Taylor Swift is the biggest star in the world, and The Tortured Poets Department is, so far, the biggest album of the year. Those facts can be proven in numerical terms: the record-breaking tour, the record-breaking concert film, the record-breaking vinyl sales, the record-breaking streaming numbers. But feelings, to flip a phrase from professional conservative complainer Ben Shapiro, don’t care about facts. Though Swift is indisputably on top, her fans still feel the need to protect Swift from perceived slights and imagined industry sabotage. The days following the release of TTPD have been marked by fans’ conspiracy theories and a demand, trending on Twitter on Tuesday, to #RespectTaylorSwift.
Within less than a week of TTPD’s release, a growing number of online Swifties have begun proliferating conspiracy theories regarding what one fan described as a “full on media takedown attempt.” The reviews for the album are largely mixed-to-positive, but it’s the “mixed” these fans can’t seem to get over, nor the fact that many of the critical reviews highlighted the same issues: Swift’s hyper-productivity impacting quality, the overlong double record needing editing, the production motifs becoming repetitive, among others. “Something is fishy about the critics being too harsh to TTPD. Scores being changed, the album split into two, using [Twitter] arguments... This is not just them being unprofessional and bitter towards Taylor I bet someone behind the scenes is pushing this…” one fan posted on Twitter/X. Another wrote, “taylor has literally [alienated] the industry due to her tremendous success. but you can’t tell me this hate train isn’t calculated. there’s behind the scene PR running to defame her. luckily, she’s too strong to fail this time and that’s what they can’t digest.” These two tweets have over 20,000 likes and thousands of shares combined.
The Swifties have “evidence,” such as it is, to support their otherwise baseless claims. For instance, some noticed that Genius Lyrics seemed to have subtracted a number of views from the TTPD song pages after the initial release. Never mind that this is not a metric of success anyone else is tracking or paying attention to; never mind that Genius’s own social media posted in celebration that Swift held the top 10 positions in its “Songs of the Week” chart. Elsewhere, Swifties were suspicious that TTPD’s Metacritic score was split into two albums (the original and The Anthology). Further, they took issue that her score was impacted by three different reviews from Sputnikmusic (On Sputnik, multiple staff members and users can review the same album). The outcry overshadowed the fact that the double album’s Metacritic scores were “generally favorable” at 77 and 69.
If it seems ridiculous that Swifties would cry conspiracy when Tortured Poets is indisputably a critical and commercial success, that’s because it is. But when Swift isn’t wholeheartedly and universally embraced, her most vocal, intense fans start looking for someone to blame. In some cases, that’s the only other mega pop star that can come close to Swift’s orbit, and who recently released an album of her own: Beyoncé. In a not-so-veiled allusion to Jay Z, one fan posted, “ever since someone went up to grammys stage crying bc of specific grammy category and weird things happening to taylor in this era; unprofessional reviews mentioning things that have nothing to do with the album such as private jets and being billionaire and now genius deleting the [views]…”. Another wrote, “this is getting beyond ridiculous. the sudden bad reviews and hate articles and all this? someone very influential is behind this, i think #that couple’s copycat strategy didn’t work so they’re moving towards this.” And another: “When i say everything has been fishy since someone’s rant at grammy stage … Like they both do same stuff , billionaire , private jet , long album but taylor is being dragged and all those group projects yea…”.
This, despite the fact that Swift and Beyoncé very publicly signaled their alliance by attending each other’s concert tour premieres (and despite the fact that Swift has in the past condemned “comparing all the girls who are killing it”). But these Swifties’ experience is incredibly insular. They believe no one faces the same criticism and scrutiny she does, which isn’t true. She may face more scrutiny than average, but it’s proportional to her level of stardom. (Pitchfork’s review of Cowboy Carter does mention Beyoncé being a billionaire, for the record.) None of this truly matters, though, as long as people exist who won’t bend the knee to their queen, as evidenced by the fact that Swifties quickly began to complain that other celebrities and industry figures hadn’t publicly posted their support for the album within 24 hours of the TTPD release.
This is all the more ironic given that Tortured Poets spends a fair amount of time rebuking her fans’ behavior, painting them on songs like “But Daddy I Love Him” as faux-Christian busybodies overstepping boundaries to meddle in her personal life. This came after fans took issue with her brief public relationship with The 1975’s Matty Healy. At the time, some fans urged the singer to dump her boyfriend over some problematic behaviors and offensive comments, even going so far as to write an open letter and organizing under the hashtag “#SpeakUpNow.” This clearly rankled Swift, who denounces “judgmental creeps who say they want what’s best for me” on her latest record. “I’ll tell you something right now/I’d rather burn my whole life down/Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning,” she sings.
Yet Swift’s own occasional distortion of reality sets an example for her fans. Last year, Swift claimed in no uncertain terms that her “career was taken away” in the wake of the infamous leaked phone call with Kanye West. Of course, that wasn’t true; her next album cycle was a strong commercial success, if not a critical homerun. Swift and her fans have long suffered from false underdog syndrome, where no matter how many wins they rack up they still feel persecuted somehow. You can see it in the way that Swift is still writing about Kim Kardashian bullying her (“thanK you aIMee”) even after Kardashian’s marriage to West publicly and spectacularly fell apart. And you can see it in the way that Swifties will rise to her defense even when she doesn’t require it. Lots of “stan armies” engage in toxic harassment, but Swifties are a different breed. Swift has clearly experienced it herself, and so have the rest of us—just look at how our sister site Paste Magazine removed the byline from their negative TTPD review due to Swifties’ violent threats about previous criticism.
The facts are, there is no conspiracy against Swift. There is no shadowy industry figure buying out a handful of reviewers to write negative criticism. There is nothing suspicious about the fact that some of the Tortured Poets reviews went up quickly, as some suggested; many outlets (including this one) got advance copies to review. There is also nothing suspicious about the proliferation of articles and think pieces, both positive and negative, published surrounding the release of TTPD. Swift is the most visible cultural product in the world (arguably of all time, given the access social media provides). There’s inevitably going to be a lot of criticism, praise, analysis, and reflection surrounding her and her work. That’s not a sign “the industry” has turned against her—it’s a sign that she’s winning.
It’s true that anybody on top of our cultural pedestal—women, particularly—are in constant danger of being pushed off; it’s true that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. But Swift hasn’t fallen. Some people don’t like the album. Some people don’t like Taylor Swift. Some people, it’s true, simply don’t like her because she’s too popular. With any gigantic cultural phenomenon, there will be a countercultural response. That’s natural, but it doesn’t make her an underdog. Swifties, Taylor doesn’t need your defense when she already has your support. You can stop fighting battles, because you’ve already won the war. Feel free to put down the pitchforks and enjoy the victory lap.