Taylor Swift upped the ante of the release of “The Tortured Poets Department” by gifting Swifties more Easter eggs to unlock and a SiriusXM channel dedicated to her music.
None of that was enough, however: Two hours after “TTPD’s” release early Friday, the singer announced that there was a second LP titled “The Anthology” — bringing the total to 31 new songs for her fans to analyze to death.
It’s safe to say Swift outdid herself on this latest endeavor. But why does she insist on undoing any emotional growth she’s gained by bringing up an old feud from nearly 10 years ago?
Before I dive in to this analysis of the singer’s need to move on, I feel compelled to be clear: I absolutely adore her music. I find her lyrics incredibly relatable, if not extremely powerful, and usually want to listen to her albums while bathing in the dark with nothing but a lit candle to leave my tears in shadow.
No one does heartbreak and lost dreams like Swift. But no one should be writing about feuds as much as she does — especially when they’re from a bygone era and she already has a whole album about them (“Reputation,” from 2017).
It all began in 2009 when Kanye West interrupted Swift’s speech at the “VMAs,” though the two appeared to make amends in 2015 when they posed for photos together at the same awards show.
One year later, that rapport would meet its demise.
And now — after various eras — Swift uses a rather elementary code of lowercase and capital letters, Swift re-characterizes Kim Kardashian as a high-school bully on “thanK you aIMee,” the new album’s 24th track. Swift is 34 years old, so why is she singing as if she’s 16 again — thinking high school is the end all, be all of our lives?
“And maybe you’ve reframed it / And in your mind, you never beat my spirit black and blue / I don’t think you’ve changed much / And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues / And one day, your kid comes home singin’ / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you, ’cause,” Swift sings, seemingly referring to a TikTok video of Kim and her daughter North West singing along to “Shake It Off.”
If Kim, 43, has grown enough to dance to the hit from “1989” with her daughter — knowing that it would be newsworthy — Swift should be adult enough to see it as flattery, instead of using it as evidence in a one-sided war she believes she’s won.
Instead, Swift (who incidentally outed herself as a viewer of the mother-daughter duo’s video) pens a narrative that suggests she believes Kim doesn’t know the song’s about her. As if. It takes a narcissist to know a narcissist.
Suffice it to say, should Swift even be referencing a 10-year-old child who seems, as fate would have it, to be a Swiftie? Absolutely not.
It has been eight years since Kim famously leaked Swift’s conversation with Kanye West, in which she gave approval for the “Famous” lyric “I made that bitch famous” — after Swift had vehemently denied doing so.
So much time has gone by, in fact, that not only has Kim divorced Kanye, but he already has moved on to his second wife, Bianca Censori. Yet the Eras Tour performer still feels compelled to attack the former couple in a second song on “TTPD” titled “Cassandra” — positing herself as the Greek priestess of myth who warned the world of tragedy but was never believed.
“They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time / That I was onto something / The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line,” she sings on track 27, seemingly referring to the Kardashian family and West’s former Sunday Services.
“They all said nothing / Blood’s thick but nothing like a payroll / Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul / You can mark my words that I said it first / In a morning warning, no one heard.”
The Kardashians going for a paycheck is nothing new — billionaire Kylie Jenner’s foray into spiked seltzers is a desperate attempt to cash in on a trend years too late — but isn’t Swift doing the same by penning songs about a years-old feud?
At the time that Kim had exposed the conversation, Swift replied that she’d like to be “excluded from this narrative.” So then why is she reinvigorating the narrative eight years later?
I also feel compelled to say that no, the Kardashians did not ask for this piece to be written. Undoubtedly, my social media will be filled with accusations that Kris Jenner “paid” me to write this but, unfortunately for me, she didn’t.
The new tracks already have radicalized the Swifties into bearing arms in the should-be defunct war against the Kardashians, with many having woken up and deciding to troll the reality star on social media.
There’s no denying Swift’s power and influence over her fans. She jumps, they jump. She cries, they tear her exes asunder. But in 2024, when cyberbullying has never been worse, Swift should not be using her pen to take people down — especially women who have moved on from their problematic pasts (and husbands).
No one knows better than Swift that the pen is mightier than the sword, so it’s about time she starts using it to effect positive change instead of harping on old feuds. I’d say she should look inward and reevaluate, but no one focuses more on herself than thee Taylor Alison Swift.
Then again, if she ever moved on from her issues, we wouldn’t be getting her “Taylor’s Version” re-records, inspired by her feud with music manager Scooter Braun, or a 10-minute version of “All Too Well.”
The moment “TTPD” hit streamers, Swift wrote on social media that “this period of the author’s life is now over” and promised listeners there’s “nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed …
“Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it,” she added.
And hopefully we can be “free” of this tired narrative — though we’ll only find out when she releases the next album.
