The role of video games in my life has always been strangely fraught. This is something I’ve written about before, but even though I loved games as a kid and spent almost all of my free time as a kid playing Nintendo DS and computer games I checked out from my local library, I simultaneously rejected the role and identity of gamer.
It had to do with a few things – gendered expectations, for one. When I was younger, I didn’t have a lot of examples of women who enjoyed video games – the cultural image was always a teenage boy or young man. When I got older, though, I started to hear about things like Gamergate – a movement of targeted harassment against women and other minority game developers and creators under the guise of “integrity in the games journalism industry.”
Now that I’m an adult, though, I feel like the label is pretty unavoidable for me. I spend a lot of my free time playing video games, and spend a decent chunk of my disposable income adding to my collection. I enjoy keeping up with releases of game franchises I care about, and follow Twitch streamers, voice actors, developers, and other creatives and influencers in the gaming industry.
At the same time, claiming the term gamer has just become a lot more common and a lot easier. There’s now a ton more representation within the gaming community of all sorts of people, not just the quintessential young white straight cis guy.
But I also think there’s an interesting shift in what sort of games are even being made, as well. I think there’s something to be said about the baggage that comes when you discuss the connection between video game genres and the gender of the players who enjoy them.
A lot of gaming franchises that have historically been popular with women tend to get disparaged and written off, on one hand. On the other, a lot of the games associated with women tend to be associated because of some pretty insidious gendered stereotypes.
All that acknowledged, I can’t help but feel that the cultural shift within video games coincides with, or perhaps is caused by, the growth of gaming genres like life simulators, dating sims, farming simulators, and other genres that have come to fall under one mega-genre… the “cozy” game. And cozy gaming is a huge movement – one I have some mixed feelings about.
Though cozy games have been around for just about as long as games have, I think it’s pretty clear that the beginning of the modern cozy game movement came with the release of Animal Crossing New Horizons in 2020. The game’s coincidental release at essentially the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a ton of new gamers into the fold. Seeking comfort and companionship during a scary worldwide crisis, it simultaneously molded the tastes of many of these new gamers, many of whom weren’t the traditional gamer. Now, four years later, many of these players have moved on to other games – creating the huge boom.
Therefore, the definition of a cozy game is fairly influenced by Animal Crossing. Regardless, as with any genre, the definition of a cozy game is somewhat abstract. As the name suggests, a traditional cozy game is any game that is designed to elicit feelings of comfort and calm in a player. Generally, these games test player creativity, social skills, and curation. This makes the bounds of the genre somewhat easy to see in some cases – for example, a heart-pounding, fast-paced first-person shooter is likely not going to fit the bill. Nor will a terrifying survival horror game.
However, beyond the obvious examples, there’s a surprising amount of nuance. For some, the genre’s conventions are fairly loose, and can be applied to any game that can be comforting to a player. For others, any kind of conflict or dark tone disqualifies a game from the moniker. I’ve seen people legitimately try and argue that cutesy farming simulator Stardew Valley, arguably one of the founding games of the cozy game movement, can’t be considered a cozy game due to its exploration of themes of alcoholism, death, and familial abuse in some of the backstories of its characters.
Regardless of the fuzziness of its boundaries, though, it’s pretty impossible to deny the strength and clout of this new genre. Whereas shooters, adventure games, and platformers previously dominated the games market, there’s now dedicated cozy game sections of major gaming platforms like Steam, and the organization Wholesome Games has sprung up along with its regular “Wholesome Directs”, which bring together indie games that fit the cozy game genre and promote their release in the style of bigger companies like Nintendo’s promotional game presentations.
Where once the gaming industry felt like a hostile place for a young girl like me, particularly to the kinds of games I was drawn to – creative, slow-paced, nonviolent, and cute – these games are now numerous and openly celebrated.
In many ways – it’s wonderful to see. I imagine there’s probably a lot of girls, queer people, people of color, and other traditionally non-represented populations getting to feel comfortable and supported in the gaming world.
Still, though, I sometimes feel like as wonderful as cozy games are as a genre, that they might have some downsides. There is nothing at all wrong with wanting a comforting gaming experience – it tends to be what I’m drawn to myself. But there’s also something a bit limiting about the way I see people discuss cozy games. Creators stay within the bounds of the genre, recommending only games that fit the cozy game mantra. Creators within this space who step outside of it are often made fun of or chastised.
And I return to some of my reservations about the gendered expectations that continue to swirl around. As wonderful as cozy games are as a space, as welcoming as they can be, are we really making meaningful change in this culture if we continue to accept that video games for women must necessarily be soft, cute, and slow-paced? Are we limiting these new gamers from seeing the wide variety of wonderful games that exist if we continue to push the existence of this so-called cozy game genre and encourage people to exist only within it? When some people deny that a cozy game is even allowed to cover darker themes… well, is that healthy for a genre?
I think of games like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Hades – action/adventure games with moments of violence and “cozy game” traits. The comforting music, beautiful soundscapes, and pensive atmosphere of Breath of the Wild was one of the most soothing I’ve ever experienced, even if it came between heart-pounding action scenes. Hades has some of the best character writing and story development I’ve seen, in the package of a tough-as-nails rougelike fighting game.
I say this because these are two games that challenged my vision of myself as a gamer. Before playing both of them, I doubted I even could. I had spent so many years seeing myself as not very skilled at the types of games that required quick reflexes and strategic thinking. But it was the more “cozy” aspect of these two games that encouraged me to try them anyway and find out that I enjoyed being challenged by the less “cozy” aspects of them.
Maybe my fears are unnecessary. Perhaps I can put my trust in these new cozy gamers to know their own interests and not be afraid to explore games outside of the cozy game moniker. Or, perhaps, there are probably many of these gamers who will be perfectly happy to stay within their genre and there’s nothing inherently less valuable about that.
But if you’re a cozy gamer yourself, reading this post, I wanted to say – hello. I love you. I used to be you. In many ways I still am you. I’m so happy that the gaming industry has changed to meet what you love. I’m so happy things are better for you. It’s what you deserve. It’s what we deserve.
At the same time, please don’t feel restricted by the cozy game genre. Even if you think you’re not a very talented gamer – sometimes it’s worthwhile to challenge yourself. You might find a game that changes your view of what games can be – and of your own skill.
Gaming is amazing. Video games are some of the coolest, most innovative pieces of art right now. Don’t limit yourself to just a few based on the opinions of an influencer or advertiser. You’re more than capable of experiencing the breadth of this world.
Alright, I admit it, it’s been a long time coming, but I’m a fan of pop.
I think this has always been true about me, even in my teenage years, when I was in the throes of my own self-disparagingly named “hipster phase.” Sure, I like to dig deep past the Billboard Hot 100, as I think my past seven year-end lists have shown, but I’ve never not appreciated a good hook. It’s just so difficult not to like pop when it’s a genre that, by its very nature, evolves and grows and changes with the times.
Though this has always been in the back of my mind to some extent, the feelings it has elicited in me has changed throughout the years. As you might imagine, back when I considered myself a hipster in an ironic-not-ironic kind of way, I saw my taste for the poppier side of things as a secret shame. Something to blush and hide away when talking to other music aficionados.
But now, something has shifted in the atmosphere. Maybe it has something to do with the changing landscape of the music industry – the lifting up of many indie artists in the mid-to-late 2010s, blurring the lines between shallow pop and treasured obscure classics. Maybe it has something to do with the collective trauma we have all recently experienced due to a worldwide pandemic. Maybe it’s just me getting older and less ashamed of the things I like.
Whatever it is, I’m not ashamed to say it anymore. I love pop music. And while plenty of the artists that made this year’s list run the gamut of genres – dance, indie, even some country – the majority of this list is pure and simple pop perfection. And you know what? That’s what I’ve been loving lately.
Songs on this list had to have come out in 2023, and in order to keep the list as diverse as possible, I’ve limited each artist to three appearances each (though features don’t count).
As always, this was a competitive list. I usually offer a Spotify playlist of every song I talk about in each of my year-end lists, but this year I thought the competition was so competitive that I wanted to show my work. So, this year’s playlist includes not only the 30(ish) songs that topped my list this year, but also all of the songs I considered that ultimately just didn’t make the cut. I guarantee you’ll find something to love there.
And, if you’re interested in diving even deeper to my music taste for some odd reason, you can check out my complete 2023 playlist, which features just about everything I discovered this year, even if it’s a little older.
Well, what do you say? Let’s pop to it, shall we?
30. Coming of Age – Maisie Peters
Maisie Peters’ 2023 release The Good Witch is an album that tangles with narrative. While I didn’t initially feel like it fully explored the interesting ideas at its core, after spending some time with the album I’ve come to really appreciate the small ways this idea of narrative occurs and reoccurs throughout the album.
This track is an interesting twist on the idea of the coming of age story, a genre that chronicles the growth of its protagonist from childhood to adulthood. Relevant to the conversation is the fact that this genre has up until recently been dominated by stories about young men, a population whose growth and development has a tendency to be emphasized over the growth and development of others. Peters subverts this idea, though, by claiming the story of her heartbreak as a moment of growth and development for herself – in contrast to the way she previously put him first in their relationship.
It’s a really clever idea for a song, and I love the dynamic contrast throughout that adds impact and energy.
29. Flowers – Miley Cyrus
Until this year, I hadn’t really paid much attention to Miley Cyrus’s life and career. Of course, as any child of the 2000s, I knew her very well. But I was a kid who liked to pretend that my media interests reflected my intelligence, so I often “rejected” the popular tweeny bop idols of the time. But, this lead single for her album Endless Summer made me take notice not only of Cyrus’s new musical identity, but also the emotion her art is tackling.
In the wake of her breakup with Liam Hemsworth, “Flowers” is a defiant, disco-inspired song of self reliance. There’s something very classic about its approach – starting soft, with nothing but Cyrus’s voice and a rolling bassline. Then, the disco strings kick in in the chorus and we feel the freedom and bliss of being perfectly at home with yourself. It’s a great track, and I’m glad it brought my attention to an artist I previously wrote off.
28. Red Wine Supernova – Chappell Roan
I’m going to have to hold myself off from gushing too much right now, because you’ll come to find that this isn’t Chappell Roan’s final appearance in this list by far. But let me say that this pop artist’s debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess made my year. As per my rules, I could only pick three songs per artist, and it was a bloodbath for Chappell! I love so many of the tracks on her album, which is, as a rule, sweet, fun, and perfectly constructed from beginning to end. So what put “Red Wine Supernova” ahead?
