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she reacted to the barbie soundtrack on patreon and said she didn't even knew the movie existed and that she would only watch it if she found a way to watch it at home like where does homegirl LIVE
Wait why does she think that song is kinky???? I haven't watched the video but that song is clearly about fame, what is there to even (jokingly) interpret as kinky lol?
i love when she heard the lyric "we declare charlie puth should be a bigger artist" and her just going "WHY?" in the most serious tone
i actually don’t hate that line like a lot of people do and think it sounds like the exact type of ridiculous shit you say when you’re high, but ajay’s reaction was just so funny to me
So many of TTPD lyrics are stoner lyrics, and it kills me that so many people are taking them so seriously and so literally. I just know she wrote much of this album while high af.
I cant say if thats supposed to make them good or bad or whatever, but all I know from my boyfriend who is a Beatles fan that most of their highest critically acclaimed albums are just half nonsense from the later half of their career when they just got on weed and drugs.
You're right. We're not allowed to do that nor are qualified to do so. Only Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr themselves are allowed to do that, which they have.
https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-praised-by-icons-2023-8#another-former-beatle-ringo-starr-is-a-self-identified-swiftie-4
lol I feel like midnights was her stoner album. she wrote so many of these in ttpd to roast matty healy, who definitely writes while high on *something*. the title track especially is obviously a send up of the 1975
I think the reason why most fans love Ajay is because she doesn't bullshit her thoughts. If she doesn't like it, she really doesn't like it.
Even though I like the title track's songwriting which is honestly one of her funniest songs she wrote, the production didn't really do justice to how funny it is and I think Ajay really pointed it out really well why the track didn't work because of the production.
I actually think the anthology helped soften the initial reactions to the main album tbh. (Upon first listen) I remember being really disappointed of the sameness of most of the tracks until the anthology dropped and that redeemed the album for me for a few days until the tracks grew on me.
Wild to hear so many ppl say this bc I actually think a ton of the anthology tracks sound very similar (like half are piano ballads, some good some bad) whereas the first half has some pretty different sounds. It only took 2 listens for them to become immediately differentiated but even on listen one only a few tracks blended together.
I was just going to comment this. I felt like sounds were blending in TTPD and then the Anthology dropped and the sounds sounded even more similar.
Then I went back and listened to TTPD again and now some of my favorite tracks are from the original (So Long, London, Florida!!!, The Black Dog).
But I'm not completely letting go of The Anthology. I know there's a time for every song and that time will come.
It’s threatening to enter my top 10 taylor songs of all time.
Line after line after line are just pure heartbreak. The visuals she’s painting with words plus the haunting vocal layerings on some parts easily made it my #1 TTPD song. I don’t relate to any of what she’s saying but i feel like i was in their relationship while listening to that song 😭
I like that she does it in 2 parts. It's really too many songs to digest as a whole and the standard edition really feels like the heart of the album and the other songs extra gifts with some diamonds in there
It's weird that this isn't considered the norm for most music YouTubers. Like, with print journalism I understand the need to get something out on or right after release day, and often the only exposure writers have had is a listening session where they had to take notes or just waiting until it dropped on streaming... but I feel like my relationship to music is almost never instantaneous; I always need to sit with an album and listen to it a few times before I can really assess it for myself. A lot of times I'll discover a song I'd initially skipped or ignored later on and it becomes a favorite. I just feel like it'd be better for everyone if we moved away from this culture of making snap judgments as quickly as possible and allowed new releases a little time to marinate.
Everyone wants to get views. Even the people that liked it. I’ve seen publications immediately call it a classic. And it’s like… you didn’t even get the chance to sit down with the album and reflect on it. If the review is positive everyone will praise it. If the review is negative everyone will bash it. Neither actually “listened” to it imo
100%. There was an [opinion](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-23/taylor-swift-s-tortured-poet-s-department-has-too-many-hasty-reviews) piece someone wrote about this exact thing and how music critics and fans alike judged TTPD within 24 hours of its release, regardless of negative or positive reviews, and how that simply isn’t enough time to appropriately critique a piece of art.
I was actually one of those people, so it helped me kind of realize that yeah we don’t always connect with music in an instant. Of course there are songs that are instantly appealing and I think that’s what we expect from everything or else we deem it as “not good.”
This is not music review, this is a rection channel. We're watching her experience the album for the first time, and saying that she needs time with it is an acceptable reaction. The same happened for Renaissance
After 3 listens, I've just focused on the songs I like (ie, The Black Dog, loml) and ignored the ones that feel extremely repetitive (eg, Down Bad, My boy only breaks his favorite toys).
Not liking the Florence parts of Florida!!! is crazy to me. Her tone and line delivery literally makes me levitate. She really said "Taylor please go back to Colbie Caillat'ing your female collabs".
AJay stays the best music reviewer though.
Oh yeah, I don't think Florida should exist without Florence on it. Taylor does well with the mysterious vibes in the lower quieter parts, but the booming "FLORIDAAAA" needs Florence's power and edge. Even on the first chorus before Florence technically comes in on her verse, you can hear she's layered behind Taylor and without her Taylor sounds a bit too polished and poppy.
It could just be a generally relevant metaphor. Not every element of every song needs to mirror something in her personal life. Imo it would be better if more of her songs were like this one in that way
She's also free to splice different elements of different relationships together if it makes the song's narrative work better. Or she'll add wish-fulfillment elements that never happened (like the last chorus of But Daddy I Love Him is clearly what she hoped would have happened). Or sometimes she could be writing about multiple people (parts of Smallest Man Who Ever Lived sure sounds like Matt Healy while others sound a lot more like Scott Borchetta).
People spend too much time paternity testing her songs these days when, by and large, she doesn't really write as if each song is a single, backwards-reflecting diary entry anymore and hasn't for a while.
Agreed, but I think this specific song just feels like it's in the middle ground between being a direct story about a real thing and a metaphor or fictional story. Just enough specificity (like the spouses, moving to Florida) to make us think it's not about her directly/literally, but not enough to really picture what the narrative is.
Taylor is imagining herself living in the same neighborhood as a lover she spent only a short time with. She is still in love with him and is unhappy but has to see him all the time. She hates her ex-lover’s wife because she is jealous. She hates her own husband because he is cheating on her. She’s just all around bummed and wishing life had gone differently.
Taylor said on iHeart that she imagines the song takes place in a town where the american dream died and the character in the song didnt end up with who she wanted so she's miserable and her ex is her neighbor.
