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Have you ever had the urge to “gatekeep” your favorite music? To keep something precious to you close to the chest, lest it get swallowed up by the pop culture machine? It’s a common impulse within music culture today, but it’s recently cropped up in an unexpected place: the Taylor Swift fandom.
Last month, Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. A surprise double album, it’s her most raw, messiest collection of songs yet, and she doesn’t try to paint herself as a likable girl-next-door as she has in the past.
The project divided critics. Billboard and NPR’s Ann Powers celebrated the album’s dark turn, while Pitchfork and NME found it overwritten and uninspired. Swift’s choice to release an album like this at the height of her career is fascinating, and so are the fans’ responses to these 31 songs.
The general consensus? We are so back. “TTPD has very clearly separated the og swifties from the eras tour bandwagon fans who like her bcs she’s popular,” one fan wrote on X. “it’s becoming ‘uncool’ to like taylor swift again. we are so back y’all,” wrote another. “seeing so many locals saying they’re done with taylor because of this album… we are SOOO back,” a third Swiftie wrote.
These Swifties claim that recent, fair weather fans of Swift have left the fandom because of the new album, which means only true fans remain. “Locals,” i.e. basic people who simply like what’s popular and don’t have their own sense of style or taste, can’t handle TTPD because it requires more than passive listening. “they just don’t get it like we do,” one fan responded.
Taylor Swift fans are happy fair weather fans don’t like the new album
On the surface, this rhetoric might seem to contradict the norms of fan culture. In general, fans want their faves to succeed, so it looks a little odd that Swifties are celebrating the fact that not everyone likes her new album.
But these fans aren’t hoping for Swift to fail, nor has she come anywhere close to doing so, as TTPD broke numerous streaming records in its first week. What fans want is for the fandom to be excised of non-believers and hangers-on, so that only diehards remain.
This kind of discourse is not unprecedented within pop music. It happened with Lady Gaga’s Artpop album, which failed to impress critics but is beloved by fans and has become a sort of litmus test for proving one’s Little Monster cred. It’s happened before in Swift’s career as well. Reputation received nowhere near the critical acclaim of her previous album, 1989, but fans have long defended the album and its renown has continued to grow among those converted to the Swiftie cause.
In a way, it’s kind of like reverse gatekeeping. Rather than wanting to keep new fans out, Swifties want new fans to go away and leave them in peace. Perhaps it’s more fun to love an artist who’s not universally revered. The impulse to defend something you care about is powerful, and that’s also the sort of thing that brings a fandom together.
There’s one more piece of this puzzle, and that’s the issue of economics. Swift’s quest for world domination has made it difficult for fans to get their hands on concert tickets and merchandise, which often sell out in an instant. If the locals really have dropped off, the hope is that “real” fans will have easier access. “yessss hopefully this means i can get eras tickets,” one fan commented on an X post. Whether our evil overlord Ticketmaster will register this shift in opinion remains to be seen.
Why it matters
Fandom is about belonging and identity as much as it is about loving something with all your heart. Having a personal relationship with music that millions of other people are also listening to is a fascinating phenomenon, and the Taylor Swift fandom exemplifies this condition on a massive scale.
There’s no question that Swift’s career will survive an album receiving mixed reviews, and for some fans, criticisms only intensify their devotion. Whether the locals are on her team or not, the Swifties always have her back.
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