Contained in the Fan Madness Unleashed by The Lifetime of a Showgirl

Once I labored as a Digital Tradition Reporter at Enterprise Insider, we had an expression for the way we’d cowl the buzziest new tales: Flood the zone. Like a defective fireplace hydrant, or a vacuum cleaner whizzing up and down with the uncontrollable hysteria of a feral raccoon, our directive was to suck up as many clicks as doable by means of each angle conceivable. I recall this occurring throughout the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Titan submersible implosion in 2023, when social media was fully engulfed by updates each minute. Even when your beat wasn’t geopolitics or the financial construction behind deep-sea tourism, you had been presupposed to drop the whole lot and assist perpetuate the flood, or discover a option to work it into your protection, nonetheless contrived. I wrote a narrative about how folks had been making Zelenskyy fancams and dissected the best way TikTokers had been spreading misinfo concerning the struggle through the use of pretend violent audios.

Taylor Swift is the Titan submersible implosion of music journalism—or a collection of them, or one countless sustained ultrabuzz spectacle—driving a rapturous surge of media protection by churning out a lot materials. It’s an more and more uncommon sort of cultural domination—even on the peak of the Beatles or Michael Jackson, there was at all times a pantheon of different deities. Swift has a monopoly on monoculture, she’s the Elon Musk super-entrepreneur of music. It’s why Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, employed a devoted Taylor Swift reporter.

There have been lots of of constructive and punitive articles printed about her on-line since The Lifetime of a Showgirl was launched on Friday. Individuals alone has written dozens within the final week, from particular person items cataloging each track to a narrative written a couple of single remark Travis Kelce left on an Instagram put up made by Kameron Saunders, a backup dancer within the the video for Swift’s track “Destiny of Ophelia.” (“You killed it as at all times Kam!!” he wrote. That’s the story.) Different article ideas embrace ELLE Australia’s “213 Actually Chaotic Ideas I Had Whereas Listening to The Lifetime of a Showgirl for the First Time” and Parade Journal’s “Massive Phrases in Taylor Swift Songs and What They Imply.” Rolling Stone caught immense flak on launch day for touting their first ever “homepage takeover” and turning the positioning into an elaborate “immersive expertise” in honor of Swift’s transcendent magnificence. While you visited the positioning, it was mint inexperienced—the palette for Showgirl—and each seen article was one thing concerning the report (which they instantly scored a 5 out of 5) or the way it slotted into Swift’s ongoing and ever-accumulating legacy.

Throughout our catch-up name final week, my editor made an uncommon request: “So, uh, and that is the one time I’ll ask this,” he mentioned with a touch of agitation in his voice. “Is there a Taylor Swift Rabbit Holed angle?”