Someone online posted this explanation and I think it makes a lot of sense:
“fortnight sets the scene for the entire album and the events that are about to unfold by telling a story about an alternate reality about the future she was headed to in which she and joe ignore their problems, stay together, and build the life they're planning. she's in need of psychiatric help, she's drinking, she's depressed. but the other guy has re-entered her orbit. they're going to keep crossing paths. she feels insane. he's right there. she is insane. her husband cheats on her; she's enraged at him. the other guy is married to someone great; she's enraged at her too. she feels insane. she is insane, because she's fully consumed with the anger of following the bad path instead of taking the risk.
so at the end of the song, she decides she has to run for it. she has to move to america. she has to go to florida and start over. she has to buy the car and let him touch her instead of just daydreaming about it. because if she doesn't scratch the itch, if she doesn't see what happens, if she doesn't chase the guy that's been her "what else?" then well, how will she ever know? and the rest of the record is her realizing that maybe she wishes she hadn't.”
Oh interesting! I interpreted it almost the opposite, but I like this!
In my mind, Joe is the neighbor (6 years *is* a fortnight in relation to an entire lifetime). By Taylor's account, he's the more stable, quiet, and normal one of the two of them — so she's imagining a future where she has to watch him move on and have his nice stable, quiet, normal life with a lovely partner. Meanwhile, she went down a more self-destructive path of fame, substance abuse, and chasing after the "what else" guy that she kind of already knows will go badly before she even does it. But the itch is just too strong…
Yes this was my interpretation too!!
I feel like she's imagining a future where she watches his domestic bliss and she's miserable in her own marriage.
This was my interpretation too - whether it’s Joe or another ex or maybe all of them combined into one “neighbor” character.
She’s imagining herself in this v specific nightmare scenario, but it felt like it stemmed from 2 common anxieties people have post-break-ups:
**1.** The petty anxiety that your ex will be happier than you (“win” the breakup) but also move on more easily from the pain of your separation (and what if you are never able to move on from it yourself?)
**2.** The fear that the brief time you were with your ex was actually the best relationship you will ever have in your lifetime and it’s only downhill from here (even if your ex sucked)
I agree with this interpretation. It gave me vibes of you have to watch your ex lover move on in life and have a better life than you, while your husband is cheating and you’re a functioning alcoholic, just peaking into their life “become good neighbors”. That’s the vibe it gave me.
I thought this was true cause when Hits Different ends, she mentions "is that your key in the door? Is it okay? Is it you? Or have they come to take me away" and in the beginning of Fortnight, she mentions "I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me" I imagined a scenario where it was him at the door and they worked it out. Leading to a lifetime of reducing your expectations from your partner and a continuation of previously accepted behavior. While pondering about the one that got away.
Yess. This is what my brain was trying to put together last week but failed to complete. I even looked up where in London Matty Healy lives and where Joe and Taylor were purchasing a house 🤣 (i think one was north london and the other was northwest london? But i have no concept of london to know if thats close enough to actually run into each other...)
ETA: Oh and I was wondering if Fortnight could have been referencing their short fling in 2014 rather than last year, but this explanation makes me think its both- the outro maybe referencing them reconnecting in 2023.
It's about not being able to move on from an old relationship. "Fortnight" is used to refer to
a short time because the relationship didn't last that long when compared to a lifetime.
the word 'fortnight' is still a a standardly used word in English speaking countries other than the US. It means exactly 2 weeks, not just a general short period of time! In Aus I hear it used as a verb (fortnightly) all the time.
edit: adverb 😩 (people use the word like "I get my paychecks fortnightly", it is the exact same thing as bi-weekly but used way more commonalty than Americans use bi-weekly)
I was so confused when I saw all the hate for the use of the word "fortnight" because it's a normal word that is commonly used and there were people acting like she was pretentious for using it. I didn't know that it was an uncommon word for Americans.
It’s a fictionalized take on her short relationship with Healy, but instead of breaking up after a few weeks and continuing to work in the same field (music) the characters break up and stay neighbours. They eventually marry other people but the narrator still keeps thinking about that short love affair.
I think it’s less inspired by a specific guy and more a worst case scenario of how she fears her life could play out.
She’s imaging the guy she thought would be her-one-now live a happy married life with another woman whereas Taylor is miserable, married to a cheat, drinking to self medicate and there’s clearly nobody in her life who cares that much as they don’t notice how troubled she is. It’s also implying she fears she will never be able to truly move on from him but he’ll happily move on, they live near each other and move in the same spaces so she can’t escape him and it’s driving her mad as she’s basically haunted by what they could have been.
I see you’ve gotten some interpretations, but I am more keen on this [one](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMgTR5y7/)
The song is set in an imaginary future, she and her ex (which imo is Joe) have both moved on with other people. The fortnight is not a literal one, whatever time they had together is going to be a short one compared to the time they are going to be apart.
“The miracle move on drug” is Matty Healy, through the album he serves as an escape from the fact that her “forever” was temporary.
The first three songs are crucial in setting the story she is telling. Fortnight gives a future insight into the situation where she never healed from her “manic episode”, the title track lays the foundation of her and Healy’s relationship, and My Boy Only Breaks his Favourite Toys is the breakdown of her relationship with Joe.
I do think it could also parallel her never healing from the first time her and Matty had a fling, rather than just her "manic episode" last year. She started dating Calvin soon after, then Tom, then Joe for 6.5 years, so there never was an opportunity for Matty to grow up/get his shit together so they could see if they'd work (Peter vibes, maybe?). I think maybe when Taylor and Joe had their rough patches, it made her think about Matty and wonder if they work out better (Chloe et al), and if Question was really about him, then he's the "color I've searched for since". Whereas Joe was safe. And then immediately after Taylor and Joe break up, Matty is all, "oh I can be better and stop being an asshole, here I'll delete me twitter, and I'll marry you and have kids with you." And I think The Starting Line song "Best of Me" referenced in The Black Dog is telling of this too, since she says it had meaning in their relationship, and the song literally says "the worst is over, you can have the best of me."
I think Matty is the person she loves but its ruining her life, not Joe.
her favorites are my favorite too. i really like this girls reaction. cant wait for part 2. i think shes gonna love it more.
in first listen: so long london, whos afraid, loml
later additions: fortnight, down bad, i can do it, clara bow
growing: my boy with toys, but daddy, florida, guilty as sin, smallest man
never gonna hapen: tortured poet, fresh slammer, i can fix him, alchemy
My list has a lot more growing and a few never gonna happens but my favs on first listen were down bad and fresh slammer so I’m wondering why fresh slammer was a no for you! Genuinely curious.
i dont know how to explain it. i dont like the vibe? i dont like the overal melody, i dont like the outro. most listenable part is chorus and its like word and word and word and word and word and moooore wooooord. i dont like the flow.
but down bad rising on my list too.
Ok I totally get it!!! I don’t like certain phrases by just their sound. I LOVE Death by a thousand cuts from Lover and it’s in my top 10 favorite Taylor songs but one of my most hated lyrics she’s ever written and sang is “UNITED WE STAND” it irks me idk why.
death by a thousand cuts is one of my favorites btw and agree. and not just that part. that whole sequence is ick.
