The speed at which Swift has dropped albums since 2020 has been astounding and, IMHO, getting…worse? In the last five years, the prolific songwriter has released five albums, for an average of one a year. She used to put something out every two years, a pattern that seems rather consistent across the industry.
Folklore and Evermore were the last great hurrahs. It felt experimental for her after over a decade of migrating from country to pop to establishing herself as the pop princess. The visuals were executed with precision, and, importantly, delivered on the acoustic expectations. Both albums had a lot of flannel and woodsy motifs. We got soft, mellow albums with great storytelling that made everything feel mystical.
From Midnights onward, I’ve had the impression that Swift has traded her artistry for a content farm. Not, necessarily, in a bad way. She’s a master at creating a world for each album and the aesthetics are always sublime. Confusingly, there’s now always cognitive dissonance between what the album art is queuing me to expect, and the actual sound the musician delivers. I thought Midnights would be a rock album. The Tortured Poets Department had me thinking we would throwback to the whimsy and wonder of Folklore. The Life of a Showgirl was begging for some big band/Old Hollywood reference. Did we get it? No.
From the writing to the visuals, everything seems to be made for the content machine. Pleasing and unoffensive to the masses and, importantly, easily disseminated on social media with alacrity. Unfortunately, the price for quick, internet-friendly content is good art. I’m personally for the argument that instead of expecting my favorite artists to churn out content for my consumption at regular intervals, they should be afforded the time to actually sit with their creativity, without backlash or risk of falling out of relevancy. What I’m saying here is that if Swift took a five year break and came back with something that felt actually good, I wouldn’t be mad at that.
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