| |
Celeb News: Taylor is "punitive and controlling" - Sunday Times
Member Since: 10/31/2011
Posts: 16,937
|
Taylor is "punitive and controlling" - Sunday Times
I took the liberty of transcribing some of my favourite parts of today's 6-page article on the Lord in the Sunday Times.
Quote:
|
Taylor Swift: Nightmare Dressed Like A Daydream?
|
Quote:
|
For more than a year I was part of Taylor Swift’s world, and that period is best summed up for me by a contact on my iPhone that simply reads “Taylor Swift’s Friend”. To this day, I do not know their real name, but that’s how they chose to define themselves. Since the release of Swift’s most successful album to date (1989 — her fifth) in late 2014, the ultimate social currency among anyone in the entertainment industry is to be able to say that Swift, master of the pop universe, is your friend.
|
Quote:
|
Her wooing of me had begun during the spring of 2014, while I was deputy editor at the music magazine NME. I'd been to see her at one of her five sold-out London O2 dates, and her performance had an effect on me akin to a religious awakening.
|
Quote:
|
The first I knew about having made it onto "Tay's" radar was when I received a call at work, telling me that tweets of mine had been screen-grabbed by one of her assistants and sent to her to keep. It felt surreal. [...] I was sworn to secrecy, but understood exactly what I was being asked to do. Through me, Swift sought to receive NME's rock'n'roll stamp of approval. As I was to discover, Team Swift had a highly honed talent for playing the media to her advantage.
|
Quote:
|
It happened in Vegas. By the spring of 2015, everyone was poised for the 1989 world tour. [...] Considering this show was intended to cement Swift's reputation as the biggest pop star on the planet, I reckoned it wasn't as good as it should have been. Instead of giving the show a theme or story arc, Swift rolled out prerecorded video testimonials from her famous friends between the songs, telling the crowds how much she loved baking - and cats. The outfits werent particularly noteworthy, and there were sound issues.
|
Quote:
|
Hours after the review ran, I awoke to discover that my name had been removed from the guest list for an awards afterparty hosted by Swift and her buddy Brit Ed Sheeran. [...] At first I was shocked - reviewing her performance was my job, and I didn't enjoy feeling that I wasn't free to write what I liked. [...] it felt punitive and controlling. It felt like I was in a high-school playground drama.
|
Quote:
|
I wound up at the party I'd been disinvited from. [...] At the party, I was told that my review of her performance had indeed ruffled feathers in the Swift camp
|
Quote:
|
Things got more bizarre after I returned to LA. Friends and peers seemed genuinely concerned that my review meant trouble, even though they all agreed I hadn't been particularly negative.
|
Quote:
|
After Vegas, my invitations to Swift-related special events dried up. Instead, I watched from the sidelines as her empire expanded. First came the proliferation of the #squad. Where initially it had been made up of women who shared a progressive female agenda, the ranks were increasingly swelled by Victoria's Secret beauties, young actresses and models. [...] Where the #squad once stood for female solidarity it now looked like an exclusive, Mean Girls-style clique of perfect, stalk-limbed and shiny-haired clones.
|
Quote:
|
While Swift Inc was on a programme of world domination, back in LA the mood music around her was jarring. People in the business sought me out, off the record, of course, to unload their own stories of falling foul of the Swift machine. One pop star told me about losing a best friend to the #squad. One actor got so paranoid halfway through a rant that she simply stopped speaking.
|
Quote:
|
In the wider world, meanwhile, the mainstream press continued to fawn over Swift. Her media image went unquestioned. By offering unparalleled old-school access, Swift had the media in the palm of her hand. Covers for Rolling Stone, GQ and Vanity Fair went beyond the standard 20 minutes in a hotel room. At a time when the media need bankable stars more than ever, why would anyone risk spoiling that by saying anything less than glowingly positive? And the gushy pieces kept coming, fuelled by sales pitches wrapped up as personal invitations. That had been part of Team Swift's practice for years.
|
Quote:
Patrick Sandberg, editor of the American pop culture magazine , believes that Swift's tightly controlled presentation may yet be her undoing. "With Taylor, there's no fourth wall being broken - it's so immaculately presented that it's boring."
