¿El Fin de la era Taylor Swift? Su miedo a ser reemplazada, y la competencia con Olivia Rodrigo –  Hw

What happens when your idol sees you as competition?  Imagine spending your whole life admiring an artist, growing up listening to their albums, memorizing their interviews, analyzing each of their lyrics, and feeling that this person understood you better than many of the adults around you.  Imagine that thanks to her you lose the fear of writing songs exactly as you feel them, shamelessly and without trying to seem more interesting, more sophisticated or more mature than you actually are.

You start following in their footsteps because they represent everything you would like to do someday.  And then your career takes off.  The artist you’ve been idolizing for years listens to your music and publicly calls you “My baby.”  She says she’s proud of you, gives you a ring along with a handwritten note, and invites you to officially promote the launch of her new album.

It seems like the perfect ending for any fan.  Until one day you discover that perhaps your idol never saw you as a disciple, someone to guide or someone to help.  I actually saw you as a competitor, and not just any competitor.  Suddenly, the person who inspired your career completely changes their role in your life, and the songs you wrote no longer belong to you completely.

Millions of dollars change hands.  In interviews, their names cease to be mentioned, and the relationship that seemed idyllic ends up becoming one of the most talked-about stories in recent pop music.  That’s exactly what happened to Olivia Rodrigo with Taylor Swift.  Five years later, it remains one of the few episodes in Taylor’s career that many fans have not been able to reconcile with the image they had of her.

This story, aside from retroactive credits, chart wars, or money, is about what happens when an artist who has spent two decades building her legacy, defending her place at the top, and publicly confessing her fear of disappearing, meets a younger version of herself for the first time.  Hi, I’m Cambi and today we’re going to talk about Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and a story that 5 years later still haunts them both, that will probably never die away, and the root of it all.

Don’t get to know your heroes from disciple to rival. Olivia Rodrigo never hid the fact that Taylor Swift was her favorite artist.  She wasn’t a casual admirer or a celebrity who claimed to listen to his songs occasionally.  She was a true Swifty and she was the one who fulfilled the dream of composing, singing and being successful with it.

She grew up admiring and studying the work of her idol like any other teenager and dared to say so publicly more than once. really and the only one.  His best friend, the singer Conan Grey, also idolized Taylor and seemed to have found an idol in her . admired the way that she knows how to speak.  So she knows about and pop so Taylor, for her part, seemed delighted with Olivia at first.

He invited her to promote Fearless Taylor’s Version.  He gave her a ring inspired by his album Red, accompanied by a handwritten note, publicly called her his baby, and celebrated her success when Driver’s License reached the top of the charts alongside his own songs.  For a while everything seemed to be fine.

Olivia with Driver’s License became one of the biggest musical phenomena of 2021. Then came Good for You, then S, and the album broke streaming records, dominated the sales charts, and ended up winning three Grammy Awards.  The press began calling her the new Taylor Swift, and for the first time in a long time, a young artist appeared who was able to connect with an audience very similar to the one that had accompanied Taylor for more than a decade.

Olivia ceased to be seen as a sweet girl who admired industry veterans, and it became clear that they were not facing a one-hit wonder, but someone with enormous potential and a career that was just beginning.  Furthermore, he began to break records that until recently belonged to Taylor.  From then on, it seems that something changed.

Taylor Swift’s biggest fan stopped talking about Taylor Swift with Andrey too. Suddenly, they both avoided questions they had previously answered with enthusiasm. People are going to really hate me for saying I actually haven’t I haven’t listened all the way through yet.  I’m I know I’m just about it.

It’s just been on tour and they didn’t even attend her concerts that everyone else went to, and they seemed to avoid any conversation related to her. Small details also began to accumulate that fans noticed were strange, such as Olivia quickly leaving a video call where Taylor was also present. All of that pointed to the fact that the relationship had died, and not in a peaceful way.

The strange thing is that at the same time nothing seemed to have happened. Taylor continued to be friendly with Olivia in public.   She applauded her at award ceremonies and gave the impression that there was a perfectly cordial relationship between them.  But by then, in Hollywood, rumors that Olivia wanted absolutely nothing to do with Taylor had already been circulating for some time.

