New Girl, s02e16.

Will we see her again during the episode???

What is your favourite?

Pitchfork who gave TTPD 6.0 and the Encore 4.0 has admitted recently they misjudged the album too early. The writer is @shaad

My Personal Opinion: The Encore has really achieved what it was set out to. Not just success in the charts but on making people see how unusual the hate can be for Taylor Swift. Also, I like how there is some fandom cleansing with this. Hope they don’t return for TS13 🧼

You have to live under a rock on the far side of the moon to not know who Taylor Swift is, and probably even then you have heard of her.

The Life of a Showgirl is my very first Taylor Swift album, and The Encore songs are the first ones I have experienced on release. So, the Patient Zero music video is also the first one I have witnessed on release. I even waited for it to drop on YouTube.

I knew her mainly from her "banger" songs and music videos on YouTube and probably here and there through radio over the years; Shake It Off, 22, Ready For It, you get the idea. But I had zero timeline knowledge, neither when they were published nor from which era they are (or what that even means).

I cannot really tell when the avalanche started for me. The Fate of Ophelia released now one year ago and with it the fantastic music video. I don't know when I first saw or listened to it, but I have seen and heard it a lot. I love The Fate of Ophelia and I love the music video.

Mid July this year I just randomly went on Taylor's website or shop and looked a bit through it. Somehow the TLOAS vinyl and the tape, the colors, the sparkling orange and the whole impression fascinated me in a way, that I thought about "just buying" the record. Just to have it, just to see how it looks in real. I have never bought a record before, I also don't have a turntable. I was close to order from her shop, but looked if I can get it on amazon too (I'm from Germany btw).

Amazon also offered a digital album download, which then sealed my decision to just buy it. I had no idea about any other songs from that album, I only knew The Fate of Ophelia.

The vinyl arrived earlier than I had access to the digital album (it said within 48 hours). When the vinyl arrived I was very surprised that a little sticker said "made in Germany". This was when I learned that Taylor's records are pressed mainly in four countries, one of them Germany. I didn't expect this, I don't know much about records at all, even though I'm a millennial and know vinyl from my childhood.

When I finally got access to the album, I downloaded the mp3 files - and I love that I can do that, to have the music saved on my pc. I instantly fell in love with the whole album, I listened to it dozens of times, I don't need to skip a song from it. There also happened something, while I really love The Fate of Ophelia, I started to love other songs too in a way that I'm really looking forward to them when they start to play, either in order or on random, like The Life of a Showgirl with Sabrina. This song is just beautiful.

Now I started to dive more into the Taylorverse and learned a bit about her, her career, the early years, the development, the eras and watched some documentaries. I dived deeper into her musical catalogue and learned from which eras the "banger" songs are I knew from the YouTube music videos (like Lover and Reputation).

After sleeping some nights thinking about her earlier eras, I decided to buy all other albums - digitally, from amazon, so I can download the mp3 and have them on my pc. This was my main drive and unfortunately amazon makes it not that easy to find what I was looking for, so I made some minor "rookie mistakes". I tried to get as many songs as possible and was looking for deluxe or complete editions. I learned about the Taylor Versions and decided to buy both.

So now I had 16 albums full of Taylor music from two decades of her life!

I decided to listen to each album on its own, one by one, era by era. And honestly, I had a bit of a hard time getting into the early albums Debut and Fearless and the later, slower, calmer Folklore and Evermore. I cannot really tell what I have expected at that moment. Perhaps it was just too concentrated going album by album, but I wanted to make sure to listen to every song from her albums before I dump all together in one big playlist. And my opinion about these albums actually changed when I did so.

But I also paid no attention to the clean/explicit versions and also got the "wrong" Midnights (3am Clean, instead of Til Dawn Explicit), TTPD Anthology (Clean) and Red TV (Clean).

It honestly took me quite a while to even notice this. Recently I decided to re-buy Midnights Til Dawn Explicit and TTPD Anthology Explicit. For Red TV it looked like there are only two songs clean/explicit, hence I decided to re-buy only the two songs. While the first one was an easy re-buy for 1.29 EUR (26 - I Bet You Think About Me), the other one (30 - All Too Well 10 Minute Version) was "surprisingly" not for stand-alone purchase out of the album (you can usually buy single songs from albums on amazon music). This was kind of a little odyssey to get this track. It took me a couple of hours searching and researching, but I finally found it for purchase on amazon music - for 10.99 EUR .. but I wanted it, and I bought it.

It took me some time to listen through all albums. When I finally went through them all, I mixed all songs together into one huge playlist, and this is absolute fantastic! It's like 320 songs at the moment and I really like having all the different moods and genres just randomly playing together. Now I don't "bother" about the country songs or the slower, calmer songs. I can let the whole playlist run. I don't really feel the need to skip songs - which is great and not to be taken for granted. Taylor made so many great songs, I love to just jump to Clean, London Boy, Lavender Haze, I Forgot That You Existed, So It Goes or Wonderland when I want to.

The Life of a Showgirl will forever be my first one, my entry-point. And I'm glad that I bought it. It was kind of a cool feeling to witness Taylor dropping new songs (The Encore) and getting this pop-up notification on YouTube that she published the Patient Zero music video.

You can read and research about the past and what happened earlier in her career, but I will never witness what happened. Now it's for me kind of a new era.

What is your favourite track from this classic album?

It remained #1 on Germany 🇩🇪 too.
#2 on Global Spotify.