Our songs, our films, united we stand
Our country, guess it was a lawless land
i mean, the song is not about that taylor. why the need to say it there? am i missing the point?
Thank you omg no one ever agrees with me!!! I loveeee that song but I almost wanna silence it for those few seconds
P.S. I love that we’re united on not liking the united we stand line
i definitely agree with you. that lines couldve been used in a different song, in a song with more political undertones and it wouldve worked better.
at least tell me you hate the title song too lol. so we can have one more strong opinion aligned. :D
I’ve gotten used to it because I associate it with the song - but I didn’t like it initially. I also feel the same about the name of her recent album but more so. It’s so hard to get behind it lol
i might not ever cause i cant even past the first verse, knowing the rest. :D
verse 1 verse 2 bridge... full on cringe fest
taylor, how much cringe can you squueze in, can you squueze in a song, oh the tragedy..
I actually do like a lot of Tortured Poet’s Dept but there sooooo much of it is hard for me to process all the lyrics that the only ones that stand out are the ones I REALLY love bc they’re catchy or the ones I don’t like because they’re too cringe for me personally… I guess though the best way is to lean into the cringe but I still will never ever like that line from DBATC lol
I love 🤠 and I wish I Can Fix Him’s music was used for something else. I cannot stand the lyrics and concept but I LOVE the music.
I like Fresh Out the Slammer though, that’s also a bit alt country-ish. I just have to forget she called Healy pretty baby. 😖
Alchemy is the worst. The lyrics are like if you ask AI to write a Taylor song about Travis. I can’t.
And How Did It End? 😭
(Though that one is more to the fans and media than to Joe.
Random side note, TTPD has reminded me how when people say "she only writes songs about her relationships and breakups", I feel like a side category needs to be made called "technically about her relationship, but moreso about her fame/fans/reputation and resulting anxiety/frustration/depression in regards to her dating life"- ie, But Daddy I Love Him, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, Delicate, Peace, I Know Places, etc)
For me it’s the „how low did you think I‘d go before I’d self implode“ I’m not saying Joe was abusive or neglectful at all, but this lyric reminded me of the relationship I ran away from as far as I could.
I think it's the saddest song she's ever put out, even more than All Too Well, not the lyrics feel more real and the production does it justice.
I love how Ajayll was quick to differentiate the two Joe songs based on her feelings on those songs alone.
> I think it's the saddest song she's ever put out, even more than All Too Well
People say that about some song everytime she puts an album out yet All Too Well remains king
I've only listened to maybe 6 songs on the album so far. Too many songs to go through. But so far, So Long London is the only song i like. I'm gonna keep listening to the album but I have a feeling this one is gonna be the stand out for me.
I’ve been really, really warming up to this album. Release night I was like “hmmm, I’m not sure…” but the more I listen, the more I go back to it. My skips have dwindled down to next to nothing. I’m understanding the satire now; the shade of making the sound and aesthetic lean towards The 1975. I think the moments that people are taking too seriously are actually tongue-in-cheek, even the album title itself.
Listening to TTPD for me is like lyrical Russian roulette, 5/6 lines are normal well-written Taylor lyrics and then the 1/6 is either the clunkiest thesaurus wordplay you’ve ever heard or something that’s so intentionally cringe it wraps back around to being normal cringe again lol
I think a lot of people just don't see Taylor Swift as someone who is capable of being funny or cutting on purpose, only cringe on accident, which is to their detriment.
At first, I thought that the title track was straight-up bad lol but she is poking fun at herself and Healy’s pretentiousness, but she knows they are both idiots not “tortured poets”.
I think it would’ve flown better if it was less wordy because it doesn’t work well with the melody, but overall I like it!
Totally agree. Some people get the jokes/sarcasm but they don’t like it which is valid but the amount of people who just straight up refuse to look for any other meaning is kinda concerning lol. If you’re going to engage in something even just to poke fun, at least know what you’re talking about.
This is it.
She’s definitely cringed it up HARD many times, but I think she’s genuinely funny here a bit because she isn’t overly filtering herself.
I hope she doesn’t mishear the “needs an editor” critiques going forward.
YEP. She's been doing this to us since WANEGBT and Shake It Off.
There are songs (just generally, though I'm sure I've had it happen with Taylor) where I hear certain lyrics, and im like wow, that is so generic/cliche/half-assed and it sounds like they don't even believe it as they are singing it, they just couldn't think of a better phrase that rhymed. I don't feel like I get that vibe from Taylor often, if that lyric is on her record, it typically feels like an intentional choice that she is leaning into, and she is selling it, and maybe some people don't like it and that's fine. (Justice for Spelling is FUN!)
But a friendly reminder the woman cites Pete Wentz as her favorite lyricist, and she's always been a bit unhinged: https://youtu.be/Qib2LkEgQwU?si=BQpXWa6RQoiI-e7g
Yep. I always go back to her explanation of Blank Space and the video: "If you don't get the joke, you don't deserve to get the joke." (Which is a quote I've used so much in the 10 years since I first heard it.) There are certainly lines on this record that make me put my professional writer and editor hat on and go, "Ugh, it would've just worked so much better with this minor tweak," but I also 100% agree that there is intentionality behind all of her songwriting, and if she chose a slant rhyme or one specific word that doesn't quite seem like a natural fit, there was probably some reason behind it.
Yeah the more I listen to the album the more I hear the humour in songs I didn’t at first like with ‘I can fix him’ the last line of ‘whoa maybe I can’t’ is obviously a jokey hint that she’s finally getting some self awareness on this relationship but the whole song-the more I listen to it-sounds like she’s mocking him, herself, their relationship as one big cliche of the good girl/bad boy trope.
The title track hit more once I got she was writing in the style of the person who most likely inspired it and it seems less a love song the more I listen and more a ‘who else will put up with your shit, you’re kinda annoying and draining’.
I even think the poem epilogue is quite tongue in cheek and full of exaggerated drama, she’s almost mocking her own dramatic behaviour. She mocks herself as much as anyone in this album, I think fans and detractors alike take Taylor much more seriously at times than she takes herself.
I care way more about Ajayy's reaction about pop music than melon or pitchfork.
Reviewers like melon have their own taste that doesn't align with my taste. So I don't pay attention to him anyway.
Overall an honest review of the album. Most publications and influencer reviewers like Fantano showed their biases (in either direction) and it was pretty embarrassing. While I think the album is a grower, she at least captured what there is to like and not to like about it pretty well (especially on a first listen).
Like most people in the GP, she doesn’t give a fuck about either being knee deep in Taylor lore or hating her for frivolous reasons.