And apparently, he wasn’t too worried about people noticing. Many probably never noticed the distancing, but soon after, new names began to appear in the credits of some of Olivia Rodrigo’s most successful songs.  Millions of dollars changed hands and an artist who had built much of his identity around admiring Taylor Swift went on to act as if Taylor Swift did not exist.

So what had really happened?  Why would a multi-millionaire artist at the absolute peak of her career, with a tour destined to become the most successful of all time and a level of influence that very few people have achieved within music, seem to behave as if an 18-year-old girl posed a threat? The superpredator.

Taylor Swift is not competing to participate. Taylor is not a villain, but she is an extremely competitive person and that leads her to do questionable things. To talk about any person, you always have to go back to their childhood because that usually defines many things about the person you become as an adult.

Taylor Swift was always a talented girl with a taste for music.  His parents had and still have a lot, a whole lot of money.  But this has always been conveniently left out when telling his story.  Actually, it’s always talked about how he grew up on a Christmas tree farm , how he was bullied, how he had hardly any friends at school, and little else about his dedication to music, and that’s where it ends.

And all of that is true, mind you, but the fact that his parents were able to pay for and support absolutely everything has a direct effect on him being where he is today.  This does not take away from his merit, effort, or discipline in any way, because if anything defines Taylor, it is precisely that.

But it is also important not to ignore that the magnitude of his success and reach is largely due to the financial cushion and family structure he had behind him.  It’s all part of the same whole.  Taylor seemed to be a sentimental, studious, and quite well- behaved girl.  And for years that was also the public image she projected: that of a good, sensitive, and genuinely kind girl.

And I think a lot of that was true.  Her father, Scott Swift, was extremely involved in her career long before she signed a record deal.  He made contacts, pulled strings, got opportunities for him to perform at local events, and even moved the whole family to Tennessee to pursue the dream of turning Taylor into a country artist. She also bought a stake in Big Machine Records, the label that would eventually sign her.

Scott was and is a millionaire businessman, and although he certainly supported his daughter’s dream, he also seemed to understand very well that he was betting on a project with the potential to become something huge.  His hands were present in virtually every stage of Taylor’s career and in many ways continue to be so today.

That’s why Taylor Swift’s career was so unusually orderly and flawless from the beginning.  She had resources, a stable family, committed parents, and a support structure that many other child and teen stars never had. Unlike many cases in Hollywood, there does n’t seem to have been a desperate financial need behind his success.

Her parents did not depend on Taylor becoming a star to survive, which probably allowed them to support her career from a much more strategic than exploitative position.  Scott, moreover, has always seemed to be extremely aware of his daughter’s public image, and perhaps that’s why Taylor spent years being perceived as the girl who could do no wrong.

Educated, hardworking, sentimental, the typical American Sweetheart.  She and her family seemed to build a personal brand where disappointing the public was simply not an option, and it worked.  The discipline with which Taylor has managed his career is admirable.  And probably a lot of that comes from growing up surrounded by two parents so involved in every decision.

In an industry where many young artists end up getting lost in excess, endless parties, public scandals and self-destructive careers, Taylor seems to have led an extremely orderly life.  She never had a rebellious phase like Miley, nor a chaotic one like Demy, nor was she associated with the excesses that surrounded many of her contemporaries.

And that’s something that’s definitely admirable because very few celebrities or people can say something similar.  Taylor’s will and unwavering determination to say no in a world where virtually everyone says yes has probably been one of the reasons why he has enjoyed Hollywood and never really had to survive it.

Although that is part of the narrative surrounding her, the evidence tells a different story.  But I think he also inherited from his father a strong need for control, a very business-oriented mindset, and a tendency to think several moves ahead.  Taylor learned from a very young age that in this industry it is not enough to be talented, you also have to know how to protect what you have built.

Taylor created her own league in which she plays alone. However, his way of seeing things did not allow him to ever stop competing. The mentality that there is always someone younger, newer or more interesting waiting to take their place remains.  And if she was taught from childhood to think several moves ahead, perhaps there comes a point where she stops distinguishing between a real threat and an 18-year-old girl who simply grew up admiring her and is playing in another league.

The girl who was always right, the refuge of victimhood. And since not everything can be controlled, conflicts will always arise.  The problem is that nobody is completely good all the time.  We all react badly when we feel hurt.  In Taylor’s case, it seems that experiences of public humiliation, rejection, or betrayal reinforced a very specific image of being the good girl who is unfairly attacked by others.

