People online are so weird about Taylor Swift. When TTPD came out, it got absolutely bombed, reviewers and tabloids tore it apart, and the consensus was that it was too long and not her best work. A couple of years later, a lot of those same people treat it like one of her strongest lyrical albums.
Midnights went through the same cycle: first it was “weird” and “her weakest,” and now it’s a lot of people’s favorite and sitting comfortably on playlists. I’m not even going to start on Lover, because that one got burned to the ground on release and then quietly rehabilitated (LOVER got a whole circle moment during the Eras tour).
The same thing is happening with The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore. Half the internet has already decided it’s her weakest, as if four extra tracks on an album that just came out last year can be written off in a weekend. At this point that reaction is kind of expected. The first-week pile-on has become part of the release ritual: dunk on it, call it a flop or a step down, then circle back later once the songs have actually lived in people’s lives.
It also feels extra lazy this time because Encore isn’t even a full new era. It’s an expansion of a record that already did historic numbers and proved to be the public’s fave. Calling the add-ons her “weakest album” is just recycling the same hot take with a new title. If the pattern holds, give it six months and “Patient Zero” will be the track everyone pretends they always liked…
walk with me guys. theres spot for 3 more of the locks and we saw four different colored book in the background of the podcast aka the variants #tsthelifeofashowgirl
"How did people not realize it's a chessboard during Mastermind?" My friends, everyone realized it was a chessboard. The new information was that it was an actual sequence to get checkmate in a real game of chess and not just visually satisfying choreographed moves