I’m listening to the Taylor Swift album. You could offer many reasons, but I kinda feel like I should know what the negative thoughts are.
I am absolutely not the target demo, but i don’t find it horrible. This past weekend, TheFP’s Things Worth Remembering wrote about the extended version of All Too Well. Again, not really my cup of tea, but I have some fuzzy memories of hearing it from the passenger seat of my wife’s car just around the time that things really went to shit for me in 2012/13.
No, it’s not really my speed, but I’ve been trying to listen to the lyrics sorta closely.
Maybe if I really was invested in some of her previous lyrical output, I’d be disappointed, but it was never really something I would have gone out of my way to hear. I wasn’t going to pay money for it before streaming services, so, aside from rides in my wife’s car, it’d have been something that completely escaped me.
Not terribly broken up about that. I know that I heard some lyrical chops with her early country work, but really hadn’t paid that much attention after she’d been Little Orphan Annie on SNL.
The past few years has been almost-nonstop attention with her boyfriend, now fiancée, on NFL games. Whatever. The Chefs really fit with what was going on in the NFL the past few years. Back to late-90s/early-00s West Coast Offense and Tampa-2 defense.
I can see how her cavorting around a creaking Arrowhead Stadium might bring a few more eyes, make people forget Coach Romeo.
But back to the reason for writing — the album.
Is it underwhelming? A bit, I guess.
*gets distracted by a callback from a lawyer I’d reached out to like three weeks ago*
Somewhat that doesn’t feel completely inappropriate. Maybe I’m projecting my own attitude lately onto it, but it almost feels like a retirement album. I’ve done what I needed to do, now I can go off and do domestic things.
Maybe that’s part of the backlash? She went and did incredibly big things, and now she’s interested in doing other things. (And I’ll refrain from elaborating on what those things are. Though Kennedy might have laid it out pretty well on her pod. You enjoy parts of his physique. Great. Nobody needs to know about it!)
Am I a little empathetic based on what’s been going on with me, personally? Could be. Did I think I’d be retired before 50? Nope. Am I really that broken up about it? Again, nope. I’m going to try to enjoy what’s on tap for the rest of my life.
I hope the future Mrs. Kelsey is happy. She shouldn’t feel guilty for going and doing that.