And when one perceives oneself in that way, it is easy to fall into a logic where any conflict is not seen as a disagreement between two people and is interpreted as an aggression.  In that bubble, he’s the only one who exists. How could they do this to me?  Instead of broadening that perspective and wondering what might be happening on the other side, Taylor never fully left that place, and with age, support, and the overwhelming power he has, it has only gotten worse.

And since Taylor has been two steps ahead since he started playing this game, there’s one phrase of his that probably sums up better than any other the way he seems to understand many of the conflicts in his life. Look what you made me do.  Look what you made me do.  Taylor rarely presents herself as someone who initiates conflicts, but rather as someone who responds to them.

For example, Kanye West.  She didn’t start that business. Without a doubt, Kanye was, is, and probably will continue to be an idiot because of that and many other things.  God knows how much I detest that man.  And Taylor had every right to respond, but I think it was from that moment on that  a very particular way of interpreting conflicts was finally consolidated in his mind.

Someone does something wrong, she gets hurt, and she simply reacts.  It doesn’t matter if the response is disproportionate, or who it might hurt in the process.  As long as no one has the final say about her, her reputation, or her credibility, Taylor seems willing to go as far as necessary .  Taylor was an extremely sensitive teenager who suddenly became one of the most famous people on the planet.

The episode with Kanye would probably have left its mark on any artist who was just learning to handle fame at the tender age of 19.  The problem is that from then on, many of her subsequent conflicts began to look quite similar, even when there were elements to suggest that Taylor could also have been wrong or contributed to worsening the situation, such as the leaked call between Kim and Kanye, the issue of her mother and the story that her  life’s work was taken away from her, the moment when she decided to respond to Nicki Minaj when

absolutely no one was talking about her, or her past relationships with Kirby Perry, Damon Alborne, Charlie XX, or Billy Eish, to name a few.  In almost all of those cases, Taylor seemed to see herself reacting to people who, from her perspective, had attacked her first.  And when in 2016 Kim and Kanye released the call exposing that she lied, and much of the internet seemed to agree on turning her into the villain of pop culture, it clearly affected her a lot, and it’s no wonder it would affect anyone .  But it is also true

that by that time her image as a good girl, hardworking and practically incapable of harming anyone was already starting to tire the public. She herself has said that she even thought her career was over, and that’s why she made that 180-degree turn.  After that, it seemed as though Taylor finished building a wall around herself to minimize any future vulnerability.

And because of that, I think that people who perceive themselves as good tend to react particularly badly when they feel that someone betrays them.  Because if you do everything correctly, work harder than others, behave well, avoid excesses, and build your identity around being responsible for the class.  Any disappointment feels far more unfair than it probably is.

I think Taylor also developed another strategy that is quite common among sensitive people who achieve great success.  As compensation, if you didn’t have any friends during your adolescence, you build the most famous and spectacular group of friends in Hollywood.  If you felt you couldn’t control how people perceived you, you built a machine capable of guiding virtually every conversation about yourself.

If someone publicly humiliated you in front of millions of people, you make sure that no one ever has the last word on your story again.  And although we all do this to a greater or lesser extent, the problem is that Taylor had the resources, talent, and power to take those compensations to a level that very few people could achieve.  I honestly don’t think Taylor is a monster, because he isn’t.

I think she is an extraordinarily hardworking woman, who seems to treat those who work with her well, who genuinely appreciates her fans and enjoys being an artist, but I also don’t think she sees herself solely as a victim.  Taylor is also perceived as a survivor, someone who has spent years enduring public humiliation, criticism, cancellations, and scandals to always come back bigger than before.

And when you spend so much time being the good guy in the story and at the same time the one who always manages to get back up after every blow, there can come a point where you start to classify people into those who are with you and those who are trying to take something from you, even though maybe they are just competing, criticizing you, or making different choices.

