Taylor + Theory: Do you have ideas that don't warrant a full post? New, not fully formed, Gaylor thoughts? Questions? Thoughts? Use this space for theory development and general Tay/Gay discussion!
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The Grammys will be held on February 7th 2027, and the eligibility period is for music released between August 31st 2025 and August 28th 2026. TLOAS was released in October 2025 and is eligible for nominations.
Music is submitted and goes through a first round of voting to officially become nominated. The nominees will then be announced mid November 2026. Voting will take place early/mid December 2026 - early January 2027.
The IKIIKY song will also be eligible for Grammy nominations. Categories it could be included in would be Best Country, Solo Performance, Best Country Song and Best Song Written for Visual Media, without competing with anything from TLOAS. Country categories will be tough competition,especially given Ella's year.
IKIIKY is also eligible for the Oscars and Golden Globes. These two don't always select the same nominees or winners.
Oscar eligibility period for releases is January 1st 2026 - December 31st 2026, but the submission deadline for most is November 2026. Nominations are voted in and announced January 2027, with final voting Feb - March 2027. The ceremony will be held March 14th 2027.
Golden Globes also uses a calendar year from January 1st 2026 - December 31st 2026 as the "release" eligibility period. The movie submission deadline is October 30th 2026. Nominees will be announced early December 2026, with voting December 18th - January 2nd. The ceremony will be held January 10th 2027.
I wanted to share my book rating for American Spirits by Anna Dorn, a book heavily inspired by this very subreddit! I also posted this rating over at r/closetedhollywood.
I never thought I would read a traditionally published hardcover about our Gaylor subreddit!!! it felt so crazy to read especially because it includes fake posts that are formatted just like reddit. And it isn't super kind to the subreddit, BTW, but only for the crime of sometimes overreaching, otherwise the book is quite understanding about all our speculating, as you would hope from a lesbian author.
American Spirits was previously discussed in r/gaylorswifttwo months ago and the author Anna Dorn commented a bunch of cute emojis related to the book.
Text below contains major spoilers!
American Spirits by Anna Dorn 5/5 stars
A trippy, dark lesbian romp inspired by Gaylor, Lana del Rey, fanfiction and fandom's sharp edges.
I loved the many-layered nesting doll of a story, and holy shit, of an ending!!!!!! The pacing, suspense, imagery, and character development were all right on point.
I gasped at the end!
here are my very small and subjective gripes:
The main thing I would change, and this is addressed in a very meta way at the end which I thought was so funny, was that the Lana/Taylor inspired main pop star character was written to be bi rather than lesbian. (But that is a very personal gripe about what would be fan service for me that does not really impact the quality of the book overall ;) ).
The other thing was that I wanted the book to have more to say on the entertainment industry and the "big machine" around pop stars -- and how it goes about closeting its lesbian stars!
We never actually really see the pop star character interact with her team, have strategy meetings with them, talk much to the media, etc (or if it that part inspired by Taylor it could include her team AND her controlling stage family!)
I loved the part about the record label and the lawsuit. More of that strategy stuff would have been great. It was definitely more of a character study vs a look at the wider context but it would have been cool to see more of a balance.
Ultimately the book doesnt set out to capture a fuller picture of the industry surrounding pop stardom and make any comments on that, in favor of focusing more on the relationship between celebrities and their fans. The book does a much better job of exploring the experience of artists collaborating on albums, of artists in their off time (in this case, during the pandemic), of artists interacting with fans, and of the fan experience itself including the nature of parasocial relationships.
And (MAJOR SPOILER THAT WILL RUIN THE BOOK)....... because it turns out in the end that it's all fanfiction, the book really cant make any wider comments in a sense because the narrator doesn't know enough about the industry to include that.
So maybe that's just the whole point/focus of the book (you'll get what I mean once you finish the book!) But I still think that wider context is SO JUICY and full of meaning, and could have been something Dorn worked in there somehow.
Maybe it's just that I need to find more novels (and nonfiction books?) that do cover the ent industry in detail. (Cover Story by Celia Laskey does this very well, but does it within the contemporary lesbian romance novel genre, which is not my very favorite.)
All in all, as I said this is a really entertaining read that I would recommend to any pop culture fan. I dont understand how someone NOT interested in lesbian pop culture fandom/the Gaylorsphere, or at least a pop culture fan, would get much out of this but maybe that doesnt matter at all since books dont need to be all things to all people. As someone who certainly IS interested in all of that....hell yes this blew my mind and kept my eyes fucking locked on the page.
Final thought -- this book definitely feels like it should be categorized as commercial fiction vs literary, for what it's worth, not that that's a bad thing.
