks to 2025's relative scarcity of good pop music. I also don't think "Golden" should win the Oscar (I prefer "I Lied to You") but that ship has definitely sailed.
One of the things about the post-Eras Tour era with Taylor is I swear she was not this hellbent on charts and records before “Midnights.” Like yes, she had multiple variants and tons of merch, but she wasn’t pushing “Cardigan” and “Willow” to the moon and back. I feel like the massive success of The Eras Tour combined with all her “Versions” scrambled her brain where everything has to be a smash and set some kind of record no one was paying attention to.
I definitely like it more than Showgirl, easily, but they're also kinda doing different things so I never really compare them in my head Also, What It Sounds Like supremacy, personally haha
I've said this before, but I think 1989 (Taylor's Version) broke her brain. She got a glorified re-release of a nine-year-old album to a 1.6 million first week, AND got a new number 1 hit out of it. And then she really goes all in on the alternate covers, the "only available for 24 hours, I swear!" false scarcity strategy, and generally doing anything and everything she can to push her albums AND her singles to the most inflated chart performances possible. (I don't think it's coincidental that 1989 TV is also the last time she had almost universal acclaim and good will around one of her releases.)
This album cycle is what finally did it for my wife. She saw a new variant pop up every other day and finally said, “What the fuck Taylor!?”
I’ve had no desire to revisit this and actually every time I have I like it less than I previously did. On first listen I liked the first 3, Ruin the Friendship and Honey but Opalite and Elizabeth Taylor especially lost their shine very quickly
Speaking far outside any actual personal knowledge about this subject, it’s interesting that you guys are calling this a mindset shift rather than a gradual strategic push towards the optimization of potential revenue. There were eight variants for folklore and it was specifically timed against a rule change on Billboard that affected physical releases. You’re not taking into account that there are dozens if not hundreds of people thinking about how they can push ROI. Anyway, “Wi$h Li$t” acoustic version is fun.