One of the things I really admire about Chappell Roan is her surprisingly down-to-earth method of storytelling. Sure, it’s elevated, it’s glitz, it’s camp, but at the core you can never lose the Midwestern roots. I think this track is one of the best examples of this nature. The wild fantasies of the narrative here are constantly and humorously undercut by the little details. The lover is a “stoner”, and their romantic tryst is complicated by the fact that the singer has a “twin bed and some roommates” (but don’t worry, they’re cool!)
That play between fantasy and reality, whimsy and groundedness really makes the song into its own sweet little world. It’s so fun to spend time there.
27. Haute – Janelle Monáe
Janelle Monáe’s 2023 release The Age of Pleasure is kind of a difficult beast to include in a top 30 countdown format like this one. This isn’t because it’s a bad work – the opposite, actually. It’s a condensed dose of feel good sunshine, with hook after hook after hook that will likely spend the next few millennia stuck somewhere in your head.
However, it is also essentially one continuous track, with each song blending into the next seamlessly. I definitely wanted to feature a song or a few from it, but each song itself is made a little less weighty without the songs around it and the overarching narrative it ends up creating. So, I went with the song with the hook I remembered most clearly with the hope that, by singing its praises, you might put on the entire album and experience it the next time you need a little sunshine in your life. Got it? Good.
26. Smoke Detector – The National
Perhaps inspired by their new musical relative, Taylor Swift, The National had a huge output this year. Two full-length albums! I loved a lot of what I heard, but there’s something altogether new and unique about this track off of Laugh Track, the second of the two 2023 releases.
Obviously mimicking its titular alarm, the guitars in the back of this track squeal in disharmony as lead singer Matt Berninger slurs and mumbles a stream-of-consciousness prayer. To me, this is a song about a person in the midst of crisis, of the lashing out of the mind to different emotions – fear, desperation, sadness, and love. The refrain is a request for the “smoke detector” to protect an unnamed “her” and a repeated, “you don’t know how much I love you, do you?” Like many pieces of art I love dearly, it’s carrying the complicated emotions of dealing with a hard time while also wanting that hard time not to affect those you love – even as you know they will, inevitably.
25. Got Me Started – Troye Sivan
Despite being low on my radar, Troye Sivan’s 2023 album Something to Give Each Other is undoubtedly one of the best of the year. It’s a joyously constructed pop celebration, equal parts giddy body-grooving beats and introspective “crying on the dance floor” sorrow. It also is perhaps the one project this year that I really feel is using its obvious sampling for something good.
If any other artist reached for Bag Raider’s “Shooting Stars”, one of the many songs whose brilliance is overshadowed by its meme. In this song’s case, it was a silly 2016 meme about people falling down repeatedly, which honestly sounds like a parody of the inane ridiculousness of the memes of that era. So it’s actually super refreshing that Sivan reaches for it seemingly for more than just the meme recognition. It’s not for humor, it’s honestly for the feeling of the song, which is more than I can say for a lot of the songs getting popular on the charts right now for their ill-fitting “oh my god I remember that song! how goofy!” vibe.
24. I Remember Everything – Zach Bryan ft. Kacey Musgraves
The past few years of my life has been one of reconsidering one of the most controversial American-born genres of music. Country has never been kind to people who don’t fit the mold, and for that reason and others I’ve often found myself writing it off. But a new generation of country artists interesting in challenging the modern mainstream and making art that actually speaks to the downtrodden has brought me and many others into the fold.
Two of those voices collaborated this year. I’m a huge fan of Kacey Musgraves, and have been since the release of 2021’s star-crossed, so when I heard she was on this track I had to check it out. I’m less familiar with Zach Bryan, but I love the unique tenor of his voice, and the odd and interesting way it meanders and settles across the minimalist, drunkenly morose production of this track. It really sells the feeling of two lovers confronting each other about something toxic that has built between them, and shows the incredible storytelling potential of this genre (when it quits the gatekeeping and navel-gazing.)
23. Shadow – Carly Rae Jepsen
Something really cool about Carly Rae Jepsen is her habit of releasing B-sides albums for all of her albums. So, of course, on the heels of last year’s The Loneliest Time came its B-side, The Loveliest Time. I talked last year about the unique concept of the first of the two for Jepsen, who is generally more well-known for her exuberant love songs than for any explorations of sadder emotions. So there’s something humorous about her intentional return to form in contrast.
That being said, Jepsen is fantastic at what she does, and The Loveliest Time is jam-packed with great little love songs. However, because of its relationship to The Loneliest Time, all of the love songs here feel like they have a little undercurrent of darkness, even when it’s just in the way Jepsen characterizes her admiration for her love as a shadow following them wherever they go. The understated normality of this metaphor carries in the almost quaint and down-tempo feel of this track, which makes it feel completely new and unique.
22. Dang – Caroline Polachek
It’s funny, because last year I opened my Top 30 tracklist talking about songs that are so jarring and strange at first listen that you can’t imagine ever returning… until you realize you’re on repeat number 73 and you can’t get the song to leave your mind no matter how hard you try.
“Dang” is yet another example of this principle, which apparently proves that Caroline Polachek is a master of it. Meant as an intentional skewering of the themes of her last album, Pang, an album all about the feeling of falling in love, this track is a punchy, weird, jarring song about falling in lust. The flippant sounds and syncopated rhythms of the track communicate the thoughts of a narrator open and proud about their shallow admiration for the subject, and there’s something endearing about that. (And yes, very very catchy.)
21. One of Your Girls – Troye Sivan
I implied this when talking about the album before, but for all the love and joy that fills the tracklist of Something to Give Each Other, there’s a certain sadness there, too. Nowhere is that juxtaposition more apparent than “One of Your Girls”. With a straightforward acknowledgment of the futile nature of the plea, Sivan’s narrator attempts to make a bargain with the straight man he has fallen for – “Give me a call if you ever get lonely / I’ll be like one of your girls when you hold me”.
It’s a tragic statement on its face, one of a person fully willing to sacrifice a healthy, reciprocal relationship just for the chance of getting to pretend to be the one their desired one could love. It’s made even more poignant in the music video, where Sivan dresses in impressively gorgeous drag, juxtaposed with the black and white image of his regular face, staring into the camera, begging to be considered. It’s really moving, and really brings you into the mindset of such a narrative. Such effective storytelling, both visual and musical.
20. Anything to Be with You – Carly Rae Jepsen
When most people think of Carly Rae Jepsen, I still think they imagine the “Call Me Maybe” girl. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I suppose, but it does understate the oceans of musical experimentation she’s done since then. Case in point – this rhythmically interesting and effortlessly cool track.
I first listened to The Loveliest Time while shopping for groceries, and I distinctly remember being stopped in my tracks in the baking aisle by this song’s strange chanting chorus. The song’s percussion forms just about its entire soundscape, with big echoing cymbal crashes, tom hits, and the just the lightest hint of strings. Then, you add in that little bit of honking brass… It was almost off-putting, in a way I hadn’t been expecting from Jepsen.
But then, I let the song sort of wash over me, felt the bustling city-life feel of the soundscape it creates, and I couldn’t help but be swept away. The overall effect of the song is slick and flirty and surprisingly warm. It invites you in rather than pushing you away.
And that’s the Jepsen effect, baby.
19. I Believe – Caroline Polachek
If you aren’t spending time in certain circles, you might not be aware that the recent boom of innovative pop voices owes its success and ingenuity, in part, to a producer named SOPHIE. Working with an absolute cavalcade of some of the most well-known movers and shakers in this slightly more underground pop scene, including Charli XCX, Lady Gaga, Kim Petras, and, of course, Caroline Polachek.
Despite an impressive body of work, she was just getting started. That is, until SOPHIE tragically passed away in 2021 following an accident. When it happened, I had barely heard of her, but I quickly realized that I knew her work extremely well. It was her buoyant, slightly strange sonic sensibilities that came to form so much of what drives some of my absolute favorite current artists.
So, it feels right to talk about her when I talk about one of my favorite tracks off of Polachek’s album this year, itself a tribute to the late music innovator. Using many of the looping, deep, surprising stylistic qualities, Polachek sings about her belief that she will meet her friend again somewhere. Perhaps it’s a truly spiritual statement, but for me it also reflects the absolutely tangible influence the producer still has. Of course we will meet again. We meet every time one of the artists she inspired makes something beautiful.
18. lacy – Olivia Rodrigo
I found myself playing a lot of preliminary defense of Olivia Rodrigo this year. But hey, I was right! GUTS was a highlight of 2023, no doubt. Every bit as funny, cynical, and clear-eyed as its predecessor… but with something a little more. I’ll spoil it for you – three tracks from this album made it on my list this year, and each one highlights something new in Rodrigo’s sound I just couldn’t get enough of.
In the case of “lacy”, we have a track that absolutely caught me off guard. Soft, slow, and laced (ha) with an almost poisonous bitterness throughout, Rodrigo describes her creeping jealousy of and desire to be like the titular Lacy. Who Lacy could be is anyone’s guess – some opting to interpret it as one pop star or another. But for me, Lacy doesn’t need to be anyone in particular. Lacy is the ghost of effortless perfection, who we love to hate and hate to love.
There are so many things about this song I love, but if I had to choose just one, it would be the slow build to the soaring and strange bridge. Rodrigo is no stranger to a primal scream on her tracks, but this part sounds more like a wail of despair, matching the hauntingly beautiful quality of the entire song. It’s so cool to hear Rodrigo experiment like this, and to such a unique extent.
17. The Alcott – The National ft. Taylor Swift
If there’s something I love, it’s a song that plays with perspective. When a song can show me a situation from many sides, I eat that up. There’s just so much storytelling that can be accomplished so efficiently when you get to see a situation from multiple differing sides.
So, yeah, of course I’m going to absolutely eat it up with my favorite emotional support blonde woman teams up with my favorite emotional support band of dads for just that type of song. Illustrating the story of a couple that has clearly gone through a number of splits realizing that, despite themselves, they want to give their relationship (yet another) go, it seems to narrate the competing thoughts each person has as they see each other again.
The tragedy of the song, I think, is the way that both parties seem to acknowledge that what they are doing is ultimately doomed. As Taylor’s character moans over the bridge – “I love this curse on our house” – at no point is the listener fooled into thinking that things might work out between them. Yet, there’s that empathy that is built regardless, as the listener understands the magnetism that exists. It’s fantastic storytelling, and it gets to me every time.
16. River – Miley Cyrus
Absolutely funky. I can’t think of another word to describe Miley Cyrus’s “River”, my favorite track from Endless Summer.
You know, I can’t help but think about that criticism of pop music you hear so much that it’s essentially cliché at this point – we’re just telling the same three or four stories over and over again to the same dance beat and ABABCB structure! And yes, this criticism exists because it is sometimes true. But there’s a reason why we keep telling the same stories with the same structure over and over again – it just works.