When conflicts cease to be a matter of perspectives and  automatically become a matter of blame, Taylor responds with such forcefulness that few people inside and outside the industry seem too keen to continue arguing with her or about her, even when they might be right.  So, if someone spends 15 years learning how to protect themselves from any threat, what happens when that threat isn’t a journalist, an ex-boyfriend, Kanye West, or Scooter Brown, but a young artist who looks too much like the person she once was? The fear of disappearing.  Olivia’s mistake

: looking too much like Taylor Swift. After more than 15 years at the top, Taylor Swift managed to survive, something very few pop artists achieve. While many of her contemporaries were commercially declining, reinventing their careers, or simply ceasing to be relevant, Taylor remained, growing stronger all the time.

Kiriy Perry went into a tailspin.  Lady Gaga took other paths. Miley changed her image several times. Nicky Minaj, well, Selena never got to play in the same league, but Taylor continued to rack up record after record and she’s perfectly aware of how rare that is .  At Miss Americana, she spoke openly about the fear many women in the music industry feel as they approach 30, describing entertainment as an elephant graveyard for female artists.

In a 2012 interview with Bog, he admitted to living with the constant feeling that at any moment the other shoe could fall off and he could lose everything.  She has even commented that many artists feel that at 35 the industry begins to leave them behind.  And here’s something I’ve already mentioned before.

Taylor took many of her insecurities from failed relationships, from feeling like she did n’t fit in during her teenage years, and from her life in Pennsylvania, and turned it all into art.  Like many artists, he probably thought that success, fame, and money would eventually compensate for many of those shortcomings, and for quite some time it seemed to work.

Each album was more successful than the last.  Each scandal ended up becoming a new example of survival, and each blow seemed to make her even bigger.  And then Olivia Rodrigo appeared, a teenage girl who wrote autobiographical songs that turned her breakups into viral hits.  She connected very well with a young, female audience, she was accumulating records at an absurd rate, and to top it all off, she was an avowed Taylor Swift fan.

The press wasted no time in comparing them.  There were even some rather curious parallels between the two.  For example, Olivia accidentally broke one of her Grammys after receiving it, just like Taylor had done years before.  Olivia was not a copy of Taylor, she was a distinct artist with her own influences and personality, but she did seem to be the first person in many years able to challenge the place of many competitors in the pop industry.

And I think Olivia made two mistakes.  The first was admiring Taylor Swift too much and so publicly, and the second was becoming successful too quickly.  Taylor was still the biggest artist on the planet.   She was about to embark on the A Store and was amassing a fortune that no other artist had managed to build. But since nothing lasts forever, many began to notice Olivia and wonder if one day she could occupy the exact place that Taylor had been fiercely defending for years.

Olivia was the first tangible proof that even someone who appears to have completely won the game is still replaceable.  At the same time, Olivia was not like Taylor’s other enemies .  He didn’t try to humiliate her like Kanye, nor did he buy her masters like Scooter Brown, nor did he start a social media war against her like Kim Kardashian.

She simply existed and wasn’t trying to take anything from him.  She is talented, writes very, very well, and connects very well with her audience.   That’s why , simply because of the good things she brought to the table, she reminded me too much of the person Taylor herself had once been.  It was much easier for Taylor to defend himself against cancellations, enemies, and genuinely bad people than against someone who was simply growing up.

This type of challenge put Taylor in a dilemma.   He could either continue on his path as an artist and as a person, or retire gracefully with his records and all his glory, or let the compulsive need to keep winning at all costs end up tarnishing his entire legacy.  Therefore, what happened next made perfect sense. The business lesson: when your heroine sends you the bill.

And now we can go back to the beginning, to Red’s ring, to the handwritten note , to Taylor calling Olivia, my baby in front of millions of people, and to that possible mentoring relationship that made Olivia, Conan Grey, and many fans think that Taylor had really found a young artist in whom she saw a version of herself reflected.

The problem is that instead of being happy, opening up spaces for both of them, and leaving a solid and respectable legacy, her insecurities seemed to hit the exact spot that scared her the most .  As Olivia was a huge Taylor fan, in a 2021 interview she commented that the bridge of Deyavu, her song, had been inspired by that of Cruel Summer, a song by Taylor.

He said it like any musician talks about their influences.  He wasn’t admitting plagiarism because it wasn’t plagiarism, but simply acknowledging that a song he loved had influenced another one he had just written.  Shortly afterwards, Taylor Swift, Jack Antenov, and St. Vincent were retroactively added to the credits for Deyavu, which meant that Olivia had to pay royalties on money her song had already generated.

