I need more people to read this piece by Taffy Brodesser-Akner so I can talk to them about it because I think it’s one of the smartest essays I’ve ever read about pop culture.
This a gift link, so no complaining about paywalls.
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@KVV I will read this, you should play in the 3BR 4.0 on July 20 too while I’m thinking about it
OK, @KVV I’ll bite. What makes it so great? I’ve now read it twice and feel like it would be good at maybe 4000 words, but at 8500 it felt bloated and tedious.
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I’m still reading it but this line is so perfect:
She would realize that this new person she had become was someone whose best work would come from her reactions to the world, her urgent metabolization of her pain into poetry.
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Would be fascinated (horrified?) to hear what 4000 words you would cut.
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As someone who enjoys her music and has followed her career for 15+ years but also wouldn’t consider themselves a Swiftie, I thought it did a really good job highlighting the key moments, songs, relationships, etc of her time in the spotlight while also weaving in sweet anecdotes and interactions from that particular concert.
I also think it is pretty remarkable that one of the most criticized and maligned artists of my generation has become such a uniting force this deep into her career. I used to roll my eyes when I would hear stories about her fans and how much of their identities were seemingly wrapped into someone who makes music for a living. But now? I think it is sort of sweet.
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Well…that hit fucking hard
She puts on the dress and picks up her hairbrush and puts on “Love Story,” and she sings the song that was playing when she got engaged, the song that was a little bit taken from her that day even as it became a monumental part of her own permanent history. But even as she sings, even as she finds the old pleasure in the song, she remembers her time on the balcony of Section 301. She understands for the first time that those balcony moments are more fun to wait for than to live. Because once you live them, there starts a backward-counting clock in which the bedroom is no longer yours alone, and singing “Love Story” in your purple dress will make less and less sense.
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I was trudging through it, half curious and half confused about here this was going, and then I got to this part. God damn. That part hit me like a ton of bricks.
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Her ability to weave Taylor’s history from the beginning, with the Eras tour, with the huge scope of people attending the concert, all while passively exploring adolescence, romantic love, friendship, relationships, identity, celebrity journalism, and probably 10 other things I missed is nothing short of remarkable.
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I really loved this article, and thought it was a perfect way to sum up Taylor Swift’s career, and to be honest, there’s a lot more she could’ve included.
However, I also thought this whole paragraph summed it up best, especially for those who have been following Taylor Swift from the start.
I don’t know if I could tell a story about Taylor Swift that’s better than the story she tells about herself, through every song, every dance, every video, every social transmission. She is a master not just at the revelation of information but the analysis of each revelation, the scrutiny of that analysis, the contextualization of it all. The way this concert has consumed the world is the living embodiment of one destabilizing question to me: How could I interpret Taylor Swift better than she does, better than her fans do online, every day, without my interference or input? They’re reading her codes, hunting down her clues, complying with her wishes, finding themselves in her world — a place that someone like me used to have the privilege of visiting alone.
@KVV I’m curious your thoughts on the this part: “This isn’t a loss for them; for the most part, they’ll be happy when the entire profile format is eradicated.”
I had a feeling this was coming, and over the years, I wondered how this would go with sports because of The Players’ Tribune. To be honest, I don’t read The Players’ Tribune like I did a few years ago, and I’d much rather read a well-written article or profile from a journalist/writer, rather than a first-person account.
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There are some of the most hilarious bits in this article. The way her son constantly but subtly ages throughout is fantastic.
Ezra returned with some nachos. I don’t want to brag, but he’s a doctor now! He had gotten married and bought a co-op downtown.
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Fair point. After reading it a third time, maybe it’s this: there is so much packed in here and I feel like it meanders all over the place and it’s hard to follow the threads as they crisscross over one another. Maybe I would appreciate it more if it was something like a 5 part series where the different threads were discussed more linearly.
Or maybe I’m just too simple (and unfamiliar with the Taylor Swift oevre) to understand, follow, and unpack it all.
She’s buddies with Brittany Mahomes. Jackson undoubtedly next. Bad, bad, bad. Will not support this propaganda. Hard pass.
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I love so many parts, but I think I love this the most, and I think it (I’m being sincere) helped me understand my 13-year-old daughter better.
It’s a form of dancing I haven’t done in front of anyone for years; it’s the kind of thing I used to do with a group of other young women or girls when there were no boys around, or at least no boys we cared to impress. That’s what this entire concert reminded me of — time I spent in my own teenage bedroom, singing songs and pinballing between sexy stripper moves and goofy square dancing. Maybe that’s what Eras really is: the acknowledgment of girls as people to memorialize, of who we are and who we were, all existing in the same body, on the same timeline. You are your sluttiest version, your silliest version, your most wholesome, your smartest, your dumbest, your saddest, your happiest — all at once.
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This line spoke to me having attended a couple of P!nk concerts with my wife.
Ezra returned from the bathroom. “Wow,” he said. “The men’s room was emp-ty .” We’d been in the line for what seemed like hours by then. He’d grown a little bit of beard while he was gone. “It was really nice, actually. Peaceful.”
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I had a friend describe her TS experience as “Like Phish, but cute”. Made me smile, and understand.
The mood was solemn — spiritual, even. I have prayed at dawn at the Temple Mount. I have stood among quivering supplicants at the graves of biblical forefathers. I have walked in trembling silence as I entered farther and farther into the inner sanctums of the Vatican. This was like that, except for girls.
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I don’t have much to add to the discussion except that that was a fantastic read.
Long Live Celebrity Profiles!
Reading her description of the people sitting with her in section 301, my first thought was “someone needs to tell Alan Shipnuck that this is how you set the scene!”
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