Maggie R (Maggie)

Nothing beats Billie’s voice. Nothing beats Finneas’ instrumentals - this album is a cloudy mess of both with no coherent thesis or intelligible purpose. I want MORE Billie and better Finneas - these instrumentals are stale and frankly uninteresting. I want it to be better. I know they both can be. I desperately want someone like Professsor Skye to not only praise the album but actually explain how it is good musically - please. Not hearing it and it’s making me sad.

Essential listening. This is a complex, difficult album to listen to. It is filled with female rage, classic Taylor nostalgia, excellent lyrics, very dark humour, tons of 1975 diss references, and more classic "I can do it with a broken heart" fun hope. It is not easy to listen to or understand. But it is simultaneouly heartbreaking and overwhelmingly relatable. There are themes about the American West, escape, feelings of being trapped and some extraordinary expresson of Taylor's experience as a pop star for her entire adult life: The control from her label and the industry, the critics, the fans obsessions and para-social commentary on her love life. She is not holding back. She is not trying to be poetic. The poetry is simply who she is at this point and she's chosen her most trusted reliable producers to work with. She does not care about doing something "new" on this album. She is giving us raw material at it's best. We need the rock album, we need the re-records, we want more acoustic, we want and we want. This is what she has. She's said it. It's here and it's true and it's excellent and complex and you may not like it but this is it. And she's closing the book on the era. This is the greatnesss of Taylor Swift. I wish more people understood who she is - but if you don't - accept that she is silly and funny and very very hurt and very very determined to do her job well.