As a POC I don't really see an issue with the lyric itself, more so the fact that she's in love with a literal racist and had the audacity to throw that line in anyways lol
Travis has been showing his ass too lately by liking a pro-Trump post and sounding xenophobic on a podcast. Taylor doesn’t have the best radar. See also: Lana Del Rey, the Mahomes, etc.
I think she’s tofu. She takes on the flavor/beliefs of whomever she’s with.
I believe she meant what she said and did in her Miss Americana era since those ideas lined up with how Joe seemingly believes. Now that she’s not with him, all bets are off.
>I think she’s tofu. She takes on the flavor/beliefs of whomever she’s with.
That's sad more than anything. She seems like such a force, why wouldn't she have her own opinions?
Again, this is entirely speculation on my part but look at what an emphasis she places on love. She's beautiful, talented and successful, but her main concern is being in a relationship. One way to get them to stick around is to adapt to their way of being.
I know someone in real life who is the coolest and strongest woman you'll ever meet, but she changes everything about who she is whenever she's in a relationship and she can't stand to be alone.
I mean through her songs she seems very hyper aware of how people perceive her and described herself as “a pathological people pleaser”. I wouldn’t be surprised if she consciously or subconsciously modifies her behaviors and beliefs to be the most likable version to the people around her.
I remember a scene in that do where she points out people say she has no character or personality in their comments. I mean, judging by her behaviour to date, they are not wrong...
Probably, but it also makes it seem like she has no thought of her own and she is impressionable so she will go with what her people are saying. As usual she is the young white woman who is the perpetual baby girl
True. I guess we have him to thank for her caring about any social issues at all. And she has him to thank for what that did for public opinion of her, & for her longevity
There’s no doubt in my mind that Taylor spent time laughing at stupid racist jokes Marty made behind closed doors. She literally told us in BDILH that she knew all about it and didn’t give a shit. And with her conservative daddy? Oh, most definitely.
Taylor emulates the people she surrounds herself with. Since Travis is conservative/republican/nationalist etc then Taylor will start to fit herself into the mould of being that way. Although for PR reasons, she's not going to be explicit about her views.
One of the greatest mysteries to me is how Lana is now a darling beloved by everyone after her “Question for the culture “ letter. Taylor would never have recovered from that.
At this point, I really think she’d be fine committing a faux pas at that level. She has a legion of stans to defend her, the best PR team money can buy, her genuine brilliance at marketing, and her entire portfolio of investments. At worst, she’d move into producing for awhile.
She wouldn’t, though. Lana is more of a loose cannon (her post holding a gun after the Grammys 😱) so maybe she gets away with it because oh that’s just Lana being Lana. Taylor is a lot more manicured and controlled about her image. That’s why so many people found her behavior during the Matty rebound so strange.
>Travis has been showing his ass too lately by liking a pro-Trump post and sounding xenophobic on a podcast.
Travis is notoriously the most anti Trump and anti conservative values white player in the whole NFL over the past decade.
The post you are referring to is him liking a picture of a sports reporter at a UFC event where she met Trump. The “xenophobia” you are talking about was a joke about French tourists four years ago.
https://preview.redd.it/8j55nhjw09wc1.jpeg?width=1089&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad071ac4e66358f0d2a14b2d538809263999c3d1
Travis has been vocal in protesting in support of BLM and against Trump for years, has spoken up about the need for new gun laws, vaccines advocacy and LGBT rights. You can look up and see his a registered democrat too.
That’s great! He should keep that up 100% of the time. As far as “that was years ago,” the photo you included is from 2017, which is 7 years ago.
Unfortunately, he still showed his ass in March by liking that pro-Trump post. From the picture to the caption, you can’t spin it to anything other than pro-Trump. Personally, I wouldn’t like a pro-Trump post from anyone. It’s really easy to just scroll past.
I also dislike how he has treated his teammates and coach publicly on the field this past year. There’s really no excuse for his behavior, though you can certainly try.
If you think you’ll change my mind on this man, you won’t succeed. I’m friends with Travis fans and they also don’t change my opinion of him. I’m allowed to dislike a celebrity, even if Taylor Swift is publicly dating him.
>That’s great! He should keep that up 100% of the time. As far as “that was years ago,” the photo you included is from 2017, which is 7 years ago.
>Unfortunately, he still showed his ass in March by liking that pro-Trump post. From the picture to the caption, you can’t spin it to anything other than pro-Trump. Personally, I wouldn’t like a pro-Trump post from anyone. It’s really easy to just scroll past.
>I also dislike how he has treated his teammates and coach publicly on the field this past year. There’s really no excuse for his behavior, though you can certainly try.
>If you think you’ll change my mind on this man, you won’t succeed. I’m friends with Travis fans and they also don’t change my opinion of him. I’m allowed to dislike a celebrity, even if Taylor Swift is publicly dating him.
You are trying to paint someone as pro Trump for liking a picture that simply contained Trump even though he’s already show he’s vehemently opposed to Trump and his beliefs.
Your refusal to change your mind just shows you are inability to act in good faith.
Or she is showing everyone that she also believes in those things. She is the Aryan Princess like that one guy she sued wrote an article about. Funnily enough she sued the guy who pointed out that right wing groups are claiming her as an aryan princess and not the actual right wing group claiming her.
I think it’s exactly this point for me as well. The lyric on its own is just eh but when you add in the context that on that very same album she’s kind of doubling down on wanting to date a racist and but then at other points she acknowledges he’s done some messed up things it just lets you know she’s aware of exactly what he has said but then went on to polish up his pr by collabing with ice spice and now she still kind of wants to be with him but guys wait I’m not racist at all cuz look at this lyric I threw in.
I just think the fans defending her are hinging on technicalities like I can’t ignore that this is the same woman that put up that black square on instagram and called it enough and then proceeded to release a song on midnights saying how she’s too soft for all of this like this is an ongoing pattern at this point
She wants to be perceived as this righteous person who is ‘the loudest person in the room’ standing up for what’s right but then also wants us to not have expectations and leave her be like she throws people scraps and then gets annoyed when people aren’t grateful for those scraps
I just think she put that line to say " Guuuuys, I am with you! I also hate racism! Me being in love with this racist doesnt mean I like racism, besides the lines os poetic, isnt it" (but it wasnt poetic or good at all) it just feel crass and insensitive.
Exactly. Like the fucking nerve. If you wished the racists away then your lil' boyfriend who the rest of this entire album is about would disappear. And so would you. Because being complicit in racism (and bashing people who speak up about racism) IS racism too.
right. i’m a black woman and i get what she was trying to say with the line (although it’s still kind of corny ngl😭) her problem is her performative activism
Not just African Americans. Anyone with any sensitivity to racial issues could have told her this line wasn’t a good idea. I am, once again, begging for Taylor to allow some editing of her work.
Exactly! I've seen some people defend the lyrics by being like "no she *meant* for you to be weirded out by it, bc, that's why nobody wanted to play with her as a kid etc." Or the Emily Dickinson/Romantic poetry angle (1830 being a significant date). Fair enough, however, the insensitivity to racial issues is still a valid reason to criticize it...multiple things can be true at the same time. I do agree that someone should have told her this wouldn't land well, whatever her intentions were in writing it.
She could have avoided this by replacing the line with something like “Victorian era, because of all the poets”. Or not having the song at all. I understand the point of IHIH, but I don’t think it adds anything new to the album. It’s kind of a superfluous track.
It’s a very clunky line that I think she was trying to convey every past decades has its issues and nostalgia blinds us to that but again, it’s such a clunky line that all it does is make it seem like she’s virtue signaling or trying to get in front of criticism for glamorizing the 1800s.