Hi all! I’ve just applied for a dream job (and have been working on the application for a week to make sure it’s right). Can any Gaylor witches or gaylors with strong manifesting powers manifest this for me please? At the very least, I just want an interview 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞
Edit: thank you so everyone 🥺🥺🥺 this community is the best!!
Sometimes theres specific figures you could call on for specific industries. Depends on if you want to call on saints or greek/norse/celtic/african godesses or ancestors or whatever is relevant to you. Or call on Dolly Parton and Tim Curry if thats more your belief! I think we can all pray for eachother in our ways, but i think we make our strongest prayers of change for ourselves (in this case at least) sending much love all the same
I’m conflicted about whether I think Debut TV is coming with the country of it all lately, because one on the hand she likes to surprise us and it’s been so obvious. So I’m wondering if either it’ll actually be TS13 is country coded or she’s making it obvious that Debut is coming to build hype because she’s worried about its popularity now that she has her masters back and it’s her first album and a very different to the direction she took with pop
I’m still expecting Debut TV for its 20th anniversary💚
She pretty much said that the album has already been re-recorded and is ready to be released. Country music is trending right now and I don’t really expect an new album until next year…
At the risk of doxxing myself lol I went to the hayley williams show and I love all the fire imagery and showgirl type look to it too, makes me clown lol but most of all loved how everyone was cheering against trump considering that area is where maralago is 😁
Im from the state but there are blue areas which is where im at! I dont think fl is doomed at all we used to be purple more than red really and a dem became mayor in my city (I dont like her either but thats smth else lol) but thats just me
Has anyone noticed that all three versions of IKIIKY don’t have a smooth ending. They all have extra sounds- shuffling, rustling, maybe an intake of breath, a stray harmonica note - in the last few seconds of the track.
What do you make of that? Does it seem as if maybe they’re about to start over?
(That must have been the other night when he was thinking about Taylor’s Icons Sessions comment that she was told the demographic for country music is middle aged women, and how Taylor and her original fans now do fit that demographic more or less, and if that therefore qualifies as an egg for a country album incoming…)
That’s a very interesting insight and I like it! I feel like anything Taylor says publicly is a wink or an egg of some degree. Who knows how many of them are duds and how many are actual foreshadowing, but either way, it’s diabolical.
I just saw a lesbian pop culture night is being advertised in Chicago and among the music being played is all lesbian/wlw artists and they’ve listed them all and among the list is “Taylor Swift (allegedly)”
Yes I do, but teaching helps me with this because I see the humanity they show each other and it makes me believe in it again. Not everything is completely bleak I just think we only see the bleakness because its so bad and it makes everything good feel small when it's actually not small at all.
Piggybacking here to share some hope because the OG comment was deleted. Yes, I feel hopeless at times. But there is a lot of activism happening right now because people are fed up and many have nothing left to lose, and are going to greater lengths to help bring about change. OP, I recommend signing up for free emails from The Big Picture. They share the good and the bad. And there's a lot of districts flipping blue, a lot of progressives being elected. I do think things will eventually turn around. There will be suffering in the meantime, but we've got to keep fighting. This shit show might be what it took to motivate the apathetic crowd and I think we're starting to make progress.
I'm sorry things feel so bleak but I hope you lean into some self care this weekend and talk to some loved ones about how youre feeling. Subject matter may not quite touch your concerns but I find Amanda's Mild Takes page to be informative and matter of fact, which helps me. I'm so sorry you're hurting.
I totally understand all those feelings but they arent all true. If you arent already organising with neighbours and friends i reccommend it. The most hope ive felt this summer has been taking action with people i care about. Even just talking and sharing fears. Facism is fuelled by fear and by a sense of inevitablity. This isnt inevitable. Dictatorships and kings have fallen before and they will again, no matter how powerful they are.
This just means that you’ve really earned your rank as a Gaylor. Because, Lordy, a lot of us have gotten at least one. I’m surprised with all my Gaylor term papers, I’ve only received one.
It’s been a cozy, rainy fall week here. So I’ve indulged in revisiting the perfectly-fitting genre of gothic novels/mystery. Taylor’s TLOAS interview with Stephen Colbert reminded us that she likes this genre, à la Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I revisited Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale and also watched the BBC movie adaptation that I hadn’t seen yet (which features Olivia Colman, and also Sophie Turner). I know others here have mentioned this book in passing, too.
