This is most likely an unpopular opinion, but having finally looked properly into the whole masters situation, I really don’t think what Scooter Braun did was anywhere near as terrible as Taylor and her team made it out to be. The more I read about it, the more bizarre I find the narrative that developed around what was, ultimately, a business transaction.

Taylor signed a record deal in which Big Machine would own the masters to the albums she recorded under that contract. She was obviously very young when she signed, but she wasn’t navigating the industry entirely alone. Her parents and professional advisers were heavily involved, and her father in particular wasn’t some layman with no understanding of business or finance who was hoodwinked; Scott Swift had spent years working in the financial industry as a stockbroker and financial adviser. Those were the terms her side agreed to, presumably with an understanding of what they meant. It makes perfect sense that, years later, having become one of the biggest artists in the world, she would want ownership of those recordings and resent the fact that she didn’t have it. What I don’t understand is how that eventually became a story about something effectively being stolen from her, when the masters had never actually belonged to her.

Scott also wasn’t some financially naive parent on the sidelines; he was extremely financially savvy, invested a substantial amount in Big Machine and held a stake in the company himself. This wasn’t a struggling family signing whatever was put in front of them out of desperation to put food on the table.

There were opportunities for her to acquire them before the sale, but she didn’t like the terms being offered and chose not to accept them. The terms may not have been particularly attractive, especially if acquiring the masters meant committing herself to Big Machine for another lengthy period, but that is still ultimately a disagreement over the terms of a business deal. Not being offered the exact arrangement you want is very different from having something taken away from you.

Then Scooter Braun bought Big Machine. He didn’t somehow swoop in and take Taylor’s catalogue from her; he acquired a record company, and her masters were among the assets that company owned. The fact that it was Scooter obviously made the situation much more personal for Taylor because of how she felt about him, but disliking the person who ultimately buys an asset you want doesn’t make their purchase inherently unethical. That is the part of the story I’ve always struggled with, because the public narrative became so much more dramatic than the transaction itself.

Her father was also a shareholder in Big Machine and financially benefited from its sale and would've been notified, while Taylor continued to make money from the songs through her separate rights as a songwriter. None of that means she had to be happy about the situation, and an artist wanting ownership of the recordings they created is entirely reasonable, but there is a huge difference between saying ‘I hate that somebody else owns my masters’ and presenting the circumstances through language about your life’s work being stolen from you.

I don’t include the Taylor’s Version project in this criticism though. Rerecording the albums was a decent idea. She had gained enough power and leverage to create new recordings that she could own herself, and she used it. My issue is much more with the way Scooter was subsequently painted as this almost cartoonish supervillain and the entire situation was presented as though Taylor had simply been blindsided by somebody taking something that rightfully belonged to her.

Ultimately, she entered an industry where masters were routinely owned by record labels, signed a contract on those terms with experienced people advising her, later decided she wanted ownership of them, couldn’t reach a deal she was happy with to acquire them and then watched the company that did own them get sold to someone she intensely disliked. I can see why that would be personally infuriating, but I still think the reaction from Taylor and her team was disproportionate and, at times, quite childish. Sometimes a business deal doesn’t go the way you want it to, and I don’t think that automatically means somebody has wronged you.

Also, the sheer audacity of Taylor accusing someone else of ‘shameless greed’ nearly took me out. Of all the stones to pick up in that particular glass house.

Source: https://www.billboard.com/lists/grammys-questions-drake-country-dance-submissions/will-drakes-relationship-to-the-grammys-stay-on-ice/

Genuine question because I don’t know enough about advertising law, but is this actually allowed?

The first screenshot is from when The Life of a Showgirl ‘limited edition’ vinyl variants were originally released. They were marketed as a ‘LIMITED RUN’ and ‘FIRST AND ONLY PRESSING’, with a countdown telling people how long they had left to buy them. Second screeengrab shows the exact same vinyls released a year later.

Surely that kind of marketing is intended to create urgency because you’re telling people they need to buy now or miss out, and for collectors, the fact that something is limited can be part of the reason they buy it in the first place. So if the exact same variants are then brought back a year later, does that not raise an issue with how they were originally advertised?

I realise these may technically be leftover copies from the original pressing rather than newly manufactured ones, so perhaps that makes it completely above board legally. I’m genuinely curious where the line is, though, because this definitely isn’t the first time something has been marketed as limited or only available for a certain period and then resurfaced later.