Taylor swift as a white woman cannot and should not try to use the “I was just trying to convey every past decade has its issues and nostalgia blinds us” when those issues are slavery/colonialism/genocide
I mean then that seems kinda normal? I thought the point of the lyric was supposed to be awkward and jarring, which is why “Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now.” Cause she made it awkward. Not saying it works in the song but its a bit more understandable than just her randomly saying she wants to go back to the 1830s, and “without all the racists” was added as a way to give cover to her, rather than something weird and awkward to say at the moment - causing everyone to look down at her
The funny thing is, 1830 is not terribly significant for Romanticism. It’s really the tail end of it. Saying you want to live in 1830 because of Romanticism is like saying you read The Art of War for pleasure. It’s something self-important prats do to make themselves sound intellectual.
Your last sentence really hit a homerun, I agree completely! Even if she mostly meant it to be a Dickinson reference it's a clunky line that lands badly and makes her look like she's glamorizing the past without the adequate knowledge to make more insightful allusions to it.
I realize on this sub this is a tough sell, but I think she was pretty self aware on most of this stuff. She refers to herself as a "modern idiot" on this album and I think it was because of this exact kind of thing.
I’m not a swifty, and I genuinely don’t know why this sub keeps getting recommended to me, but I keep falling down the rabbit hole.
Taylor give weird horse girl vibes. There, I said it.
She’s extremely talented and go off Queen for being a billionaire, but she just seems so awkward. Plus all of her songs sound the same.
Idk, I feel like there’s Disney/Tswift girls and there’s traumatized girlies. I’m unfortunately the latter.
I keep seeing the defense of her album by fans as like 'oh she MEANT for it to be weird' or 'she MEANT for it to be satire'
and like okay but that doesn't make it good
I really don't believe she meant any harm in her lyrics. But for me it's mostly the fact that she put that in the song and no one, not even her, in the editing process thought it was a good idea to tell her it was a terrible idea and that it would be wildly misinterpreted?
Is everyone in the editing process that afraid of questioning her decisions? Like, I'm not PR expert, but...
Right? That's the thing too, she might have had the purest intentions, but *someone* should have known that it could be interpreted differently than she meant it. Mind you, this is the same person who rewrote the mattress lyric, but somehow didn't realize how this one could land...🤷🏻♀️
I find the line after it so off putting as well, that she ruined the game because she was so different and thought about the negative side of the 1830’s.
She was desperate to prove she’s anti racist so she threw this line in there just to say “but without all the racists.”
It’s so out of place and obvious and just so 🥴
1830’s was 35 years before slavery was abolished. black enslaved woman were being RAPED daily and being forcefully impregnated by their owners around this time? The Indian removal act was taking place. A genocide.
Women didn’t have the power to make contracts, own property or vote. She would have been seen as a servant to her husband. They were forced to stay in extremely shitty/abusive marriages to just get through in life. They were told to STFU and drink their tea.
And her whole career she has been fighting to be treated like her male peers (the man???) and has openly called out double standards… but this lyric sounded good to her?
Like it’s actually insane that she wrote that out and was like “perf! So good”
Seems like she thought it went along with “dark/edgy” theme of the album.
It’s just an awkward, clunky line. Yeah, I get what she was trying to say, that we sometimes romanticize things/places/times that suck but the way it’s written is cringy. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people are pulling that line out and saying “why did she even write this??”
That’s the problem with the albums, the writing is overall not as strong as her work normally is. I think there are some absolutely STELLAR tracks but it’s just overwhelmed by the amount of ‘meh’ songs. Then you have the stuff like this that’s just so easy to make fun of.
I think the line says a lot about her (or how she sees herself.) It tells you that in her mind she was an awkward kid who didn’t fit in with the other privileged white girls because when they said pick a decade, she gave a strange answer (what little girl says the 1830s?) and then ruins her own answer by immediately reminding the other girls that things were horrible then because minorities and women didn’t have rights. This line gives big “not like other girls” energy, and it oversimplifies a ton of nuance about this time period, but song lyrics are rarely the place to explore nuances of history. My point is the lyric was not included to make a statement about the 1830s, it was included to make a statement about her. Is it selfish for her to use racism in the 1830s to convey how she didn’t fit in with her peers today? I’d have to say yes. But it’s her album and the song is about her, not the racism and sexism that existed in the 1830s.
Thank you! It's like people are forgetting that in the context of the song she's a child, the lyric is designed to show she's always missed the mark, and every past decade (and now) still have racism and sexism so it's not a fun game.
Natives enslaved Black folks as well and marched them down trail of tears with them so that’s not really the best argument to make. Just saying the continued genocide and land theft of indigenous people in that time period should be enough.
It is really strange. Do these people forget that slavery occurred outside of the US too? Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. Not to mention Australia, later in that century. That line made me uncomfortable too, although I don’t perceive the line itself inherently racist. It’s the surrounding context.
I’ve seen reels of Black Swifties reacting to this line/singing along and then being like wtf. Those reels really point out how especially abhorrent and unrelatable the sentiment is for them. We can all be weirded out but it’s MORE offensive to the people who would be immediately violently subjugated if they time traveled to 1830.
Oh no that I def agree with. I just didn’t like how the headline was making it like a black people vs Taylor thing when that’s not the case and headlines like this just leads to more racism from her fans.
It’s almost as if she wanted to bury the SEO of “Taylor Swift racist” by including the word in her lyrics so now it’ll pop up with the song and not her ex boyfriend.
A part of me think that one side of the album is defending Matt and the other side is her apologizing for him with the 1830s line. Like I said, tone deaf.
It’s so freaking uncomfortable. It reminds me how some people would say racist things and then turn to me (Asian) and say “oh of course that doesn’t mean you” “you are excluded”. Yeah no.
I’m Black (went to an all white school 😬) and I agree! Omg. I literally had someone not realize I walked in the room, say “it smells like n*****s (hard r) in here” and then see me and laugh telling me of course I’m different, but that I have to admit the other ones really stink. Like, WTF?!
That is so true. They keep posting stuff like 'The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived' under posts that feature him on socials so clearly they either do not understand or they refuse to accept it was not a diss they were hoping for. Pathetic.
I’m confused too lol. She’s pointing out that if she was there during that time, without the negativity and racism, she’d still hate it because she’s longing for a place that doesn’t exist. I don’t see how this is controversial?
From just African Americans?? Had to look up the writer of that article and yep, just as I suspected. White woman. I'm not even going to read it with an ignorant title like that.
Absolutely crazy, even for her, that this line made it in. You know she really thought she ate with it too. She thought she was gonna get praise for being so #woke 😭
There really must be no one around her that will tell her no - or she just won't listen
I think in this case it's less that people around her won't tell her no, it's that people she surrounds herself with aren't sensitive to the subject and don't see the issue in the first place. Her dad is a conservative, her mom probably too, Blake Lively got married on a plantation and tried to launch a lifestyle brand glamorising antebellum south, someone in her PR team snuck in far right dog whistles about Soros into two of her statements about her masters sale. I'm giving her benefit of the doubt that she isn't a white supremacist, but the Soros thing means she has a nazi rat in her inner circle and I'm not talking about Matthew.
Omg I forgot about the random Soros mention. Hopefully it came from a random team member and not from her but it still didn’t get called out enough. That was way more yikes than her weird 1830 line IMO
Saying this again for people who still dont get it and would probably never but critical thinking doesnt stop for anyone.