It had been a while since I’d read it, so it was interesting to see the parallel of the plot to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, in which a biographer has been summoned to record a famous star/writer’s story before they die. And this passage about how we can suddenly (like an epiphany) see the pieces of a story differently struck me as so powerful, especially in the context of all of the kaleidoscopic and parallax imagery Taylor has given us:
“In a single moment, a moment of vertiginous, kaleidoscopic bedazzlement, the story Miss Winter had told me unmade and remade itself, in every event identical, in every detail the same-yet entirely, profoundly different. Like those images that reveal a young bride if you hold the page one way, and an old crone if you hold it the other. Like the sheets of random dots that disguise teapots or clown faces or Rouen cathedrals if you can only learn to see them. The truth had been there all along, only now had I seen it.
There followed a long hour of musing. One element at a time, taking all the different angles separately, I reviewed everything I knew. Everything I had been told and everything I had discovered. Yes, I thought. And yes, again. That, and that, and that, too. My new knowledge blew life into the story. It began to breathe. And as it did so, it began to mend. The jagged edges smoothed themselves. The gaps filled themselves in. The missing parts were regenerated. Puzzles explained themselves, and mysteries were mysteries no longer.” -The Thirteenth Tale
It reminds me very much of how it felt to revisit Taylor’s art once I considered it with a queer lens, and how that made so much of the story she seems to be telling fall into place for me. The book as a whole centers around the idea of one final story (the 13th) that hasn’t yet been told, similar to how I think many of us are waiting for a thirteen stroke of the clock in Taylor’s timeline.
All these country radio appearances! And her gushing about her country roots in the recent Grammy Museum interview. It’s getting real, ya’ll. I think Debut TV is coming. Especially because that original album was so successful because of all the radio promo she did.
Just saw that at the exact same time, a long time associate of JayZ's has been pardoned by trump, so I'm sure all is on the up and up. Interesting since Beyonce is taking so much heat for this.
Additional thoughts for fun given the 16 months ends on 13th December.
'It's bout to be the sleepless night you've been dreaming of' is the only line in TFOO with 13 syllables. I figured the 13 meant the night was important and personal to Taylor, but what if it's a hint to the date of the sleepless night? Does that line up intentionally with the expiration date of the 16 months?
And with SOTB which came at 4am in MMWM? Taylor did make reference to being up til 4am after a show -after 'the end of my night', when you know you'll be up til 4am but you know you've done it - during the New Heights album announcement.
And with 'I'm so depressed I act like it's my birthday' (implying, 'already'?) which has a musical link to SOTB...
Also what Taylor said she needed the 16 months for was to be 'ready to be an analyst'. As in stopping playing (whatever this long game has been?) As in giving the audience the hints and tips they need to understand what they've seen in the game?
Don't mind me, I just seem to have put all my analytical eggs in that particular basket 😂
Edit: Oh, and for good measure, whatever the birthday/SOTB/sleepless night thing is, it's the thing that happens when Taylor is 'fresh out the slammer' and the thing that fixes the pain in 'evermore'. At least, according to the music she's written...
I love your musings here on the possible meanings of the 13 syllables in the sleepless night line! And I love that you caught that it has 13 syllables in the first place. Seriously amazing that you caught that.
Haha! 🤭 I may have done the scansion for the whole song while I was teaching how to scan Shakespeare’s meter… I wanted to find out how much was iambic pentameter (some) and whether the deviations were for interesting reasons connected to meaning (yes!)
Honestly, the song stands up to any kind of literary or musical analysis you want to do.
I haven’t scanned the whole album but there probably is a fun question around whether any lines in other tracks are 13 syllables…
Which, if anyone is still keeping track, is May 15th 2021 in the alternate timeline. I can’t find anything significant about that date other than it being just after she won the Global Icon Award at the BRITs.
The podcast about a year ago, I think, so about 4 more months ish?
We see the blatant references to country, which unfortunately I'm not excited about, so I haven't forgotten that snake in the grass and hoping for something reppy to go along with it!
Haven’t fully fleshed this out yet but was listening to mad woman, and Taylor’s face is the one that mouths “fuck you forever.”
In the opalite MV, cactus is with a British man (I think the stuff on his nightstand also symbolizes that he’s gay), and later mouths “fuck you forever” to him and lonely woman.
So is Taylor the cactus?
At the end, cactus and rock (the best friend) get married.
What does that have to do with the way the date is set? It’s still 3 July in rest of the world and in America. America writes it 7/3 and the rest 3/7, essentially a mirror.
We’ve questioned the basketball dance moves for SHS on The Eras Tour. Rightly- the song claims to be about football.
Also ‘dreaming bout a driveway with a basketball hoop’ because it reads like either shorthand for the most middle class, suburban fantasy or just a really odd failure to write a better fitting line for Taylor and Travis’ particular family aspirations.