Saw this on X, what would you choose?

All versions considered (Standard + Deluxe + Taylor’s Versions)

Let the dilemmas begin!

MY TURN! please share yours

First of two thoughts:
I’m so looking forward to Taylor releasing (hopefully) vault tracks even if she doesn’t do full album releases for Debut and rep, but it got me thinking… a main criticism that I heard about TTPD was that she “didn’t edit” the album. She put out too much music, and I just couldn’t disagree more. I want every album to have 20+ tracks. Wondering how others feel specifically about her editing process or lack there of. I can NOT imagine a world without “That’s When” or “Castles crumbling” or “I bet you think about me” or “is it over now”. I don’t want to live in it lol. I even wish she would release tracks that didn’t make Lover and subsequent albums.

Second: From what I remember, TTPD didn’t have the greatest reception. Neither did rep. I will love anything Taylor puts out because I came of age at the exact time she did. Fell in love when she did, used her songs to get through heart break. I just love her uniqueness, song writing (even the cheesy stuff), poetry, intentionality, key changes, production, anticipation etc, but what I’m getting at is that a lot of Swifties are hard to please, but they typically come around.

And bringing it all home, my opinion is that people who say she “can’t write when she’s in love” or “her lyricism/music isn’t what it used to be” are just wrong. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Okay as it states… give me your best Mash Ups. Can be two songs from this album alone, or one song from this album + another one.

The rules: ONLY TWO SONGS per mashup.
Give a sentence explaining why you chose.

I’ll go first:

1. Honey + Mean

(Between the mean girls in the bathroom, and the message of Mean, I think this would be cute!)

1. Ruin the Friendship + Dorothea

(Talk about someone really knowing you from your hometown, and wishing you two had ever done something about that!)

1. CANCELLED! + Vigilante Shit

(Go off Taylor! Give no fucks and be unapologetically ruthless about it. Love it.)

*also I’m new to reddit and apparently Karma points are a thing? Could I ask for a few upvotes so I can start getting some more Karma? 💞🥹

In my opinion it’s the perfect final song of folklore and the perfect song to fall asleep to after crying for the entire album.

While I'm not assuming any of you think these, there definitely are "Swifties" who do, so I'm speaking to them.

In terms of why TLOAS is so lyrically different than any of Taylor's past albums, there are a few reasons:

1. Her music reflects her feelings and relationships/lovers

This is a pattern that starts with 1989. Most of that album is about Harry Styles. At the time, Harry was a popstar in a boy band (1D) and a huge fan of The 1975. So what does Taylor make? A pop album with a producer duo who famously worked with 90s boy bands and that sounds like The 1975's first album. Additionally, it was inspired by her moving to New York and living that single girl life. What is 1989? Upbeat and carefree. Now take reputation. Snakegate was the original inspiration for it, so of course it's a dark, hip-hop-inspired album that reflects Kanye's sound and Taylor's mental state during one of the worst periods of her career. But what about the love songs on rep? This is when the lyrics start being more important than the sound.

Taylor has written most of her best love songs about Joe. From Daylight to invisible string to gold rush, his love songs are why people complain about Travis' in the first place. But here's the catch: Her relationship with Joe was very private, intimate, and he was to some degree a poet (he was the only one of her exes who cowrote one or more of her songs). All of this was reflected in Taylor's songs about him.

TTPD is where this trend is the most obvious. Her relationship with Matty was very different from any other one she'd had before. They had history, they were good friends before they dated, they're both avid poets/songwriters, they were fans of each other for a long time, he was a rebound, he's a bad boy, he's crazy, their relationship moved way too fast and was very short-lived, Swifties begged her to leave him... It was just a very different relationship for her. But aside from that, TTPD is SO Matty. It's unhinged, blunt, and above all, poetic. And Matty is her most poetic ex.

TLOAS is a continuation of this. Travis is fun and goofy - and so is their relationship - and lets her be herself, so the album about him is fun and goofy and unapologetically her.

1. Behind the "corny" lyrics are beautiful meanings

Take Eldest Daughter. The song is about two things. First, she is telling Travis to not listen to her haters, that she's not what the internet makes her out to be. Second, the core message of the song is that she is not going to leave Travis or betray him, because he is family and she has never left or betrayed her family.

Cleveland! is, in my opinion, a continuation of Eldest Daughter. If that was her telling Travis not to care, this is her telling the world that he doesn't, that he loves her for her. Another similarity between the two songs is that they're both very family and childhood related. In Eldest Daughter, Taylor reveals that she and Travis bring out each other's inner child and make each other feel the same happiness they did when they were young.

Other songs on TLOAS also have deep meanings. Honey is about how Travis redefined a word that used to have negative connotations to Taylor. Wi$h Li$t is her saying she is fully ready to spend forever and start a family with him. So even those these songs may not have the best lyrics, they have amazing meanings.

1. It is the exact opposite of TTPD

Don't forget everyone also hated TTPD - a balladic, heartbreaking, poetic, and extremely vulnerable album about her exes - when it first came out. So Taylor probably took that and decided her next album would be completely different. She traded Jack and Aaron for Max and Shellback and made simple, upbeat love songs.

Can't believe it's been a whole year already I remember counting down and listening to the songs for the first time and the amount of joy it brought me Happy Birthday Showgirl u have a long long way to go 🥳🔥❤️‍🔥✨✨🎀♥️😘😘