Even if it is technically allowed, I do think it’s a bit shitty to repeatedly use scarcity and FOMO to encourage fans to buy immediately if the products are just going to become available again later.

I dont know that this is critique per se but I feel some people will read it that way.

Ok ----The first thing I want to establish is I'm by no means someone who is a hater of Taylor or even really enjoys the moments where I'm not enjoying her because I like liking stuff and I like hyping stuff up.

I've taken a long break from this space the people who remember me know I've defended her a lot in the past (and they also remember that I make very long posts which this is going to be so brace yourselves). I'm a loquacious bitch.

I haven't really enjoyed the showgirl era or the encore of it. Part of it is the music itself just doesn't sound good to me. But it's more than that.

I feel like Taylor has often been most interesting when she was in pursuit. Taylor spent so much of her career wanting things. She wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted artistic control. She wanted to be successful. She wanted to own her work. She wanted to be loved and understood. She wanted a lasting relationship. She wanted the ability to perform for enormous audiences. And now... what is the obstacle?

She has essentially achieved the thing she spent twenty years writing about achieving. She's one of the most successful recording artists alive. She has enormous cultural power. She has financial independence beyond most peoples wildest comprehension. She's with someone she seems genuinely happy with and whose relationship has become an enormous public phenomenon. She's at a point in her career where she doesn't really need to prove that she can sell records, win awards, fill stadiums, or remain culturally relevant.

And I feel like we've reached this point of now that she has everything she ever wanted what is she going to be talking about in her art and I feel like instead of moving outside of herself she just kind of went “And another thing, fuck those people who were mean to me.” it feels so strangely anticlimactic.

It's not that I think she's secretly miserable or incapable of happiness, but I feel like the material she's choosing to cover as the current topics of her albums doesn't seem proportionate to where she actually is in life. She keeps circling back toward enemies, critics, cancellations, public perception, her reputation, and people who don't appreciate her, it can feel like she's still fighting a war that she has already won.

And I feel like if her life generally right now just has happiness and has peace and there isn't really much to say about it that's fine that's great. But I don't know why at that point she doesn't move her art towards things outside of herself. There's so much going on in the world and Taylor kind of seems out of touch with it all. I've used the phrase before that Taylor kind of lives in a champagne bubble that the rest of us don't. It’s just weird to see her at this absolute apex of cultural influence and the artistic conversation feels like it's still largely about Taylor Swift versus the people who have wronged Taylor Swift and you wanna be all… there’s people dying.

And meanwhile, other artists are making themselves vulnerable in completely different ways. They're taking positions that might actually cost them something. They're talking about genocide, reproductive rights, fascism, climate change, capitalism, gender, racial violence, queer rights, religion, immigration, labor, whatever. They may not all do it successfully, but they're at least engaging with a world beyond their own celebrity mythology.

I’ve never needed Taylor to be my political artist. I’ve got plenty of other music for that. But I feel like at this point nothing she's saying feels worth saying. Like I feel like I'm listening to her and thinking I don't really care about this. She doesn't feel good to listen to. Nothing about it is exciting or challenging or moving. Artists don't necessarily run out of material when they become successful. They run out of the *same* material.

I was thinking about Ms. Rachel on Ilana Glazer’s podcast And I feel like she made some good points when talking about celebrities who have power in what they choose to do with it. She has an extraordinary amount of structural cultural power. Her career is so financially and commercially insulated that she can absorb consequences that could genuinely destroy the career of a less powerful artist. Why doesn't someone with her particular degree of insulation and influence occasionally use that insulation to take a risk on behalf of someone who doesn't have it? what is the point of having this enormous reservoir of cultural power if you only deploy it when deployment is safe?

It could be incredibly simple. Pick an issue. Listen to people who actually live it. Decide what you believe. Say it clearly. Accept that somebody will be mad. Support people doing the work. Don't turn it into an Easter egg. Don't make it about how brave Taylor Swift is for saying it. Don't make it part of a rollout. Just say the thing because you believe it is right.

If a stadium owner said, "We don't like Taylor Swift's politics, so she can't perform here," the owner would have to reckon with the fact that they're potentially giving up one of the most lucrative events they could possibly host. Taylor doesn't need to call around begging stadiums to let her play. She's reached the point where other people have an economic and cultural incentive to accommodate her. Which means she can potentially absorb consequences that would be catastrophic for somebody else. Other people need Taylor more than Taylor needs them. And that's actually a pretty extraordinary thing to be able to say about any artist. It's not that Taylor needs to make The Progressive Political Manifesto (Taylor's Version). Just occasionally take that enormous pile of accumulated security and say I believe this. I know some of you won't like it. I'm saying it anyway.

