Despite what you may have heard, Taylor Swift is not “art police.” She’s just a regular billionaire who released eight versions of a single album that no one seems to like that much. That album, The Life Of A Showgirl, isn’t receiving the rapturous reception her music typically garners. Coupled with the experience of paying money to watch lyric videos in a movie theater, the album has broken whatever spell she had over fans and critics, as the singer is receiving some of the harshest reviews of her career.
But Swift isn’t letting it get to her. Appearing on Apple Music’s The Zane Lowe Interview, an interview show where Lowe laps celebrities with praise as artists get as real as their media training allows, Swift offered a rebuke to those criticizing the album: Thanks for the free promo, dude. “The rule of show business is if it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping,” Swift said. It doesn’t matter if you’re mocking Swift’s phallic imagery or trying to figure out how to “girl-boss too close to the sun,” Swift “welcome[s] the chaos.” As someone with “a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art,” Swift maintains that she isn’t the “art police” and that “everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want” about the record.
Still, she hopes that people will come to like the album eventually. In the past, it has taken her fans some time to get on board with whatever new era Swift finds herself in. She loves that growth and hopes it will one day apply to this one as well. “What I often love seeing my fans say is, ‘I used to be someone who didn’t relate to Reputation. And now that I’ve been through some other things in my life, that’s my favorite album.’ Or, ‘I used to be a Fearless girlie, now I’m obsessed with Evermore.’ We’re doing this thing for keeps,” Swift said. “I have such an eye on legacy when I’m making my music. I know what I made. I know I adore it, and I know that on the theme of what the Showgirl is, all of this is part of it.” Once more of her fans meet the Super Bowl-winning superstar of their dreams, they’ll get Life Of A Showgirl.