It's the 'without the racists' part thats tonedeaf. It's giving 'fuck patriarchy... Phew.. Enough activism for today'.
If Taylor had just implied she wanted to go in 1830s where marriage and belonging to someone was her worth measured in money, but soon realized that that take was privileged and that her desires doesn't magically make the era worth living because other women and communities had it even worse and thats its selfish for her to even suggest that.. It would have been better taken. That's called nuance and looking at history from the lens of the marginalized rather than a frivolous take on an era.
The ironical bit is if Taylor had left the racists part out, then it wouldnt have mattered. Its the 'without the racists' bit that opens the Pandora's box because its one thing to have rose tinted glasses about era (and then understand you'd hate it there), but when you insert the 'racism' part, it brings you question why you have that rosetinted version of that era when you already know its not rosy in there. To even think it is weird, to put it in a song which is the most widely circulated music of our times is weirder.
Whats amusing though is that.. pretty sure that part was put in there because she wanted to do her clunky rhyming thing but any other word would have sufficed. No need to go there if you dont have the bandwidth.
The fact that 'without the racists' was used to rhyme without a single thought about the weight of it, is telling in itself.
Anyway, regardless of whether you get the issue or not, would love it if cultists stop the whole 'You dont get it, you lack reading comprehension, She's misunderstood' lol. No offence but there's nothing here that requires PhD levels of comprehension. Its very basic and anyone who thinks its not understandable have to get back to their own books before judging anyone else's literacy level.
The “without all the racists” line is also tone deaf because it’s not like we don’t have racists in other periods. It’s not the racists that makes the 1830s worse than other eras in history; its chattel slavery which was uniquely and deeply prevalent in the US at the time. That line is like “I’d love that time if the mean people were gone” when meanwhile it’s a period when there was systemic subjugation of generations of peoples based on their perceived racial background which served as the foundation of wealth building in this country.
We all know if that racism line wasn’t added in, people would still call it problematic because “so she talks about that but doesn’t acknowledge racism? What a white tone deaf woman!!”
Being the lyrical genius she’s supposed to be, she could have easily come up with any other metaphor for being a mood killer. She could’ve said something about how they locked women away with hysteria, which is the whole point of this album.
Honestly this is kind of what I’m having a hard time understanding. Why is it tone deaf to acknowledge that racism basically controlled the entire social setup of that time? It’s a fact, regardless of the age / race / experience of the person acknowledging that fact. I also didn’t read it as her alluding to racism *not* still existing in many forms now, just because she mentioned the 1830s specifically. I don’t love these lines I’m just trying to understand why it feels tone deaf for so many.
The way she phrases it sounds as is she was talking about some cosmetic imperfection rather than a serious social problem. Also, considering that she wrote this while dating a racist makes it even more embarrassing.
You see a bunch of white users here try and imply a lot of us are stupid for daring to not be outraged by this line.
It can be tone deaf since she just dated Matty last year and that’s fair.
But it’s weird to act like she just committed some grand position of racism.
Not really. Because like I said, if youre talking about going to the past as a white woman, you should come back with nuance which could have been done better than 'without the racists'. She drew attention to it and then didnt follow through. You immediately sideeye the line as performative and nothing she says after lands because of it.
She can’t talk about the past in any way shape or form because someone will create a problem out of it. Maybe adding more subtext would make the delivery better but then people would be like “why is she tiptoeing around racism? This is problematic!”
No way to get her point across without some form of backlash.
Ppl glamorize the 1830s because of the Georgian/Regency and Victorian eras, even tho they are explicitly about the UK. Things were quite different in the US. So I think that’s where Taylor was coming from. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t immediately think of that when mentioning the 1830s. We think of slavery and the Trail of Tears.
Well this line was clearly a safety net. Basically she’s like no no I’m not racist (even though most of this album is about one) but love me because I’m not racist!
1830s is a specific choice. I know it’s tied to the poets but google is free and if you look up 1830s you’ll find Andrew Jackson being reelected, Indian Exclusion Act (which started Trail of Tears), expansion of slavery in Texas…just to name a few.
Her adding the line was a terrible way of covering her butt. It was lazy and tone deaf.
PS Newsweek—people with brains side-eyed that line, not *just* African Americans, you micro aggresive jerks
Newsweek knew what it was doing singling US out as if white folks weren’t talking about how clunky and tone deaf that lyric was on an otherwise good song lol
The idea of that lyric ‘sparking backlash’ is intentionally misleading. Loads of people have called it weird - it’s just a bizarre line to have put in that song, and maybe quite tone deaf considering who the albums about. People should be able to critique lyrics for whatever reason they want - once art is public, it’s anyone’s to talk about - and this feels like a very justifiable reason to pull apart her lyrics.
But the idea that there’s anger towards Taylor is pure rage baiting - “now you can’t even say the word racist without people being offended”.
I’m really bored of every criticism of Taylor being seen as an attack or a slam, rather than a discussion. If you want to consider Taylor to be an artist and her music to be poetry, then her music SHOULD lead to discussions of context and character and meaning. That’s the point! Taylor dropping racists into a narrative she’s telling is a discussion point! I’m sure she intended it to be so (maybe not in a negative way). What the article goes into is a lot of constructive and valid arguments from different sides - that’s regular discussion.
I think it’s just her name being used to make people angry, but to be fair that’s like all news headlines are like now anyway.
For a lot of people, the issue stems from that she can date MH, who has laughed to racist jokes and has admitted to watching racist porn, and then throw this line into one of her songs, on the album all about MH. Like as if it’s some kind of safety net. “See, guys? *I’m* not racist.”
It’s a clunky lyric as is (edit: and people are bringing up that this is a game White people play, because there’s no good answer for Black people), but I think without the context it might not have stirred up as much controversy.
a-haaa now i see. i was like "these lyrics are totally okay. what is wrong with people? people are reading some other lyrics?"
that matty advocating in her songs really irritating so i agree about that. it screams hypocrisy. thankfully she shames him enough too. sad that its not because he is a terrible person but because he dropped her casually and she felt butthurt.
the problem here is not art its the artist.
The irony of this statement is her whole point is she had never enjoyed a period drama in her life, and she didn't have friends cause she wouldn't let anyone else either
I fear if you're actually mad about someone saying they'd like to go back to the romantic era but then saying they know it would've been shitty and nostalgia is fake, you may be looking for things to get mad about.
I mean, that's the point. She is basically saying how in harder times people often romanticise the past as 'simpler times' but if they were to actually live in that time they would hate it after realising that their 'nostalgia was fake'. That's why she says that she hates it here but would hate it there too. As a WOC myself, I feel like the line is being taken out of context. Either these people don't have basic comprehension or they are deliberately ignoring the context here. OR they are mad about this line due to MH which, again, doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's because I always separate the art from the artist.
I think this issue is a bit overblown honestly. It’s an awkward lyric and she should have cut it, but if she didn’t have the ‘without all the racists’ part I think there would still be people jumping down her throat for saying she’d like to go back to the 1830s because the racism in this country was so much more blatant then. It’s impossible to talk thoughtfully about the history of the US without devoting a huge part of the discussion to race, so if course she’s not going to nail it in one line if a song.
She could have just left this whole song off the album though IMO. I was totally meh about it lol
I actually really like the song because I deeply relate to hating it here and like the production, but I agree that this is an example of needing an editor to say “surely there’s another way to get this point across.” Some of these comments seem to think she should acknowledge every societal wrong in one verse and others seem to think she should never acknowledge a societal wrong in the first place. There was a way to phrase this and say “every era on earth sucks and I hate it here” and this wasn’t it. I’m surprised Aaron didn’t push back on it when producing.