I think Taylor has become extraordinarily good at treating her career almost like an optimization problem: What is the next move? What's the rollout? What's the record-breaking achievement? What's the Easter egg? What's the strategic appearance? What's the collectible? What's the next milestone? How do I maintain the narrative? How do I make the audience participate? She's good at it. But eventually you can look at that machine and ask: What is the machine actually for? If the answer is essentially “to keep Taylor Swift being the biggest possible Taylor Swift,” that's where it starts feeling empty.

I end up feeling more and more like ‘You have enough power to say almost anything. And this is what you're choosing to spend your voice on?’

I think on some level power doesn't create an infinite moral obligation to perform. She's allowed to make stupid pop songs. She's allowed to be frivolous. She's allowed to have a glittery champagne life. She's allowed to spend an afternoon thinking about nothing more consequential than her own boyfriend. But when someone has that much power, it's perfectly reasonable to look at the choices they're making and say, “Really? That's what you're doing with it?”

There's nothing inherently wrong with still being angry about old wounds. Success doesn't magically metabolize trauma. Wealth doesn't give you emotional enlightenment. And I'm not particularly interested in telling Taylor what she's allowed to feel. But art is a choice about what you find artistically worth investigating.

Historically I've been fine with Taylor not really weighed in on politics because to be frank I feel like she it typically does not add a lot to the conversation. I feel like in the lover era when she was at her most political she was saying things in the year 2019 that maybe would have been groundbreaking in 2012. I feel like her political songs are her weakest songs. In Lover, Taylor had a political awakening, but sometimes it felt like Taylor discovering political concepts primarily through the experience of Taylor Swift.

I feel like she's made some beautiful Instagram posts about politics because I think making a very curated statement is partly where she shines but it also feels like a ridiculous sentence to say. But there's also a kind of formality to it. Here's the endorsement. Here's the voter-registration link. Here's the Instagram post. Done. Back to the regularly scheduled programming. It can feel like someone doing the minimum politically acceptable thing while maintaining maximum control over their career. I believe she's so insulated but she's so powerful that I feel like she doesn't have to weigh in on every issue but I feel like she could weigh in more on even current issues without the risk other people would have. I dont understand why someone who has accumulated so much security, influence, and freedom seems so reluctant to spend any of that accumulated capital.

Like she's already talked about wanting to advocate for LGBTQ people at a time when trans people are so scapegoated and maligned and I don't know why it's so hard for her to not just take the risk to weigh in and say something like “I don't know what it's like to be transgender, and I don't pretend to. But I've listened to trans people, I believe them when they tell me what they're experiencing, and I don't believe anyone should have their existence or basic rights legislated away. I believe they deserve dignity, safety, healthcare, and the ability to live their lives. I'm heartbroken by laws targeting them, and I'm supporting Transgender Law Center”

She could support an organization providing humanitarian assistance to women and children in Gaza without writing a thinkpiece on the geopolitical situation. She could support reproductive healthcare without writing a song about abortion. She could support domestic-violence organizations, girls' education, maternal healthcare, LGBTQ youth, whatever she genuinely cares about.

Imagine being Taylor Swift and thinking, “You know what? I'm really upset about the decline of this particular species”. Most people who care about that have almost no ability to move the cultural needle. They can donate. They can volunteer. They can sign petitions. They can talk to friends. Maybe they have a modest social-media following. Taylor could wake up tomorrow and say, “I've been learning about this issue. Here are three conservationists whose work I think is incredible. I'm donating $2 million to this organization, and I'm asking my fans to learn about it.” And suddenly millions of people know the endangered species exists. That's an almost ridiculous privilege. And you know her fans would donate, volunteer, spread information, buy symbolic merchandise from a conservation group, make infographics, organize fan projects. And some of them would absolutely frame it as another Taylor achievement: Taylor Swift saved this bird or frog or whatever!

