Taylor Swift - Midnights

Did you hear my covert narcissism
I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman?

This part gets me every time, but the entire song is full of memorable lyrics.

The part that shocked me into caring about this song was that line — the narcissism/altruism/congressman line. It seems to come out of nowhere?

In the video where the crowd was singing along she absolutely spits the word congressman — that took me by surprise too.

What I love about the congressman line is that it’s not clear whether she’s speaking in general or specifically critiquing even her own confessionalism on this song, like, “look, even now I am crying out for attention and to be loved, and trying to make myself look like a more self-reflective person than I really am.”

lol she sure seems to be going ridiculously all out for this tour

It cost them so much babysitting and other jobs, but my kids are going to lose their shit.

LOL same here. We are going to Nashville. They are approaching Losing Their Shit stage currently and should be at full-on Interstellar Overdrive (or something like that) stage by the time we get there.

she played “enchanted” ;_;

i don’t love the setlist personally. shoutout to her for doing 45 songs tho

Here’s the chunk I’d be all over (could leave the rest):

“Tis the Damn Season”
“Willow”
“Marjorie”
“Champagne Problems”
“Tolerate It”
“…Ready for It?”
“Delicate”

When your fans have no taste

The Evermore segment included live debuts of “’Tis the Damn Season,” “Marjorie,” and “Tolerate It,” as well as a self-aware gag from Swift, who said the album is one that “I absolutely love—despite what some of you say on TikTok… I’ve seen it. I’ve seen all of it!”

otm

Looks like she's actually dividing it up into eras, which makes sense given the name of the tour, but seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to put songs from different eras together in interesting ways.

xp I think she's adressing weird persistent rumours that SHE didn't like evermore and has 'buried' it since release. Although yeah, the fans also underrated it.

Oh thanks, interesting. (I won’t pretend to understand the logic of that rumor, considering that she did the thing of breaking the songs up into a bunch of digital EPs, giving “Willow” a ton of remixes, etc.)

My daughter gave me the lowdown this morning. Apparently she barely tweeted or posted anything about Evermore, compared to Folklore (which got its own special?), and then didn't mention the album on its "birthday" (anniversary) either.

Ok, definitely a different level of tea-leaf reading happening there.

Just did some Twitter searching (yes, I'm bored) – she only tweeted twice about Folklore, post–2020: (a) in Feb. 2021, announcing she put FL & Evermore together in a playlist; (b) in July 2021, the "Happy Anniversary" tweet (debuting a new version of "The Lakes"). As for Evermore – she tweeted about it seven (7) times in 2021 (and that's not counting the aforementioned playlist tweet, or an announcement of a deluxe version of the LP).

I think if an artist was tweeting a lot about their albums’ birthdays I’d probably block them

I would like to celebrate the anniversary of every post I made on ILX.

both the opening and closing tracks are very confusing choices

I was there last night. My daughter’s Christmas present. Great stage/set and performance.

There really should be one catch-all thread for her at this point. Anyway, assuming it is accurate, I was impressed by this:

Taylor Swift was one of the only celebrities who did their due diligence on crypto exchange FTX, according to the lawyer suing the now-bankrupt company’s celebrity promoters.

Attorney Adam Moskowitz has gone after basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, football star Tom Brady, “Seinfeld” creator Larry David and more than a dozen other FTX promoters in a class action lawsuit that accuses them of promoting the sale of unregistered securities.

Moskowitz is seeking $5 billion in the lawsuit, he said during an episode of The Scoop podcast with Frank Chaparro. He claims the exchange’s celebrity boosters didn’t do their due diligence to check whether they may be breaking the law before cutting TV and digital ads for FTX.

“The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift. In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them, 'Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’” Moskowitz said. Swift reportedly came close to inking a $100 million sponsorship deal with FTX, but the partnership never materialized. Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.theblock.co/amp/post/226981/taylor-swift-ftx-shaquille-oneal-lawsuit

embarrassing that she even got that close to it at all really

Yeah, even promoting a "bona fide" scheme for $100million, and yet they still shout about John L / Country Life Butter....

Where was Beyonce in all this? Busy doing private shows for dictators or something? (I wonder if Swift does that stuff, too. Probably. A Wall Street friend of mine says that Coldplay is *always* taking corporate gigs, and god knows those dorks don't need the money.)

