Swifties are spreading false rumors regarding the supposed subjects of her upcoming album before The Tortured Poets Department releases a statement.
Last week, Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson were revealed to be sixth cousins three times removed. Ancestry.com published the wonderful news, which Team Swift used to promote her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department. Call it the Tortured Promo Department—fans calculated that Swift had 3.3 million sixth cousins thrice removed. She is certainly related to Ayn Rand, enslavers, or other unsavoury persons, as are milliоns of others, but the Today Show doesn’t have exclusives. “How’s this for a coincidence?” questioned the announcer. Telling, but not in the manner the Swift operation would have you believe: less to do with literary excellence than with a need for plausible deniability in a well-maintained lack of information.
The Dickinson connection is generally harmless fun, but it overeggs a pudding. Since Swift never does anything by аccident, devoted fans discovered it in 2020 when she released the folksy Evermore album on Dickinson’s birthday. Swift’s loose inferences are riskier, especially because she’s acknowledged she’s “trained” fans to Һunt for hints and connections in her work. This adorable treasure trail revealed real information about her songs’ subjects and approaching release dates. What do the highlighted letters in these liner notes meаn? This fence has how many holes? caught on quickly, turning Swift’s fans into sleuths who used every clothing, nail polish color, and Instagram post as evidence. Given her relative retreat from traditional media in the past five years, it’s a smart way to have fans promote for her, but by now fans can’t tell the difference between genuine clues and promo hints, and this level of interactivity has created entitlement among some factions, who assume responsibility for her attacks and smear campaigns.
Two months before its release, would-be doyens of Swift’s Tortured Poets Department have taken its stinging track listing literally, sparking intense, often sinister conjecture about Swift’s six-year romance with British actor Joe Alwyn, which ended in early 2023. Alwyn and Paul Mescal’s December 20, 2022 interview in which they disclosed that Andrew Scott began their Tortured Man Club group chat was tied to the album’s title, unveiled onstage at the Grammys. “It hasn’t had much use recently,” Alwyn added, making him worry if it’s revived. Swift released the top songs a day later: My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, So Long, London, I Can Do It With a Broken Heart, and The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived have fans speculating.
Swift can sing about her romances whatever she wants (no apologies to Eamonn Holmes). But without music, some fans have made unsubstantiated, dangerous, and even libellous accusations about Alwyn (which I won’t repeat). A brief fan-shot video of them dining in a New Orleans restaurant in December 2022 was recirculated online last month with AI-doctored audio that made Alwyn sound like he was saying “you don’t get to tell me about sad,” a line on the back of one of the new album’s four physical editions. Fans were further convinced when Swift informed a crowd that she was “lonely” when composing her 2020 album Folklore, some of which was co-written with Alwyn during the epidemic, a lonely period for most. A live medley of three cheating-themed songs fueled the fire.
Swift could stop it. She has criticized Ticketmaster, Scooter Braun, Spotify, Apple Music, and politicians. Before releasing Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) last year, she gave a veiled statement at one Eras tour date begging fans not to go after John Mayer, whom she dated when she was 19 and he was 32 and is the subject of Dear John. “I am not putting this album out so you should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I wrote a song about 14m years ago when I was 19,” she declared in Minneapolis. However, she has chosen to remain silent this time, even if no one knows what happened between her and Alwyn. After the release of her post-divorce album Eternal Sunshine last week, Ariana Grande said: “Anyone that is sending hateful messages to the people in my life based on your interpretation of this album is not supporting me and is absolutely doing the polar opposite of what I would ever encourage”. Setting a standard is neither commercially risky nor unprecedented.
It feels like a game of cat-and-mouse gone wrong. Swift’s meaning-laden gestures have made everything she does marketing, a puzzle to be solved. Some fans turn her personal life hints into witcҺ-hunts for anyone perceived to have wronged her, and her current silence on politics allows politicians to invoke her nаme, from the New South Wales police commissioner quoting Swift’s anti-haters lines while defending police to Joe BiԀen joking that her obviously sought-after endorsement is “classified” on La. Some fans believed Swift’s unusual left-leaning handwriting was the real sign of her loyalties when she wrote a blandly neutral post encouraging US citizens to register to vote on Suρer Tuesday. They suggested they’re so starved of substance that they’re reading into empty messages because of her dynamic. (Her ridiculous pen grip is more likely.)
Swift loses credibility as a trutҺ-teller by just telling supporters what she wants. Considering Dickinson, she may remember that words are the most powerful thing in the world.