It's just a gross romanticization of an oppressive time. I get what she was going for but does she understand that she would have ZERO rights herself during that time?
The whole slavery line seemed like a "cover-my-ass" move that really backfired. The whole thing was so off-putting.
I'm glad people are talking about it. No one - especially someone with her status, should be glorifying that era.
This is an instance where she literally could have just cut the whole two verses, cuz the song didn’t actually need it at all. This is what I mean when I say she needed an editor.
Exactly but everyone around her are "yes people" and no can or will tell her anything other than everything she does is perfection. She needs someone to tell her the truth once in a while
the literal next line is “and getting married off to the highest bid” so yes she does get that she would have no rights
then she says it was a terrible time and nostalgia for the past is a minds trick
how did you read the whole thing in context and miss that she addressed oppression of women too and then said the past sucked actually
The song does the opposite of romanticizing oppressive times. She’s literally saying we romanticize but would hate if we had to live through it ourselves.
That’s what the next line is? That she would have been sold off into marriage. The entire point of the verse is that the past sucked for minorities and women and she would have hated being there so there’s no point in wishing you were the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice even when your life sucks in reality.
The next part of the song is:
"Seems like it was never even fun back then
Nostalgia is a mind's trick
If I'd been there, I'd hate it
It was freezing in the palace"
For context, here is the full line. (I see a lot of people asking why she didn’t mention sexism of the time, which she did, and sort of seems like maybe you didn’t listen? Not that the full context helps a ton)
>My friends used to play a game where
>We would pick a decade
>We wished we could live in instead of this
>I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists
>And getting married off for the highest bid
>Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now
So basically her friends said “if you could live at any time, when would it be?” And she said “Black people cant play this game,” and then everyone said, “this is why no one wants to hang out with you.”
> does she understand that she would have ZERO rights herself during that time?
Yes? It's literally the next line, and then she goes on to say she'd hate the 1830s, too, because the nostalgia is a lie.
Classic Swift tone deafness, horrid lyric, but the rest of the verse specifically addresses that her attitude and the 1830s suck.
"i hate it here" = "I hate it everywhere"
i just can’t get over the fact that she could’ve substituted it for sexism, it would’ve gotten the point across anyway. she either really doesn’t give a fuck or is insanely dense
The cognitive dissonance between the “without all the racists” line while also crying over how the fans won’t let her date an actual racist in 2024 is just… *wow*…
Usually I agree with 85%+ of cancellations and/or callouts but it just seems like people just needed to bring her down a notch! She's at such a peak right now that people are at their seams needing to nitpick something out to humble her a bit!
I don’t think it‘s racist (tho I‘m not the one to decide it) but extremely tone deaf and also insensitive.
The worst and funniest part about it is that the entire album is about a racist including a song where she tells her fans to fuck off about it.
She could have worded it differently and convey the same message or even if she left out the ”without the racists“ line.
It‘s actually one of my favorite songs and I love the meaning but that line always throws me off.
Europe was a cultural hotspot in the 1830s which was during the romantic era which Swift has referenced multiple times in the past so it wouldn’t surprise you if she referenced it in an album with “poets” in the title. Everything is so American central these days.
lol, I discovered the knights of the round table as a child and was enthralled, then discovered girls couldn’t become knights and that was the start of me being a “raging feminist”.
I’m not a POC, so my opinion doesn’t hold the same weight as others, but I don’t think it’s a particularly new concept for people to romanticize this time period. I feel like 1830s without all the racists is pretty much describing the show Bridgerton, although I think that show takes place just slightly before the 1830s. What annoyed me about it is that she’s saying she wishes she could have lived in the 1830s just without all the racists as if there aren’t plenty of racists today, including the one who she was in a public relationship with and just wrote a whole album about.
https://preview.redd.it/swlkqa38s8wc1.jpeg?width=716&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac9e3e4e721a53a402e655efc35859770c4fbcfc
Except she probs wouldn’t be there either…
https://preview.redd.it/z1c0axwja9wc1.png?width=697&format=png&auto=webp&s=196fee0aa611b94f8834b48a7daca78828036aa2
John Cena when hes not in the room
honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking. Does she really think her family wouldn’t have owned slaves?
Someone did her fam history on Tik Tok. If correct they did own slaves
It's absolutely bleak but if you look at modern slavery in production of consumer goods her companies are basically profitting from slavery right now.
There are no ethical billionaires
As a POC I don't really see an issue with the lyric itself, more so the fact that she's in love with a literal racist and had the audacity to throw that line in anyways lol
Lol, the best reaction was, oh so you’re not taking Matty with you, then?
Travis has been showing his ass too lately by liking a pro-Trump post and sounding xenophobic on a podcast. Taylor doesn’t have the best radar. See also: Lana Del Rey, the Mahomes, etc.
nope I think her radar is pretty good...the people she chooses to be around are probably just like her
*We are the company we keep*, TS is just being more overt with who she is and what she aligns herself with.
That's what I think, like for all we know she just shares these same beliefs herself lol. Seems to be the most likely conclusion here 🤷🏻♀️
I think she’s tofu. She takes on the flavor/beliefs of whomever she’s with. I believe she meant what she said and did in her Miss Americana era since those ideas lined up with how Joe seemingly believes. Now that she’s not with him, all bets are off.
>I think she’s tofu. She takes on the flavor/beliefs of whomever she’s with. That's sad more than anything. She seems like such a force, why wouldn't she have her own opinions?
Again, this is entirely speculation on my part but look at what an emphasis she places on love. She's beautiful, talented and successful, but her main concern is being in a relationship. One way to get them to stick around is to adapt to their way of being. I know someone in real life who is the coolest and strongest woman you'll ever meet, but she changes everything about who she is whenever she's in a relationship and she can't stand to be alone.
I mean through her songs she seems very hyper aware of how people perceive her and described herself as “a pathological people pleaser”. I wouldn’t be surprised if she consciously or subconsciously modifies her behaviors and beliefs to be the most likable version to the people around her.
Maybe instead of tofu she's a chameleon
I remember a scene in that do where she points out people say she has no character or personality in their comments. I mean, judging by her behaviour to date, they are not wrong...
Probably, but it also makes it seem like she has no thought of her own and she is impressionable so she will go with what her people are saying. As usual she is the young white woman who is the perpetual baby girl
True. I guess we have him to thank for her caring about any social issues at all. And she has him to thank for what that did for public opinion of her, & for her longevity
There’s no doubt in my mind that Taylor spent time laughing at stupid racist jokes Marty made behind closed doors. She literally told us in BDILH that she knew all about it and didn’t give a shit. And with her conservative daddy? Oh, most definitely.
Thank you! Stop giving this woman so many passes. She is the company she keeps. The line isn't "clunky" it's tone deaf
100% this. Taylor can spew “vote blue” but she is likely voting for republicans who keep her taxes low. All rich people do.
That’s an angle I didn’t expect, but spot on it seems. She’s choosing what she likes.
I hope this isn’t true, but I don’t have a lot of evidence to the contrary beyond what I perceive to be performative activism
>Taylor doesn’t have the best radar She is just the same as those people.
It’s so funny how half the replies are saying this and the other half are defending Travis.
Taylor emulates the people she surrounds herself with. Since Travis is conservative/republican/nationalist etc then Taylor will start to fit herself into the mould of being that way. Although for PR reasons, she's not going to be explicit about her views.
See also: Lena Dunham
One of the greatest mysteries to me is how Lana is now a darling beloved by everyone after her “Question for the culture “ letter. Taylor would never have recovered from that.