He ended up giving up 50% of his royalties. Initially it was about $325,000 for Taylor alone, but that number keeps increasing because the song continues to generate revenue.  Keep in mind that Taylor Swift currently has an estimated net worth in the billions of dollars.  It is the richest music in history.

That $325,000 represents just one whole zero with 162,500,000 millionths per crime. For an average person in a first-world country, for example, who earns about $30,000 a year, it would be the equivalent of receiving $0.88. $4.88. So, to say that Taylor didn’t do this for money.  And yes, I know that in 2021 Taylor was worth considerably less, about 750 million to be exact.

If we do the same calculation, it’s still the equivalent of about 43. The funny thing is that the parts of the songs are not even remotely similar and it would probably be a difficult case to make in court.  But did Olivia want to take on Taylor Swift legally and turn the whole thing into a scandal?  I don’t believe it, and I suspect Taylor didn’t either.

But do you know which songs do sound very similar? Opalite de Taylor and two lovers of Luis Miguel.  And do you know who isn’t listed in the credits for Opalite?  Luis Miguel. Later, something similar would happen with Good for You, whose profits ended up being shared with the members of Paramorph due to the similarities with Misery Business.

But that case was different because Olivia’s team and Paramor’s team had already been talking even before the song came out.  Then, suddenly, Olivia, an artist who had been in the industry for a very short time, saw how some of the songs that had defined her debut ceased to belong to her completely.   We will never know what conversations took place behind the scenes, who made each decision exactly, or to what extent Taylor was personally involved in the negotiations.

But Olivia did make it clear how she felt.   She said it was frustrating to see her creativity discredited and described the whole experience as a business lesson, a rather elegant way of saying that she had just discovered the music industry was far less romantic and friendly than she had imagined.  And then many things begin to make sense.

Why did Olivia stop mentioning Taylor? Why did Conan Grey also stop doing it? Why were they avoiding questions they had previously answered with enthusiasm?  Why [snort] did Olivia quickly leave the VMAs while Taylor was still there supposedly supporting her in front of the world?  And why did songs like The Grudge and Vampire make many people begin to suspect that that disappointment was still very much present?  Although Vampire S is officially a song about an ex-partner, it’s hard not to think of Taylor when listening to it.  Not because

Olivia has confirmed it, because she has always avoided doing so, but because many of the emotions they describe fit surprisingly well with what happened between them.  The song talks about feeling used, about having idealized someone only to later discover that the person was not who they appeared to be.

It talks about realizing you were naive, about ignoring other people’s warnings because you were too convinced your experience would be different, and about finally understanding that those who warned you were perhaps right all along .  There are even references to it being sold in parts, which makes sense when you see the percentages of the songs that no longer belonged to her.

I think Vampire works on two levels at the same time, because it talks about a romantic relationship and at the same time about the disappointment of discovering that your idol wasn’t exactly the person you imagined.  And if that were the case, I do n’t think Olivia would have many options, other than denying everything.

Directly targeting one of the most powerful artists on the planet, whose fanbase is known for defending her irrationally, would have generated a media storm of much greater magnitude.  But that doesn’t mean she has to stop writing about what she feels.  However, with Vampire there is still room to interpret that Olivia was mixing several personal experiences into a single song.

The Grudge is 100% for Taylor.  In other words, I have no doubt, not the slightest doubt.  In it Olivia sings, “My immortal love I now hold like a grudge.”  And then he asks himself, “How could someone do the things you did to me so easily ?”  I’m trying to understand why you would do all this to me.

You must be insecure, you must be very unhappy.  But it’s on the bridge where I have the fewest doubts.  Your flowers were full of vitriol. Vitriol is sulfuric acid, that is, a very beautiful gift hiding a poison inside.  Cire, poetry.  And of course, Taylor sent her flowers with a note and everything.  Then Olivia sings, “You built me ​​up to watch me fall.

”  Taylor publicly calls her my baby.  He gives her a ring, writes her little notes, supposedly celebrates her successes, and dazzles her by opening the doors of his apparent friendship, only for him to end up facing retroactive debts, millions of dollars, and a complete estrangement shortly afterward.

