The internet is awash with speculation about the metaphors and coded references to Taylor Swift’s personal life in her latest album.
With “The Tortured Poets Department”, the global superstar has provided her fans with “information to piece together the story of someone they feel invested in personally as well as artistically”, said Emily Bootle on the i news site.
The album “couldn’t be more transparent about its subjects”, said Laura Snapes in The Guardian. But it’s hard to decipher whether Swift wanted the “highest-profile humiliation of her exes possible”, or whether it is an “admission of defeat” against the media, or simply “a naked attempt to harness the exposure guaranteed by that kind of coverage”.
‘Tension between authenticity and artistic credibility’
Swift is not the only artist releasing songs “laden with popcorn-chewing subtext”, said Snapes. The likes of Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter have also had successful hits that appear to play into the current trend of “gossip” as “pop’s driving engine”.
But do “knee-jerk responses” to albums like Swift’s say “more about our culture of misogyny” than her songwriting, asked David Robson on the BBC. Writers, poets and musicians have been producing works about lost love for thousands of years, but the “rise of mass media” in the 20th and 21st centuries has “amplified speculation about the inspiration of modern writers”.
Some critics have raised concerns about a tension between “authenticity and artistic credibility”, and suggest that an “overreliance on personal experience devalues the writer’s creative talent”. These accusations often seem sexist, Robson said, given that they are “levelled at women more than men”.
There is a clear contradiction in the way female artists are treated compared to male artists, said Bootle. Men are often said to be writing about their “muses” when it comes to past relationships, while women are simply referencing “exes”. Swift’s work has been labelled as “obsessive and crazy, or an embarrassing overshare, or even slyly manipulative of her audience”.
While Swift is the “queen of easter eggs”, said Olivia Petter in The Independent, and there will “undoubtedly” be people “scavenging for tidbits of celebrity gossip”, her music will “ultimately transcend such low-level, insipid chatter”.
All the same, “pop in a tricky spot”, said Snapes. “Too much gossip and you date your work; too little and fans lose interest.”
‘A vicious cycle’
This hunger for gossip and insight into an artist’s personal life comes from the “unprecedented position of seeing a celebrity’s life and work play out simultaneously” on social media, said Bootle.
In a previous age, without the almost “limitless information of the internet”, fans were left to assume much of what an artist was saying through their songs. Now, with Swift in particular, artists have “captivated an audience who desire personal information and self-narrative, and an idol to worship as well as an artist to engage with”. But it results in a “vicious cycle” in which the “role of celebrity and artist is blurred”, and fuels the thirst for both gossip and new artistic work.
This is not to say that “pop stars should avoid writing about their personal lives”, said Snapes, more that sustainable and “resonant pop steers between the two impulses”. “The Tortured Poets Department” has a “handful of moments like this”, she said, and those are the ones that “resound with real emotional truth”. Perhaps, even for pop music more widely, that is a “testament to leaving the picture incomplete”.