Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department (April 19, 2024) Album • Page 115

Put another way, no one's soundtracking a President Harris meme today with "Fortnight"

 

I guess you don't follow me then

 

i hope to God they don't run with Woman's World

 

Except they are? Because of course they are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/...ris-charli-xcx-taylor-swift-endorsements.html

Fans quickly started posting remixes on TikTok that incorporated audio from Ms. Harris’s speeches, along with her laugh, into songs by Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Mitski and Kim Petras.

 

I don't think, and I think the data backs up my point, people are as "over" Taylor or this album as this thread is. The plugged in hyper attentive group here ... I do not think is indicative of the music listening public at large. The Stanley carrying co-worker is still making Taylor Swift memes and comments in every chat and streaming the album all the time. There's a reason she's still the most searched for on YouTube and I think there's an over-indexing on personal overexposure/feelings being applied to the masses that I do not think is backed up by what's actually happening out there.

 

My mom and little sisters literally ONLY listen to Taylor. They’re not on music forums haha

 

I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive that she’s as popular as ever with most normal people while the newest album isn’t quite the lasting/impactful cultural moment that many of her previous albums were. Drake has also done insane numbers constantly for the last two decades, but since 2016-18 or so his albums do bigger numbers than ever while they enter and leave the culture pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean I don’t encounter normie Drake fans every single day. People Google Drake at a pace they will probably never Google Kendrick Lamar, but there’s no question about which of the two has had more of a lasting moment this summer and whose artistry and discography is viewed in higher esteem.

 

I dunno, seems that they are pretty on par and Kendrick spiked over Drake when he released the songs/had cultural moments recently:



Past 30 days, web US only, Kendrick is on top, spiking as expected during the cultural moment:



Seems to indicate that both are very much still in the zeitgeist (and it makes sense because they're pretty tied together due to the current musical back and forth), with Kendrick being more discussed/searched for/talked about over the last 3 months.

 

Of course Taylor Swift songs are going to be used. As I said, Taylor is absolutely huge! She's the biggest in the world right now. But her songs from TTPD aren't omnipresent, just siloed into her massive fanbase. Maybe it's just my feed, but those memes aren't what's actually breaking through. CNN is talking about "Kamala is brat".

Another data point: the only Taylor songs on the global hot 50 are "Cruel Summer" at 19 and "Fortnight" at 34. You have to go all the way to 37 in the US to see something from her on the Spotify charts.

 

Also, I am not over Taylor in any way. Counting down the days until I can start spinning "august".

 

Disclaimer at this is all anecdotal so prob means nothing lol

I feel like Tortured Poets was huge upon release and there was lots of usual relationship discourse especially around the Matty Healy stuff and posts about the black dog or whatever choosing sides. And eras tour was huge on my tiktok algorithm. But it was like a crazy two weeks and then all I've really heard about it since is the discourse around all the different versions. Obviously she and the album are massive though and it continues to sell a ton

Sabrina and Chappel are def the it girls on my social media right now and I see a lot of memes and posts about brat and people having a brat summer. But like my mom doesn't know about any of these things. Whereas she knows Taylor Swift released a new album.

Taylor is on another stratosphere and is a household name but maybe doesn't feel as "trendy" as others do rn. But she has something much more established with longevity. And honestly if tortured poets was more trendy in addition to its massive popularity already it prob would be a bit much for me

And my social media algorithms aren't indicative of the general population of course

 

The Avatar comparison seems apt to me. The sequel was the biggest movie on the planet in 2022, by a sizable margin, but I heard a fraction of the buzz around it that I heard around Top Gun: Maverick. (Consequently, I have still not seen Avatar 2, and kind of forgot it existed.)

Taylor has never felt that way to me before this, though. All her albums seemed super present in my life, both online and off. Even Lover, which was the previous "Is Taylor's power waning?" album, didn't feel like that to me.

I do think a lot of this has to do with this album just not having a super sticky hit single, at least not yet. I'm not ruling out the possibility of another song becoming that. Last I saw, there actually are two Taylor songs on the top 25 of the rolling year-end Billboard songs chart for 2024, but they're "Cruel Summer" and "Is It Over Now," not "Fortnight." And some of the bigger-seeming songs we're talking about here ("Espresso," "Not Like Us," "I Had Some Help," etc.) are doing better.

 

Also Taylor has turned into Beyoncé and does no promo anymore which she has done every single other album cycle. For Midnights she hit every single late night talk show but for Tortured Poets she’s done nothing, which is perhaps why it’s feeling like there’s less long term ”buzz” about this album.

Also I think the last time she did a non-tour performance of any of her songs was at SNL for All Too Well 10 minute version which was nearly three years ago now.

 

And again, this album’s numbers are clearly inflated by 1) the fact that it’s 31 songs long, and 2) the fact that she’s been more aggressive than ever before in getting her die-hard fans to buy multiple physical copies of it. Without those two factors, I sincerely doubt we’d be having this conversation about “why does this record-breaking Taylor Swift album not feel as monumental as past Taylor Swift albums?” because it would not be a record-breaking Taylor Swift album.

 

But you're arguing that it's not big, or has any impact.. in which it clearly does, not to you, but to A LOT of different people. If it wasn't significant, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

I said it when it came out, and I'll say it now: the album release/rollout was more focused on the shock factor of releasing so many songs than making sure all the songs were actually good. That latter part is what keeps people talking about something for a long time.

But what do I know, she's the most popular artist of my lifetime, so keep doing you.

 

The argument I'm making is NOT that this album is "not big" or "has no impact," it's that this album does not feel like the lasting cultural phenomenon that the numbers themselves would indicate, or that most past Taylor albums have been. 1989 was an album that got tabbed by a lot of culture critics as the "modern-day Thriller." The Midnights era, with the tour and everything folded in, was even bigger. I simply don't think this is that, in spite of the records.

 

If you wanna make the argument that Sabrina and Chappell are having bigger talking-point 'moments' than this album overall, I'd agree, but no way is Brat even half as popular.

 

All I know about Brat is that the cover is a meme? I haven't heard a single song anywhere.

 

I mean are we forgetting the massive amount of discourse about Matty Healy and her relationship? And her and Travis Kelce's relationship that came from this album? I think these core conversations, the lore, and the offshots of these conversations have left an incredible cultural impact. Also, Brat is kinda part of the canon of Taylor because XCX is being constantly compared and constrasted to Taylor, not to mention Sympathy as a Knife being about her. Like on TT and twitter these were huge pieces of cultural touchpoints. I'm not even that big of a Swift fan but every single one of my friends who are Swifties were texting and calling me to ask about 1975 lore so they could better understand the TTD references.

 

I don’t think anyone is making the case that this album/taylor swift isn’t massive and culturally relevant. The Eras tour feels more defining for 2023-24 Taylor Swift than this album does. Granted the whole debate about what albums mean more or have more of an impact is pretty ephemeral in general.

I feel comfortable saying brat will have a more influential cultural footprint 5-20 years from now though

 

treat yaself

 

I sing "there's still a young girl from Essex" like I can personally relate to that at all lol but it's a bop

 

Also I can do it with a broken heart will hopefully be a huge song for Taylor because it rules. I've heard that song in the wild more than fortnight so the people have spoken!

 

Some buddies and I won T swift trivia a couple weeks ago. Our team name: Deranged Weirdos.