A dance track singing the lustful praises of your lover is just about as run of the mill as it gets. But when you actually get to listening to it, it’s impossible to deny how absolutely hype the same-old-same-old can get. Cyrus’s vocals are husky and warm over an unmistakably new wave-inspired melody, and you can’t help but dance.
15. Super Shy – NewJeans
There’s something kind of interesting happening with breakout K-pop stars Newjeans. I’m assuming everyone else who knows them knows this, but I still think it’s worth puzzling over a little – they’re making Y2K music.
I don’t mean music inspired by a 2000s sound… well, I do a little, I think. But I don’t mean this is grabbing only from the radio of the 2000s, it’s also grabbing sounds straight from my childhood. I swear that this song is sampling the Powerpuff Girls theme song. Just me? That backbeat is just too unmistakable for me.
Surprising bursts of nostalgia or not, though, there’s something I really appreciate about the subtle way this track brings the listener in. Suitable for the subject matter, a narrator who hopes to catch the eye of a suitor even while admittedly being “super shy”, the track itself is soft and minimal yet packs a powerfully catchy punch.
14. Tropic Morning News – The National
Well, what can I say. I’m a sucker for painfully honest songs about anxiety. I know this. You know this (if you’ve read any of my previous writing, really). And so, when The National leads their first 2023 album First Two Pages of Frankenstein with this painfully honest track about finally coming clean about the hardest things in your life with someone you love, it obviously became my favorite track on the album.
As being honest about the darkest parts of yourself can be, the song is simultaneously courageous and embarrassed, elated and downtrodden. I love the meandering feel of the lyrics, too. You almost hear the cadence of someone confessing something difficult to say – floundering with words and struggling to put in clear terms ideas that may feel hopelessly abstract.
Yet, with driving guitar and a constantly rising feeling of hope, the listener feels the relief the narrator is feeling as well. It’s a song that takes you on an emotional journey, one that really reads from the very first listen.
13. love is embarrassing – Olivia Rodrigo
Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR chronicled a lot of what it was like to be a teenager, good and bad. It was one of the things I loved about it – the brutal honesty lending to moments of devastation and, yes, hilarity.
The self-aware humor continues into GUTS with the song on the album most likely to get stuck in my head – “love is embarrassing”. With a rollicking rock sound, Rodrigo shows off the huge emotional range of her vocals, delivering a performance that is legitimately funny. The eye-rolling embarrassment of lines like “I’m planning out my wedding for some guy I’m never marrying” captures the mood of the song so perfectly.
This is one of the reasons I treasure albums like GUTS so much. Much like another beloved album I’ll be discussing on this very list, it captures that strange time between childhood and adulthood with humor, tragedy, and love. Rodrigo may not yet have the hindsight to realize how perfectly she’s done it, but with a few years between me now and me at 19-20, I can say it’s too accurate for words.
12. Vertigo – Griff
It’s deceptively difficult to form an entire artistic statement around a single metaphor. Pulling it off has a certain simplicity and elegance, a certain “ah-ha” moment that makes it all feel so obvious that it’s easy to forget that the mission of constructing such a metaphor is complicated.
Yet, despite being a newcomer to the music industry, Griff pulled off this balancing act in “Vertigo”. The dizzying and unsteady nature of a relationship where someone just won’t commit is captured with every aspect of the song. The lyrics, of course, have a repeating, circling structure, but so too does the chorus’s melody, switching between two notes. Plus, the percussion is made up of a repeated breath – jarring and, yes, cyclical.
The vocals are emotive and interestingly textured, and it all comes together into something extremely emotional and memorable. Griff is definitely an artist I want to keep an eye on.
11. Is It Over Now? – Taylor Swift
Seasoned Swifties might be enraged at how low I’ve placed this track, but allow me to remind them that this was a pretty competitive year for Taylor Swift songs. Still, there’s a decent contingent of people who will argue that “Is It Over Now?” is the crown jewel of the 1989 Taylor’s Version vault, many of whom would also argue that 1989 itself is the crown jewel of Taylor’s discography.
I may not totally align with either of these perspectives, but there is something absolutely astounding about this track. I previously argued that 1989 is unique amongst Taylor’s albums for its very streamlined narrative. Taylor wanted to tell one single story with the album and rarely strayed. There’s strengths to this, of course, but there was a certain lack of the trademark Taylor Swift messiness I have always loved.
The vault, though, and especially this song, brought that messiness back. “Is It Over Now” is a tale of bitterness between the narrator and her ex, scathingly judging him for his open moving on (while simultaneously acknowledging that she, too, has moved on). It’s half media criticism (why does the guy get to get away with sleeping around with models while she’s subjected to such scrutiny for dating one new guy?) and half self-criticism as the absurdity of the narrator’s emotions come through. Plus, for all the crazy Swifties like me who care about this sort of thing, it’s jam-packed with tiny, winking references to the era it came from.
10. Rush – Troye Sivan
If there’s one theme Troye Sivan comes back to in Something to Give Each Other, it’s physicality. Whether it be through dance or sexuality, that corporeal focus is so tangible in “Rush”.
The house feel of the track of course connects it to dance, but to me it’s the heaviness of the beats in the chorus, their power overtaking every other part of the mix, lowering the vocals and other instruments and making you feel like the track is pulsing through the floorboards, even when you’re just playing it from your phone speaker. In that way, it captures that feeling of physicality and makes it real.
And I can attest – you feel it when this plays on the dance floor (thank you to my good friend Marisa, who played this at her wedding reception this year – taste!) This is one of the most fun tracks of the year.
9. Shy Boy – Carly Rae Jepsen
Just like last year, the Carly Rae Jepsen track that captured my heart most was the first one I heard. I simply can’t stress how perfect Jepsen’s track record is for churning out absolute bangers. For me, it’s the dynamic quality of the lyricism that sells what this song is trying to communicate. Jepsen’s vocals travel through various filters, giving texture and direction to this song.
I can’t help but love the subject matter, too. It reminds me of another one of my favorite Jepsen songs, “I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance”, a party love song singing the praises of a lover who’s a little too shy to dance. In a spiritual successor, “Shy Boy” is about basically the same character being encouraged to come out of his shell. It’s this lyrical specificity that I’ve always admired in her music, because it gives you something real to hold onto and relate to.
Speaking of real, though, I should also mention that the song is obviously inspired by Jepsen’s boyfriend, producer Cole M.G.N., whom she actually met while creating her previous album, The Loneliest Time. Therefore, its love-filled counterpart The Loveliest Time is more than just a quirky mirror – it’s an actual love story.
8. Feather – Sabrina Carpenter
I came so close to breaking my own rules when it comes to Sabrina Capenter.
Technically speaking, if a song didn’t come out in the year I’m talking about, it shouldn’t be on this particular list. This can become a problem when I discover a song I love just a few months too late, as is the case with Carpenter’s 2022 album emails I can’t send. I really did consider throwing my favorite on the album, “Read Your Mind”, or some of my other favorites “skinny dipping” and “Bad for Business” on the list and hope nobody noticed, but eventually my morals won out.
However, Carpenter did drop the deluxe version of the album this year, including this absolute bop. Aligning with many of the themes of the original, “Feather” is all about moving on from a toxic relationship and feeling incredible doing it.
The soft, carefree imagery employed throughout is so effective at communicating the feeling of freedom and relief, especially paired with the upward lilt of Carpenter’s vocals. She’s a performer I have really enjoyed getting to know this year, and I look forward to the day I can include a current album of hers on a year-end list.
7. Now That We Don’t Talk – Taylor Swift
The only thing I don’t like about “Now That We Don’t Talk”? It’s way too short.
This track captures that emotional complexity I was talking about wanting from 1989 better than any other track, in my opinion. There’s certainly viciousness in the way the song lists the things the narrator is happy to finally be free from now that the relationship is over – (“I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock!”). But there’s also a sadness to the idea that a relationship that was once so close is gone.
No part of the song exemplifies it more than the beginning, where Taylor recounts hearing from someone else about her ex showing up to a party, his charisma the major focus of the stories she can now only hear and not witness herself. However, she quietly wonders to herself “Did you get anxious, though / on the way home?” This line suggests so much intimacy in the way she seems to know more than the public-facing charisma of this ex. Yet, of course, that intimacy is forever one-sided now, as there’s no answer to that question.
The entire song is a slow build, bringing in the beat and slowly amping up the intensity of the synths and the vocals, until it feels like an emotional breakdown – but in fun dance form! This is the song I most wish had made the cut of the original 1989, but I am super happy to get it now.
6. De Selby (Parts 1 and 2) – Hozier
Eagle-eyed readers may have caught when I said 30(ish) songs would be on this list and may have wondered what exactly I meant by that. So, listen. These lists are all my own rules, and that means that sometimes I can break them just a little bit. While I usually do feature just 30 songs on my list, this year brought the incredible two-part album opener “De Selby (Part 1)” and “De Selby (Part 2)” on Hozier’s album Unreal Unearth. And this one-two punch is my absolute favorite moment from the album by far.
So I faced a choice – do I take up two spots on the list? If so, how do I order the two? Do I put them together but have them take two spots? Or… do I bend the rules a little and allow them to appear together in one spot? You can see what I eventually decided to do. After all, the strength of these tracks, to me, come in the way they blend into each other to create one unified message.
Part 1 is a soft, folksy ease into the underworld journey the entire album focuses on. It chronicles a world falling asleep, bringing to mind a darkening sky overhead as the narrator prepares for their harrowing journey. I love the lullaby-like way Hozier slips into Gaelic, bringing in a choir to build into something more powerful.
Then, part 2 sweeps in with gritty guitar to remind us of the nature of the journey – an ultimately doomed journey of hopeless love. The narrator declares his devotion in impossible terms – “I’d block the sun if you want it done.”
Much like the mythology this album takes inspiration from, these two tracks set up the listener to understand the stakes, and know already of the tragedy that is about to befall the protagonist. It’s powerful, dynamic, and absolutely epic.
5. HOT TO GO! – Chappell Roan
The world’s first impression of “HOT TO GO!” came on TikTok. Chappell Roan has made ample use of the short-form video platform to advertise the slow rollout of singles in advance of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. In the case of this song, Chappell admitted to her audience that the inspiration for the song came from a simple childhood dream of being a cheerleader and getting to lead a catchy chant.
Well, if that was her goal, she succeeded with flying colors. “HOT TO GO!” is another example of a concept played so perfectly well in every possible way. The combination of a sensual love song and a cheerleader chant works so perfectly I am shocked I haven’t seen it done more. The glitzy, up-tempo, almost frenzied instrumental approach is already essentially what goes into this kind of a song, so the pairing is a match made in heaven.