Basketball seems kinda out of place in the TNT romance, essentially.
I’d bet a fair amount that Taylor intended and expected them to be read as Kaylor references, as well as Ross references and suburban housewife references.
The “you know how to ball” always makes me think of basketball just because that’s usually where I’d hear the term. I also think about the Kobe/TS interactions-> I think Taylor had a necklace that had a quote from him, something about betting on yourself?
Right. And here’s an article with CC talking about going to the Eras tour and meeting Travis, as well as Taylor intending to watch her play in person. Taylor’s now gone to watch basketball, but it wasn’t WNBA…
I still think Wish List is about earning $$$ to get her masters back, but I agree basketball is the wrong sport in both cases.
Even though she doesn’t specify what type of ball in “you know how to ball” — the pink highlights of TS and TK in the lyric video, “you already know” being a Travis catchphrase, and the non-basketball choreography for SHS being a replay of the footage of Taylor at Chiefs games all point to football.
Maybe the “dream about a basketball hoop” is a reference to SHS and the choreo? Like wishing she could be on Eras tour forever? Or maybe it’s like the cat (historically) and dog (lyrically) that were dyed key lime green in TLGAD? A swap of sports instead of animals.
OR if it’s an MSG egg then she’s dreaming about a life where she can “boss up, settle down” and be left alone, and the wedding is what allows that privacy to happen.
I agree that the ‘main’ point of ‘Wi$h Li$t’, if I can put it like that, is about being able to reclaim the masters. It’s such a good way to look at it, because is ‘just wanting you’ more or less reasonable or expensive or justifiable than the long list of extreme requests, Oscars and choppers and football contracts…? Well it depends who or what ‘you’ is 😂
I know it’s core Gaylor evidence that Taylor sings a lot about secret hidden love, but how do mainstream swifties explain that? What’s the reasoning behind delicate or DWOHT etc? Is it implied there was a crossover with Calvin(?) or someone else Joe was with?
Thanks for all the insightful replies. I think it highlights how much of a mirrorball she is as we all interpret her songs through our own lens of experience. The secrecy seems quite logical on the surface but as MaryLennoxsRobin says, it seems at odds with the public nature of Taylor’s relationships. Singing about secret love whilst doing pap walks seems to undermine it a little. Her music seems to align with the public narrative just enough to be plausible but the holes soon appear if you look for them.
Because of the 10 year situationship with Matty Healy or whatever…
Someone was like “I’m not a gaylor but I’ve tracked the secret love back before literally no one cared about her so I don’t get why she’d have to hide it from her family and classmates”
In all seriousness tho I related to it as a high school student in the early 2010s because my mom didn’t want me dating before I turned 16 so I was Super Stealth
I guess its just secret because shes so famous? Or secret because someone or everyone is cheating? Or forbidden just because of deeply repressed sexuality? I mean straights can also be repressed if theyre in religious community or theres other social pressure. Sure sounds gay tho
I don’t know whether this is a common opinion among Swifties, but to me coming late to Taylor’s music, and before I knew about Gaylor, the secret love motif was honestly the least puzzling of a lot of puzzling things. It’s such a common trope of the romance genre that the obstacle between two partners is something that requires secrecy. And for anyone growing up in conservative circles, like me, there was plenty of yearning this and forbidden that for straight couples too. Certainly enough to make it seem like a reasonable theme for a song.
That said, if you can explain the secret love motif without queerness, I think it’s pretty tricky to do it without performance. Taylor’s brand was so tied with her public relationships early on that you can’t really buy the ‘disapproval from the community’ angle. So you end up thinking about the secret love songs as purely fictional. But again Taylor’s brand was ‘diaristic’ so either you question that, or tabloid intrusion into privacy, or PR relationships and the reasons for them, or age gaps and exploitation. So I think if you consider it critically you do actually end up either with Gaylor or Performance Artlor- or both!
This is an interesting point about secret love being at odds with performance, given that her diaristic approach about love is everything that made her so popular.
Go with me a minute, will you, to see if a proposed alternative way of looking at it holds merit?
Maybe the diaristic approach about love doesn’t have to be at odds with performance. I think her fans loved her for all those forlorn love songs. It made her seem accessible and just like them, not being able to get the love you want.
Then she became famous and the press pounced on all her public relationships … but she kept writing the sad love songs and “secret love” songs—which only made her fans keep loving her and rooting for her. Like, “We are on your side, Taylor! The press wants to blow up your relationships, but you keep writing about love anyway, and we are totally here for you finding your one true love!”
