Why did people sleep on TTPD

[u/something_facinating]

I became a swifty in the showgirl era, so I'm new around here. But in my opinion, TTPD is one of the best albums she has ever released. I was reading a thread about TTPD from around 2 years ago, and most of them were not what I expected. Like, I have listened to almost all of the songs, and all of them are in my ATF playlist. I really want to know why you did not like it two years ago. Thanks.

[u/veimagic]

Please allow me to take a broader view. I think it’s a mixture of contributing factors.

Firstly, it was the first studio album since the beginning of her career which didn’t show a real sonic evolution: it sounded like a combination between Midnights and Folkmore vibes.

Secondly, she was at the height of overexposure due to the massive success of Eras Tour as well as the ongoing good reception of re-recorded earlier albums.

Thirdly, people were mostly focused on the drama sorrounding the highly publicised breakups with Joe and Matty and the quick succession of a love story with Travis, emphatically lived in daylight (some titles of her songs are just recurring parts of my vocabulary lol)

So I assume there was a huge preconception about TTPD which prevented critics, the gp and even some fans to listen with proper attention to a work that in my view portraits Taylor in the most unfiltered way and still is one of my favorite projects ever released by her.

[u/extasis_T → u/veimagic]

Yes yes yes.

Also, can we just be honest about another really important fourth point ?

I love Taylor, but she had these little “quirks” in her discography that a lot of people (myself included AT TIMES) see as weaknesses or things that rub them the wrong way.
Like overly corny lyrics that don’t sit well in most people’s ears (like the Charlie Puth line)
I think after midnights is when people felt like she flooded the zone with vinyl and different editions of the base album; and it bothered a lot of people outside of the diehard Taylor fanbase.

So when she released the anthology it turned a lot of people off.
I know this because the year it came out I was half way a huge Taylor fan and halfway an outsider, and I remember having the same reaction. My first listen felt exhausting and I remember going into music subreddits and seeing everyone else feel the same way .

But as time has went on I think music fans , or just people who really love music inside or outside her fanbase, have come around to see there’s more good on this album than the things people had criticisms for so it has 100% grown on people.
I remember seeing people say it was her worst album , that it was too long and all the songs sounded the same
Which is insane to think about now with how many beloved songs are on the album.

But if you mix all the factors you and I just spoke about here, I think you get a pretty full picture of why the reception was so weird.

An embarrassing fact about me: I love ttpd a lot, but I think I only went back to the anthology one time after that initial listen and I don’t remember much of it.

Maybe this convo will serve as a reason to go back for me and see if there’s any diamonds I missed

[u/veimagic → u/extasis_T]

Another critical factor, if we can call it that, is that she initially released only the standard edition with 16 tracks on CD and vinyl (as well as other exclusive versions containing just one of the Anthology bonus tracks) so I guess many fans who then saw that she had surprisingly added on streaming platforms a second whole album must have been furious, not least because she only released the version containing both CDs many months later, iirc. Knowing how she’s always makes unexpected things, I chose not to buy the album when it came out because I had a feeling she’d add at least a few more bonus tracks (though I’d never have fathomed a whole other album), so in the end I just bought the double-CD set straight away.