Then, of course, you bring in the simple, fun, and extremely catchy chorus. The title brings another little theme of fast food, an element that would seem distracting if it didn’t also perfectly align with the ideas already introduced. Shallow, produced, a bit artificial… it’s a lovely little metaphor for the ideas we’re playing with already. This narrator is more than willing to do anything she has to to get the object of her desire in bed, a mirror to the way fast food brands are willing to do just about anything to get the consumer to spend more than they should on cheap food.
Ironically, there’s something deep to this, though. Even if the song makes choices that come off shallow at every step, it’s how intentional those choices are that fascinate me. Yes, Chappell may have set out with the goal to create a song that mimics a chant made superficially to rile up a crowd, and it may use the metaphor of fast food to push forward that feeling of superficiality, but it’s all in the service of creating a particular experience – not cynically. This is, I think, one of the things I love about modern pop. It takes the things that make the genre apparently shallow and superficial and plays with how to create a meaningful experience out of them.
4. Foolish One – Taylor Swift
A lot has happened in the world of Taylor Swift this year. Like… a lot a lot. It’s been a year basically unprecedented in volume of new stuff coming from Swiftdom, plus the Eras Tour and everything that has come from that. Looking back on the year, it felt a little complicated to choose just one new song to top my list with all of the everything that has happened.
What it came down to for me is what felt like the song that made the biggest musical moment in my own life. And, well, I have to be honest. That was Speak Now Taylor’s Version. This was the rerecord that felt the most huge to me – the early album that I loved the most. It’s a wild, fantastical, flawed piece of work from a wild, fantastical, flawed young woman, and I longed to see how it would be updated.
I was extremely impressed by how it all came out. In hindsight, though, I didn’t need to worry. From the moment Taylor released her statement ahead of the album, detailing the complicated emotional process through which the original album came to be, I understood that she, too, saw this album as more than just the stepping stone between mainstream success Fearless and critical darling Red.
To me, “Foolish One” is the vault track that captures that complicated nature, that messiness, the best. It’s one of those vault songs that feels so obviously of the era that you can imagine a 19-year-old Taylor penning it, but also so meaningful in hindsight. Of course Taylor at this age was embarrassingly aware of her own unrealistic standards of love – of course she was chastising herself for her own romanticism. But also, of course she couldn’t help but feel that way anyway. After all, this is the Taylor who wrote “Enchanted”.
To me, this song had such an impact because it revealed a thesis statement of Speak Now I’m not sure everyone had really realized. This was an album about wild fantasy and knowing that your fantasies are too wild… and getting swept up in them anyway.
3. Not Strong Enough – boygenius
I am someone who really tends to respond most to the lyricism in songs. I’m sure it’s easy to tell from the way I talk about each of the songs on this list. Sure, sometimes I love a musical moment or an instrumental choice or a melody, but if I’m going to really latch onto a song it’s usually because something in the lyrics caught me. I’m a writer at my core, and words are how I relate to the world more than anything else.
And while I do love reading and learning about the original intentions of a song’s lyrics, there’s something a little magical about connecting personally to a song untainted by all of that. Such is my relationship to “Not Strong Enough” by boygenius.
The intention of Dacus, Bridgers, and Baker in this song was to take the role of a dirtbag guy making excuses for his poor behavior to a long-suffering woman in his life. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense for the lyrics, bringing clarity to a hook like “I am not strong enough to be your man”… it makes literal sense.
But when I first came across this song, I didn’t know that was the intention of the song at all. So, to me I was hearing a woman singing “I am not strong enough to be your man” and I really loved what that said. The story it told. It felt resonant to me, taking into account the complicated strands of gendered expectations, and felt to me like a woman seeing someone they love going through something and struggling within the boundaries of the expectations of her role to respond. I certainly find myself relating to a song about knowing that you’re pushing up against internalized and harmful biases you’ve grown up with in an effort to build a better and happier life.
Perhaps that is not the way I was supposed to read this song, but I can’t help but love that music is an art form that lets me interpret something a little wrong and find meaning in it anyway.
2. all-american bitch – Olivia Rodrigo
Rodrigo has gone 2 for 2 when it comes to absolutely nailing the first song of her album. I loved the way that “brutal” not only played with listener expectations but also ushered listeners into the thematic and sonic world of GUTS.
In “all-american bitch”, Rodrigo plays the same sort of trick. However, for me, there’s an extra ounce of meaning heaped into the soft strings at the beginning of this track. Where before it was a bit of a comment on Rodrigo’s image as a mourning teenage songstress versus the actual pop-punk inspirations of the album, the contrast between the softness of the verses and the big guitars of the chorus comment on the pressure of dealing with emotion as a young woman in the public eye.
The verses name all of the things Rodrigo must be in order to align with expectations of behavior for her. She’s pretty, she’s sexy, she’s kind. She’s alright with people making jokes at her expense, she’s a cool girl who can play every role needed of her. But on the inside, she’s bitter and resentful and loud.
I also just love the title when used on a song like this. The use of the word “bitch” is a really smart and meaningful one that can be read in so many ways. In some ways, its an acknowledgment of the fact that no matter what she does, the hoops she jumps through to follow the rules, she’s still going to be a “bitch” in the eyes of many. However, it also takes into account the anger and bitterness in the song – the way the song rages against these very expectations. Being a “bitch”.
It’s clever, it’s punchy, and it’s likely relatable to a lot of the 19 and 20-year-olds who heard it. I’m so glad they get to have someone like Rodrigo to put to words the anger they’re feeling at the strange role they have to play.
1. After Midnight – Chappell Roan
Okay, you guessed it. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was my album of the year. It was an interesting album, because I already knew most of it from the slow rollout it got over a few years. It’s an album made entirely up of some of the biggest pop banger singles ever, and that’s not the sort of thing I would have thought would be such a huge part of my listening atmosphere a few years back.
But as I hope I’ve begun to communicate to you, Chappell is an absolute master of the exact kind of pop I love. So many of the things that make pop a bit of a maligned genre are getting played with and subverted and made more meaningful by this new generation of alt pop artists. In Chappell’s case, she loves to take things that might ordinarily be seen as tacky or gauche or shallow and plumb them for hidden depths.
The very concept of the album plays with the tacky superficiality of midwestern American culture (something I am very very familiar with growing up in Indiana). But Chappell doesn’t do so with hatred or dismissal of the culture of her hometown – it’s with genuine emotional care and love.
Anyway, I’m getting distracted talking big picture, so let me talk about the song from this album I love the most. On the surface, “After Midnight” is a pretty simple party song that plays with fairly well-tred thematic ground. After midnight, things get freaky! Inhibitions are low, anything could happen!
But there’s an extra element added here that I just love. In this song and a few times throughout the album, Chappell brings in the character of her mother, a woman who similarly grew up in the superficiality of the Midwest but unlike her daughter never ended up escaping. In songs like “Pink Pony Club” and this one, she ends up being a sort of inner conscience Chappell’s narrators have to contend with.
Here, the song opens with a piece of advice from this absent mother, who warns that staying out late and losing control is shameful for a “good girl” to do. With this statement in place, we see the narrator discover for herself that she likes the feeling of losing control, of kissing anyone she wants, of getting all dressed up and dancing any way she likes.
See what’s happening here? Where a song with the simple message “let’s get wild and loose and have fun” is a dime a dozen, a song where we see a narrator discover that she loves the feeling of freedom that comes from this kind of situation despite having an upbringing that told her that this kind of feeling should be shameful is something new and interesting and fun. And… likely relatable for a lot of people.
Plus, I mean… it’s a bop.
I’m really excited to see what Chappell Roan does now. I’m going to get to see her open for my #2 artist this year, and I’m super excited to see where she goes next. She has so much potential.
This past week was the third anniversary of Taylor Swift’s ninth studio album, evermore. On December 11th, 2020, just five months after the surprise release of her eighth studio album, folklore, she did perhaps the only thing more unexpected than surprise-dropping one album – surprise-dropping another.
Two days later (ironically on Taylor Swift’s birthday, though I didn’t know it at the time), I, encouraged by my lifelong Swiftie friend Sam, decided to give the album a review, intrigued by the novelty of me, a staunch Taylor Swift non-enjoyer, giving my opinion on it. That initial review sparked a curiosity that would lead me on a two-month marathon review session of all of Taylor’s discography which I entitled “The Swiftening”. Little did I know, what would start out as a novelty blog series idea would become a fandom for me.
So, at the same time that Swifties celebrate the three-year anniversary of one of Taylor’s most thematically interesting albums, I also get to celebrate my three-year anniversary of Swiftieism.
One of the things about running a blog like this for as long as I have is the fact that I can very easily go back and view my perspectives and opinions from years ago. This can sometimes be something fun and cool – but in this particular case, this is a personal embarrassment for me. The truth is, my initial review of evermore makes me absolutely cringe.
Perhaps this was just a flaw of the project, but I was approaching an album I would soon come to consider one of my favorites of all time, and my favorite Taylor album period, with absolutely zero knowledge or understanding of Taylor Swift. And while it worked out in a few of these albums’ favor that they were getting rerecordings, and thus I could accurately reflect my changing opinions from the Swiftening review to the rerecording review, the same could not happen for evermore, which would not be getting a rerecording.
So I’m faced with a choice. Let my weird, misguided, nothing opinions on one of my most beloved albums stand? Or, do I issue a correction?
Here stands the correction. Allow me to engage in a bit of a conversation with my past self so I can finally do justice to evermore. I will be pulling quotes from the original post and responding to them, letting you know the truth.
Let the pain begin.
“Over the years, I have held fast to the concept that I am not a fan of Taylor Swift. Borne of my childhood days of rejecting femininity wherever I saw it in a misguided attempt to seem cool and smart, I nonetheless, with maturity, have never found myself able to truly call myself a fan. I think she’s a great songwriter, but I find her vocals a little lacking.”
I think this was one of the more clear-headed things I said back then. To this day I do really feel that most of my opinion of Taylor Swift was borne of misguided assumptions and internalized misogyny. I do think there is something to be said about the impression that her hits leave about her discography compared to how it actually is, but I’ve grown to love even some of her more prickly radio singles with the added benefit of context. (“Look What You Made Me Do” is the biggest example that comes to mind).
What I don’t exactly agree with now is my assessment of her singing ability. This is something I’ve heard a lot from non-fans, and while I suppose I see where it comes from, I think it’s a tad bit unfair. Taylor Swift is first and foremost a singer-songwriter, and while there are certainly singer-songwriters with incredible and notable vocal talent, the key to this type of artist’s success isn’t a Ferrari of a voice. It’s about being able to convey the emotion and complexity of the lyrics. And Taylor is absolutely able to convey a broad and complex range of emotions with her voice.
