Underground artist Taylor Swift announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, this week on her boyfriend’s podcast. The internet exploded over teases of mint green, glittery orange, and a social post tagging Sabrina Carpenter. Following the incredible success of The Eras Tour and a complicated detour at The Tortured Poets Department, it seems the clues are coming together to form what is Taylor’s newest era.
Elsewhere on the interweb, Florence Welch posted an ominous, uncaptioned clip of her digging a hole and then screaming into it. There is no context accompanying this clip but the comment section would have you believe this was the key indicator a new era was imminent for Taylor’s FLORidian accomplice (get it?!).
If you haven’t caught on yet, a curated aesthetic + social teasers + musical artist = ERA. It’s not just an album or a piece of media, it’s an important period that must be marked in some significant way, preferably with a well-appointed merch selection.
The Eras Tour was a look back on the weaving story of Taylor’s discography and built out a cohesive, well-branded narrative around them. It was a greatest hits-type tour previously reserved for the retirees, this time as a punctuation within a career that is far from over.
That Taylor’s individual albums are considered distinct eras, ones marked with a cohesive suite of visuals, merchandise, and, I don’t know vibes I guess, is a marketing outcome. Like obviously, and I get it, but it really has to be restated: the understanding of Taylor’s studio albums as individual eras that define both a point in time and story arch, is a strategically packaged way to experience the product.
By the way - not an inherently bad thing!
Every studio album by every music artist is more or less a packaged collection of whatever the artist wants it to be: memories, fictions, fantasies, a document of a time and place. What is a record album if not a curated selection of audio clips meant to evoke any of those previously mentioned things? That we now refer to them as eras is a trained, market-tested response to media publishing cycles. Taylor Swift is controlling more than just the pop charts.
And actually, I think that’s what failed Taylor when she released The Tortured Poets Department. When all of your creative output is received as a purposeful, carefully articulated reflection on it’s themes, it leaves no room for mess. Distinction means a contrast, a setting apart. When things are distinct from one another and then categorized based on that distinction, the scraps that fall amongst the gaps in between, what can’t be categorized, have nowhere to go.
The Tortured Poets Department was the closest Taylor has ever come to a mixtape [ETA: other than Red!! I forgot Red!!]. There is a narrative cohesion implied throughout, but the songs are looser lipped, surprisingly clunky in places, it is genuinely unfocused.
And a lot of people hated it! It’s her worst received album critically and it’s resoundingly not what the fandom wanted, according to themselves. This kind of Taylor is uncategorizeable, therefore this output is also impossible to categorize. The Tortured Poets Department is not an era, it’s simply an output among any. But when each new output is treated as a precious relic that must be counted and canonized and compared against each other, outputs that aren’t tied to an intended emotional outcome feel suddenly out of place.
At least in terms of the way we as listeners have been trained to react.
Bob Dylan has released 40 studio albums, 21 live albums, 17 volumes of The Bootleg Series, 44 compilation albums, seven soundtracks as main contributor, 24 notable extended plays, and 104 singles.
There are certainly, to use the common vernacular, “eras” of Bob across his career and stylings. Preoccupations and special interests. There are classics, clunkers, and questionable choices along the way. Whether you have 200 albums or 12, musicians should be able to use their runway however they choose [airplane joke in a Taylor article! Groundbreaking!].
The eras concept has put artists in a chokehold that doesn’t allow for experimentation or play as far as the audience is concerned. There aren’t allowed to be missteps and mistakes when everything you do is meant to be a greater defining moment.
And look, Tay isn’t short on cash or success. I get it. But why as listeners is this good enough for us? Why does everything need to be defined into oblivion instead of digested and processed alongside the artist exploring all of this through the work?
Taylor has something to say and we like that she does, don’t get us wrong, but she better say it to us in a cohesive, pre-planned, Easter egg-filled way, and it’s sole task is to soothe the narrative we have in ours head about her. Give us what we want to hear from you, Taylor, show us that you’re the ultimate show girl and storyteller. Shut up and sing the hits.