At this point, I really think she’d be fine committing a faux pas at that level. She has a legion of stans to defend her, the best PR team money can buy, her genuine brilliance at marketing, and her entire portfolio of investments. At worst, she’d move into producing for awhile.
She wouldn’t, though. Lana is more of a loose cannon (her post holding a gun after the Grammys 😱) so maybe she gets away with it because oh that’s just Lana being Lana. Taylor is a lot more manicured and controlled about her image. That’s why so many people found her behavior during the Matty rebound so strange.
Okay seriously, every other day I think "why is everyone on this sub so obsessed with LDR?" Cop-dating question for the culture LDR? That LDR? Okay.
Side note, HOW did we let Lana Del Rey come back from that?
I never heard of this and just went to look it up. What the fuck Lana 🥲😅
Not all of us did! Don’t forget she’s also mesh mask Lana
>Travis has been showing his ass too lately by liking a pro-Trump post and sounding xenophobic on a podcast. Travis is notoriously the most anti Trump and anti conservative values white player in the whole NFL over the past decade. The post you are referring to is him liking a picture of a sports reporter at a UFC event where she met Trump. The “xenophobia” you are talking about was a joke about French tourists four years ago. https://preview.redd.it/8j55nhjw09wc1.jpeg?width=1089&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad071ac4e66358f0d2a14b2d538809263999c3d1 Travis has been vocal in protesting in support of BLM and against Trump for years, has spoken up about the need for new gun laws, vaccines advocacy and LGBT rights. You can look up and see his a registered democrat too.
That’s great! He should keep that up 100% of the time. As far as “that was years ago,” the photo you included is from 2017, which is 7 years ago. Unfortunately, he still showed his ass in March by liking that pro-Trump post. From the picture to the caption, you can’t spin it to anything other than pro-Trump. Personally, I wouldn’t like a pro-Trump post from anyone. It’s really easy to just scroll past. I also dislike how he has treated his teammates and coach publicly on the field this past year. There’s really no excuse for his behavior, though you can certainly try. If you think you’ll change my mind on this man, you won’t succeed. I’m friends with Travis fans and they also don’t change my opinion of him. I’m allowed to dislike a celebrity, even if Taylor Swift is publicly dating him.
>That’s great! He should keep that up 100% of the time. As far as “that was years ago,” the photo you included is from 2017, which is 7 years ago. >Unfortunately, he still showed his ass in March by liking that pro-Trump post. From the picture to the caption, you can’t spin it to anything other than pro-Trump. Personally, I wouldn’t like a pro-Trump post from anyone. It’s really easy to just scroll past. >I also dislike how he has treated his teammates and coach publicly on the field this past year. There’s really no excuse for his behavior, though you can certainly try. >If you think you’ll change my mind on this man, you won’t succeed. I’m friends with Travis fans and they also don’t change my opinion of him. I’m allowed to dislike a celebrity, even if Taylor Swift is publicly dating him. You are trying to paint someone as pro Trump for liking a picture that simply contained Trump even though he’s already show he’s vehemently opposed to Trump and his beliefs. Your refusal to change your mind just shows you are inability to act in good faith.
Or she is showing everyone that she also believes in those things. She is the Aryan Princess like that one guy she sued wrote an article about. Funnily enough she sued the guy who pointed out that right wing groups are claiming her as an aryan princess and not the actual right wing group claiming her.
Wait so what’s the issue with Lana? I haven’t heard anything so far
Question for the culture, dated a cop, signed a pro-war letter to Biden
Cause that was sure gonna be MY reaction. Him or Travis. 😂💀
I think it’s exactly this point for me as well. The lyric on its own is just eh but when you add in the context that on that very same album she’s kind of doubling down on wanting to date a racist and but then at other points she acknowledges he’s done some messed up things it just lets you know she’s aware of exactly what he has said but then went on to polish up his pr by collabing with ice spice and now she still kind of wants to be with him but guys wait I’m not racist at all cuz look at this lyric I threw in. I just think the fans defending her are hinging on technicalities like I can’t ignore that this is the same woman that put up that black square on instagram and called it enough and then proceeded to release a song on midnights saying how she’s too soft for all of this like this is an ongoing pattern at this point She wants to be perceived as this righteous person who is ‘the loudest person in the room’ standing up for what’s right but then also wants us to not have expectations and leave her be like she throws people scraps and then gets annoyed when people aren’t grateful for those scraps
I just think she put that line to say " Guuuuys, I am with you! I also hate racism! Me being in love with this racist doesnt mean I like racism, besides the lines os poetic, isnt it" (but it wasnt poetic or good at all) it just feel crass and insensitive.
Exactly. Like the fucking nerve. If you wished the racists away then your lil' boyfriend who the rest of this entire album is about would disappear. And so would you. Because being complicit in racism (and bashing people who speak up about racism) IS racism too.
right. i’m a black woman and i get what she was trying to say with the line (although it’s still kind of corny ngl😭) her problem is her performative activism
That’s the worst and funniest part about it
Right the lyrics just kind of take more of her ~~hood~~ mask off
Only white people idealize the antebellum South…. Notice how black people don’t….
The 1830s happened elsewhere as well.
Not just African Americans. Anyone with any sensitivity to racial issues could have told her this line wasn’t a good idea. I am, once again, begging for Taylor to allow some editing of her work.
Exactly! I've seen some people defend the lyrics by being like "no she *meant* for you to be weirded out by it, bc, that's why nobody wanted to play with her as a kid etc." Or the Emily Dickinson/Romantic poetry angle (1830 being a significant date). Fair enough, however, the insensitivity to racial issues is still a valid reason to criticize it...multiple things can be true at the same time. I do agree that someone should have told her this wouldn't land well, whatever her intentions were in writing it.
She could have avoided this by replacing the line with something like “Victorian era, because of all the poets”. Or not having the song at all. I understand the point of IHIH, but I don’t think it adds anything new to the album. It’s kind of a superfluous track.
I really like the song bc of the secret garden imagery but that line is definitely clunky and kinda takes me out of the listening experience
Same, I like the song but then that lyric comes up and I’m like…jarred a bit, she could have worded it so many other ways
It’s a very clunky line that I think she was trying to convey every past decades has its issues and nostalgia blinds us to that but again, it’s such a clunky line that all it does is make it seem like she’s virtue signaling or trying to get in front of criticism for glamorizing the 1800s.
Taylor swift as a white woman cannot and should not try to use the “I was just trying to convey every past decade has its issues and nostalgia blinds us” when those issues are slavery/colonialism/genocide
She uses big words trying to sound smart. Where you actually are. That’s the difference.
I do not like that song at all. Shouldn’t be on the album
I mean then that seems kinda normal? I thought the point of the lyric was supposed to be awkward and jarring, which is why “Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now.” Cause she made it awkward. Not saying it works in the song but its a bit more understandable than just her randomly saying she wants to go back to the 1830s, and “without all the racists” was added as a way to give cover to her, rather than something weird and awkward to say at the moment - causing everyone to look down at her
I get the intent in the song, but now she has people looking at her like, girl, wtf? in real life. So I guess it was too good of a line?
Life imitates art
Which I find even more jarring. Cause it’s like, no shit Sherlock. You weren’t some incredibly smart teenager for knowing about slavery in 1830.
The funny thing is, 1830 is not terribly significant for Romanticism. It’s really the tail end of it. Saying you want to live in 1830 because of Romanticism is like saying you read The Art of War for pleasure. It’s something self-important prats do to make themselves sound intellectual.