“Her singing is strong but not operatic, expressive but not flamboyant, perched at the border of a conversational or confessional tone. In effect, it’s a voice made to fit the lyrics—neither overwhelming nor underwhelming, an intensification and distillation of what’s extraordinary in ordinary life.”
This is how I feel exactly. She isn’t an Ariana Grande or a Mariah Carey or a Kelly Clarkson, but she doesn’t have to be. The strength of her music comes through in the words. Much like the old musical adage that “when your emotion grows too strong to speak it, you sing it”, Taylor Swift’s voice feels like what it would sound like when an ordinary person finds the voice to explain some of the most complicated emotions they could.
I will also say that I think her vocal talent has improved immensely across her career. And, of course, right? She got famous as a teenager and worked and grew and improved over the course of her life. Anyone can hear it in the comparison between her rerecordings and the originals.
“Plus, her fast descent into pop never seemed to suit her, in my opinion. She is a singer-songwriter, with her skills strong in the latter and weak in the former, and that just never seemed to gel well with pop. Even in “ME!”, her team-up with one of my favorite pop artists, Brendon Urie, she could never rise above many of her contemporaries in the same genre.”
While I still don’t particularly care for “ME!”, calling Brendon Urie “one of my favorite pop artists”? Cringe. There’s nothing else to say about it. That’s cringe. Ironically, looking back on what has happened to Urie’s career since then, I can’t help but wonder if his influence is what threw that song off the rails in the first place. I mean… this is the man who thought “Viva Las Vengeance” was going to be an alt pop hit.
On Taylor’s relationship with pop, though… I once again think this perception was due to my experience with Taylor’s hits. I actually think some of her most shining pop moments are deep cuts on her discography, or at least were at the time I wrote this. “Cruel Summer” comes to mind, or lesser hits like “Style”. But I mostly don’t agree with this anymore. I think Taylor is a pretty good pop star, she’s just not as keen as some of her contemporaries to sacrifice her lyricism for danceability. In the end, I’m glad she’s like that – she plays to her strengths.
“But now, she seemed to have found a genre that worked with her talents and also appealed to my genre tastes more. Truly dangerous. But I still didn’t find in it the magic key to retroactively adoring everything else she’s made.”
I have nothing to say about this other than… oh the irony.
“evermore is beautiful in much the same way its older sister album is – the stripped-down, acoustic wandering of the instrumentals suits Swift’s writing style so much better than her previous genre explorations have. Her lyric-writing is focused in story, in unfolding imagery and language, and lessening the production allows these sparkling moments of lyrical beauty to land so much heavier.”
I agree… mostly. What I have come to feel nowadays is a little less “folklore and evermore were Taylor Swift finally finding a genre that suits her” and more “folklore and evermore are Taylor Swift finding a genre that showcases her talents most to people unfamiliar with her previous work.” Though they are definitely more “alt” in their stylings, they ironically made Taylor Swift’s strengths far more accessible to a general audience by wrapping them in the trappings of a strong singer-songwriter.
See, this is where the confusion about her ability to do pop stems from, I think. When it’s surrounded by a funky dance beat, I don’t think most people like to pay attention to depth and complexity. I don’t necessarily think this is wrong – pop music is generally about being fun and easy to listen to – but I do think it often causes the miscommunication between Taylor’s pop music and a listener unprepared to deal with what she’s talking about.
Take “Look What You Made Me Do”, for example. Don’t laugh, but knowing the context and story behind this song adds a lot of depth to what Taylor was trying to pull off with her image here. This was an intentional villain era, the hard shell around an album about lowering your defenses and being vulnerable. However, many of the things that lend this thematic depth to the song – the prickliness of the production, the jarring feeling of the verse-chorus pattern, the hammy lyrics – are also what turned people off because they were also what made the song fail their expectations for a pop song.
By comparison, people come to expect that a folksy guitar will surround deep and thematically interesting storytelling, so I think folklore and evermore were the first albums for many – myself included – to put the listener into a headspace to actually notice some of the storytelling and lyricism that has always been present in Taylor’s music.
All that aside, though, allow me to gush about the lushness and beauty of evermore’s soundscape. The unified sound of the album is interior, glimmering, like the warm glow of a candle in a darkened cabin. Aaron Dessner absolutely went off in the texture and beauty of this album, and it’s what makes me continue to turn to it as a sort of auditory warm blanket. More on that later.
“There are moments of weakness, though. A few songs get a bit lost in the murky sadness that pervades the entire album. For example, “tolerate it” feels a bit too amorphous to really let the (honestly quite well-written) lyrics land.“
Don’t kill me, but this is one of my negative takes on the album I kind of actually still feel a little. I do appreciate the ways the song’s sound lends meaning to it. The unsteady piano notes make you feel the precarious position of the singer in this relationship – her nervousness, the way she looks to her partner for cues on how to act. The amorphousness I mention here come from that. I think this song shines most as the piece of performance art it becomes on the Eras Tour stage.
“And for how strong the opening few songs of the album are, it dips a bit in quality toward the end. “ivy” feels a little stale and “cowboy like me” is a cute concept, but the slow country-styled sound just doesn’t manage to stand out in the end.“
Oh my GOD I was so wrong!! I was so wrong!! It’s insane!!
The final tracks of evermore are actually the strongest, hands-down. My favorite way to listen to this album, condensed, by the way, is to hit play on “coney island” and let the album ride out.
“ivy” is absolutely not stale, and I’m not sure why I even came to think this. As far as storytelling on this album goes, this is the most shining moment. It’s an Austen-like tale of forbidden love between a married woman and her cavalier lover, told in some of the most beautiful language I’ve ever seen in song. I mean, come on, this chorus?
“Oh, goddamn, my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand / Taking mine, when it’s been promised to another / Oh, I can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland / My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I’m covered in you.”
Just… where to start? The double meaning of taking a hand that has been promised to another in marriage? The imagery of her solid stone home being infiltrated by the ivy – the beautiful way that illustrates that feeling of being overtaken by love without realizing it? The dual way it suggests that said love might weaken the foundations of the home she has built for herself, just as it could lead to the end of her marriage?
Plus, the way this song ends. The anger and resignation that comes through – the way character and complexity is portrayed so beautifully in such a short amount of time. “ivy” is a masterclass.
And “cowboy like me”? More than just a novelty. I’ll chalk some of this up to me not yet going through my cowboy phase a la Orville Peck, but there is so much thematic resonance to find, and it’s about more than just a silly yeehaw cowboy song to throw back to Taylor’s country roots.
The song starts in the middle of a story, as two vagabond-types meet on the dance floor, both with their well-backed-up assumptions that a romance between the two could never work out. We then learn that things have changed – “Now I know I’m never gonna love again.”
We come to understand that this seemingly dark phrase is actually a positive one – the narrator won’t love again because she has fallen in love with this one person forever. The slow croon of the lyrics discusses why. These are two people who understand each other innately because they have the same nature of solitude. They’re both, in a sense, lone cowboys.
This is a gorgeous love song that uses the symbol of the cowboy in a very particular way to characterize the two lovers.
Swift’s other collaborations, though, are quite hit-or-miss. “coney island” is elevated from an average melancholy song of lost love thanks to the contribution of The National. I have always loved lead vocalist Matt Berninger’s deep and velvety tone, and through the contrast between his and Swift’s vocals are definitely unique and a bit difficult to adjust to, I think they add a lot of punch to a song that would otherwise be quite forgettable.
Again with the forgettable?
Okay, can I admit something to you? Back when I still did these posts on a weekly basis, I would often feel a bit rushed. In the case of album reviews like this one, I sometimes found myself feeling like I didn’t have time to form fully thought-out opinions of many of the songs. Recently I’ve found that the better way to handle discussing songs that I just didn’t have the time to fully grasp is to just not talk about them at all, but back when I still thought I needed to address every song, I used to sometimes fall back on “Well, I didn’t personally find myself moved to spend much time with this song, therefore it is forgettable.”
While, three years later, I wouldn’t say “coney island” is my favorite song on evermore, I certainly wouldn’t call it a forgettable song. If anything, it’s a bit of an obtuse song. The lyrics seem to describe two lovers longing for one another after the relationship has ended or reached some sort of snag. However, the puzzling thing is the abstract nature of much of the imagery.
Many Swifties have connected certain images in the song to different eras of Swift’s career. For example, “Were you standing in the hallway with a big cake? / Happy birthday” is often considered a reference to the song “The Moment I Knew” from Red, which features a birthday party, and “When I got into the accident / The sight that flashed before me was your face” is a reference to the car crash depicted in the bridge of “Style”. To me, this indicates that the song might have some sort of connection to, perhaps, the balance of her love life with her career. Though, if it is true that several eras are being referenced, it indicates that she likely isn’t talking about any one lover, but rather a pattern of conflict between career and personal that has taken place throughout her life.
Still, I do often find myself beating my head against the wall when it comes to figuring out this song. I do think it’s beautiful and conveys a very particular regret and melancholy, though.
The titular “evermore”, though, doesn’t have the same distinction. It’s pretty enough, I suppose, but nothing to get all that excited about, and nothing particularly new.
No sentence ever penned by this hand has ever made me angrier. I want to invent time travel so I can go back and get in a fist-fight with the version of me who would write something so absolutely awful.
“evermore” was one of the four songs I was so lucky to get in the two sets of surprise songs I witnessed, performed on the piano in Cincinnati on June 30th. Hearing the opening piano notes ring into the cavernous expanse of Paycor Stadium brought actual tears to my eyes. I threw my hands to my mouth with such ferocity I think I remember accidentally elbowing the teenage girl sitting beside me.
“evermore” is not simply “pretty.” It is a song about the deepest most terrible depths of sadness one can go through. It is about looking back at a dark, dark time in your life with the uncomfortable feeling that you may be a major part of the reason that time was so dark. It is about regretting how you acted when you were at your lowest point, even while acknowledging the reasons you would act that way. It is about feeling like there is no end to the things you’re struggling with.
That unending sadness is exemplified by the refrain – “I had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore.”
But then, in the bridge, it shifts to a story of pushing against that despair. In the final part of the bridge, Taylor sings:
“And when I was shipwrecked, I thought of you / In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you / And it was real enough to get me through / I swear, you were there.”
What was before an entirely solitary song, focused only on the thoughts of despair of this narrator, a second person is brought in. We don’t know who, but we know that it was love for this person that got the narrator through this storm. And even more fascinatingly, there’s a strong indication that this person isn’t even physically there – only present in thoughts and dreams, “real enough” to get the narrator through.