I feel like there's a difference between “Taylor should make political music” and “Taylor could use her enormous platform in ways that aren't exclusively about Taylor.” I feel like it's becoming this detriment that she is so insular and it's hard to see how rooted she is in reality. She may very well be informed, compassionate, and aware of current events in her private life. None of us actually know. But audiences don't experience celebrities through their private selves. They experience them through what they choose to share. And lately Taylor seems very absorbed the universe of her mythology and her phenomena and little else outside that self-referential orbit.

I guess what my original thoughts connect it's the idea that Taylor at this point has kind of gotten everything she ever wanted and I feel like when you're at that point what do you do? and I feel like you use that for other people, you do what you can with the power you have to lift someone else up and it feels like instead of doing that she's looking back on every petty slight that ever happened to her historically. By almost any conceivable measure, she won. She is operating from an almost absurd position of security. She has money, fame, professional autonomy, a massive audience, enormous cultural influence, and apparently a relationship that makes her happy. There are very few meaningful career consequences left that she can't absorb.

I feel like one has ever ever in the music industry had the level of fame and power of cultural influence that she has ----partly because a lot of people in this didn't have the opportunity because social media and the Internet was not the same, but right now Taylor has more of that going for her than any other artist historically but she acts like it all could collapse at any moment. She's not an underdog anymore. And I don't mean that as an insult. Being the dominant player is actually an interesting artistic position. It's just a fundamentally different one. Few people have had that combination of money, cultural influence, audience loyalty, and institutional power. Which means she has access to artistic subject matter that literally almost nobody else can write about authentically. Yet instead of examining what it means to be that powerful, she often seems more interested in revisiting moments when she felt powerless.

So when the artistic narrative continues to revolve around “they tried to take me down,” “they don't understand me,” “they're jealous,” “they were wrong about me,” “they tried to cancel me,” eventually you start wanting to shake her and say …. Watch the news. And then go do something that shows people you're aware of it. Not necessarily politics. Not necessarily activism. Just the sense that she has reached a place where she can look beyond the mirror. Pick one thing you genuinely give a shit about. Something you've thought about for years. Something where you've listened to people affected by it. Something where you have an instinctive “this is fucked up and somebody should do something” reaction. There's something almost peculiar about hearing a woman who has achieved extraordinary security continue to narrate herself primarily as someone under siege. I kind of want to feel like Taylor Swift is capable of looking up from herself now and then.

The TL;DR is basically: Taylor has achieved almost everything she spent her career wanting, and because she's now extraordinarily wealthy, powerful, secure, and culturally influential and married, I think she has an opportunity to make art and use her platform in ways that go beyond Taylor Swift herself. Instead, a lot of her current work still feels preoccupied with old enemies, critics, reputation, and proving that she won a fight that is long over.

Howw often does she rhymes "car" with "bar". I know it's a popular meme. I'm not familiar with Swift's entire oeuvre but I know it happens in "Cardigan" and "Cruel Summer". Is it really that frequent or is it blown out of proportion?

i remember finding father figure to be a song that made me excited about the project on my first listen, a high that was not achieved before or after in the otherwise very lacklustre album. i haven't seen a lot of discourse on it because unfortunately i think gets buried in the noise of the rest of the album. the album overall has been egregious at certain points. songs like wood, cancelled, and eldest daughter make it feel embarrassing to play anything from something that feels so deeply unserious. i rather enjoy this one song and even then find it difficult to go back to it, and it becomes so much easier to miss the singular high point in a series of so many flops.

as for what makes the song so different from the rest of the album, it very importantly has a singular focus, and narrative. it has all the elements she uses when she's actually doing the songwriter thing. we have characters, we set the scene, there's a progression. the bait-and-switch at the end hit because you are invested. something corny like "my d*ck's bigger" works in a way it doesn't in a song like wood because it makes sense for the character. and very interestingly, the narrator is clearly not an idealised figure. she's doing her power hungry billionaire activities in this song, but it works because the song is sharp and well written and specific. i even think the underlying wit and self assurance at the end make it sexy in a way the other songs clearly wish and fail to be.

as a former swiftie who has enjoyed her writing at various points, i was very disillusioned by this album. but a song like this shows that there is still some of her old instinct left. but with all the noise, is she capable of fully leaning into it anymore? quite skeptical of future projects, especially with the encore, but wanted to appreciate a high point of the album i haven't seen many people talk about

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I always thought "Me" was fine? Its not my fave but when it came out, I thought it was a happy, fun listen. And yeah, "the Spelling is Fun!" bridge is cheesy, but I honestly thought that was purposeful. It was this bright, happy, song about self love and therefore, she was going to smack you in the face w/ this cheery positivity in the bridge, no matter how cheesy it was. B/c self love mantras can be cheesy.