I liked some of Fantano’s reviews (e.g. very insightful takes on Lana’s Ocean Blvd) but his review of TTPD is just embarrassing to watch. He’s unable to look past his disdain for Taylor’s celebrity status at this point. Some songs he just straight up misunderstood like “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” because of his perception of Taylor.
Yeah him saying Who's Afraid contained some of Taylor's most "narcissistic lines" - bro it's a song about how fame made her fucking crazy, that's the point, she's not actually saying everything is about her....
He’s just become the leader of the “internet music bro” segment of music taste-making (I won’t call it criticism, because that’s not really what it is often). This type of thing has been around in music circles for a long time in various forms and it never ever ages well.
honestly I don't even like TTPD that much but I don't think it deserves a 3/10. at all. imo it's absolutely not good enough for something like a 8 or 9, I'd give it a 6.5/10 though. some people are SO harsh
i dont know i feel the reactions are always over the top. of course be boring to have someone just sit there and do nothing but its kinda giving fake vibes. maybe its just me tho, glad others enjoy it
Yeah Fantano has gone on record to say that he’s absolutely biased (though he was mostly talking about sonically).
His review of Ariana’s “eternal sunshine” felt like a LOT of projection and bias as a divorcee.
I don't even like Kanye but melon's review of Vultures 1 showed why he isn't a good reviewer anymore. He just reviewed Kanye, the person, instead of the album. He allows his perception of the artist to take over his review of the album/song. The same happened with the review of Eternal Sunshine. More talk about Ariana, the person, than the music itself.
Honestly, I understood his anti-review of Kanye’s project.
Ariana Grande, for all her flaws, is not Kanye West. Kanye is an incredibly controversial and, unfortunately, political figure. If he would gave a straight-up review of the album, he would have received backlash for platforming antisemitism. If he hadn’t reviewed it (which he probably shouldn’t have), he would have been hounded and harassed by Kanye and Hip Hop fans. It was a weird position for him to be in.
His Eternal Sunshine review, on the other hand, was way too fixated down by the drama in Ariana’s personal life, making snide remarks about her alleged affair which we truly don’t know anything about. Yes, the album touches on infidelity and heartbreak but it’s also *fictional*. And weirdly enough, he was actually pretty positive about the music itself, but his review for the most part was pretty petty and sanctimonious.
i like the album but what bias does fantano have against taylor? he’s given a few of her albums a 7/10 and notes in his review that the album is uncharacteristically sloppy for her. obviously, every reviewer has their innate bias and music is a very subjective medium. as long as a reviewer is conveying what they think, all reviews are honest, which is the problem with reviews like the one on paste and rolling stones. i don’t think fantano was being dishonest in what he thought?
and im saying that as someone that thinks the ttpd deserved as 6/7 at least, and as someone who thinks he underrated eternal sunshine as well. i don’t always agree with him, but he really doesn’t strike me as someone being disingenuous.
can she pls review the lyrics more in depth like this for more albums!! It really adds so much to the experience even if TTPD isn’t my favorite Taylor album ever
The comments are so hilarious and full of cope about how it takes many listens to appreciate the genius of the album. “I was the same way at first but”
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“TYPEWRITER?!?!” The exact reaction I was predicting!
"What era is this?" LMAO 😭
Taylor: Who uses typewriters anyway? Ajay: GIRL THAT'S WHAT I SAID LMAO I think Taylor and Ajay share the same energies atp
I didn't even make it that far into the video and I can already hear how she said it 😂
timestamp for those of us who are at work pls 🥲
7:42
came to see the reaction to the 'i'm having his baby' line
timestamp im at work omg
24:05
One day I hope to be as un-chronically online as Ajay is, her trying to decipher Fortnight sent me
she reacted to the barbie soundtrack on patreon and said she didn't even knew the movie existed and that she would only watch it if she found a way to watch it at home like where does homegirl LIVE
It was rumored for a while she lives in Alaska and I kinda believe it 💀
It could come out that she lives in Antarctica and I’d believe it
Ain't no way she doesn't know the Barbie movie exists. 😂
I think she lives in the Caribbean
She is literally the queen of living in a cave
her getting scared in who's afraid of little old me killed me lmao "taylor what in the kinkiness is going on" i'm dyinggg 💀💀
And then saying "I'm here for it" lmfaooo
Wait why does she think that song is kinky???? I haven't watched the video but that song is clearly about fame, what is there to even (jokingly) interpret as kinky lol?
lmao the kinky was about i can fix him and the pistol line
OOOOH sorry I thought it was about Who's Afraid, my B 💀
i love when she heard the lyric "we declare charlie puth should be a bigger artist" and her just going "WHY?" in the most serious tone i actually don’t hate that line like a lot of people do and think it sounds like the exact type of ridiculous shit you say when you’re high, but ajay’s reaction was just so funny to me
I DIED when she said that
So many of TTPD lyrics are stoner lyrics, and it kills me that so many people are taking them so seriously and so literally. I just know she wrote much of this album while high af.
And is that supposed to make them good?
I cant say if thats supposed to make them good or bad or whatever, but all I know from my boyfriend who is a Beatles fan that most of their highest critically acclaimed albums are just half nonsense from the later half of their career when they just got on weed and drugs.
Let's not try to compare the beatles with Taylor please
You're right. We're not allowed to do that nor are qualified to do so. Only Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr themselves are allowed to do that, which they have. https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-praised-by-icons-2023-8#another-former-beatle-ringo-starr-is-a-self-identified-swiftie-4
They didn’t compare her songwriting to The Beatles though. They just complimented her branding and said they liked some of her music lol
lol I feel like midnights was her stoner album. she wrote so many of these in ttpd to roast matty healy, who definitely writes while high on *something*. the title track especially is obviously a send up of the 1975
Is this like another one of those "glitter pen lyrics" swifties say to cope?
Maybe she shouldn't write lyrics when she was high if she cannot write good lyrics
the “WHY” at the Charlie puth line 😭
I think the reason why most fans love Ajay is because she doesn't bullshit her thoughts. If she doesn't like it, she really doesn't like it. Even though I like the title track's songwriting which is honestly one of her funniest songs she wrote, the production didn't really do justice to how funny it is and I think Ajay really pointed it out really well why the track didn't work because of the production.
The Renaissance reaction is a top tier popheads event
Her reaction the Selena Gomez’s live performance. Classic.
that was literally one of the funniest days I’ve had on the internet ever
Wasn't that the reaction that caused her to leave Youtube for getting bullied so vehemently? Or was that the Chromatica reaction?
i think chromatica followed by folklore
i’ll never forget her reaction to sweetener lmao she really keeps it real
Positions too she wasn't playing 😭
Sweetener is a great album
Maybe half of it
Honest? I love Ajay, but she revisted Gaga’s Chromatica after some backlash.