Still, like a spell, the words dismiss the intensity of the piano line, which calms back down into the way it was at the beginning. However, the lyrics change. She ends it on this note:
“And I was catching my breath / Floorboards of a cabin creaking under my step / And I couldn’t be sure, I had a feeling so peculiar / This pain wouldn’t be for evermore.”
In direct contrast to the harsh winter imagery of the rest of the song, the narrator finds herself in a warm cabin the last line. Finally able to catch her breath, she realizes that there is hope and there is an end to the despair she is feeling. The pain wouldn’t be for evermore.
“evermore” is the final song of the original tracklist of the album it lends its name to. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is the song Taylor chose to represent this album.
Throughout evermore are many narratives, many of which deal with great pain. Sure, there are some love songs along the way, but they’re almost always tinged with a bit of darkness or anxiety. I would argue “evermore” (the track) is one of the most tragic, at least in its beginning. It is a truly painful song. But the important thing about it, and evermore as an album, is the way it also finds its way toward hope. Toward moving forward.
One of the things that continually brings me back to this album again and again and again in the three years I’ve had it in my life is this dual nature. It’s a really painful album at times. There are depths of great sadness here. I often cry at many of the songs in this album. But at all times there is a feeling of comfort and love and, ultimately, joy, which undercuts the darkness.
The people whose stories are told in this album suffer for their love, but ultimately we come to understand through this suffering how that love was worth it anyway. This is, I think, the core of evermore, an album about love that carries us through the darkness, even when that love might sometimes be its source.
This is the sort of thing I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand less than 48 hours from the release of an album from an artist I didn’t even really give a fair consideration. But in a lot of ways, I have grown with this album, seen it take on many forms in my heart.
I can’t seriously picture any piece of work Taylor could create that could unseat this album’s spot as my favorite of her albums, though I am happy to see her try. In the meantime, though, I can finally rest easy knowing that I gave this beautiful album its fair shot now, even if it took a little while for me to really get my understanding there.
On May 24th, 2023, Taylor Swift announced the release of a special deluxe version of her newest album, Midnights, exclusively sold at the merchandise stands of her Eras Tour.
The deluxe version, called the “Late Night Edition”, featured the original 13 tracks of the album, a few of the “3 am edition” vault tracks, two remixes of “Snow on the Beach” and “Karma” respectively, and an entirely new track, “You’re Losing Me”.
It was just over a month after the announcement that Taylor had split from her 6-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn, and many fans took one look at the title and knew what the song would be addressing. It’s hard to explain how, but I was one of those fans who just knew. I knew before pressing play on the – ahem – completely legally acquired online version of the track that weekend that what I was about to hear was an explanation. It just made sense.
The day the split was announced, I will admit, I felt real grief. Being a fan of Taylor Swift feels a lot like having a very talented, very famous friend, and that day felt like hearing that friend had just broken up with her longtime partner. Confusion and sadness and directionless anger toward whoever could have caused such negativity to befall a dear friend.
Adding on to the sadness amongst the fandom was the many, many love songs Taylor had written about this relationship, songs that felt extra special when you knew the real love it was based on. Five albums worth.
When you’re a fan of Taylor Swift, it’s very difficult not to find the artist’s real life bleeding into the experience of enjoying her art. It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t a fan, but diaristic confessions have always been an integral part of Taylor’s brand. Certainly, its role and form has shifted along the course of her 17-year career. She no longer hides secret messages in lyric booklets, jokes openly about her relationships on Ellen or SNL, or posts liberally to social media, but her music and its universe of references communicates so much to long-time fans and new fans who have done their research.
This is intentional. It’s a part of Taylor’s art, and it’s a part that fans respond to. Swifties take great pains to catalogue the real life inspirations behind every one of her songs, and openly debate what songs could be referencing to this day. For an incredibly recent example, Midnights saw arguments over whether the relationship referenced in “Midnight Rain” could be hers with Tom Hiddleston or Taylor Lautner or if it could be referencing a boy she knew before becoming famous.
Real-life speculation is just par for the course for Swifties, and Taylor knows this. She’s a smart businesswoman who has been doing this for years, and she absolutely keeps it in mind in her decisions. In the case of “You’re Losing Me”, she clearly didn’t want to draw attention to the breakup or make her entire image about it. She was, after all, in the early stages of her soon-to-be record-breaking Eras Tour. But it was clear she wanted to say something to those fans that were paying attention, who were already speculating on what finally ended the relationship.
So, Taylor put out this bonus track, available only to those fans who were there in attendance at tour or who knew how to get a hold of an upload from someone who was. It was a subtle message, a quiet comment on the break that only those who would understand would stumble upon. A mastermind move from the mastermind herself.
“You’re Losing Me” is perhaps one of the saddest songs Taylor has ever released, even if you don’t know the context. It’s a song about the confusion of a relationship ending because the other person doesn’t want to put in the effort anymore. And it told us what happened – Joe had checked out. He wasn’t willing to deal with the stress of dating Taylor Swift anymore, but he also wasn’t willing to put in the emotional effort of ending it himself.
In the most devastating part of the song, Taylor sings, “And I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people-pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.”
He didn’t want to marry her. This was the message Taylor wanted fans to know, a major sticking point in what ended a relationship that inspired so many love songs, including Lover’s “Paper Rings”, with it’s jubilant chorus: “I like shiny things, but I’d marry you with paper rings.”
That was how the song would stay for the next six months, an extremely niche little track fueling thousands of terse conversations between fans, until this past week. In light of Spotify naming Taylor the platform’s Global Top Artist of 2023, she tweeted her thanks and finally made the song available on streaming.
Um ok this is unreal?? I just wanted to say to anyone who listened to my music this year, anywhere in the world, thank you. Getting named Spotify’s Global Top Artist in 2023 is truly the best birthday/holiday gift you could’ve given me. We’ve seriously had THE MOST fun this year… pic.twitter.com/HZVkjvxp2D
Jack Antonoff, who produced and co-wrote the track with Taylor, posted a story on his Instagram celebrating the release, including in his message the date that the song was first written – December 5th, 2021.
Up until that point, fan assumption had been that “You’re Losing Me” was a more recently-written track, written just before or just after the end of the relationship in Spring 2023. Though it was called a vault track from Midnights, which had released that past October, most assumed that the track couldn’t have actually been written for the album. The timing just didn’t work. If that track had been written before Fall 2022, it would mean she had to have felt that way for months if not longer. That couldn’t be right. Right?
But with this information, the length of the end of the relationship suddenly became painfully obvious to fans. Taylor had been feeling that about her relationship for at least a year and a half before it actually ended. Swiftie social media went into a frenzy of anger at Joe Alwyn and sadness for Taylor.
But, I want to take a step back, because I have a guess at what you might be thinking right now. Doesn’t it all seem a bit much? Like, okay, global superstar Taylor Swift is secretly sending messages to her fans about the end of her relationship through music, sure. I’m sure your best friend Taylor is really sad about her breakup, that must be so hard for you. But don’t you think all this speculation might be a little invasive?
And to answer all that… you’re right.
I became a fan of Taylor Swift in 2021, a little before things started to get really crazy in Swiftieland. Midnights didn’t yet exist, nor did the Eras Tour, but 2020’s folklore and evermore had brought a ton of fans into the fold who hadn’t before appreciated Taylor’s songwriting and craft, myself included. Before being a fan of Taylor’s, I had never really been a fan of an artist so huge and popular. And I certainly had never been presented with such a detailed history of a person I was a fan of before.
As I’ve said, diaristic and personal confessions are just an unavoidable part of Taylor’s career. Her early success was built on the way she was unafraid to be honest about her heartbreaks and crushes and hopes and dreams. But into the 1989 era, Taylor was starting to find out that being an adult and having adult relationships that work is extremely difficult when everyone is looking at you, absorbing every little detail. So, she tried to backpedal a little – she tried to craft a bit more of a streamlined narrative. She tried to date in secret. And… it went… well… let’s just say it went badly.
So, in 2016, Taylor left the spotlight. She deleted all of her social media posts and went dark for an entire year. An artist that had once intentionally put her life on display suddenly disappeared as she, apparently, reassessed her relationship with the spotlight.
During that time was when she first met and started dating Joe Alwyn. Though he was also famous…ish, his smaller profile made it possible for her to actually have a relationship out of the view of the public. And when she reappeared in 2018 for reputation, she had love song after love song about the joy she felt being able to love someone without everyone looking at her. Somewhat contradictory as it was, she was still writing honest songs about her life, but that honesty included the message of “I don’t enjoy being observed at all times.”
In all the albums since, this contradiction has always been at play. Taylor hasn’t ever not been confessional in her music, and fans have never not noticed. But there’s also the real sense that there must exist a line somewhere. There must be a boundary between enjoying Taylor’s art for the meaning it was intended to have about her life and being invasive in the life of a stranger. I think the release of “You’re Losing Me” exemplifies this – Taylor’s obvious desire to communicate with fans about her feelings (after all, she could have just not put out a song about the end of the relationship at all), but her desire to do so in a controlled manner, out of the eyesight of those who don’t… for lack of a better word… care about her and her life.
Still, it’s not as if fans are incapable of stepping over that boundary. If you think this isn’t something Swifties worry about, you’re dead wrong. Every time something major happens, including April 2023 when the end of the relationship with Joe was revealed, Swifties argue how much discussion and speculation about Taylor’s life is too much.
What makes this problem tricky is that every person with feelings on where they stand tend to imagine everyone else belonging to one of two camps. The first, your quintessential problematic Swiftie, is ravenous for gossip about Taylor. This hypothetical person is more than willing to make up farfetched ideas about her life based on the smallest of indications, and wants nothing more than to put these speculations on display for all to see. The other hypothetical is the total abstainer, the person who, monk-like, fully ignores Taylor’s life and refuses to engage with any discussion of the real inspirations she may pull from in her music.
The reality is, though, that most people fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, myself included. I certainly started out trying to be more of the latter. I wasn’t used to being a fan of a person with such a publicized life, and the massive amount of detail available to me about Taylor made me uncomfortable. I drew away from a lot of conversations about songs and the connections between them, unsure of how to navigate them.
But the longer I remained in Taylor Swift circles, the more I realized that my attitude wasn’t aligning with the actual art. Closing my eyes and covering my ears and pretending not to know about Taylor’s life was making me miss a lot of very intentional artistic choices she was making.
