Taylor Swift album cycles are starting to feel like Fall Out Boy lyrics circa 2005: Which came first, the music Taylor Swift record or the misery discourse? And I’m like, I just, I mean… this is exhausting, you know? 

This time around, Taylor did something very new (for her). In a move that honestly only really works for the highest rollers in entertainment, she surprise-unleashed a 16 track full length, titled folklore, on the unsuspecting internet at large. Response was massive, immediate, and polarizing. For a huge number of listeners, both in the private and critical spheres, this release has been lauded as one of her best yet. It credits indie heavyweights Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon on the track “exile,” and the record’s production has The National’s Aaron Dessner all over it. To the more casual Swift listener–or to be exact, the “I’ve heard her singles, and that’s it” listener–this venture into the world of “indie” is out of character and out of left field, and as a result… feathers have been ruffled. And as tends to be the case with these things, the resulting discourse has, yet again, overwhelmingly failed to validate its own complaints. As usual with Taylor, it does this by focusing on snippy critiques mired more in misogyny than in the actual issues at play here.