NEWS
MAUREEN CALLAHAN slams Taylor as a money-grabbing, narcissistic, wannabe poetess and says this intellectually stunted, clichéd new album commits the worst sin of all, TAYLOR HARSH RESPONSE.
from the Super Bowl to the 2024 presidential election. She could have been used at Gitmo to break terrorists.
Swift is a scourge, responsible for, among other things: The unforgivable trend of friendship bracelets on middle-aged women; charging tween and teenage fans thousands of dollars for tickets; cynically announcing new albums and then suddenly issuing multiple other versions with just one or two added tracks, knowing her fans will pay the price — or, as with ‘TTPD’, announcing there’s actually a double-length edition just hours after its release.
In other words, another marketing ploy to bilk fans who bought what they thought was the whole thing.
On Thursday night, Swift first dropped at least four different versions of ‘TTPD’, starting at $12.99 each. Then, after the clock struck midnight:
‘It’s a 2am surprise,’ she wrote. ‘Here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.’ Signed off with a heart emoji. Of course.
Total cost for every single version of ‘TTPD’, as of this writing, comes in just shy of $200. And that’s to say nothing of the overpriced merch (a hoodie goes for $75) on her official site.
Taylor became a billionaire last year. But this gambit, so typical of her, isn’t just about money. It’s a way of dominating the charts, breaking sales records — rigging the system, really.
It all feels patently unfair, especially for an artist who is extremely limited. Not for nothing did her peers remain unmoved as she collected that record-breaking Grammy this year.
Swift has been making music since 2006, but in all that time, she has not grown beyond a few, very myopic subjects: Famous ex-boyfriends (almost always terrible), her own victimization — for such a powerful woman, she’s never at fault, never an architect of her own misery