Look, I appreciate the effort but women can tell you they still have relationship issues with men 20 yrs in. YOYOK and Bigger than the whole sky are probably my faves off the last one. Anti Hero was fun - I didn't interpret those as romantic relationship songs. And at the end of the day...relationships are a pretty universal experience. This particular critique isually coupled with the ever present comments about the number of romantic relationships has always smelled bad to me. Plus it seems she's largely been coded as teen girl adjacent so she gets the pumpkin spice treatment of "anything girls like is to be mocked and belittled." Not that she's immune from criticism. I can agree with some of what you said and have my own as well.
Like clearly what she's doing career wise is working and no one is in her universe for the parasocial game - which is really probably the secret sauce.
I never saw "Anti-Hero" as a boy/girl love song. I thought it was a "
maybe I'm the problem" song.
A fine song, and one I think that would work better with a true rock beat instead of a synthpop soundscape, but it's another IV I V iv four-chord sequence by her. The production dresses it up as best that it can and the lyrics are introspective by her, but it is just going to end up sounding like other songs.
I get romantic love is one of the primary sources for inspiration for all songwriters (women and men alike). But she's
very and
almost exclusively reliant on it. And she's almost always singing with her own voice about her own experience and feelings without mixing in much for metaphor. She has occasionally gotten away from that narrow focus (especially on the folksy pandemic albums that I like) but only rarely.
Plenty of male and female rockstars and popstars have had troubled personal lives (and looking at the "Personal Life" section on
Wikipedia for many of them looks like a thermonuclear weapon went off there). Plenty of them used that for inspiration in their songwriting. But plenty more of them used other themes as the foundation for songs and albums... especially when they recorded 10+ of them. George Harrison put "Something" on
Abbey Road, yeah, a quintessential love song, but he also put "Here Comes the Sun" on there, a life-affirming and beautiful song meditating on life and loss. I wish she would try riskier things like that.
I'm not critical of her personal life. I actually don't know much about it. You're right she's the master of the parasocial relationship. I like her for her friendly, bubbly self rather than whoever she is dating and want to meet her cats. The only relationship of hers I know much of anything about is the current one with Travis Kelce because I knew who Travis Kelce was a long time ago and she keeps popping up on the TV whenever I try to watch football on Sunday and the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes are breaking the heart of yet another opponent.
I find it hard to square that her personal life is irrelevant to her public persona when it is central to her work as a musician and, as you said, foundational to the parasocial relationship so many of her fans have with her. They bonded with her over songs about the same ****** boyfriends they had growing up.
I try to keep it about music and cats, though, and occasionally football.
Music? I give her a solid "B." Always listenable if a bit repetitive. Slick and professional but very much anchored to its era and lacking in musical and lyrical adventurousness.
Cats? A+
I don't mind her at Chiefs' games. A few cuts to her isn't obnoxious. Though she could shut it down entirely if she wanted to and... she's chosen not to. Lots of NFL stars date famous actresses and models.
Notice that you never see cuts to Hailee Steinfeld during Bills' games even though she's dating Josh Allen... because her PR team told the broadcast networks they didn't want her shown in that manner.
Taylor...? Doesn't seem to mind...