I didn’t mean to, but I wrote a meandering, random essay on my special subject — Taylor Swift. Paste Magazine removed the byline for their negative review so that none of their staffers would get death threats (it didn’t work), but kind of nobody reads this newsletter… So I think I’ll be fine. If anyone wants to dox me, my address is Flat 7/91 Gragin Roa- just kidding.
There are other things in here too, but you won’t know about them unless you get to reading. Alright?
🐭 SWEETIE RATES 🐭
Fitness… more like… fit-ness lawsuit into the newsletter…
David Beckham is suing alleged actor Mark Wahlberg for £8.5 million over a fitness deal gone wrong. I know, It’s terrible to see our foremost intellectual titans battling it out like this, but unfortunately it’s necessary — keeping the pockets of Hollywood’s lawyers primed and lined is what keeps the world spinning and the birds singing.
Neeeeeed Ryan Murphy to create a season of Feud based on this case called Feud: Ball vs Wahl, starring Ike Barinholtz as Mark Wahlberg and Brooklyn Beckham as David Beckham. Let’s give my favey nepo baby another shot!
Two himbos stand before me. David and Mark, this is your last chance to impress the judge and save yourself from deposition. The time has come for you to litigate for your life. Good luck and DON’T f*** it up.
Wacky Phoenix
So many celebrity interviews now end us as carefully-managed, tightrope-walking nothingness. People don’t want to get yelled at online, which I understand, but that’s why we need as many curmudgeonly, older celebrities who don’t give a hoot about anything as possible.
Brian Cox is an all-star truth-teller. He can’t obfuscate his beliefs if he wanted to. Whether he’s kind-of eviscerating Jeremy Strong, being one of the only outright public defenders of Amber Heard, or now, taking aim at Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Napoleon, he’s gonna rock out with his Cox out, and I think that’s fab. To wit:
Terrible. It’s terrible. A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It really is appalling. I don’t know what he was thinking. I think it’s totally his fault and I don’t think Ridley Scott helps him. I would have played it a lot better than Joaquin Phoenix, I tell you that. You can say it’s good drama. No – it’s lies.
I think he’s well named. Joaquin…whackeen... whacky. It’s a sort of whacky performance.
Love to see Brian Cox working out this pun in real time. This is what it’s like in my head. Somebody get this man a Substack for the love of God!!!!!
Sky Ferreri x Lady A
ARE YOU F’ING KIDDING MEEEEE. I am officially walking back my remarks in last week’s newsletter RE Coachella being boring. I’m still rooting for you, Sky.
An incredible intersection of interests here. Brava.
🐍 SWEETIE HATES 🐍
The Tortured Poets Department
The last few days on the internet have been awash with critiques and acclaim for Taylor Swift’s double album The Tortured Poets Department, my review of which is, “It’s not very good, is it?”
With 31 songs in total across the double album, most of which are about loving and being cut loose by loser Matty Healy last year, I think that these songs really would’ve benefited from being left to rest on the counter for five minutes. In what I assume is a rush to straighten up her narrative, maintain interest in the ongoing Eras Tour and stay front and centre in the dizzying spotlight, Taylor has spat out old-hat songs with garbled metaphors, silly asides and crude plays-on-words. It’s a misuse of her incredible talent, and her precious time.
Aside from the album being a lukewarm revisit of albums Midnights, Folklore and Evermore, the whole exercise is also quite cruel. Taylor Swift seems to use her music to dole out punishment as much as she does for artistic expression. After months of furious internet speculation that this album would specifically invoke Taylor’s long-term ex Joe Alwyn, many fans are surprised that she instead primarily gunned for short-term lover Matty Healy. His romantic shortfalls, drug use and pretentiousness are in the firing line again and again, her broken heart a broken record.
