EDITED BY →
ALEX SUSKIND @ALEXJSUSKIND
Music
Tay lor -A
A new sound.
A philanthropic
call to action. A
scathing blog post.
The preamble to
Swift’s LOVER
expertly blurred
the personal and
the promotional.
BY MAURA JOHNSTON
WHEN YOU’RE A MEGASELLING
artist like Taylor Swift, every move
you make is up for scrutiny. As one
of the first pop stars to have fully
grown up in the era of social media’s
endless feedback loop with the
celebrity-industrial complex, Swift
has always been aware of that fact.
For the bulk of her career, her
albums—in sound and in packag-
ing—have squared the circle
between big gestures and personal
statements. Take her Instagram
posts right after she finished her
new album, Lover: Their tonal shift
from casual behind-the-scenes
photos of Cats and her cats to
pastel-hued shots of palm trees and
fence posts signified that some-
thing was coming. What that
“something ” was wound up being
fodder both for Swift’s fans, who
put on their detective hats to
deduce clues from each photo’s
array of subjects, and for media
outlets in search of news items on
one of music’s biggest names.
The Tumblr post where Swift
revealed her feelings on manager
Scooter Braun’s purchase of her
94 SEPTEMBER 2019 EW ● COM
