Less than a week since the release of the “super album” The Tortured Poets Department on April 19, magazines have continuously published reviews and scores for Taylor Swift’s 11th album. Frankly speaking, The Tortured Poets Department creates a clear wave of polarization: some people will love the perfect score and others will give it a very low score. Ignoring the towering achievements, it is not difficult to see Taylor’s album this time Swift created a lot of mixed opinions among critics. In particular, one magazine page frankly said that because they were afraid of being murdered by these “crazy fans”, their review would not include the author’s name.
Specifically, Paste Magazine , famous for many reviews of artists’ products, also published comments, in which, Taylor Swift – as the most famous musician in the world but in The Tortured Poets Department is unable to make her fans less “childish” – something that also contributes to her success. This editor further noted that they did not dare to leave their names because their review of the album Lover in 2019 was threatened with violence by readers who did not agree. “We care more about the safety of our employees than a name attached to an article,” the magazine said. Paste ‘s review gave Taylor Swift’s new album a very low score – 3.6 with the criticism: “The album has one of the worst lyric writing in Taylor Swift’s career.”
Sputnik Music, a music review site famous for Taylor Swift’s broken scores, also has a very confusing scoring phase. First, they gave the album The Tortured Poets Department 90/100 – an extremely high number. And it wouldn’t have been a problem if this page hadn’t turned around and continued to give The Tortured Poets Department two more scores, 48/100 and 10/100. After being attacked by Swifties for giving it a score of 10 out of 100, Sputnik Music magazine even lowered the score to 0.5/100.
Pitchfork magazine also published a controversial review with scores of 6.6 for the standard version and 6 for the extended version, respectively. The review received a lot of criticism when the author only focused on Taylor Swift’s private life and personal issues in the review. Although they previously asserted that “we set higher artistic standards for artists like Taylor Swift”. But this same magazine once wrote an article criticizing the singer’s use of a private jet, or sarcastically mocking her for becoming a self-made billionaire, completely contrary to the above statement. Pitchfork even confused the music arrangements of Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the two main producers of the album.
Pitchfork posted up to 3 articles in a row emphasizing how they think this album is terrible and how Taylor Swift is going downhill with the goal of getting views to the review, while for other artists there was only 1 post. announcement on social networks. This raises suspicions in the Swifties community that newspapers are trying to bring down Taylor Swift and reduce the singer’s power after so many successful albums. Many suspicions also suggest that Universal Music Group felt dissatisfied with the way Taylor Swift released her album this time, so the company did not take any media support as usual.
Bloomberg magazine recently published an article defending Taylor Swift against the wave of unreasonable criticism from review pages about the album The Tortured Poets Department: “Whether you love or hate Taylor Swift, you It’s impossible for people to fully understand the 31 songs and write a review just a few hours after the album’s release.” Bloomberg criticized negative reviews that only focused directly on Taylor Swift’s personal life, instead of being careful with words when writing: “Some sites like Variety are careful in writing articles, and some sites like pre-written drafts just waiting for an opportunity to criticize”.
Bloomberg also pointedly criticized Paste magazine for playing the game of “throwing stones and hiding your hands”: “If you guys are willing to throw petty criticisms or exclamation points at an artist, you should at least put your name on it.” into the article, that’s the minimum courtesy.” This magazine also believes that the current review culture has gone beyond the boundaries of music review knowledge. Specifically, this author argues that in an era of half-hearted arguments in online forums, anyone with a smartphone can vent their thoughts online.
