The reputation prologue: Enjoy the Silence. An Editorial.

I’ve never heard silence quite this loud, Taylor Nation 🙂

Yeah, you knew I was going to use that quote. I’m glad to be back firmly on Taylor Swift subjects. The last two posts were either very personal or rather uncomfortable to write. Now we’re putting the Sparkly Dressed back in the spotlight with a subject that might seem related to the last post, but actually it’s broader than that.

Simply put, Taylor Swift is keeping to herself lately. She’s been economizing her appearances to a few. Yes, she did the Christmas concerts on December last year, but she’s done zero interviews. Before we start with the opinions, let’s have the Blonde With The Sparkly Snake Microphone gives us some insight via the most telling of sources: the introduction/prologue printed in the album sleeve of reputation. At least this gives you a place to look it up online if you ever need to 😉

Here’s something I’ve learned about people.

We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don’t know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip.

This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we’ll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you.

The point being, despite our need to simplify and generalize absolutely everyone and everything in this life, humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party, existing somewhere between our well-lit profile photo and our drivers license shot. We are all a mixture of our selfishness and generosity, loyalty and self-preservation, pragmatism and impulsiveness. I’ve been in the public eye since I was 15 years old.On the beautiful, lovely side of that, I’ve been so lucky to make music for living and look out into crowds of loving, vibrant people. On the other side of the coin, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, and my songwriting has been trivialized as ‘oversharing’.

When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory, because it’s 2017 and if you didn’t see a picture of it, it couldn’t have happened right?

Let me say it again, louder for those in the back…

We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us.

There will be no further explanation.
There will be just reputation.

Taylor Swift, reputation

Yeah, the Enchantress sounds kinda fed up with the misinformation around her name. So much so she’s put the world on a diet of her words, her responses and her reactions.This also means no Taylor dancing in the front row of the award show, unfortunately! 😦

She does however appear here and there because she’s usually booked four years in advance, a factoid I learned some years back (if you must know, I legitimately tried to get an interview with the Sparkly Dressed and obviously failed).

Hence, Taylor has some commitments she has to honor such as her British Vogue cover photoshoot and her appearances in AT&T’s Taylor Swift NOW. Other than that she’s done only performances. She really won’t mind meeting fans, but the closest thing that she has had to a late night appearance was on the Tonight Show. I think that was a personal favour for Jimmy Fallon who was coming back after a leave of absence due to his mother’s death. Even then, Taylor only did a low key performance of “New Year’s Day”.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I do expect Taylor to ease up on the hush-hush policy as her tour starts. If you want to talk character, Taylor might be the only artist capable of pulling a move so financially risky as limiting her exposure during an album release and a tour ticket sale and still have the fans remember her name.

(Now resisting to quote “Long Live” here…)

I do still expect certain mainstays in the reputation Tour. She should still have her meets and greets as well as some new incarnation of the T-Party / Club Red / Loft ’89 from tours past. The Rep Crib. Rep Station. Rep City. Who knows…

The point I am trying to make, and I do have one, is that although Taylor doesn’t seem to be talking to radio stations, late night shows, daytime shows, magazines or any media hubs, she will not stop talking to her fans. And hopefully she gets to meet a whole new batch this tour.

Coming up on the Calendar!

• May 8: Taylor Swift’s reputation Stadium Tour begins in Glendale, AZ.

(Sources: Taylor Swift via her reputation album)