She goes easier on Joe Alwyn, and by that I mean she has simply released less songs about him this time around. It’s easy to feel cynical about not just the content of these scant songs, but the outcome of releasing them. The lyrics to So Long London, for example, contain zero opacity. In it, she outs her notoriously private ex-boyfriend’s crippling depression, with details about how, in part, it contributed to their break up. It’s a touching song in a vacuum, but knowing that Taylor Swift let her most virulent, attack dog fans terrorise Joe after they broke up leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s just me, but if my relationship fell apart due to my partner’s severe mental health struggles, I’m not sure I would stay silent while my stans sent him death threats.
Kim Kardashian, someone Taylor had a public feud with (remember #snakegate?) eight years ago, also gets a look in. In thanK you aIMee, very subtle, Taylor alludes to her mother, Andrea Swift, wishing Kim dead. Taylor also makes an allusion to Kim and Kanye West’s eldest daughter, North West, who is ten years old and a genuine, public fan of Taylor’s. Why she’s choosing to dig this grave up again is unclear. It doesn’t really add anything to the album sonically, acting as a strange provocation more than anything else. It’s the Streisand Effect in full swing. If Taylor had let this feud go quiet years ago, nobody would care to revisit it. But here it is again. Fans, go get em’!
It’s telling that Taylor has, for the first time, called out a segment of her own fan base on But Daddy I Love Him — naming them “vipers.” Why? Because they tried, clumsily, to hold her accountable for dating the controversy-courting Matty Healy. But having gotten a taste of her own medicine, having had her fans turn on her as they do other people she’s aired personal issues with publicly, it does not seem as though Taylor has meaningfully reflected on the experience. If Taylor feels any type of way about how Swifties use this mighty energy to avenge those they feel have wronged her, she has nothing clear to say on the matter. Just don’t do it to her, OK?
It’s almost impossible to separate the art from the artist when it comes to Taylor Swift. She’s been an honest, confessional lyricist throughout her career. But the constant, frenzied interest in her personal life has helped sustain her as much as it has imprisoned her creatively. She seems stuck in an ouroboros: there is significant interest in her personal life, which she turns into pointed art, which turns into fodder for gossip and speculation once again. The Tortured Poets Department as a whole seems to signify more than just heartbreak. It signposts stagnation, perhaps even laziness. Despite saying she was “canceled within an inch” of her life after #snakegate, I think even she knows she’s big to fall from completely out of favour, or off the charts. Taylor has expressed time and time again that she’s more interesting than the sum of than her relationships — so why doesn’t she want to act like it? Because as long as she’s making headlines, she’s making history.
I don’t know. I wanted to like this album, really I did. But all it made me want to do was go back into her archives and listen to her stronger, greater songs from the past. And so I did.
At the end of the day, I don’t need artists to be perfect paragons of virtue. I just want to vibe. Maybe the songs are more growers than showers, maybe I’m just disillusioned by Taylor Swift’s precarious cult of celebrity, but so far I can only connect with I Can Do It With a Broken Heart… i’msodepressediactlikeit’smybirthday — everyday — i’msoobsessedwithhimbutheavoidsmeee liketheplague. God, she’s got me hooked on that one.
Bikini Killjoy
Don’t you hate it when you’re trying to take a picture on a yacht, with your incredible body and gorgeous face, and your family keeps ruining it, but you still look so amazing that it actually makes steam come out of people’s ears? Don’t you just HATE. THAT? Sorry Salma, if it’s any consolation. we’ve ALL been there. Love your Instagram bio, by the way.
Leave Breachy Alone
Scientists have had a 20-minute ‘chat’ with a humpback whale. OK? Who asked for that?
Leave the whales alone! When I was in Iceland I watched part of a documentary about how the ocean is too loud for whales because we keep shipping things across the ocean, creating submarines and sending out stupid, huge cruise ships that emit significant noise pollution. The whales can’t hear each other, which is terrible for breeding, avoiding predators, foraging and, yes, talking to each other, not losers in lab coats.
All in all, we’re truly wreaking havoc on the whale community. It’s really bad and it kind of ruins my whole day whenever I think about it. But anyway, yeah deafen the whale with more virgin science talk. That’s a great idea. Idiots.
Until next time!