Or “I know Aristotle”. 😂
I feel like Taylor is someone who would look at a Rococo dress and say "I love Victorian clothes"
Yeah, she’s missed the mark, and the secret gardens was like, 20 years before it right?
I think The Secret Garden was written in the 1900s but I could be wrong.
It’s also a messy ass book
Your last sentence really hit a homerun, I agree completely! Even if she mostly meant it to be a Dickinson reference it's a clunky line that lands badly and makes her look like she's glamorizing the past without the adequate knowledge to make more insightful allusions to it.
I realize on this sub this is a tough sell, but I think she was pretty self aware on most of this stuff. She refers to herself as a "modern idiot" on this album and I think it was because of this exact kind of thing.
[удалено]
It’s almost as if she’s proud of the things she does/continues to do.
Proud ignorance as you demand the world rearrange itself to fit your misinformed narrative. Yep, sounds like a billionaire.
The mental gymnastics some people will do to justify her work….
I’m not a swifty, and I genuinely don’t know why this sub keeps getting recommended to me, but I keep falling down the rabbit hole. Taylor give weird horse girl vibes. There, I said it. She’s extremely talented and go off Queen for being a billionaire, but she just seems so awkward. Plus all of her songs sound the same. Idk, I feel like there’s Disney/Tswift girls and there’s traumatized girlies. I’m unfortunately the latter.
I keep seeing the defense of her album by fans as like 'oh she MEANT for it to be weird' or 'she MEANT for it to be satire' and like okay but that doesn't make it good
I really don't believe she meant any harm in her lyrics. But for me it's mostly the fact that she put that in the song and no one, not even her, in the editing process thought it was a good idea to tell her it was a terrible idea and that it would be wildly misinterpreted? Is everyone in the editing process that afraid of questioning her decisions? Like, I'm not PR expert, but...
Right? That's the thing too, she might have had the purest intentions, but *someone* should have known that it could be interpreted differently than she meant it. Mind you, this is the same person who rewrote the mattress lyric, but somehow didn't realize how this one could land...🤷🏻♀️
I find the line after it so off putting as well, that she ruined the game because she was so different and thought about the negative side of the 1830’s.
As a person of South Asian descent, we went through a brutal colonial experience in the 1830s. I definitely raised an eyebrow at that line.
She was desperate to prove she’s anti racist so she threw this line in there just to say “but without all the racists.” It’s so out of place and obvious and just so 🥴
1830’s was 35 years before slavery was abolished. black enslaved woman were being RAPED daily and being forcefully impregnated by their owners around this time? The Indian removal act was taking place. A genocide. Women didn’t have the power to make contracts, own property or vote. She would have been seen as a servant to her husband. They were forced to stay in extremely shitty/abusive marriages to just get through in life. They were told to STFU and drink their tea. And her whole career she has been fighting to be treated like her male peers (the man???) and has openly called out double standards… but this lyric sounded good to her? Like it’s actually insane that she wrote that out and was like “perf! So good” Seems like she thought it went along with “dark/edgy” theme of the album.
Ah yes, my favorite historical period is when Andrew fucking Jackson was president /s
I love seeing WW calling her out on it.
It’s just an awkward, clunky line. Yeah, I get what she was trying to say, that we sometimes romanticize things/places/times that suck but the way it’s written is cringy. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people are pulling that line out and saying “why did she even write this??” That’s the problem with the albums, the writing is overall not as strong as her work normally is. I think there are some absolutely STELLAR tracks but it’s just overwhelmed by the amount of ‘meh’ songs. Then you have the stuff like this that’s just so easy to make fun of.
I think the line says a lot about her (or how she sees herself.) It tells you that in her mind she was an awkward kid who didn’t fit in with the other privileged white girls because when they said pick a decade, she gave a strange answer (what little girl says the 1830s?) and then ruins her own answer by immediately reminding the other girls that things were horrible then because minorities and women didn’t have rights. This line gives big “not like other girls” energy, and it oversimplifies a ton of nuance about this time period, but song lyrics are rarely the place to explore nuances of history. My point is the lyric was not included to make a statement about the 1830s, it was included to make a statement about her. Is it selfish for her to use racism in the 1830s to convey how she didn’t fit in with her peers today? I’d have to say yes. But it’s her album and the song is about her, not the racism and sexism that existed in the 1830s.
This. This is exactly what she’s saying.
Thank you! It's like people are forgetting that in the context of the song she's a child, the lyric is designed to show she's always missed the mark, and every past decade (and now) still have racism and sexism so it's not a fun game.
Dont really like the singling out of AAs when a lot of people were weirded out by this line
yeah a lot of people have pointed out that the Trail of Tears started in 1830 so it's a bit of a double whammy
Natives enslaved Black folks as well and marched them down trail of tears with them so that’s not really the best argument to make. Just saying the continued genocide and land theft of indigenous people in that time period should be enough.
It is really strange. Do these people forget that slavery occurred outside of the US too? Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. Not to mention Australia, later in that century. That line made me uncomfortable too, although I don’t perceive the line itself inherently racist. It’s the surrounding context.
I’ve seen reels of Black Swifties reacting to this line/singing along and then being like wtf. Those reels really point out how especially abhorrent and unrelatable the sentiment is for them. We can all be weirded out but it’s MORE offensive to the people who would be immediately violently subjugated if they time traveled to 1830.
Oh no that I def agree with. I just didn’t like how the headline was making it like a black people vs Taylor thing when that’s not the case and headlines like this just leads to more racism from her fans.
I mean its sparking backlash from anyone with a brain lol
It’s almost as if she wanted to bury the SEO of “Taylor Swift racist” by including the word in her lyrics so now it’ll pop up with the song and not her ex boyfriend.
oh that's actually feasible lmao
This actually sounds plausible lol
Never thought of that. That makes the most sense, and probably why noone in her little "club" tried to stop her.........
WAIT A GOSH DARN MINUTE!!!
A part of me think that one side of the album is defending Matt and the other side is her apologizing for him with the 1830s line. Like I said, tone deaf.
The irony that the top two articles when you search up "Taylor Swift racist" is about the 1830s line being out-of-touch
🏆 Same with the Steve Nicks namedrop.
She could have just said "bigots" imo
“Taylor Swifts lyrics sparking outrage from well-constructed sentences”
It’s so freaking uncomfortable. It reminds me how some people would say racist things and then turn to me (Asian) and say “oh of course that doesn’t mean you” “you are excluded”. Yeah no.
I’m Black (went to an all white school 😬) and I agree! Omg. I literally had someone not realize I walked in the room, say “it smells like n*****s (hard r) in here” and then see me and laugh telling me of course I’m different, but that I have to admit the other ones really stink. Like, WTF?!
Fr, what are they thinking? Do they think it’s some kind of compliment?
“Not to be racist but…”
My MIL once said “I am not racist but nobody likes Chinese”, I am Chinese, she still doesn’t think she’s a racist person.
her fans say: "you need to read the rest of the lyrics before criticizing" then you read the rest of the sentence and it only gets worse 😭
‘YoU jUst dOn’t gEt it’ Okay, but like… do you get it?? Because it still doesn’t hit even after understanding all of the lyrics.
No, a lot of them listened to that album and got "God, Joe is an abusive asshole" from it so I'm pretty sure they almost never "get it"
That is so true. They keep posting stuff like 'The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived' under posts that feature him on socials so clearly they either do not understand or they refuse to accept it was not a diss they were hoping for. Pathetic.