Oh, goddamn
I almost got caught up in a crypto scam
They said "Shaq's on board," but I responded
"Oh, tell me
Are these unregistered securities"
They wouldn't say, I never signed
And now I'm grateful

swift does do corporate gigs but i don't think she's done the middle eastern dictator circuit or anything. at least if she has it hasn't gotten out publicly afaik

I would be so fucking embarrassed to be an audience member at a fucking corporate gig gee wiz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otc8CboPT2s

How many global pop superstars still are on the "private shows for dictators" circuit?

Guarantee it's a least double the number of ones we actually know about.

Taylor Swift actually asked them, 'Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’” Moskowitz said.

Strongly doubting this quote but kudos to her for having a good team.

I doubt the quote too but it's also not entirely implausible either considering her dad is a stockbroker and her mom worked in mutual funds that she picked up a few things along the way

I still think about a long magazine (RS?) profile from years back, in which the writer observed her making deals and talked about how good at bizniss she is... and also mentioned that she was paranoid that stereo speakers in the room could be listening in on her conversations (she asked something like, "If they can produce sound by vibrating, how do we know they can't transmit sound back to someone?").

For those in the know, yes, they totally can

i guess i'm a late swiftie. i actually can't get over how beautiful folklore is... 'cardigan' has made me cry a few times over now, and 'august' and 'hoax' are so tender...

I don't feel like "unregistered securities" are that arcane a thing for a 30-something multi-millionaire to understand or ask about.

I mean, of course she has finance people. But I wouldn't be surprised if she's on the more diligent end of wealthy celebrities when it comes to understanding her money. She's always seemed pretty business savvy.

It's probably telling (and fits with that thing I read) that she was negotiating/asking questions directly, rather than just leaving it to her ppl to vet & arrange... which is how I'm sure at least some other stars would handle it.

(also fits with her intense personal involvement with ownership of her masters etc., which I recall reading something about...)

her dad was a big stockbroker/finance guy

I don't know how long this clip has been floating around, but I hadn't seen it before. It's her arguing with her dad about why she needs to come out against Marsha Blackburn in the 2018 elections.

"I can't see another commercial and see her disguising these policies behind the words 'Tennessee Christian values.' Those aren't Tennessee Christian values. I live in Tennessee, I am Christian. That's not what we stand for."

I’ve never seen this before but this video of @taylorswift13 is worth watching

pic.twitter.com/DKxdl9pj2A

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) May 2, 2023

That's awesome. Can't imagine the amount of pressure she must have felt from the TS machine to just be quiet.

"Did Bob Hope do that? Or Bing Crosby? What about Mick Jagger?"

Iirc that's from her Netflix doc "Miss Americana," which is really good and

And ... scene.

So I feel a little tacky being the person to bring up the breakup, but does Midnights become more interesting if we think of it as an impending-breakup album? Because I found it pretty blah on a first listen, and honestly I still do, but in hindsight I guess you could put together "Anti-Hero," "Sweet Nothing," "Mastermind," and maybe "Bejeweled" as a (possibly unintended) portrayal of a relationship that's fallen into toxic patterns: she's the one ostensibly controlling everything, but also the one who's entirely to blame if anything goes wrong; he's a kind of faceless, blandly perfect, endlessly patient angel in the house, but also the one who constantly makes her feel like she has to apologize and diminish herself.

"Sweet Nothing" in particular is very pretty but the title phrase is double-edged: would you really want to be someone's nothing? And "Anti-Hero" picks up a pattern that started in Lover, of "If we ever break up it will be my fault because you do everything right and I do everything wrong, including failing to take responsibility for my actions" but makes it into a huge, gleeful hit; it may be lyrically about midnight self-loathing, but vibe-wise it's a long way from something like "The Archer" or "Peace."

Huh, I wasn’t aware she had a breakup (or that her ex apparently had a few writing credits on Folklore & Evermore).

Yeah, I don't think anyone treated it as a big news item at the time it happened, which is refreshing and makes me feel bad about being the person to bring it up.

Seems totally valid to bring it up in the context of analyzing the album!

Looks like it did get coverage as general “pop culture news”; don’t know why I’m not up on that stuff anymore.