Taylor Swift’s newly released album “The Tortured Poets Department” has generated mixed reactions from music critics but has also prompted an energetic defense of the controversial pro-abortion singer with one magazine going so far as to publish an anonymous review to protect the writer from potential backlash.
Paste Magazine explained its decision to withhold the author’s name in a post on X formerly Twitter citing threats of violence received by a writer who reviewed Swift’s 2019 album “Lover.”
Editor’s Note: There is no byline on this review due to how, in 2019 when Paste reviewed ‘Lover,’ the writer was sent threats of violence from readers who disagreed with the work. We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.
— Paste Magazine (@PasteMagazine) April 19, 2024
The review which gave “The Tortured Poets Department” a low rating of 3.6 out of 10 criticized Swift’s lyrics as well as the album’s overall composition. The anonymous writer questioned the sincerity of Swift’s self-proclaimed “tortured” era given her immense success and popularity arguing “no musician has been bigger this century than Swift which makes it impossible to really buy into the ‘torture’ of it all.”
.@TaylorSwift13’s “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT” becomes the fastest album in history to surpass 600 million streams on Spotify in just 3 days. pic.twitter.com/N26FcaGELk
— ChartMasters.org (@chartmastersorg) April 22, 2024
The decision to publish an anonymous review shows just how entranced Swift’s fanbase is with her and how emotionally unhinged millions of sad little girls can be when encouraged by each other and by what appears to be their cult leader, Taylor Swift.
The unnamed writer in the Paste Magazine review addressed this issue head-on stating “Women can’t critique Swift because they’ll run the risk of being labeled a ‘gender traitor’ for doing so. Men can’t critique her because they’ll be touted as ‘sexist.'”
The reviewer also took issue with the album’s “simplicity empty language [and] commodification” and described the instrumentation as “the most dog-water uninspired synth arrangement you could possibly imagine.”
Overall, it appears Swift’s fans are too emotional about an issue that really just isn’t that serious. The romantization of the musician has led to an inability of her fanbase, who she maintains a parasocial relationship with, to accept even fair criticism of a musician who, to be fair, has been overrated for a long time now.
