Here’s the best advice I can give you: Don’t worry about Taylor Swift’s conduct. You are not her mom, and you are not her therapist. If she wants to empty both barrels into another pop star, that does not affect you, even if it’s a pop star that you like. It’s a given that Taylor Swift’s personal life and her lyrics are all tangled up with one another in various messy and potentially uncomfortable ways. That’s been the case since the very beginning. The Taylor Swift experience is inherently parasocial to one degree or another. You generally know who she’s singing about, and she knows that you know. But that doesn’t mean you have to approve of her decisions there. Swift is the biggest pop star in generations, so people judge her music based on their mixed feelings about her imaginary private life, not based on whether or not she’s making great pop music. Well, she’s making pop music. Don’t be weird about it. I’ll try to follow my own advice in this review. No promises.