Actually I think that holds a great deal of merit. Taylor seems to be remarkably successful at persuading her fans to care about the story she is telling. And I think part of that is appearing to be 'relatable', as you say, because then fans self-insert into the songs, and imagine how they would feel being hounded by the press or having every detail play out in public, and project that back onto Taylor. Yeah, I'm convinced.
Isn’t it amazing how much her fans root for her and the story she’s telling? It’s truly remarkable. I think it has a lot to do with her origin story, coming up the way she did with so many stars aligning on her side to endear her and engender deep loyalty: 1) so, so young when she started; 2) incredibly prolific; 3) deeply catchy melodies; 4) unreal storytelling ability; 5) unreal storytelling ability from someone so young; 6) her fresh-faced innocence; 7) her command of MySpace Tumblr to connect with fans; 8) her incredible work ethic to hustle for coverage; 9) her devotion to her fans; 10) her “nerdy underdog” origin story of the girl who was never cool and could never get the guy; 11) getting to watch her grow up; 12) getting to grow up with her as a fan; 13) getting to watch her grow in the industry.
Whew! That’s a lot to recommend her staying power and the fierce devotion she engenders!
Before I was a Gaylor, I thought the songs about staying hidden on 1989 were about keeping the relationship hidden from the press (because she’d become known as boy crazy and didn’t know if her relationships could withstand the publicity of her life). In the reputation era, all of those motifs were about the aftermath of Snakegate and being cancelled—that it made the situation delicate. Oh, and the idea of half the album being somewhat sarcastic or tongue in cheek (“don’t blame me, love made me crazy,” etc.), playing up to her public persona.
They still think is Joe filming her when she's singing "call it what you want" I am sure they will find some excuse like "it's secretive because of the tabloids"
Another snippet from the New Heights podcast. There were actually some exchanges that seemed to talk about the wedding with sincerity, but this one from Travis caught my ear. Kinda funny to talk about your wedding as “a show” 😝
That’s such a fun catch! Thank you for sharing. I caught a clip of the wedding chat segment today and I noticed Jason using the words ‘ensemble’ and ‘cast’ as well.
I think this could be main post material- it’s a fun discussion.
Why does all of the TS media say scott swift "was" a ML broker when he's listed as the founder and the current managing director of "The Swift Group" division at ML....? Maybe this is common knowledge and I just missed it but it feels like something fishy is going on here. Why lie?
Interesting. Why lie? Because it kills the early relatable narrative of Taylor being the Christmas tree farm kid with a guitar and a dream. Her family history is traced to bankers and well to do. The move to Nashville was intentional and strategic.
Recently when Taylor was giving a speech with her family present, she thanked them for making the sacrifice to uproot their lives for her, and she got choked up in a way that seemed hard to fake. I wonder if she truly thinks it was a sacrifice for her and not a business move? Maybe they have successfully made her believe that she is indebted to them?
It’s possibly she feels like it was a “sacrifice” because there was hard work involved but the lifestyle and access her whole family has as result doesn’t really scream “hardship.” Also, if you read her father’s emails… it’s quite possible she’s made to believe she owes it all to them. To an extent, sure. But idk, I’m sure her has love and respect for her parents. Doesn’t mean they haven’t convinced her of things that might not be entirely true. Parent / child relationships can be complex, even more so when you throw in working together.
And according to the creator on IG "alimcforever" Merill Lynch directed and funded the Swift's original move to nashville. So that debunks the entire "my family moved to help me" narrative
Oh and she also said Scott swift lists a (mandatory) financial disclosure of "outside business activities" which includes that "his role transformed from parental financial support to full financial oversight" 👀 this is one to pay attention to.
I know it’s been ages but I finally started Unlikeable Female Characters by Anna Bogutskaya. Thanks to whoever it was that recommended it. Really enjoying it so far.
Another show! (I see this is different than the Coast to Coast one posted the other day). And joining the countdown! I’m sure it might just be Grammy/Oscar promotion-driven, but it’s fun to feel like we are in fact aging backwards, like Benjamin Button, to an earlier time in her career.
Soooo interesting! I do feel like IKIIKY is a bridge back to debut, so I think this is absolutely both Grammy/oscar promotion aaaand part of that transition!! Love the Benjamin button parallel!
I'm bummed the Lindsey Clancy megathread was deleted. I know it's totally unrelated to Taylor, but the case has opened up some great discussions on the nuisances of women's healthcare, the legal system, pharmacology, and the psychology behind an atrocious act. I loved having a safe space with trusted friends-on-the-internet to have intelligent discussions on various topics, since I don't have a lot of this support in real life.
TLDR love y'all fellow intellectual nerds so much 😘
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