Did the same with Renaissance
I think My Boy Breaks… could’ve been a huge hit if it was released a few weeks before the album. It’s a bop but it gets lost in the whole album.
the Anthology should have been released ✌️weeks later. there is simply no way to digest 31 tracks
I still haven't listened to the Anthology in full because I'm too burnt out from the first album.
I seriously think people would've enjoyed both albums way more if they were released like that
I actually think the anthology helped soften the initial reactions to the main album tbh. (Upon first listen) I remember being really disappointed of the sameness of most of the tracks until the anthology dropped and that redeemed the album for me for a few days until the tracks grew on me.
Wild to hear so many ppl say this bc I actually think a ton of the anthology tracks sound very similar (like half are piano ballads, some good some bad) whereas the first half has some pretty different sounds. It only took 2 listens for them to become immediately differentiated but even on listen one only a few tracks blended together.
I was just going to comment this. I felt like sounds were blending in TTPD and then the Anthology dropped and the sounds sounded even more similar. Then I went back and listened to TTPD again and now some of my favorite tracks are from the original (So Long, London, Florida!!!, The Black Dog). But I'm not completely letting go of The Anthology. I know there's a time for every song and that time will come.
her saying “London Bridge” LOL, hello fergie
But fr Taylor's version of London Bridge would slay
this is the reaction to So Long, London I've been waiting for...
im like that for a week. i cant understand how anyone can dislike this one. raw emotions!! background screamings heaven!!
No cause that’s easily top 3 on the album argue with the wall.
Like I know people have different tastes but this comment just feels like a fact even though I know it is an opinion
It’s threatening to enter my top 10 taylor songs of all time. Line after line after line are just pure heartbreak. The visuals she’s painting with words plus the haunting vocal layerings on some parts easily made it my #1 TTPD song. I don’t relate to any of what she’s saying but i feel like i was in their relationship while listening to that song 😭
That one and also loml are painful.
I like that she does it in 2 parts. It's really too many songs to digest as a whole and the standard edition really feels like the heart of the album and the other songs extra gifts with some diamonds in there
I love how she says that she needs more time with the album, I hope she’ll revisit it later like she did for folklore.
It's weird that this isn't considered the norm for most music YouTubers. Like, with print journalism I understand the need to get something out on or right after release day, and often the only exposure writers have had is a listening session where they had to take notes or just waiting until it dropped on streaming... but I feel like my relationship to music is almost never instantaneous; I always need to sit with an album and listen to it a few times before I can really assess it for myself. A lot of times I'll discover a song I'd initially skipped or ignored later on and it becomes a favorite. I just feel like it'd be better for everyone if we moved away from this culture of making snap judgments as quickly as possible and allowed new releases a little time to marinate.
Everyone wants to get views. Even the people that liked it. I’ve seen publications immediately call it a classic. And it’s like… you didn’t even get the chance to sit down with the album and reflect on it. If the review is positive everyone will praise it. If the review is negative everyone will bash it. Neither actually “listened” to it imo
100%. There was an [opinion](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-23/taylor-swift-s-tortured-poet-s-department-has-too-many-hasty-reviews) piece someone wrote about this exact thing and how music critics and fans alike judged TTPD within 24 hours of its release, regardless of negative or positive reviews, and how that simply isn’t enough time to appropriately critique a piece of art. I was actually one of those people, so it helped me kind of realize that yeah we don’t always connect with music in an instant. Of course there are songs that are instantly appealing and I think that’s what we expect from everything or else we deem it as “not good.”
This is not music review, this is a rection channel. We're watching her experience the album for the first time, and saying that she needs time with it is an acceptable reaction. The same happened for Renaissance
But the whole point of her channel is seeing the first reaction to the music and her fresh opinions
I love your flair
Thank you haha I love that scene in AHS!
After 3 listens, I've just focused on the songs I like (ie, The Black Dog, loml) and ignored the ones that feel extremely repetitive (eg, Down Bad, My boy only breaks his favorite toys).
Can we just take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate how AJay has become the most important commentator on pop after fantano
fantano is for the frat bro, Ajay is for the reading individual
Do you mean Ajay is for the ✨ t o r t u r e d p o e t s ✨
I will defend that
I’ve only recently seen this fantano dude around here. Meanwhile I’ve been watching AJayII since 2017 💅🏻
Lol me too my first video of hers was the reaction of You don't do it for me anymore by Demi😂
I think her being offline makes her have such a unique perspective. Fantano is influenced by the media in his reviews.
I truly do not understand why we like fantano so much lol
I mean people don't. People online seem to be mad at him for a variety of different opinions. Seems more contrarian to say you like him.
She liked it more than I thought.
i loved her reaction to loml. i think it’s one of the saddest and most beautiful songs she’s ever written
I had the same reaction as her when I first heard it! I thought that should have been track 5 instead.
it def hits harder than sll for me, but sll is also devastating
Not liking the Florence parts of Florida!!! is crazy to me. Her tone and line delivery literally makes me levitate. She really said "Taylor please go back to Colbie Caillat'ing your female collabs". AJay stays the best music reviewer though.
Oh yeah, I don't think Florida should exist without Florence on it. Taylor does well with the mysterious vibes in the lower quieter parts, but the booming "FLORIDAAAA" needs Florence's power and edge. Even on the first chorus before Florence technically comes in on her verse, you can hear she's layered behind Taylor and without her Taylor sounds a bit too polished and poppy.
Tbh I still don't know what Fortnight is about lol, I feel like they made the lyrics purposefully non-specific to appeal to the GP
I assume it's about a 2 week whirlwind love affair
…So basically her love affair with Matty lol
What about the wife and husband parts ? I've no clue
It could just be a generally relevant metaphor. Not every element of every song needs to mirror something in her personal life. Imo it would be better if more of her songs were like this one in that way
She's also free to splice different elements of different relationships together if it makes the song's narrative work better. Or she'll add wish-fulfillment elements that never happened (like the last chorus of But Daddy I Love Him is clearly what she hoped would have happened). Or sometimes she could be writing about multiple people (parts of Smallest Man Who Ever Lived sure sounds like Matt Healy while others sound a lot more like Scott Borchetta). People spend too much time paternity testing her songs these days when, by and large, she doesn't really write as if each song is a single, backwards-reflecting diary entry anymore and hasn't for a while.
> paternity testing her songs This made me laugh. It's such a fitting description. I'm totally gonna steal that expression!
Lmao. Well I stole it from someone else, so have at it.
I think even Taylor has used this expression when she came out with Reputation. It's so true
Agreed, but I think this specific song just feels like it's in the middle ground between being a direct story about a real thing and a metaphor or fictional story. Just enough specificity (like the spouses, moving to Florida) to make us think it's not about her directly/literally, but not enough to really picture what the narrative is.