Taylor Swift does not accidentally reference her own life. She, perhaps more than anyone else in the world, knows exactly what she is doing when she references her own life in her art. When she wrote “It’s been 2,190 days of our love blackout” in “Glitch”, she couldn’t possibly have been ignorant of the fact that many fans would be trying to figure out what that span of time was referencing. (If you’re wondering, that’s 6 years. Guess who she was in a relationship with for six years?) When she sells a scarf in her merch store, she knows that fans know about the scarf she left, either literally or metaphorically, at Jake Gyllenhaal’s house. When, in the newly released 1989 vault, she says “Blue dress on a boat”, she knows that fans frequently circulate a 2013 picture of her sitting alone in a blue dress on a boat, often considered a picture of the aftermath of her and Harry Styles breaking up.
Frankly, it’s impossible to be a Taylor Swift fan without her life seeping in because she herself puts these details in. If she didn’t want fans to know or speculate about these details, she wouldn’t put them in the songs.
And so, this is where I’ve come to draw the line. If Taylor Swift herself is willing to speak about something in her art, who am I to say it’s wrong for fans to talk about that same thing?
You may notice that this line is incredibly murky. Because while yes, to take an example from the list above, it might be obviously acceptable to speculate about the fated “All Too Well” scarf, is it then okay to speculate that the scarf might be a metaphor for Taylor’s virginity?
Well, the artist herself seemed a little uncomfortable (jokingly or not) by that particular read, but she didn’t shoot it down entirely, did she? She may have even supported it.
But then, suddenly, we’re talking on the internet about when and where and to whom a young woman may have lost her virginity and oh boy, doesn’t that seem a little invasive? A little too much?
The problem with this conversation is that it’s nuanced, and there’s no easy answer on where the boundary is or should be. For many, this might be a sign that you should just give up and not care about having it entirely. For many, it’s a sign that it should be the only conversation and… well, that doesn’t feel right either. But it is also a fascinating problem created by Taylor’s very particular brand of honesty – brutal in its depth and emotionality. So very honest that even fans reading songs for their intended meanings can be seen as invasive. “You’re Losing Me” is one such song.
In the conversation surrounding the new knowledge of the song’s creation, this conversation inevitably began again. While many Swifties tried to fit the song’s creation in December of 2021 into the narrative (Perhaps she and Joe had been experiencing problems off and on but were committed to working it out? Or maybe they were on some sort of break when the song was written, but got back together afterward?), many other Swifties were chastising the first group for attempting to read what this new information might mean. Her art deserved to stand on its own.
But, like, that didn’t seem right either, because Jack Antonoff did not release this information without Taylor’s approval. The two are best friends and frequent collaborators – there was no way he had released this information with Taylor’s knowledge and explicit approval.
So, what, then? Does this kind of outside information get to count too, if we can reasonably enough assume that Taylor had approved it? But how can you even make that determination? What about gossip received from anonymous sources? It’s pretty common for PR teams to release information about celebrities anonymously as a method of controlling a narrative, and it’s a tactic that Taylor’s own PR team has employed on numerous occasions, including when the news of her split with Joe went public.
I wish I knew what to do. Believe me, it’s something that bothers me frequently, and if I knew exactly what to do with this problem I would be happily telling you right now. But the fact of the matter, for me, is that being cautious of the possibility that you can overstep is important. Being able to realize when things might be going too far is, I think, something that should be a goal of any fandom, in particular Swift’s.
But when have we reached that goal? How will we know when we’ve succeeded? I don’t think we ever can. Still, it’s worth trying.
Sorry for the radio silence from me! I had every intention of posting this about two weeks ago, but I have been battling the worst chest cold of my entire life on top of all of the end-of-semester and holiday responsibilities that come about this time of year. So, this blog got put on hold for a bit.
Good news is, I think I’m back on my regular schedule for the rest of the year. I have some ideas for upcoming posts and the end of the year is always a fun time on Absoludicrous, so watch this space.
One of my favorite activities as a kid was to log onto GirlsGoGames and peruse its extensive collection of dress-up games. I was never much into actual dolls as a kid, but something about the novelty of thousands of static images of women I could dress with even more thousands of static images of dresses and shirts and pants and skirts and accessories.
With the death of Adobe Flash in 2020, many of these dress-up game websites went down too, and even then I had mostly long since abandoned this after-school habit of gathering around a computer with some friends and playing these games endlessly.
But if the events of this week suggest anything, they suggest that there is some remnant of that little girl still alive inside me.
I had only heard of the Style Savvy series in passing. Of Nintendo’s long and storied list of IPs, it’s certainly not in the top spots of most beloved and discussed. But, ironically for much the same age range that was gathered around a desktop playing GirlsGoGames, Style Savvy was the fashion game of choice on Nintendo DS and 3DS. The games tasked the player with running their very own fashion boutique, with the gameplay including styling outfits for customers based on their needs and trading with and visiting the shops of other players. The first game released in 2008, with its three sequel installments releasing in 2012, 2014, and 2017.
After 2017, though, the series seemed to go a bit dormant. As the Nintendo Switch became the primary system Nintendo released games for, fans hoped that Style Savvy might make the jump.
One of my closest childhood friends was one of the people advocating for the Style Savvy series, and she isn’t alone. Despite not being a very well-popularized series, it has its very intense fans, my impression being that many of them fell in love with the series as kids and have stuck with it for every installment after.
It was on her recommendation that I took notice when, finally, it was announced that Style Savvy would get its Switch installment under a new name and a slightly different concept (more or less) – Fashion Dreamer.
Fashion Dreamer, created by the same company as Style Savvy, is not considered a direct sequel to the original series, but has been marketed as a spiritual successor. It also involves running your own boutique and fulfilling outfit creation requests from a variety of characters. It also involves online features, allowing you to get items from other players and visit their boutiques.
However, without having played any of the original games, I can tell that there’s a bit of a disconnect between these two seemingly similar games, which has caused many of the reviews of Fashion Dreamer to skew negative.
Now, obviously, I won’t name myself the authority on whether or not Fashion Dreamer is a good successor to Style Savvy. This is simply not an assessment I have the experience to make. But I have been playing this game somewhat incessantly since its release last Friday, so I wanted to give my perspective on it as its own standalone game.
I begin with the things that have really hooked me about this game – its online features. When I first got it, I had made my peace with the fact that I would likely have to shell out again for Nintendo Online. I have implied it in some of my previous Pokémon reviews, but I deeply resent Nintendo Online and the way it puts features that would have been included in the past behind a pay-per-month paywall. Still, I can afford it, and it looked like a lot of the game existed online, so I was ready to do what needed to be done.
So, imagine my surprise when I realized that the online features of this game were entirely included. Perhaps there’s something sad about beginning a review by talking about the way I was surprised this game didn’t take advantage of me the way other recent games have… but here we are.
It is relevant, though, because I feel like the online features are the thing that make this game the stickiest for me so far. You can encounter NPC characters around the game’s world, given quests to style them based on their requests and the current trends of the area, but when playing online you also encounter various other players, who also have favorite styles set. You can style them as well, and the player will get your styled outfit and an option to get all of the clothes included in it for free.
I find the outfit creation itself to be really fun and engaging. You get to choose between your own collection and a perhaps somewhat curated collection of game-chosen outfits to fit whatever prompt the NPC or player you’re styling gives you. I find the prompts for the NPCs to be relatively varied and usually inspirational, though they can at times be a bit difficult to understand. This could come down to the very translated feel of the dialogue and text in this game… or it could come down to the way certain terms are left to the player to figure out. For example, the characters often request items of a certain rarity, but never use the game’s actual language (a number of stars) to communicate this. It then takes trial and error to figure out what they actually want.
I also think the UI of the styling mode leaves a bit to be desired. Beyond filtering for item type, there’s no real search feature. So, if a character requests, for example, blue socks, you have to filter out the socks and hunt for the blue ones yourself. This is not too terrible at first but quickly becomes wildly difficult as your collection grows.
I also find it frustrating that you can’t zoom in on your character while you style them. In most cases this isn’t a huge deal, but sometimes when you’re choosing small accessories, it’s impossible to tell what color they actually are with the full-body view you’re locked to.
Still, I do like the number of clothing options available in the game (with more reportedly to come). There’s a good mix of styles, in my opinion, and though I wish they went fully into unisex clothing that can be worn by everyone, I do appreciate the diversity of styles available to each “type” of avatar.
The boutiques that each player can customize and share is another aspect of online play, where once again you can choose to explore the boutique of any player you encounter and save any of the clothing items they display. Personally, I found this feature a little less instantly engaging, though, perhaps because of the limited selection of boutique customization features and the somewhat weird setup of the boutique. The grid you’re allowed to decorate is a tiny square in the middle of a circular space, meaning you can’t ever actually fill up the whole space. It’s just kind of awkward.
Still, you may have noticed another key aspect of these online features which, I think, are a pretty interesting secret of this game’s addicting nature – the ease at which you can acquire new clothing items.
The currency system in this game mostly revolves around buying patterns for creating clothing items yourself and buying furniture and customization options for your boutique, but individual clothing items can just be grabbed for free from any player, real or NPC, you encounter. In a game about trends and style, this creates an interesting mirror to real life fashion trends. When you see another player wearing something, or see an NPC wearing something another player put them in, it’s as easy as pushing a button for you to get that item and start using it in your own styles. These styles then, in turn, end up showing up in other players’ games via your character styling theirs or via your stylings of NPCs showing up in other players’ games… and so on and so forth.
This means the game can actually track the popularity of some individual clothing items, creating these sort of “hot item” lists that then make the most popular items even more widely available.
Anyway, it’s a fascinating system for item acquisition that I’ve literally never seen before in any other game. It almost makes the experience feel more like a collect-a-thon than a business sim. You aren’t a business-minded boutique owner, you’re a fashion curator adding to your collection.
The other online aspect of the game is the social media features, which I’m far more mixed on. You can take photos of your outfits throughout your gameplay and post them to a sort of in-game Instagram feed. This is then given a number of likes and shares that seems to be automated – not from actual real players. However, you can see other player feedback in the form of your “hot item” – an item you styled that you can essentially make available to every other player. Whenever another player decides to add your hot item to their collection, you get a notification and some points.
The idea of that is nice, but in practice it very quickly got out of hand. I put up a floral pair of shorts I designed on the first day of playing, went to sleep, and then woke up to a slow and unceasing crawl of notification after notification after notification, because the game insists upon individually notifying you of each time an item is favorited, and you have to manually accept the points you earn in this way by pulling up a menu and hitting a button. It is… extremely annoying.