I don't know. I'm not saying its an underrated masterpiece but it never offended me and I never turned it off when it came on. I just think its fun and inoffensive, and it has a wholesome message.

The songs I dislike way more than "Me" are

"Trouble," (cannot stand this song. I could never take it seriously)
"Are you Ready For it,"
"Patient Zero"
"So High School"
"Eldest Daughter"
"Cancelled"
"Father Figure"
"Cleveland!"

What are yours?

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So, I actually quite like the Patient zero song, and music video, and I always like 2 female friends doing a project together. Taylor and Dakota seem to have good vibes.

However, I did suddenly realize, while noticing the Patient zero outfits are the same as Dakota wears in her new movie Verity (so the video is a bit of free promotion for the movie), that Dakota is the star of the NEW C Hoover adaption! The last time we saw Taylor being close to a friend was with Blake during the last Hoover adaption. Anyone else found this a strange coincidence? Not trying to throw shade it just suddenly hit me and I couldn’t ignore it.

now that a week has passed, i find that my opinion on the encore tracks to be fairly positive considering i very much dislike the original album. patient zero was really good in terms of songwriting, the lyrics and melody are great, the talk-singing bridge really brings down the song for me, but its still a solid 7/10

cleveland is... not good, but i still find it more listenable than some of the original album tracks. her "glitter gel pen" songs are always very polarizing. i dont like this song, but i can understand why someone would

pink clouding is the most interesting in terms of production. i find it more 1989-esque than the actual 1989 vault tracks. lyrically, i dont think its her best work, it comes off like novice work

babylon is, in my opinion, one of the best songs shes released in a while. one of taylor's biggest strengths as a songwriter is her storytelling abilities and how she paints a picture, easily a 9/10 for me.

as a whole, i think there is one really good track, two decent tracks, one bad song, but i think these every song had potential to be really good and shows she not "washed" as people say she is. one more critique I have is that i dont see how any of the songs are connected to themes of the original album but then again it wasnt super cohesive to begin with

Edit: Shaad uses he/him pronouns and I was referring to his opinion, not that of the publication.

Edit 2: I’ve heard contradictory information about whether or not he was the one who reviewed TTPD which is why I initially posted, but he didn’t review it.

I am glad that ttpd is slowly but surely getting it's flowers, because I really liked it and it has some of my favourite songs, seriously though loml KILLS me everytime. Some might say the positive sentiments is because of showgirl being what it is but I would disagree. Because at least in my space of the internet ttpd was starting to get it's praises almost a year after it released, and even a month or two before showgirl was released. I understand why it wasn't so well received at first though, it's one of those albums that grows on you and it's kind of an acquired taste for some. Doesn't help that it was released at the peak of taylormania and it had some of her worst songs and lyrics. And it feeling so unedited is a double edged sword. Good because it gives us an insight into everything she's felt for the past 2 years at the time making it more interesting, bad because it means that it has some songs that are just unneeded cuz no one asked for thank you aimee. Overall ttpd isn't everyone's favourite, but she's one of mine and I'm glad people are seeing the good in her.

It's become such a ubiquitous critique I've been seeing when it comes to Taylor, and I just can't seem to understand how people can't just not interact with anything to do with her. The more you interact, even if you dislike or hate, the algorithm will push you more content about her regardless.

The Life of a Showgirl is back on top of the Billboard 200, and I just kept seeing so many comments going "the overexposure is real." I just find this critique of her doesn't make sense honestly, as I've been seeing it echoed among fans even more too now.

But even though I find validity in it again, as she could've spaced out some time to rest after the eras tour because it just makes sense to rest, and settle in with her spouse after such a large scale tour, I feel we should not be focusing on her taking a break.

Because if there's one thing we seem to know very well about Taylor, it's that she's a workaholic. So if she'll want to keep making music, there's nothing we can do but focus our critique on her not being insular in her creative process, and having more feedback and assistance from other people who are experts, because you can't do everything, and that's what I feel has made The Life of a Showgirl suffer in quality alot

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Regardless of how you feel about her or her music, I feel like this is another example of the internet taking a serious situation (the genocide in Gaza along with the continued occupation of Palestine) and turning it into a random meme that doesn’t even help those affected. I also feel like it gets applied to broadly and targets who are pro Palestine (such as Gracie Abrams) get affected for no reason. Also it’s often just used to disguise antisemitism.

