Sharing a gift link.  All of it is very good but just want to also excerpt one part in particular.

JOE COSCARELLI For as carefully — and, for the most part, generously! — as you all have been listening to and synthesizing this music, I’m more interested in the knee-jerk responses that have dominated my side of the internet this weekend, which track closer to Ben’s feeling: This is oppressive. (The similar word that made the rounds with “Poets,” during Eras, was imperial.)

I no longer think of Taylor as a citizen of the pop music population — even when she gets to dissing or otherwise musically referencing her would-be colleagues. She is a genre, and reality show, and corporation, of one. Those who have been on the ride, like most of us (either personally or professionally or both), can parse the lore and the subtle sonic shifts and invest in the multiple listens it takes to situate “Showgirl” in the oeuvre.

Most others online seem content to graze, locate the inherent cringe they were looking for and get their jokes off, often with hyperbolic vitriol that can seem pretty personal (see also: Drake!). This in-or-out-ness among what is ultimately just a very vocal minority of posters — the inability to just say this is a pretty good pop album and maybe nothing more or less — is what allows Taylor, despite being on pace to sell three million copies in one week, to still feel persecuted and misunderstood, and also to treat her world-beating fan base as a special little family.

As everyone digs their heels in deeper, album after album, it ensures this dysfunctional dynamic that both sides seem to loathe is not going anywhere.



NYT Critics Roundtable: Taylor Swift Keeps Getting Bigger. Can the Music Keep Up?