If you’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift since Fearless, her latest release might have left you… well, fearful, to say the least. We’ve all seen it, the online discourse surrounding Swift’s new project has been instantaneous and intense. There has been a plethora of criticism and praise, some more fair than others.
A life-long Swiftie
From forcing my brother to watch the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video over a thousand times in 2017, to being a Spotify top 0.5% fan in 2023 (not to brag), I feel qualified to give my two cents here. So what’s the issue? Are we fans witnessing a creative slump and a lack of care in her craft? Are we experiencing growing pains between artist and audience? Or are we simply following the known pattern of a Taylor Swift release: intense criticism turned acclaimed classic?
Sometimes, people just enjoy tearing down successful women. So, I decided to allow the album a week or so to marinate before writing. On first listen, something just wasn’t clicking for me, and I couldn’t make it all the way through the project. Yet, due to radio exposure and many, many TikTok posts, I can see the appeal of a few of the tracks.
Some Swifties view criticism as an attack, when in reality it just shows respect (outside of the app X, of course). It is vital to identify what you love about an artist and what you do and don’t like in order to truly align with what you spend hours consuming.
When the hooks stop hitting
Taylor thrives in her ability to write catchy hooks like in “Style” and deeply moving lyrics like in “Cardigan”. However, we scarcely see either strength come out to play in the 2025 release, leaving fans wanting more. The sound lacks uniqueness and variation, and comes across as bland without the magic touch Jack Antonoff offers (the producer of many of Taylor’s previous albums). So much so that fans online are creating mash-ups of songs from 1989 and The Life of a Showgirl in an attempt to recapture the quality that we know is possible.
While The Tortured Poets Department’s criticism stemmed heavily from the notion that Swift was overly pretentious in her lyricism, this new album is truly the opposite. A personal skip of mine is track 9 “Wood”, where Swift’s use of double entendres (seemingly inspired by Sabrina Carpenter and her hits such as “Nonsense” and “House Tour”) falls flat. It is uncomfortable, and nowhere near witty enough to land well, likely due to the brand that Taylor built for herself of the awkward, girl-next-door turned introverted storyteller. Although she attempts to tap into that brand in track 5 “Eldest Daughter”, she instead manages to take ‘awkward’ too far, reminding us that she is a millennial first and global megastar second. The lyrics “I’m not a bad b*tch, this isn’t savage” appear to be a failed attempt at using Gen Z slang. Unfortunately, relatability is difficult to achieve when you’re a billionaire, especially when Swift appears to be trapped in her own bubble boasting a high school-esque mindset, lacking growth. The woe-is-me “pick me” tone is simply outdated and not favoured in 2025. Instead, tracks like “Von Dutch” by Charli XCX achieve peak popularity, reflecting the true energy that the youth of today are drawn to. “We all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire” simply doesn’t cut it. At least, not anymore.
“It just feels like there isn’t much heart in it. It’s a cash grab.”
Fellow Swiftie, Freya Astridge
Image and Authenticity
Evidently, the disconnect in both her lyrics and self-image bleeds into her branding, as saying that she likes her friends “Cancelled” in this political climate is certainly a choice and one that has sparked controversy online. Her publicly documented association with Republican Brittany Mahomes is a far cry from the Taylor we know and love, who once spoke out against right-wing politics in the Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Further, the excessive release of album variants turns her newer albums into mere photo-dumping, money-making machines, not presentations of passion.
If this album gets nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, and the works of Olivia Dean, Hayley Williams, and Conan Gray don’t, there will be grounds to question the integrity of the awards academy as the artistry of those named has been far superior as of late.
Love the Artist, just not the Era…
Yet despite this, I can’t help but bop along to the chorus of The Fate of Ophelia and will always hold Swift’s earlier works close to my heart. I will take this as a reminder that our heroes are human and that one album does not tarnish the reputation of one of the greats of our time. Perhaps the lack of raw emotion in its contents reflects that the star is in a positive place in her life, which we can only be happy to hear. If anything, it is high praise that a lot of us just expected more.