And just in case there were still any doubts, Olivia concludes with “You have everything and yet you still want more.”  Of course, Olivia has never said that The Grotch is about Taylor Swift and probably never will. But if I had to bet, I’d put 50,000 slot machine tickets on this song that it’s not about any ex-partner. The sudden closeness between Taylor and Sabrina Carpenter is also beginning to be better understood.

While Olivia completely disappeared from Taylor’s circle , Sabrina became one of the artists most supported by her, even ending up as the opening act for the Era Store.  Given that Sabrina had been part of the love triangle that inspired much of the album Sour, it was inevitable that the gesture would be seen as a message.

Sabrina was the nemesis, obviously Olivia’s nemesis.   It may have been, it may not have been, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Taylor Swift by now, it’s that she rarely makes moves without fully understanding how they’re going to be perceived. For years, Taylor spoke about how the industry exploited young artists, about the fear of being replaced, and about how unfair a system designed to take advantage of those just starting out can be.

And yet, when she had the opportunity to become the mentor Olivia was probably hoping to find, she ended up running the same dynamics she had been  criticizing for years.  And if this is how you end up treating a fan who built a good part of her career inspired by your work, who admired you for years, who constantly thanked you for showing her the way and who trusted that you truly appreciated her, then what hope is there for the rest of us? What happens when winning is the only option? Taylor learned to survive, but he always had winning in mind and he

consistently achieved it for years.  But someone appeared who reminded him that even people who always win eventually have to stop.  Taylor Swift is extremely intelligent.  In fact, I think she is one of the smartest and most strategic artists the music industry has produced in a very long time, if not the smartest.

And being that intelligent, she is perfectly aware of all her contradictions. When you want to point out that he has a strong need to control situations, there’s already Mastermind, an entire song where he practically explains that his whole life has been planned several moves ahead.  When you want to talk about her insecurities, there’s already Antihero, where she admits that she herself is the problem.

When you want to point out that she lives in terror of disappearing, there’s already Nothing New, American table, interviews talking about the elephant graveyard for women in the industry, and dozens of songs where she confesses exactly that fear. Taylor seems to have anticipated many of the criticisms that could lead him to incorporate them into his own character before someone else has the opportunity to use them against him, but admitting to a behavior does not necessarily mean ceasing to repeat it, much less justifying it.

That’s the real Taylor Swift machine, who far from just writing songs carefully controls her public image, decides what is said and what is not said about her, responds before anyone else has the opportunity to define the narrative, and for years has built an extraordinarily efficient parasocial relationship with millions of people who feel they know Taylor better than she actually knows herself.

Easter eggs are the best example of this.  They are clues hidden in songs, videos, publications and interviews that compel her most obsessive fans to listen to albums over and over again, review every detail, analyze colors, numbers, positions and theories to feel that they understand Taylor in a more intimate way than the rest of the world, as if they were reading pages torn from her personal diary.

This is not by chance and it works very, very well. Consider that if millions of people spend hours deciphering messages, making maps, connecting references, and building theories, and all of them share this on the internet at the same time without rest, Taylor gets very large, very constant attention, a giant conversation, and a guided image exclusively from his own point of view.

And it also works because very few people want to criticize it.  You simply cannot speak ill of Taylor Swift.  Ask Damond Alborne or any journalist who has tried to write anything even slightly negative about her.  Ask anyone who has had the misfortune of becoming the target of a fandom willing to defend them under virtually any circumstance.

And that’s why in Olivia’s case the blame changed sides and more than one person saw it for what it was.  And that perfectly calculated and controlled image of Taylor crumbled.  It’s interesting because despite so much praise for a celebrity’s achievements and perfect public image , there is still a human being behind it who is capable of making mistakes, contradicting himself, lying to save himself, and being hypocritical from time to time.

That doesn’t make him a villain, mind you, but he is a human being and an extremely ambitious one who, despite being foolish, has the net worth and relevance he has today.  Many celebrities have public relations teams, yes, but Taylor has an entire ecosystem.  I admire Taylor Swift a lot, I know half of her songs because I genuinely think she has very good music and also, I mean, I’ve known Taylor since they showed Love Story on MTV, I mean, I followed her very closely during my adolescence.