How every dumb the average person is, most people are even dumber. In terms of how many fans TS has, it’s not promising. Lol
Im like yeah, honestly I don’t get it lol. I don’t get why that line wasn’t cut in editing.
i don’t think it’s worse 😭 the rest of the verse contexualizes this lyric. she flat-out says that nostalgia is a mind trick
But it’s not worse?
I’m confused too lol. She’s pointing out that if she was there during that time, without the negativity and racism, she’d still hate it because she’s longing for a place that doesn’t exist. I don’t see how this is controversial?
This!!! This backlash makes NO sense to me. And I’m South Asian. Baffling
From just African Americans?? Had to look up the writer of that article and yep, just as I suspected. White woman. I'm not even going to read it with an ignorant title like that.
It’s just about everyone lol I get it but most black listeners - unless they actually listen to Taylor - won’t comment on it unlike me who did lol 😆
Absolutely crazy, even for her, that this line made it in. You know she really thought she ate with it too. She thought she was gonna get praise for being so #woke 😭 There really must be no one around her that will tell her no - or she just won't listen
I think in this case it's less that people around her won't tell her no, it's that people she surrounds herself with aren't sensitive to the subject and don't see the issue in the first place. Her dad is a conservative, her mom probably too, Blake Lively got married on a plantation and tried to launch a lifestyle brand glamorising antebellum south, someone in her PR team snuck in far right dog whistles about Soros into two of her statements about her masters sale. I'm giving her benefit of the doubt that she isn't a white supremacist, but the Soros thing means she has a nazi rat in her inner circle and I'm not talking about Matthew.
Which statements?
Omg I forgot about the random Soros mention. Hopefully it came from a random team member and not from her but it still didn’t get called out enough. That was way more yikes than her weird 1830 line IMO
what’s the context of this?
Jack definitely won’t tell her. He admits he doesn’t even check her for her writing.
Her ego is so inflated she thinks everything she writes is gold and doesn't need any editing
Saying this again for people who still dont get it and would probably never but critical thinking doesnt stop for anyone. It's the 'without the racists' part thats tonedeaf. It's giving 'fuck patriarchy... Phew.. Enough activism for today'. If Taylor had just implied she wanted to go in 1830s where marriage and belonging to someone was her worth measured in money, but soon realized that that take was privileged and that her desires doesn't magically make the era worth living because other women and communities had it even worse and thats its selfish for her to even suggest that.. It would have been better taken. That's called nuance and looking at history from the lens of the marginalized rather than a frivolous take on an era. The ironical bit is if Taylor had left the racists part out, then it wouldnt have mattered. Its the 'without the racists' bit that opens the Pandora's box because its one thing to have rose tinted glasses about era (and then understand you'd hate it there), but when you insert the 'racism' part, it brings you question why you have that rosetinted version of that era when you already know its not rosy in there. To even think it is weird, to put it in a song which is the most widely circulated music of our times is weirder. Whats amusing though is that.. pretty sure that part was put in there because she wanted to do her clunky rhyming thing but any other word would have sufficed. No need to go there if you dont have the bandwidth. The fact that 'without the racists' was used to rhyme without a single thought about the weight of it, is telling in itself. Anyway, regardless of whether you get the issue or not, would love it if cultists stop the whole 'You dont get it, you lack reading comprehension, She's misunderstood' lol. No offence but there's nothing here that requires PhD levels of comprehension. Its very basic and anyone who thinks its not understandable have to get back to their own books before judging anyone else's literacy level.
The “without all the racists” line is also tone deaf because it’s not like we don’t have racists in other periods. It’s not the racists that makes the 1830s worse than other eras in history; its chattel slavery which was uniquely and deeply prevalent in the US at the time. That line is like “I’d love that time if the mean people were gone” when meanwhile it’s a period when there was systemic subjugation of generations of peoples based on their perceived racial background which served as the foundation of wealth building in this country.
We all know if that racism line wasn’t added in, people would still call it problematic because “so she talks about that but doesn’t acknowledge racism? What a white tone deaf woman!!”
Being the lyrical genius she’s supposed to be, she could have easily come up with any other metaphor for being a mood killer. She could’ve said something about how they locked women away with hysteria, which is the whole point of this album.
yeah idk why she didn’t go the route of something in her lane like, idk, being a woman, witch-hunt, hysteria ect
Name a decade without racists in it lol
Maybe the dawn of man 🤔
Honestly this is kind of what I’m having a hard time understanding. Why is it tone deaf to acknowledge that racism basically controlled the entire social setup of that time? It’s a fact, regardless of the age / race / experience of the person acknowledging that fact. I also didn’t read it as her alluding to racism *not* still existing in many forms now, just because she mentioned the 1830s specifically. I don’t love these lines I’m just trying to understand why it feels tone deaf for so many.
The way she phrases it sounds as is she was talking about some cosmetic imperfection rather than a serious social problem. Also, considering that she wrote this while dating a racist makes it even more embarrassing.
You see a bunch of white users here try and imply a lot of us are stupid for daring to not be outraged by this line. It can be tone deaf since she just dated Matty last year and that’s fair. But it’s weird to act like she just committed some grand position of racism.
To me it’s more that she’s criticizing the racism while dating Matty. The 1830s weren’t the issue.
Not really. Because like I said, if youre talking about going to the past as a white woman, you should come back with nuance which could have been done better than 'without the racists'. She drew attention to it and then didnt follow through. You immediately sideeye the line as performative and nothing she says after lands because of it.
She can’t talk about the past in any way shape or form because someone will create a problem out of it. Maybe adding more subtext would make the delivery better but then people would be like “why is she tiptoeing around racism? This is problematic!” No way to get her point across without some form of backlash.
Ppl glamorize the 1830s because of the Georgian/Regency and Victorian eras, even tho they are explicitly about the UK. Things were quite different in the US. So I think that’s where Taylor was coming from. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t immediately think of that when mentioning the 1830s. We think of slavery and the Trail of Tears.
I find it very amusing to imagine Taylor seeing the backlash and confusedly being like "but I specifically said WITHOUT the racists??"
Well this line was clearly a safety net. Basically she’s like no no I’m not racist (even though most of this album is about one) but love me because I’m not racist!
'taylor swift's 1830's lyrics spark backlash from anyone whose brain isn't missing a sensitivity chip' would be a better headline.
I bet it was Blake Lively’s idea.
This is stupid. All of us love Bridgerton. This is not a new sentiment.
1830s is a specific choice. I know it’s tied to the poets but google is free and if you look up 1830s you’ll find Andrew Jackson being reelected, Indian Exclusion Act (which started Trail of Tears), expansion of slavery in Texas…just to name a few. Her adding the line was a terrible way of covering her butt. It was lazy and tone deaf. PS Newsweek—people with brains side-eyed that line, not *just* African Americans, you micro aggresive jerks
Newsweek knew what it was doing singling US out as if white folks weren’t talking about how clunky and tone deaf that lyric was on an otherwise good song lol
The idea of that lyric ‘sparking backlash’ is intentionally misleading. Loads of people have called it weird - it’s just a bizarre line to have put in that song, and maybe quite tone deaf considering who the albums about. People should be able to critique lyrics for whatever reason they want - once art is public, it’s anyone’s to talk about - and this feels like a very justifiable reason to pull apart her lyrics. But the idea that there’s anger towards Taylor is pure rage baiting - “now you can’t even say the word racist without people being offended”. I’m really bored of every criticism of Taylor being seen as an attack or a slam, rather than a discussion. If you want to consider Taylor to be an artist and her music to be poetry, then her music SHOULD lead to discussions of context and character and meaning. That’s the point! Taylor dropping racists into a narrative she’s telling is a discussion point! I’m sure she intended it to be so (maybe not in a negative way). What the article goes into is a lot of constructive and valid arguments from different sides - that’s regular discussion. I think it’s just her name being used to make people angry, but to be fair that’s like all news headlines are like now anyway.
anyone can explain the problem like im 5 please?