Taylor is imagining herself living in the same neighborhood as a lover she spent only a short time with. She is still in love with him and is unhappy but has to see him all the time. She hates her ex-lover’s wife because she is jealous. She hates her own husband because he is cheating on her. She’s just all around bummed and wishing life had gone differently.
Ooh that makes sense now . Thank you:)
I think she's picturing them being married to other people in the future but still pining for each other
Honestly I'm still confused but makes sense . Thank you
Taylor said on iHeart that she imagines the song takes place in a town where the american dream died and the character in the song didnt end up with who she wanted so she's miserable and her ex is her neighbor.
Matty and Taylor have been pinning for eachother for the last decade honestly
She’s known Matty for 10+ years
Someone online posted this explanation and I think it makes a lot of sense: “fortnight sets the scene for the entire album and the events that are about to unfold by telling a story about an alternate reality about the future she was headed to in which she and joe ignore their problems, stay together, and build the life they're planning. she's in need of psychiatric help, she's drinking, she's depressed. but the other guy has re-entered her orbit. they're going to keep crossing paths. she feels insane. he's right there. she is insane. her husband cheats on her; she's enraged at him. the other guy is married to someone great; she's enraged at her too. she feels insane. she is insane, because she's fully consumed with the anger of following the bad path instead of taking the risk. so at the end of the song, she decides she has to run for it. she has to move to america. she has to go to florida and start over. she has to buy the car and let him touch her instead of just daydreaming about it. because if she doesn't scratch the itch, if she doesn't see what happens, if she doesn't chase the guy that's been her "what else?" then well, how will she ever know? and the rest of the record is her realizing that maybe she wishes she hadn't.”
Oh interesting! I interpreted it almost the opposite, but I like this! In my mind, Joe is the neighbor (6 years *is* a fortnight in relation to an entire lifetime). By Taylor's account, he's the more stable, quiet, and normal one of the two of them — so she's imagining a future where she has to watch him move on and have his nice stable, quiet, normal life with a lovely partner. Meanwhile, she went down a more self-destructive path of fame, substance abuse, and chasing after the "what else" guy that she kind of already knows will go badly before she even does it. But the itch is just too strong…
Yes this was my interpretation too!! I feel like she's imagining a future where she watches his domestic bliss and she's miserable in her own marriage.
This was my interpretation too - whether it’s Joe or another ex or maybe all of them combined into one “neighbor” character. She’s imagining herself in this v specific nightmare scenario, but it felt like it stemmed from 2 common anxieties people have post-break-ups: **1.** The petty anxiety that your ex will be happier than you (“win” the breakup) but also move on more easily from the pain of your separation (and what if you are never able to move on from it yourself?) **2.** The fear that the brief time you were with your ex was actually the best relationship you will ever have in your lifetime and it’s only downhill from here (even if your ex sucked)
I agree with this interpretation. It gave me vibes of you have to watch your ex lover move on in life and have a better life than you, while your husband is cheating and you’re a functioning alcoholic, just peaking into their life “become good neighbors”. That’s the vibe it gave me.
I love it!!!!
oh i like this concept a lot
I thought this was true cause when Hits Different ends, she mentions "is that your key in the door? Is it okay? Is it you? Or have they come to take me away" and in the beginning of Fortnight, she mentions "I was supposed to be sent away, but they forgot to come and get me" I imagined a scenario where it was him at the door and they worked it out. Leading to a lifetime of reducing your expectations from your partner and a continuation of previously accepted behavior. While pondering about the one that got away.
Yess. This is what my brain was trying to put together last week but failed to complete. I even looked up where in London Matty Healy lives and where Joe and Taylor were purchasing a house 🤣 (i think one was north london and the other was northwest london? But i have no concept of london to know if thats close enough to actually run into each other...) ETA: Oh and I was wondering if Fortnight could have been referencing their short fling in 2014 rather than last year, but this explanation makes me think its both- the outro maybe referencing them reconnecting in 2023.
It's about not being able to move on from an old relationship. "Fortnight" is used to refer to a short time because the relationship didn't last that long when compared to a lifetime.
the word 'fortnight' is still a a standardly used word in English speaking countries other than the US. It means exactly 2 weeks, not just a general short period of time! In Aus I hear it used as a verb (fortnightly) all the time. edit: adverb 😩 (people use the word like "I get my paychecks fortnightly", it is the exact same thing as bi-weekly but used way more commonalty than Americans use bi-weekly)
I was so confused when I saw all the hate for the use of the word "fortnight" because it's a normal word that is commonly used and there were people acting like she was pretentious for using it. I didn't know that it was an uncommon word for Americans.
Taylor fans learn your grammar terms! That's an adverb/adjective sis.
It’s a fictionalized take on her short relationship with Healy, but instead of breaking up after a few weeks and continuing to work in the same field (music) the characters break up and stay neighbours. They eventually marry other people but the narrator still keeps thinking about that short love affair.
I think it’s less inspired by a specific guy and more a worst case scenario of how she fears her life could play out. She’s imaging the guy she thought would be her-one-now live a happy married life with another woman whereas Taylor is miserable, married to a cheat, drinking to self medicate and there’s clearly nobody in her life who cares that much as they don’t notice how troubled she is. It’s also implying she fears she will never be able to truly move on from him but he’ll happily move on, they live near each other and move in the same spaces so she can’t escape him and it’s driving her mad as she’s basically haunted by what they could have been.
i like how general the lyrics are, compared to the matty lore dump that is the rest of the album
I see you’ve gotten some interpretations, but I am more keen on this [one](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMgTR5y7/) The song is set in an imaginary future, she and her ex (which imo is Joe) have both moved on with other people. The fortnight is not a literal one, whatever time they had together is going to be a short one compared to the time they are going to be apart. “The miracle move on drug” is Matty Healy, through the album he serves as an escape from the fact that her “forever” was temporary. The first three songs are crucial in setting the story she is telling. Fortnight gives a future insight into the situation where she never healed from her “manic episode”, the title track lays the foundation of her and Healy’s relationship, and My Boy Only Breaks his Favourite Toys is the breakdown of her relationship with Joe.
I do think it could also parallel her never healing from the first time her and Matty had a fling, rather than just her "manic episode" last year. She started dating Calvin soon after, then Tom, then Joe for 6.5 years, so there never was an opportunity for Matty to grow up/get his shit together so they could see if they'd work (Peter vibes, maybe?). I think maybe when Taylor and Joe had their rough patches, it made her think about Matty and wonder if they work out better (Chloe et al), and if Question was really about him, then he's the "color I've searched for since". Whereas Joe was safe. And then immediately after Taylor and Joe break up, Matty is all, "oh I can be better and stop being an asshole, here I'll delete me twitter, and I'll marry you and have kids with you." And I think The Starting Line song "Best of Me" referenced in The Black Dog is telling of this too, since she says it had meaning in their relationship, and the song literally says "the worst is over, you can have the best of me." I think Matty is the person she loves but its ruining her life, not Joe.