I experienced practically all of their controversies in real time.  I saw the call between Kany and Taylor posted on Kim Kardashian’s Snapchat. I remember the chaos of 2016 perfectly and I’ve been here watching how this whole story unfolded from the beginning.  That’s why I feel like something was lost along the way.  I get the impression that while much of her audience grew up, matured, and went through other stages of life, Taylor in many ways remained emotionally and creatively anchored in a very adolescent way of understanding conflicts, relationships, and even

criticism.  There comes a point where you simply stop identifying with many of his more recent lyrics.  For example, in In the Life of a Showgirl, her latest album, the hints, the hints towards Charlie XX seemed completely unnecessary to me. They were something that could very well not have happened, purely optional.

And it even made me feel a bit embarrassed for her to see a woman of 35 or 36 years old writing about someone calling her the boring Barbie. One would think that an artist of Taylor’s stature would have other experiences, concerns, or ideas to draw inspiration from.  But hey, art is subjective and each person connects with it instinctively.

That was simply my experience listening to that album.  I , I, I found it quite boring.  It made me cringe even to hear her calling everyone a [ __ ] left and right, while God forbid anyone dared to look at her out of the corner of their eye.  And I also got the feeling that he didn’t contribute anything more to a career that already has much more interesting works.

Once you build a machine designed to win and the victories start coming in with bigger and bigger, more absurd figures, more numerous records, and increasingly ridiculous amounts of money going into your pockets, the goal ceases to be art and becomes simply to keep winning.  40 variations of albums, strategic releases to prevent other artists from reaching number one, limited editions, media wars to diminish the relevance of other artists’ releases.

It feels less like the career of a brilliant composer and more like the strategy of a company trying to squeeze every last bit of available record.  Perhaps that’s inevitable, and that’s what happens when someone spends 20 years surviving, competing, and proving that no one could take them off the top.  But I also believe that everything has a limit because Olivia Rodrigo didn’t try to cancel her or humiliate her, nor did she buy her messages or leak private calls, she didn’t do absolutely anything, she simply showed up and fulfilled her

dream.  This episode keeps coming up because it was one of the few moments in which a crack could be seen in an image that had been extraordinarily consistent for almost 20 years , without a Kanye, a Justin, or a Scooter.  An 18-year-old fan, Taylor, took out the heavy weapons and put a silencer on them. After all, it’s a bit ironic to think that what could end up damaging Taylor Swift’s image isn’t her enemies, the press, Kanye West, or Scooter Brown, but the very insecurities and fears that seem to have accompanied her from the

beginning.  Perhaps if at some point he manages to come to terms with the idea that everything has a cycle, that nothing lasts forever, and that even the most successful careers eventually cease to be the center of attention, the final stretch of his career may look very different.

I find it hard to imagine Taylor retiring completely, taking several sabbatical years, or leading a truly private life.  I get the impression that she enjoys creating, working, competing, being the most relevant, and continuing to build new things too much.  And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being ambitious.

I am like that myself, and I believe that women need to be like that today more than ever.  The problem arises when that ambition begins to negatively affect other people.  Clear.  And when the need to keep winning seems to outweigh art itself.  I do n’t want Taylor to disappear, to stop making music, or to become a nostalgic artist living only on her past successes.

In fact, I think she still has a lot of potential and probably several good albums ahead of her, but I also think that maybe she needs to do what she herself recommended to the world a few years ago and say, ” You need to calm down,” slow down a bit , calm down a little, trust more in the place she has already earned and accept that even if her moment of greatest commercial dominance has already passed or is about to pass, that does n’t mean her career is over.

And who knows, maybe taking steps backward is precisely what he needs to gain momentum and do something truly special again, because honestly, the last album [snorts] didn’t do it for me.  If you enjoyed the video, let me know with a like, a hype, by subscribing, and by telling me in the comments what you thought, because I genuinely love reading them and seeing what you think about all these topics.

And a huge thank you to the channel members who had early access to this video and who can also vote to choose the next topics, participate in Q&As and basically help me decide on the channel’s next case.  I truly appreciate that extra support because it helps me continue making these kinds of videos with the time and care they require.

Also remember that this video is available on Spotify as a podcast where you can find me as Anatomy of Drama and on TikTok as @camidramis.  And we’ll see you in the next video.