Taylor Swift’s newest album, 1989, just became the fastest selling record in 12 years. It is full-fledged pop, overwhelmingly optimistic and it looks like it might be the only platinum album this year.
And you need to stop listening to it.
Okay, maybe not you, “Girl Who Makes Her Boyfriend Her Man Crush Monday Every Week,” but the rest of us – yes, I’m including myself – do. And not for the reasons you’re thinking.
A few days before Taylor’s album came out, Nicki Minaj released a song called ‘Only’ featuring Drake and Lil Wayne. It’s basically Nicki, once again, expressing that she did not sleep her way to stardom, but it also features some of the best lines I’ve heard in a mainstream rap song in a while, including this one:
“Low-key, it may be high-key, I been peeped that you like me.Who the f*ck you really wanna be with besides me?”
I cannot express to you how INTO that line my best friend and I got. You know when you record yourself lip-synching in a Snapchat, how you always wait for ONE part of the song? That was our 10 seconds of, “I FEEL THIS! EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW!”
For a few days, we had this overwhelming confidence in each of our respective relationships (which aren’t really relationships, because we are in college). We were dismissive, sure of ourselves – all of our conversations about guys turned into, “Why do we even care?”
Then 1989 dropped.
Seen here: my fave, ruining all of your faves’ lives.
I find it imperative that I express to you how deeply connected I feel to Taylor Swift on an emotional level. We’re both Sagittariuses, we both go through relationships pretty quickly and VERY strongly, and we’re both in love with Harry Styles. Taylor and I are basically the same person, and this album ruined me.
Do you know what line my best friend and I latched onto from 1989?
“I said, ‘I heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl.’He said, ‘What you heard is true but I can’t stop thinking about you and I.’I said, ‘I’ve been there too, a few times.’”
What kind of self-deprecating BS is that? Somehow, in less than a week, we’d gone from being the girls who were sure of ourselves and our worth, to the girls who were, for some reason, comfortable being with the dude who is ‘out and about with some other girl.’
It’s so important that I mention that Taylor’s album did not make me, by any means, depressed, sad or lonely. 1989 makes me really, unbelievably happy, Like, smiling-on-the-bus-for-no-reason-happy. Unrealistically happy.
1989 made us naïve.
I don’t expect you to stop listening to this incredible album, because I’m not going to. I’m listening to it as I write this. I’m still going to jam out to it in my car, I’m still going to tweet the lyrics in vague, unfinished sentences, I’m still going to hope whoever I’m snapchatting understands my weird obsession with the second verse from ‘Style.’
But I’m not going to let it make me jaded, because, at the end of the day, my life isn’t a Taylor Swift song. It may be eerily alike sometimes, but it isn’t. My life is mine, my experiences are mine, and the guys I date, however heartbreakingly similar they are to the Harry Styles and Jake Gyllenhalls littering the pages of Taylor’s songbooks, are mine.
So I guess you don’t have to stop listening to Taylor Swift. Just make sure you’re listening to some Nicki Minaj, too.