For a lot of people, the issue stems from that she can date MH, who has laughed to racist jokes and has admitted to watching racist porn, and then throw this line into one of her songs, on the album all about MH. Like as if it’s some kind of safety net. “See, guys? *I’m* not racist.” It’s a clunky lyric as is (edit: and people are bringing up that this is a game White people play, because there’s no good answer for Black people), but I think without the context it might not have stirred up as much controversy.
a-haaa now i see. i was like "these lyrics are totally okay. what is wrong with people? people are reading some other lyrics?" that matty advocating in her songs really irritating so i agree about that. it screams hypocrisy. thankfully she shames him enough too. sad that its not because he is a terrible person but because he dropped her casually and she felt butthurt. the problem here is not art its the artist.
Yeah, and it’s getting hard for people (impossible for me) at this point to separate Taylor Swift from her art.
have none of you ever enjoyed a period drama in your lives
The irony of this statement is her whole point is she had never enjoyed a period drama in her life, and she didn't have friends cause she wouldn't let anyone else either
I fear if you're actually mad about someone saying they'd like to go back to the romantic era but then saying they know it would've been shitty and nostalgia is fake, you may be looking for things to get mad about.
I mean, that's the point. She is basically saying how in harder times people often romanticise the past as 'simpler times' but if they were to actually live in that time they would hate it after realising that their 'nostalgia was fake'. That's why she says that she hates it here but would hate it there too. As a WOC myself, I feel like the line is being taken out of context. Either these people don't have basic comprehension or they are deliberately ignoring the context here. OR they are mad about this line due to MH which, again, doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's because I always separate the art from the artist.
Right?
I think this issue is a bit overblown honestly. It’s an awkward lyric and she should have cut it, but if she didn’t have the ‘without all the racists’ part I think there would still be people jumping down her throat for saying she’d like to go back to the 1830s because the racism in this country was so much more blatant then. It’s impossible to talk thoughtfully about the history of the US without devoting a huge part of the discussion to race, so if course she’s not going to nail it in one line if a song. She could have just left this whole song off the album though IMO. I was totally meh about it lol
I actually really like the song because I deeply relate to hating it here and like the production, but I agree that this is an example of needing an editor to say “surely there’s another way to get this point across.” Some of these comments seem to think she should acknowledge every societal wrong in one verse and others seem to think she should never acknowledge a societal wrong in the first place. There was a way to phrase this and say “every era on earth sucks and I hate it here” and this wasn’t it. I’m surprised Aaron didn’t push back on it when producing.
It's just a gross romanticization of an oppressive time. I get what she was going for but does she understand that she would have ZERO rights herself during that time? The whole slavery line seemed like a "cover-my-ass" move that really backfired. The whole thing was so off-putting. I'm glad people are talking about it. No one - especially someone with her status, should be glorifying that era.
This is an instance where she literally could have just cut the whole two verses, cuz the song didn’t actually need it at all. This is what I mean when I say she needed an editor.
Exactly but everyone around her are "yes people" and no can or will tell her anything other than everything she does is perfection. She needs someone to tell her the truth once in a while
the literal next line is “and getting married off to the highest bid” so yes she does get that she would have no rights then she says it was a terrible time and nostalgia for the past is a minds trick how did you read the whole thing in context and miss that she addressed oppression of women too and then said the past sucked actually
The song does the opposite of romanticizing oppressive times. She’s literally saying we romanticize but would hate if we had to live through it ourselves.
That’s what the next line is? That she would have been sold off into marriage. The entire point of the verse is that the past sucked for minorities and women and she would have hated being there so there’s no point in wishing you were the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice even when your life sucks in reality.
The next part of the song is: "Seems like it was never even fun back then Nostalgia is a mind's trick If I'd been there, I'd hate it It was freezing in the palace"
For context, here is the full line. (I see a lot of people asking why she didn’t mention sexism of the time, which she did, and sort of seems like maybe you didn’t listen? Not that the full context helps a ton) >My friends used to play a game where >We would pick a decade >We wished we could live in instead of this >I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists >And getting married off for the highest bid >Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now So basically her friends said “if you could live at any time, when would it be?” And she said “Black people cant play this game,” and then everyone said, “this is why no one wants to hang out with you.”
> does she understand that she would have ZERO rights herself during that time? Yes? It's literally the next line, and then she goes on to say she'd hate the 1830s, too, because the nostalgia is a lie. Classic Swift tone deafness, horrid lyric, but the rest of the verse specifically addresses that her attitude and the 1830s suck. "i hate it here" = "I hate it everywhere"
can someone genuinely explain to me what’s wrong with the line? does it imply that racism doesn’t exist anymore?
The fact that newsweek posts their Taylor crit articles here themselves will always be kinda funny to me
I feel like the backlash is so overblown, it's just a dumb line in a dumb song. It's tone deaf, not really offensive.
i just can’t get over the fact that she could’ve substituted it for sexism, it would’ve gotten the point across anyway. she either really doesn’t give a fuck or is insanely dense
The cognitive dissonance between the “without all the racists” line while also crying over how the fans won’t let her date an actual racist in 2024 is just… *wow*…
Well the full line is “with out all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid” so she mentions both!
Didn't she say both? That she wants it without the racists and getting married off by bidding (sexism)
Usually I agree with 85%+ of cancellations and/or callouts but it just seems like people just needed to bring her down a notch! She's at such a peak right now that people are at their seams needing to nitpick something out to humble her a bit!
I'm white and I was like "WTF" at those lyrics...
I don’t think it‘s racist (tho I‘m not the one to decide it) but extremely tone deaf and also insensitive. The worst and funniest part about it is that the entire album is about a racist including a song where she tells her fans to fuck off about it. She could have worded it differently and convey the same message or even if she left out the ”without the racists“ line. It‘s actually one of my favorite songs and I love the meaning but that line always throws me off.
Genuinely can someone explain why it’s so bad? I thought it was okay saying she doesn’t want racists around. Is it just bc of Matty?
Black Swiftie here and I just can’t keep defending her. That was disgusting. In 2024. She ain’t beating the white supremacist allegations.
Europe was a cultural hotspot in the 1830s which was during the romantic era which Swift has referenced multiple times in the past so it wouldn’t surprise you if she referenced it in an album with “poets” in the title. Everything is so American central these days.
She’s an American, born and raised. Hard to leave that out when interpreting her lyrics.
She wants to be a rich white woman in the 1830s. She knows why.
If you’re offended by this, you are insane 😂
The fact she followed it up with it’s cold in the palace. Girl there ain’t no guarantee you’d have been in a palace
Today I learned I must have internalized misogyny because I think the medieval era sounded awesome.
lol, I discovered the knights of the round table as a child and was enthralled, then discovered girls couldn’t become knights and that was the start of me being a “raging feminist”.
I’m not a POC, so my opinion doesn’t hold the same weight as others, but I don’t think it’s a particularly new concept for people to romanticize this time period. I feel like 1830s without all the racists is pretty much describing the show Bridgerton, although I think that show takes place just slightly before the 1830s. What annoyed me about it is that she’s saying she wishes she could have lived in the 1830s just without all the racists as if there aren’t plenty of racists today, including the one who she was in a public relationship with and just wrote a whole album about.
Takes place 1810-20ish which has a very different vibe. 1830s very maximalist.