In 2017, Taylor Swift tried something different. She released her album, Reputation, without sitting down and giving any interviews. No fashion magazine interviews, no music-trade interviews, no TV interviews. It’s something only Beyonce has really done successfully, this whole “promoting an album entirely on her own terms and never giving up control even once” thing. Personally, I don’t think it really worked in Taylor’s case, because she always desperately wants to explain her music. Which is why she hosted “listening sessions” for true-blue Snake Fam members in which she would explain her songs, answer questions and then encourage the Snake Fam to spread the word. It was a tortured process.
In the end, Reputation was a financial success, but many critics didn’t think it was her best work. Reputation also failed to win any Grammys, and Taylor didn’t even bother showing up to this year’s Grammys. I thought this whole “I won’t talk on the record to journalists” thing was a closed chapter, and that Taylor would try something else when it came to promoting her new album, which is probably coming out later this year (for all we know). Well, guess what? She’s still going to try to do this sh-t, where instead of consenting to an interview, she’ll only write her own “cover stories.” During Reputation promotion, that meant asking British Vogue to put her on the cover with no cover interview, and British Vogue was given one of Taylor’s poems to publish. It was… odd. It’s all a very strange strategy.
So it is here – Taylor covers the April issue of Elle UK, The Music Issue, and she posed for the editorial and then she would not give an interview. To be fair, it’s not like she’s canceling these interviews last minute – the magazines know what they’re signing up for, and this is what’s negotiated with Taylor’s team. Taylor’s team is the one with the bad strategy, the magazines are just happy to have Taylor on their covers to (hopefully) boost their sales. You can see the full Elle UK editorial here, she doesn’t look like Big Bird in every photo. Elle UK got to publish an “essay” from Taylor, in her own words, talking about music, the importance of music, and which songs take her back to whatever place, which songs healed her broken heart, and how pop music is a global language. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cover courtesy of Elle UK.
Taylor did listening sessions way before Reputation, they weren’t anything new for her most recent incarnation.
I don’t think the writer means the sessions are new, just that they are technically counterproductive to her whole “there will be no explanation, just reputation” spiel we were given. There WERE explanations, just not officially to the press. She needs her fans to know who the songs are about, because that’s her whole kick.
Also, the essay was so corny.
I’m fine with her strategy and I like a lot of her music. But I hate, hate, HATE this cover.
The essay is interesting, I liked it. She has good taste in songs!
And yeah, the listening sessions for her fans have been part of her strategy for many years now.
Ooooooh, that trump fringe… Get rid of it, woman.
I mean she has a point. If Pop music weren’t a global language, she wouldn’t be touring the world.
I live in Beirut and shared this story with my husband today as I was walking home from the grocery:
Just passed two guys, mid-thirties in their convertible with the top down. They had neck and face tattoos and looked tough, you know? Full on blaring Taylor Swift’s ‘Delicate’ and singing along. Made me smile.
If you think about it,these two probably grew up in a War Zone and they obviously speak Taylor’s language too.
When did she tour the world? She goes to the UK and Australia. No other European countries, certainly not Africa or South America. Has she ever been the Asia? So where is that “the world”.
She had shows in Japan and China for 1989, as well as Germany.
She went to Japan for Reputation. Also New Zealand.
Never Africa or South America, no.
I think it’s pretty much a “world” tour according to every term in the music industry.
I hate this cover, but I actually like a lot of this essay. I really related to what she was saying about music connecting you to times and places and memories good and bad, and found what she was saying about the challenges of songwriting really interesting. (She will never have the most amazing voice in the world, but I don’t think she gets nearly enough credit for what a good songwriter she is.)
I liked Lainey’s take on this essay. She’s always talking about artists showing their “work” – in this case, how Taylor is “working” to build her legacy and the narrative around her. In that she wants the narrative to be, “Taylor is a singer-songwriter and she knows her business”
Ooh, I must look that up! I love when she analyses people showing their work, it’s always interesting, but I must have missed the Taylor one. Thank you!
Super pretty cover if only they could have done the hair a little different. Her legs and arms are different colours, like mine, nice that they didn’t photoshop that
I think she’s wearing tights here.
I think this strategy is a great one, frankly. She wants to control her own narative and now she’s powerful enough to do so. Just because she doesn’t have anything ground-breaking to narrate, doesn’t mean it’s a bad strategy, especially if she felt there was misinformation being attributed to her.
I agree. I had to laugh about the whole, “reputation was a flop,” narrative too. The woman held an all-stadium tour that will likely make her the highest paid female entertainer last year but we’re still going to call it all a failure? Admit you don’t like her and don’t like her music but you can’t say she isn’t successful as heck. She also managed to keep an over 2 year-long relationship fairly under wraps!
It said it in the article. The album was a financial success (and with all the merch = tickets schemes going on I’m not surprised) but it wasn’t a critical one. All singers want the critical praise and adulation, because if this was just a money thing her occupation would be something else. The album did flop in that regard because people weren’t checking for it due to changing tastes.
It’s really hard to judge how well even her fans liked her latest album. Many on social media admitted they didn’t really care for it, yet bought multiple copies, and still went to the concerts. I don’t think it’s normal to buy multiple copies of the same album but her fans do. And I don’t really hear these songs on the radio much so it seems her die hard fans carried her on this one.
When it was largely free that may have been true in the past. The demand for payment will be changing that in the future.
Going to say something controversial, and which makes me feel a bit Trumpian (shudder, ugh). Sometimes I feel like entertainment journalists set out to get the most clickbait from an interview—remember the dude who basically outed Lee Pace in his last interview? There was a different article I read not that long ago too, which had an eye-brow raising headline but the actual article was quite tame…just can’t remember which celeb it was, lol.
So in a way, I sort of understand why the celebs that are this huge: Beyonce and Taylor…hesitate to lose control of their own narrative.
You think what you’re saying sounds Trumpian because that’s honestly where Trump gets his “fake news” ideas from — he used to be a celebrity and celebrity gossip IS click-baity and often false. What Trump fails to understand is that government reporters writing about what they see and hear is not the same, and in no way fake.
Also, it’s random to release a magazine but with nothing else with it. I suspect she’ll be dropping an album, soon.
She happens to be a very good writer, so I think this strategy is fine. I really enjoy her essays.
Props to Taylor for being in control of her own message that’s put out in media. That’s real power. The business moves she and her team have pulled off – her new record deal where she gets to own the recording; Spotify deals, etc – she’s taking control of it all because of the position she is in and I respect the hell out of that. It’s hard for female entertainers to have so much control over their own brand.
That’s a terrible cover. Not her best angle. They couldn’t have picked any of the other much better ones? Also LOL at her “essay”. It reads high school level.
This is probably me being super weird and nit-picky, but it bothered me slightly that Taylor spelled color as “colour” – unless maybe Elle edited it to that spelling. It just seemed to me like she’s trying to be sooooo British.
I would bet Elle changed it.
I have my doubts that she wrote this on her own. I listened to an interview when she was on the rep tour and she spoke in a very immature way. Every other word was “like” & her vocab was very basic. The difference between how she spoke in that essay and this essay is a gap bigger than the grand canyon.
I do agree with her that a song may bring up our past experiences of a time when we listened to it.
But when she says it’s a challenge to bring in those details, and she does it to remember her past, I’m not buying it. I doubt it’s challenging to bring in those details. And I think she does it because many of her fans love to chase the hints & then gossip about the target, which in turn she profits from as she sells more music.
That essay is easily something that could pass for a 7th grade Language Arts paper.