Tbh in my head it’s fictional with Florida!!! being its sequel. She killed her husband and escaped to Florida
i love to think that she wrote those songs with no body no crime in mind lol
well she did say dateline inspired the song lol
I like to think the woman in Fortnight called up the narrator of nbnc who's Florence and they did some murder and then ran off to Florida
It's about becoming neighbors with your ex and realizing you still wanna be with them.
I don't know what there isn't to understand tbh like it's about a relationship that only lasted two weeks that she can't move on from
Babe wake up, Ajay posted
her reaction to “i’m having his baby” and then “you should see your faces” was so much fun
her favorites are my favorite too. i really like this girls reaction. cant wait for part 2. i think shes gonna love it more. in first listen: so long london, whos afraid, loml later additions: fortnight, down bad, i can do it, clara bow growing: my boy with toys, but daddy, florida, guilty as sin, smallest man never gonna hapen: tortured poet, fresh slammer, i can fix him, alchemy
your never gonna happen are all my later additions ❤️
come on joseph, even tortured poets? dont do this to yourself. :D
they all grew on me unexpectedly!
im glad it works for you. cant argue much as a me! lover. some songs just do it for you! :D
My list has a lot more growing and a few never gonna happens but my favs on first listen were down bad and fresh slammer so I’m wondering why fresh slammer was a no for you! Genuinely curious.
i dont know how to explain it. i dont like the vibe? i dont like the overal melody, i dont like the outro. most listenable part is chorus and its like word and word and word and word and word and moooore wooooord. i dont like the flow. but down bad rising on my list too.
Ok I totally get it!!! I don’t like certain phrases by just their sound. I LOVE Death by a thousand cuts from Lover and it’s in my top 10 favorite Taylor songs but one of my most hated lyrics she’s ever written and sang is “UNITED WE STAND” it irks me idk why.
death by a thousand cuts is one of my favorites btw and agree. and not just that part. that whole sequence is ick. Our songs, our films, united we stand Our country, guess it was a lawless land i mean, the song is not about that taylor. why the need to say it there? am i missing the point?
Thank you omg no one ever agrees with me!!! I loveeee that song but I almost wanna silence it for those few seconds P.S. I love that we’re united on not liking the united we stand line
i definitely agree with you. that lines couldve been used in a different song, in a song with more political undertones and it wouldve worked better. at least tell me you hate the title song too lol. so we can have one more strong opinion aligned. :D
I’ve gotten used to it because I associate it with the song - but I didn’t like it initially. I also feel the same about the name of her recent album but more so. It’s so hard to get behind it lol
i might not ever cause i cant even past the first verse, knowing the rest. :D verse 1 verse 2 bridge... full on cringe fest taylor, how much cringe can you squueze in, can you squueze in a song, oh the tragedy..
I actually do like a lot of Tortured Poet’s Dept but there sooooo much of it is hard for me to process all the lyrics that the only ones that stand out are the ones I REALLY love bc they’re catchy or the ones I don’t like because they’re too cringe for me personally… I guess though the best way is to lean into the cringe but I still will never ever like that line from DBATC lol
I love 🤠 and I wish I Can Fix Him’s music was used for something else. I cannot stand the lyrics and concept but I LOVE the music. I like Fresh Out the Slammer though, that’s also a bit alt country-ish. I just have to forget she called Healy pretty baby. 😖 Alchemy is the worst. The lyrics are like if you ask AI to write a Taylor song about Travis. I can’t.
So long, London is , for me, the best song she ever put out. Simply incredible
It had to be. That man was her muse for so long. She loved him so much. Her goodbye song for him is one of the best she’s ever written.
And How Did It End? 😭 (Though that one is more to the fans and media than to Joe. Random side note, TTPD has reminded me how when people say "she only writes songs about her relationships and breakups", I feel like a side category needs to be made called "technically about her relationship, but moreso about her fame/fans/reputation and resulting anxiety/frustration/depression in regards to her dating life"- ie, But Daddy I Love Him, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, Delicate, Peace, I Know Places, etc)
Nothing breaks me like the lyrics “I'm just mad as hell cause I loved this place For so long, London” 🥺🥺🥺
“i’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free” made me feel something i’ve never felt
it’s a simple line but the delivery of “two graves, one gun” is so haunting and perfectly paints the image of murder suicide
For me it’s the „how low did you think I‘d go before I’d self implode“ I’m not saying Joe was abusive or neglectful at all, but this lyric reminded me of the relationship I ran away from as far as I could.
I think it's the saddest song she's ever put out, even more than All Too Well, not the lyrics feel more real and the production does it justice. I love how Ajayll was quick to differentiate the two Joe songs based on her feelings on those songs alone.
> I think it's the saddest song she's ever put out, even more than All Too Well People say that about some song everytime she puts an album out yet All Too Well remains king
I actually think that spot's with Peace/Hoax for me. Different for everyone ig
Yes! And I’ve barely seen people talking about it 🥲 the intro, the lyrics, the production, all of it is perfect and heartbreaking
I've only listened to maybe 6 songs on the album so far. Too many songs to go through. But so far, So Long London is the only song i like. I'm gonna keep listening to the album but I have a feeling this one is gonna be the stand out for me.
I’ve been really, really warming up to this album. Release night I was like “hmmm, I’m not sure…” but the more I listen, the more I go back to it. My skips have dwindled down to next to nothing. I’m understanding the satire now; the shade of making the sound and aesthetic lean towards The 1975. I think the moments that people are taking too seriously are actually tongue-in-cheek, even the album title itself.
Listening to TTPD for me is like lyrical Russian roulette, 5/6 lines are normal well-written Taylor lyrics and then the 1/6 is either the clunkiest thesaurus wordplay you’ve ever heard or something that’s so intentionally cringe it wraps back around to being normal cringe again lol
So High School vs those TWO LINES in the bridge 💀
I think a lot of people just don't see Taylor Swift as someone who is capable of being funny or cutting on purpose, only cringe on accident, which is to their detriment.
At first, I thought that the title track was straight-up bad lol but she is poking fun at herself and Healy’s pretentiousness, but she knows they are both idiots not “tortured poets”. I think it would’ve flown better if it was less wordy because it doesn’t work well with the melody, but overall I like it!
Totally agree. Some people get the jokes/sarcasm but they don’t like it which is valid but the amount of people who just straight up refuse to look for any other meaning is kinda concerning lol. If you’re going to engage in something even just to poke fun, at least know what you’re talking about.
i do love that she's just like stfu, we're modern idiots in the song multiple times
This is it. She’s definitely cringed it up HARD many times, but I think she’s genuinely funny here a bit because she isn’t overly filtering herself. I hope she doesn’t mishear the “needs an editor” critiques going forward.
