[ SECRET POST #4701 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4701 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #673.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a BIG Taylor Swift fan, and I completely agree with you. It's my least favorite song she's ever done. I don't completely dislike the very first line, but beyond that I'm about as interested in listening to it as I am interested in eating a twinkie (not even slightly interested).

At this point, I genuinely believe she's deliberately leading with weak singles in order to control the way people react to her albums. IMO she's used this tactic for her last two albums. She's unquestionably over-exposed at this point, and I think she knows that with each successive album there's more and more of a pop-cultural drive to see one of her albums genuinely flop. So she leads with shitty singles to play into that desire, deliberately courting negative views and public speculation that she's lost her mojo. That way, when her album comes out and the songs on it are mostly pretty good, reviewers have almost no choice but to change their tune and proclaim it "surprisingly good."

Whereas if she led with her strongest songs, reviewers would say they were good, but then when the album came out and the best songs were the ones they'd already heard, they'd be free to proclaim it "overall, a disappointment," and that would end up being the general public's take-away impression.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong and Swift just genuinely believes her lead singles are her strongest songs. But...I kind of doubt it? I mean, personally I miss the writing style of her Red and Speak Now eras. But if she's still good enough to write solid-gold bops like Cruel Summer and dreamy soft jams like Cornelia Street, I just can't believe she's oblivious enough to believe ME! is a stronger single.

[(Anonymous)]

I think your theory is completely right, and as someone who loves Taylor as cunning badass business lady, it gets MAD RESPECT from me. I love how calculating she can be - the women is a marketing and image genius.

(And at the same time I believe she's a genuinely nice person -- SHE'S THAT GOOD.)

OP, ME! was definitely the weakest song on Lover.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - 100%, could not agree more.

[(Anonymous)]

But what's the point? If the singles aren't that good, they get less radio play and playlist exposure and there's a lot of money in being on rotation on various "top something playlists" and still a lot of money in being played on the radio. No matter how good the rest of the album is, if the record company doesn't put it forward as a single, it isn't added to the playlists, etc., so it's not generating that much money for her...?

I mean, I'm indifferent about her, so I never check her full albums, I only know the singles, because that's what gets played in my gym and sometimes appears as the next autoplayed video on YT - I never get to her "better work" and I'm definately not the only one. If that's a strategy, then it's a shitty strategy.

[(Anonymous)]

But what's the point?

Like I said, controlling the narrative. If media outlets are going to get more clicks for negative reviews, let them have their negative reviews - then give them an album that is undeniably better than their negative reviews were predicting. A) they'll basically have the change their tune, and B) they won't mind changing their tune, because "we thought it was going to be trash but it's not!" is also pretty decent clickbait. The worst thing that can happen to Swift as a salable artist is for the media to finally get to proclaim that her new album is a flop. Because that's the first major step on the road to pop-cultural irrelevance (or at least drastically reduced relevance).

It doesn't matter if the first two singles suck. The media will talk about them and play them anyway, en masse, ad nauseam. But if the first two singles are strong and everything after that is weaker? That's inviting them to proclaim indifference way, way too early in the album's shelf life. It's just not a good marketing strategy for the point she's at in her career. There was a long while where leading with strong singles made sense, but not anymore.

Bland singles don't hurt her much. We've seen that pretty thoroughly by now. She and her team have run the numbers, and know that her singles will get a huge amount of radio play regardless, because they're her singles. The people who are going to buy the album buy the album anyway, because they're fans, or because they want in on the hype. Or because they're easy to please and they like mainstream pop music.

[(Anonymous)]

She's not really played all that much on European radio, but whatever. She's certainly earning millions, I don't really care if she's not earning 10.5 mliion a day instead of 8.5 million/day because she's choosing wrong singles.

You seem to pretty convinced that it is a deliberate strategy - maybe it is, maybe it's not. Maybe it's also just the case of "the songs you like better than the singles are getting less traction from their focus group or are acctually less in touch with current music trends and would fare even worse".