Taylor Swift is one of the most popular artists of our generation, and yet everyone I’ve talked to about her new album doesn’t like it and is incredibly disappointed. The expectations for the album were that it was going to be a style callback to Taylor’s sixth album, Reputation, as she was reunited with those editors and had moving, show-stopping lyrics about her experience on the Eras Tour and falling in love with Travis Kelce. But instead, the songs lacked the poetic prose we heard before on TTPD, her previous album. The Life of a Showgirl fell short; fans were crushed because this album was supposed to be the best one yet, but that’s the entire point.
The album cover and first track on the album are both direct nods to the character, Ophelia, from Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet. In Hamlet, Ophelia and Hamlet are lovers doomed by the narrative; Ophelia constantly exhausts herself trying to make the men in her life happy, and eventually goes mad and drowns herself in a river when Hamlet accidentally kills her father and breaks up with her. And drowning is exactly what Taylor is doing in her album cover. Taylor looks just like the classic painting of Ophelia’s death, Ophelia, painted by Sir John Everett Millais.
But why is Taylor comparing herself to Ophelia of all characters? She has a tragic ending. Well, Taylor has rewritten that story in her first song on the album, The Fate of Ophelia. Instead of killing herself, Taylor’s Ophelia doesn’t actually drown (I might’ve drown in the melancholy) and prioritizes herself rather than the men in her life (I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I), and has a happy ending with her lover because that relationship doesn’t end (You saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia). This Ophelia sounds a lot like Taylor herself.
But the song doesn’t make Ophelia understood by anyone other than her lover (It’s locked inside my memory / Only you possess the key). And if Taylor is Ophelia, that means that no one understands her either. And with the reactions to her new album? That is exactly what is happening; we played right into her hands.
It is evident that this album is not as good as her others, but that is the entire point. It isn’t about anyone else but her and her feelings, as multiple songs are just her dissing people in her life and show business which is complex already. No one is meant to understand it, and it isn’t for the fans. A lot of people assumed that Taylor would do what they wanted and pull out the showstopper for her 12th album. But she didn’t do that at all and is now being misunderstood by millions of people who aren’t getting that the entire point of the album is to be misunderstood because she is Ophelia.