He may be right. In October, Adele re-emerged. "Hello, how are you?" she greeted, adding: "I've heard abut a squad. I wish my squad was all supermodels. We are, in our brains." It was a refreshing blast of reality. It seemed to resonate with the public, too: within 24 hours, Adele smashed Swift's previous record for most video streams a day.
So what's next for Swift? Tomorrow night's appearance at the Grammy awards might be her last public outing for a while. An insider told me that the past two years' entire campaign around 1989 has been geared towards a best album win there. It makes business sense. According to Forbes, the year Swift won her first Grammy, her average nightly gross jumped from $125,000 to £600,000, a 380% increase.
I won't be attending, but I bet my old pal is going. He sends me a text sometimes in the wee hours. "Where are you?" he says. I guess being Taylor Swift's Friend isn't all it's cracked up to be.
|
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...ard-2016_02_13
http://imgur.com/a/dMiQi
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/4/2008
Posts: 11,720
|
Manipulative Queen!  I love her.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/28/2012
Posts: 37,654
|
Quote:
|
While Swift Inc was on a programme of world domination, back in LA the mood music around her was jarring. People in the business sought me out, off the record, of course, to unload their own stories of falling foul of the Swift machine. One pop star told me about losing a best friend to the #squad. One actor got so paranoid halfway through a rant that she simply stopped speaking.
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 4,520
|
The Regina George of Pop tbh.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 25,228
|
Quote:
Patrick Sandberg, editor of the American pop culture magazine , believes that Swift's tightly controlled presentation may yet be her undoing. "With Taylor, there's no fourth wall being broken - it's so immaculately presented that it's boring."
He may be right. In October, Adele re-emerged. "Hello, how are you?" she greeted, adding: "I've heard abut a squad. I wish my squad was all supermodels. We are, in our brains." It was a refreshing blast of reality. It seemed to resonate with the public, too: within 24 hours, Adele smashed Swift's previous record for most video streams a day.
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/31/2013
Posts: 9,162
|
ok well this is kind of extra
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 10,232
|
So she wrote a critical article about her show and then wasn't invited to her party?
Evil.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/19/2012
Posts: 29,579
|
Well at least its her they're writing 6 page articles about
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/4/2014
Posts: 2,465
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 13,357
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/6/2014
Posts: 6,438
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/16/2011
Posts: 50,981
|
Oh at you can't even access the full article without paying. Gross.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/14/2011
Posts: 48,397
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 10,216
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Mike91
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 9,153
|
Taylor doesn't seem like the type to take on constructive criticism which is why she's been so hit and miss recently, and so inconsistent with 1989's visual aesthetic.
|
|
|
|
ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 10/18/2010
Posts: 5,152
|
Welp
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 14,781
|
I'm not surprised 'cause this is nothing new.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 21,846
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/13/2012
Posts: 29,559
|
Quote:
|
Friends and peers seemed genuinely concerned that my review meant trouble
|
Not them fearing for her life  The Lord's evil knows no bounds.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 12/15/2008
Posts: 38,248
|
Wooooooooooooooo, Lord. The tea is BOILING HOT here 
And...
Quote:
Patrick Sandberg, editor of the American pop culture magazine , believes that Swift's tightly controlled presentation may yet be her undoing. "With Taylor, there's no fourth wall being broken - it's so immaculately presented that it's boring."
He may be right. In October, Adele re-emerged. "Hello, how are you?" she greeted, adding: "I've heard abut a squad. I wish my squad was all supermodels. We are, in our brains." It was a refreshing blast of reality. It seemed to resonate with the public, too: within 24 hours, Adele smashed Swift's previous record for most video streams a day
|
This sums it all, tbh. I don't need to add more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
