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Taylor Swift’s new album Increasingly, which was released at midnight Thursday in a surprise release, was Swift’s second surprise album of 2020. It comes after the highly acclaimed Folklore and while Swift continues to re-record her old masters (she joked a bit about the new “Love Story” in early December). Jesus, you might be forgiven for thinking when Swift announced Increasingly less than 24 hours before launch. Do you ever sleep?
But this streak of productivity fits into an emerging popular consensus about Taylor Swift. Commentators have begun to agree that what’s most compelling about Swift is how much she works and how seriously she takes that job. That’s a striking contrast to the consensus on Taylor Swift a few years ago, when she was seen as a hard-working person whose hard work was unpleasant.
“Taylor Swift is not very good at indifference,” commented one reviewer in 2017, concluding that she would probably enjoy Reputation more “if Taylor Swift weren’t so tough.”
For Vulture in 2015, Lindsay Zoladz described Swift’s moment of embarrassment 1989 concert tour: Swift gives the audience “the look that the wide-eyed naive girl gives to sparkling skyscrapers in her coming-of-age movie just after getting off the Greyhound” as the crowd around her wore armbands illuminated plastic that glowed with different colors and pulsed to the beat of their songs. “Do you think Taylor is controlling these with your mind? Zoladz joked. And it was the fact that Swift was trying so hard, regulating everything so tightly that you could see the sweat, that made the moment chilling.
At Jezebel, Jia Tolentino said the regulated, edged brilliance of the same concert tour made her think of Swift as “an animated mannequin, a Rockette in XR Adderall.”
Swift “is a publicly ruthless capitalist pop star,” Gawker concluded in an article titled “Taylor Swift is not your friend.”
The consensus was that Swift was so determined to become a megastar that she went overboard and turned out to be fake. Her qualities of obsession with control and Type A effort made her seem calculated.
But even in the 2015 to 2019 era of Swift’s peak backlash, a sense was brewing that the same control freak tendencies were compelling, even admirable, when Swift applied them not to her public persona but to her singing. .
“Swift’s automatic musicality, shown only briefly behind a guitar for one song and a piano for another, is as physically magnetic as any choreographed routine,” Tolentino wrote about it. 1989 concert tour.
And the idea that Swift’s hard work was not a liability but, in fact, a major asset began to consolidate around her after the release of American lady, the Netflix documentary about Swift that debuted in January. As almost all the reviews pointed out, one of the most interesting parts of the movie was just watching Swift noodle at her piano while writing her songs.
“She writes lyrics and melodies quickly, seemingly effortlessly, while her collaborators struggle to keep up,” wrote Rachel Handler for Vulture, noting that Swift’s unproduced acoustic version of “ME!” it sounded better than the final product.
“It is a constant pleasure to watch Swift work and to see the joy that spreads across her face as she reads a verse or a melody,” wrote Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker. “Every time you complete a song, you seem to look at it in genuine amazement.”
“The most fascinating parts of the film are when we see Swift just doing her job, conjuring up perfectly vague but concise lyrics as a producer spins a synth alongside her,” Richard Lawson argued on Vanity Fair. “It’s exciting to see her create, because she’s so good at it. That’s when everything feels truly organic, unadorned, uncompromised by any attempt to soften reality. ”
And when Folklore Success in July, he continued this narrative of Swift as a serious craftsman – someone who put in the work and was good at the job. Part of what distinguishes Folklore Of Swift’s other recent records was the lack of polished, precision-crafted radio-ready pop. Instead, it was filled with quieter, simpler melodies that allowed Swift’s talents as a lyricist to shine through. Furthermore, by displaying that skill while locked in, Swift only further emphasized his enviable work ethic.
Swift’s previous albums, written by Laura Snapes for The Guardian, had been grueling, filled with “the feeling that one of the greatest pop songwriters of all time is overcompensating despite her obvious talent.” But with Folklore, all that changed: “Folklore it shows you can thrive away from noise. “
“There’s a bit of a Rosie the Riveter spirit,” wrote Chris Willman in Variety, “in how Swift has become the first major pop artist to offer a top-tier album that went from germination to being completely locked in the middle of a emergency shutdown. “
The idea of the pop star whose hard work and determination turns glamorous and aspirational isn’t new. Beyoncé, the queen of pop of our era Rise and Grind, has perfected it. But it’s new to Swift, and it suggests that she finally found a way to channel her workhorse vibes away from the sense of control that perked up her reaction period and toward something more meaningful and desirable.
“Swift has always seemed more herself like the precociously talented songwriter,” says Carl Wilson on Slate. Increasingly review; “The side of the pop star is where his clumsiness as an outstanding student emerges.”
Swift herself speaks of her work ethic with some ambivalence. In a 2009 Rolling Stone profile, he recalls that he couldn’t stop practicing on his first guitar. “When I picked up the guitar, I couldn’t stop,” he says. “I literally played until my fingers bled, my mom had to tape them down, and you can imagine how popular it made me: ‘Look at his fingers, how weird.’ (The image of blood on a guitar here is a very swifty one on one of his first big hits, “Teardrops on My Guitar”).
In his recently released documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, she notices that the Folklore the track “Mirrorball” is about his mixed feelings about his compulsion to work. “I wrote this song right after all my shows were canceled,” he says, and then quotes his own lyrics: “I’m still on the line. I’m still trying everything to keep you laughing at me. “
“I know I have an excuse to sit back and do nothing,” he muses, “and I’m not. I don’t know why that is. “
With FolkloreSwift worked her way through the hard work of finding a way to draw the crowd to her. And now that you’ve figured out what worked the first time, here it is Increasingly, Folklorethe brother album, for keep looking at her.