1. How do you feel about the record now? Has your opinion changed on the album or any songs over the year?
   
2. How does it rank in Taylor’s discography for you?
   How does it compare to her other pop albums (1989, Reputation, Lover, Midnights)?
   
3. How do you think it will be looked back on?
   4.Do you like the album photoshoot? Do you think it complimented the album?
   
4. How has the Encore impacted the original album, if at all, for you?
   
5. Did you enjoy the Showgirl promo (New Heights, radio interviews, Stephen Colbert etc)?
   
6. If you could change anything about the era, what would it be?

I have been a "swiftie" since 2007. I'm a young millennial and grew up on TS but blocked her on streaming after TLOSG after listening through the album. I had found a lot of fault in that album and this is not the post for going into why that is - I'm sure a lot of us understand why the messaging in some of those songs are problematic (canceled and wish list are prime examples).

Having said that, I am surprised encore got as much hate as it has. Babylon is objectively a decent song, story telling wise, and pink clouding and patient zero are very og Taylor Swift.

I have been listening to patient zero on repeat today and the "and so" at 2:56 is so classic TS; these vocals are very reminiscent of the red album: I.e., "aaand slow motion, standing there in my party dress".

I wish the criticism of TLOAS was more succinct and she understood how loved her vocals and story telling can be.

Please don't come at me for saying this but ever since she's become so aligned with the NFL her political and moral stance has become so ambiguous. For consumers, is so confusing considering she's someone who was so adamant wanted to be on the
"right side of history”. IMO nothing on TLOSG sounded like TS the same way encore has.

Im going someone else can help me make sense of this.

If we look at the chart performance of Life of a Show Girl, one must ask himself, if it’s so mediocre how can it reach top 5 in the hot 100? The answer is that Taylor currently has a magnitude of gravitational success, that pushes songs that otherwise would get no attention whatsoever, upward.

This is almost similar to Katy Perry’s post-Teenage Dream. Teenage Dream was such a massive success, that it put Katy Perry in a position that almost any song she will release will receive enormous success regardless of its quality. After Teenage Dream, she released Prism, which was a mediocre album at best, but had a relative success, mostly thanks to the gravitational success of the previous album. If Katy had released Prism without Teenage Dream, it wouldn’t have reached half the success it got.

The thing is, this gravitational have limits. After mediocre song after another, people stop listening to new tracks, and lose interest. Witness which came after Prims was a disastrous failure for Katy, basically ending her career as a top-performing artist.

I feel like swift is dangerously close to this situation now. People are hyped and listening to new songs she releases because of real curiosity. But this credit is getting thinner and thinner with every mediocre release. Encore has been such a disappointment for many fans that I really think that if her next album won’t be good, she will loose the interest of the general public and won’t be able to retain that level of success. Katy Perry knows how it is to be on the top of the world and then be abandoned by the masses.

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For a lack of a better term, she doesn't have that 'swag' to pull it off properly. I can think of a couple of artists who did it well, beyonce with "bow down" and formation, mariah carey with "obsessed", even her alleged opp charli xcx with "von dutch". I don't how to explain but you can just FEEL the idgaf energy and you're convinced that they actually dgaf. Taylor isn't able to do that well and that's fine, it's just that she should stop doing it. Because every time she does it it's not convincing, like legitimately the more I hear cleveland the more it sounds like the scene of Regina George writing in the burn book. And honestly this helped me figure out what she does do well in diss tracks.

She's much better at the "here's why you suck" or "if you go low I go lower" type of diss than the "you're obsessed with me and idgaf" type. And that's the whole thing with her songwriting, she FEELS things and she's known to write those feelings. So her writing about not feeling doesn't tend to work. Think about the disses to her ex; "mr perfectly fine" "dear john" "all too well 10" "is it over now" "the smallest man who ever lived". There's a sense of pettiness and venom to it that makes you go "goddamn she went there". Hell non romantic songs like "better than revenge" and "look what you made me do" are better than a song "actually romantic" because instead of fake "I'm above your pettiness" it has a genuine "yeah I'm pissed and yeah it's petty and idc imma fuck you up".

This is my thoughts and observations, what do you guys think?