u/lesbian__overlord

happy pride month 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ to my fellow swiftie gays (among others!)

the idea of death of the artist and taking ownership of music for your own purposes and life is something that's been done to art for ages, so today i ask you to put muse discourse and taylor's own life aside to answer the burning question: which taylor swift song is the gayest?

turning in an exam with you need to calm down will automatically result in a failure of gay class!

one of the most obvious and popular answers to this question is ivy off my favorite album, evermore. something about the element of forbidden love and the new object of the narrator's affections igniting something new, exciting, and unknown in a previously cold life just feels so quintessential to the themes of queer love. every time i listen to the song i just can't help but imagine two women in old timey dresses yearning in some fog.

the prophecy is a song that also feels very special to me as someone who grew up with a lot of homophobic, religious influences around me. reading the song through a lens of just wanting a heteronormative life and love to feel natural to you really opened me to a new level of understanding on a song i already loved.

i've also always found the readings that taylor is the heartbreak prince in miss americana, the sad boy in question...?, etc. interesting in how music can play with our expectations of gender usage in songs.

what about you?

while obviously we're all here because we love olivia's original music, i find myself really digging a lot of her covers just as much. i feel like she picks an interesting breadth of songs and that they're always so good for her voice. i also really love that she worked with war child uk for her book of love cover.

what's your favorite cover she's done? any you don't like that you see other livvies praise a lot? any you think are better than the original?

you're so vain is a long-time favorite of mine from her and i think one of her best performances! i also really love how she sounds on say it ain't so. friday i'm in love and her we're going to be friends performance with feist are also great.

i'll preface this by saying i think a lot of the hate and criticism taylor gets is delusional and misogynistic and not based in fact. this is not based or not based specifically off of any of the specific words/phrases/ideas that have been levied towards taylor in this current round of discourse but fan responses to it reminded me of something i've been feeling a while.

when it comes to criticism or even hate in general, the idea swifties have that there's a double standard with taylor versus other artists is something i think is partially true and partially more complex than that. when people call her out for variants, or chart antics, or use her as a proxy for their frustrations with industry titans or billionaires or capitalism, i just kind of feel like... okay? sure. she is uniquely successful as a pop artist working today, and i think it's a little unrealistic to act like that won't, or shouldn't, come with unique criticisms.

like, she has unique influence, so pressuring her more to speak out on things that need awareness makes sense to me too. if we as a fanbase want to applaud her constant record-breaking, her inevitable legend status, the fact that swifties are spread across the globe and mobilize for her when she asks (and when she doesn't), then i think we sort of need to accept that in most people's eyes, the adage that with great power comes great responsibility rings true. even if you don't think a popstar should have that much power.

idk, i just find myself getting more upset when people body shame her, or discredit her lyrical talent by saying she doesn't write her own songs, or act like she DOESN'T have insane reach (the amount of people think that her only fanbase is heteroexual white women from the western world is insane) because those are mean, blatantly false, and obviously on first glance rooted in misogyny.

when i see someone point out how many variants another artist or "opp" of taylor's has put out to counteract criticism of her variants, i just start thinking about how swifties and haters alike talk about her being too big to ever fail. "if she doesn't 'need' however many vinyls or CDs or cassettes as another artist does to make a splash, is she less justified in making them?" is something i think a lot of people feel from a waste perspective that sounds like jealousy (or even coexists with jealousy) out of inarticulate mouths.

legitimate criticisms being levied a little unfairly only bothers me when they're obviously fueled by stan war brain, and i think swifties as a whole would kind of be better served by saying 'yeah it sucks, but there are worse people out there and she made red/evermore/ttpd/whatever your favorite album is so i still like her' than by writing a thesis to defend taylor by pointing out what other artists are doing versus not doing. either she's singular, or she's not. i just feel at this point i can't fault anyone for raging against the least offensive billionaire just because she's the least offensive. i'm still going to be streaming my taylists and clamoring for concert tickets and admiring my lover: live from paris repress.

curious as to other people's thoughts and feelings!