Taylor Swift's new album is unfailingly vanilla

Inthe lead-up to Taylor Swift's 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, bakery chain Baked by Melissa released a special limited-edition set of cupcakes inspired by the world’s biggest pop star. Itwas one of many brand tie-ins and corporate activations that have accompanied the album’s release, evidence—if any was needed—that Swift is a commercial juggernaut. The cupcakes, with packaging full of Swift-lore Easter eggs, come in two variants—vanilla, with either a “teal” or “orange” icing.

- BHANUJ KAPPAL

I mention this little tidbit because it strikes me asa hilariously on-the-nose metaphor for Swift's music. The toppings might vary—electro-pop sheen on Midnights, indie-folk on Folklore, the hip hop imbued Reputation. Butat its core, the product remains the same: basic, risk-averse and unfailingly vanilla. Over the years, America’s Sweetheart has transformed into the girl-boss next door, but all these different erasand incarnations cannot hide the essential fact of Swift's corniness.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pop music has always held space for music that’s pure cheese—think Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You, or Celine Deon’s My Heart Will Go On. Swift's best music comes from the same place of openhearted, deeply uncool sincerity, whether she’s writing about teenage love and heartbreak, orabout being a wide-eyed small-town girl dealing with the trappings of fame. She hasan uncanny knack for taking personal experience and turning it into something universally relatable—an unlucky romantic whose music speaks directly to multiple generations of the everywoman.

Butin recent years, this approach has had diminishing creative returns, even if it's more commercially successful than ever. 2022's Midnights was strictly so-so, even if pop critics largely responded with adulatory reviews. Last year's The Tortured Poets Department wasa sprawling, overindulgent mess, more Rupi Kaur than Sylvia Plath, But that record still had some interesting twists and turns, and a sense of tender vulnerability that elevated its overwrought lyricism.