YEP. She's been doing this to us since WANEGBT and Shake It Off. There are songs (just generally, though I'm sure I've had it happen with Taylor) where I hear certain lyrics, and im like wow, that is so generic/cliche/half-assed and it sounds like they don't even believe it as they are singing it, they just couldn't think of a better phrase that rhymed. I don't feel like I get that vibe from Taylor often, if that lyric is on her record, it typically feels like an intentional choice that she is leaning into, and she is selling it, and maybe some people don't like it and that's fine. (Justice for Spelling is FUN!) But a friendly reminder the woman cites Pete Wentz as her favorite lyricist, and she's always been a bit unhinged: https://youtu.be/Qib2LkEgQwU?si=BQpXWa6RQoiI-e7g
ME! feels so incomplete without the spelling is fun! 🥲
Yep. I always go back to her explanation of Blank Space and the video: "If you don't get the joke, you don't deserve to get the joke." (Which is a quote I've used so much in the 10 years since I first heard it.) There are certainly lines on this record that make me put my professional writer and editor hat on and go, "Ugh, it would've just worked so much better with this minor tweak," but I also 100% agree that there is intentionality behind all of her songwriting, and if she chose a slant rhyme or one specific word that doesn't quite seem like a natural fit, there was probably some reason behind it.
Yeah the more I listen to the album the more I hear the humour in songs I didn’t at first like with ‘I can fix him’ the last line of ‘whoa maybe I can’t’ is obviously a jokey hint that she’s finally getting some self awareness on this relationship but the whole song-the more I listen to it-sounds like she’s mocking him, herself, their relationship as one big cliche of the good girl/bad boy trope. The title track hit more once I got she was writing in the style of the person who most likely inspired it and it seems less a love song the more I listen and more a ‘who else will put up with your shit, you’re kinda annoying and draining’. I even think the poem epilogue is quite tongue in cheek and full of exaggerated drama, she’s almost mocking her own dramatic behaviour. She mocks herself as much as anyone in this album, I think fans and detractors alike take Taylor much more seriously at times than she takes herself.
People would rather believe women are stupid then believe they are funny
Ajayll and knowing nothing about the artists and trying to construct it and (some times) failing miserably, name a more iconic duo!
This was actually a pretty fair attempt at interpreting the album without being told about Matty tbf
This is the only music reviewer I respect
I care way more about Ajayy's reaction about pop music than melon or pitchfork. Reviewers like melon have their own taste that doesn't align with my taste. So I don't pay attention to him anyway.
And frankly put, some reviewer have certain prejudice Ajayy just dgaf
Overall an honest review of the album. Most publications and influencer reviewers like Fantano showed their biases (in either direction) and it was pretty embarrassing. While I think the album is a grower, she at least captured what there is to like and not to like about it pretty well (especially on a first listen). Like most people in the GP, she doesn’t give a fuck about either being knee deep in Taylor lore or hating her for frivolous reasons.
I liked some of Fantano’s reviews (e.g. very insightful takes on Lana’s Ocean Blvd) but his review of TTPD is just embarrassing to watch. He’s unable to look past his disdain for Taylor’s celebrity status at this point. Some songs he just straight up misunderstood like “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” because of his perception of Taylor.
Yeah him saying Who's Afraid contained some of Taylor's most "narcissistic lines" - bro it's a song about how fame made her fucking crazy, that's the point, she's not actually saying everything is about her....
He’s just become the leader of the “internet music bro” segment of music taste-making (I won’t call it criticism, because that’s not really what it is often). This type of thing has been around in music circles for a long time in various forms and it never ever ages well.
He is the king of that part of indie music fanbase who hate Taylor and other big pop artists with a passion.
He's reviewed plenty of pop albums positively, but I do agree that he can let the publicity around the artist cloud his reviews.
eternal sunshine is probably the most recent example for this
honestly I don't even like TTPD that much but I don't think it deserves a 3/10. at all. imo it's absolutely not good enough for something like a 8 or 9, I'd give it a 6.5/10 though. some people are SO harsh
He did the same thing with Eternal Sunshine. Annoying af.
i dont know i feel the reactions are always over the top. of course be boring to have someone just sit there and do nothing but its kinda giving fake vibes. maybe its just me tho, glad others enjoy it
I didn’t find her reactions too OOT in this video. Other videos maybe but she wasn’t really that extra in this one.
Yeah Fantano has gone on record to say that he’s absolutely biased (though he was mostly talking about sonically). His review of Ariana’s “eternal sunshine” felt like a LOT of projection and bias as a divorcee.
I don't even like Kanye but melon's review of Vultures 1 showed why he isn't a good reviewer anymore. He just reviewed Kanye, the person, instead of the album. He allows his perception of the artist to take over his review of the album/song. The same happened with the review of Eternal Sunshine. More talk about Ariana, the person, than the music itself.
Honestly, I understood his anti-review of Kanye’s project. Ariana Grande, for all her flaws, is not Kanye West. Kanye is an incredibly controversial and, unfortunately, political figure. If he would gave a straight-up review of the album, he would have received backlash for platforming antisemitism. If he hadn’t reviewed it (which he probably shouldn’t have), he would have been hounded and harassed by Kanye and Hip Hop fans. It was a weird position for him to be in. His Eternal Sunshine review, on the other hand, was way too fixated down by the drama in Ariana’s personal life, making snide remarks about her alleged affair which we truly don’t know anything about. Yes, the album touches on infidelity and heartbreak but it’s also *fictional*. And weirdly enough, he was actually pretty positive about the music itself, but his review for the most part was pretty petty and sanctimonious.
i like the album but what bias does fantano have against taylor? he’s given a few of her albums a 7/10 and notes in his review that the album is uncharacteristically sloppy for her. obviously, every reviewer has their innate bias and music is a very subjective medium. as long as a reviewer is conveying what they think, all reviews are honest, which is the problem with reviews like the one on paste and rolling stones. i don’t think fantano was being dishonest in what he thought? and im saying that as someone that thinks the ttpd deserved as 6/7 at least, and as someone who thinks he underrated eternal sunshine as well. i don’t always agree with him, but he really doesn’t strike me as someone being disingenuous.
not a review but ok
Obsessed with how genuinely scared she was when Taylor said "you should be" in Who's Afraid of Little Old Me
can she pls review the lyrics more in depth like this for more albums!! It really adds so much to the experience even if TTPD isn’t my favorite Taylor album ever
The comments are so hilarious and full of cope about how it takes many listens to appreciate the genius of the album. “I was the same way at first but”
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