I’ll also say that any validation you receive in this way feels a tad hollow when you consider how shallow the custom clothing creation features in this game really are. Yes, there’s a pretty huge selection of different clothing patterns, but once you have a pattern there’s not a whole lot you can do to customize it beyond changing its color. You can’t even choose to put on your own pattern – some clothing items just come pre-patterned. In practice, my pair of floral shorts would likely end up looking exactly like a pair of floral shorts someone else ended up making, and the difference in popularity between mine and theirs just came down to which pair a mysterious algorithm within the game chose to show other players more.
This seems strange to me when compared to another small feature in the game where you can design a logo for your boutique. This creator is way more detailed than the clothing one, with layering options and a huge selection of patterns, graphics, gradients, pictures, and more. I wish a bit more of this customizability had made it into the clothing creator – I think that’s the sort of thing that would really push the sharing features of this game to the next level. Imagine how cool it would be to find something truly unique designed by another player – not just purple t-shirt number 73. It’s just a bit of wasted potential here that could be so cool if pushed a little further.
I’ll admit I haven’t gotten much time with the single player aspect of this game, but I will say that the progression of the online mode did go by extremely quickly. I doubt I’m some sort of maestro, but I still managed to ascend all of the levels and unlock all of the worlds within the first few days or so of regular play. It also appears to me that in the non-online mode, the primary method of gaining the game’s currency is the absolutely awful bingo feature.
Basically, when you style characters you are sometimes awarded bingo tickets. These tickets can be redeemed, one ticket per spin, for a bingo game that you only receive points for if you get a bingo. To repeat – each of the many tickets you have need to be individually used to do an individual spin of a bingo game… over and over… just to earn a few measly points. Boring, stupid, not fun. I would deal with the glacially repetitive notifications over and over to avoid having to repeatedly play the world’s most boring gacha game.
Still, for all the things that are weird and silly and a little off about this game, I have to say that I really enjoyed playing it. It’s easy and fun and creative and a little screwball, but I think it has potential to be something really cool on its own if allowed the time to grow and become its own franchise. Now… will that happen? Eh. Who knows? Seems like Style Savvy fans aren’t overall very happy with it, so it may end up getting scrapped. But, I’m still going to enjoy this silly little fashion game for the time being.
The original project of Taylor Swift’s rerecords was simple enough. After negotiations to buy the rights to her first six albums from her original record company, Big Machine Records, fell through, Taylor set out to use her rights to the songs themselves to rerecord each of them. This could, in theory, muscle out the original versions for streaming and sales dollars and effectively make her back catalogue worthless to the people who saw it as merely an investment and not a result of her at the time 12-year career.
In order for this project to work, the rerecords needed to be faithful enough recreations to disincentivize fans and casual listeners alike from going back to the original versions. But they also needed to have something extra – something new, something exciting to entice people who already bought the original version to go out and buy the new one, too.
Fearless was the first of Taylor’s album to receive a rerecord, and though it was done so lovingly, it’s obvious that it was also done conservatively. After all, though small rerecording projects have happened here and there, Taylor’s mission to rerecord so many beloved and successful albums in one go was basically unprecedented. So, her second studio album got all of its hits recreated essentially as faithfully as possible, with the addition of a few bonus tracks from the time period to sweeten the deal. Upload a few new official lyric videos to YouTube to make sure nobody’s clicking on original version lyric videos and bingo – you’ve got a rerecord.
But Fearless was a success, and the outpouring of support for Taylor and her project to reclaim her work made it clear that the project may not just be viable – it could even be profitable for Taylor and her team. So along came Red, and with it a seeming novelty in the form of its ten-minute version of fan-favorite track “All Too Well.”
This time, though, there was more to the process. Red got an entire short film to accompany the extended “All Too Well,” and the hype surrounding the release made it into the mainstream. People not even all that into Taylor joked about Jake Gyllenhaal and the scarf he still had stashed somewhere, supposedly.
And so, Speak Nowcame next, with its own original music video for one of the vault tracks, plus a surreal appearance from former beau Taylor Lautner in the video and on stage of her Eras Tour. Oh right, and the Eras Tour.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor already had three untoured albums when she began her rerecording process, 2019’s Lover and 2020’s folklore and evermore. So, when Taylor started teasing a tour after the release of her 2022 album Midnights, many people scratched their heads and wondered how much of a role the untoured albums would play in the tour. Most I saw at the time agreed that there was no possible scenario where anything more than the biggest hits from these albums would make the setlist, much less anything more than a song or two referencing the rerecords.
Instead, what we got was a 3-hour tour de force featuring a dedicated segment to 9 of Taylor’s 10 albums (only her poor forgotten 2006 debut album left on the cutting room floor). And that tour has made mega popstar Taylor Swift into something even bigger somehow.
And so, we come to 1989.
Originally released in 2014, 1989 was a major reinvention for Taylor, something that the album’s title cheekily referenced. 1989 was the year Taylor was born, and as she has stated on numerous occasions, this album would come to mark her rebirth.
It was a rebirth in a lot of ways. Not only was Taylor shedding her country past entirely for the very first time, she was also attempting very intentionally to leave behind her public image of a lovestruck serial dater obsessed with her exes. She intentionally tried to surround herself with a group of untouchable model best friends, people no one would speculate she was secretly trying to date. (Hah.)
But that was just it. It was a very intentional rebirth.
When I first listened to 1989, I was struck by its extremely polished sound. So many of the songs on this album are pop juggernauts that the album is often referred to both by fans and the broader music community as the pop bible. It didn’t invent pop music referencing vintage, particularly 80’s, sounds, but it certainly skyrocketed that sound into the stratosphere, and defined an entire decade of sound. It kickstarted the producing career of Jack Antonoff, whose style would come to make up the sounds of so many other major artists.
That is an achievement. But it’s an achievement that, in hindsight, with a modern ear, felt a little stale to me.
What I love about Taylor’s music is, for lack of a better word, the mess. The way she loves to play in metaphor and double meaning. The way she loves to admit embarrassing truths about herself. Basically every other album in her catalogue has this quality, to me. But 1989 didn’t, because it was all so intentional.
Taylor had a story she wanted to tell about herself. She wanted to be reborn, and she drove intentionally toward that mission in a way that I’ve always felt left some truth behind. Any mess she came upon in 1989 felt personally crafted that way. It wasn’t a rebirth because that was what it came to be, it was a rebirth because that was what Taylor seemingly wanted for herself at the time.
Regardless of my feelings, though, 1989 is extremely beloved, and not for no reason. As much as I sort of slid off of it, I cannot deny that there are some fantastic and iconic songs on this album, and I also cannot deny how important it was as a career step for Taylor. So, when she announced that 1989 would be her fourth rerecord, I was eager to hear a modernized version of the Taylor album I’ve felt the most distant from.
Ironically, in the talk of rebirth, it’s interesting to note how 1989 (Taylor’s Version) stays extremely faithful to the original. I get the sense that this might be one reason she waited so far in the process to tackle it – to me, it feels like she wanted to get the hang of the rerecording process before she really felt comfortable with such a beloved and continually relevant album. Despite what diehard fans might be saying on the internet, this is an album that almost exactly captures the feeling of the original, more than any of her other rerecordings.
Sure, there are tiny little tweaks here and there, but in my opinion, they’re for the best. Take “Shake it Off”, for example. I haven’t been secret about the fact that this is not a song I love dearly. At the same time, though, I think a lot of my issues with it have been polished in the new version. Her strained, squeaky delivery has been loosened and made more comfortable. Sure, the obnoxious horns are still honking, but the spoken bridge seems much more tongue in cheek and a little less grating. It’s still not my favorite song, but I think this version captures the ease and joy of the version I saw performed on the Eras Tour stage a lot better than the recorded version.
Some songs I didn’t pay much mind to in my first listens have been extremely aided by the new production. “Welcome to New York” is a total showstopper with the widened production and more confident vocal delivery from Taylor.
I feel totally cheated and frustrated that I didn’t notice how brilliant “I Know Places” was until this listen, either. I’m not even sure I can chalk it up to the rerecord, either, I think this is just the first time I’ve given the song a proper listen. (In my defense, it’s pretty far down in an album I just admitted isn’t my favorite of Taylor’s, so I haven’t revisited it as often as others, but still). The sound of a tape recorder beginning and ending the song is a fantastically clever way to capture the feeling of being monitored and underscores the futile attempts by Taylor to hide her relationships from the prying media.
And, crucially, songs I’ve loved on this album have retained their magic. The self-conscious majesty of “Out of the Woods”, complete with its melodramatic bridge, has been recaptured. “Style” is just as fun to listen to with the windows rolled down, though I will say that I think some of the low end in the original is lost, though not to any great detriment. And my favorite song from the album, “You Are in Love”, is still so intimate and self-reflective, a moment of messiness from this album that always felt a bit too pristine to me.
Did the rerecord of 1989 change my feelings on it? Not really. I still do find the album itself to be an extremely well-crafted and very clean narrative about Taylor Swift.
The vault, though…
Something that has begun to take shape over the course of the rerecordings is a seemingly intentional move by Taylor to choose previously unreleased songs from the era that recontextualize the themes of the original. To me, the greatest example was the self-awareness and self-consciousness rife in the vault of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), but moments of clarify have come from every vault so far.
So what does 1989’s vault say about the era it came from? Well, honestly, it captures the mess I’ve been wanting so much from this album.
The original narrative of 1989 is one about a young woman in a doomed and dramatic relationship escaping and redefining herself. It seemingly started from the end, with not one song lacking the awareness of how it all ends. It liberally references Taylor’s on-again off-again relationship with fellow musician Harry Styles.
I think this is where I found a disconnect – those beautiful moments where I could look at two songs in the same album and realize they were talking about the same situation with two wildly different perspectives, one during and one in hindsight, like the difference between “Dear John” and “Ours” or “Treacherous” and “All Too Well”.
But with the opening vault track, “’Slut!’”, I finally get that moment.
This track attracted attention from the moment its name was revealed – and I think it’s obvious why. Theories flew around swiftie communities trying to guess what the song would be about, and almost everyone assumed it would be a scathing condemnation of the way popular media derided her for being in relationships at the age of 25.
I don’t think anyone expected it to be a dreamy love song.
It’s not as if the themes of defiance against media misogyny are absent from this track – but instead, it seems to set up a theme that the rest of the vault will continue to explore. This is the thoughts of a woman being so in love that she doesn’t care at all about what others think of her. As she croons in the chorus – “If they call me a slut, you know it might be worth it for once.”
I think this is a theme totally new to this album. We’ve certainly seen a self-awareness toward the mistreatment of the media in “Blank Space”, for example, but there aren’t any songs that say “maybe you’re worth the mistreatment.” And it’s… well, it’s messy.
The messiness grows even more when we get to my favorite vault song, the devastatingly short “Now That We Don’t Talk”. Now separated, Taylor displays a flippant disregard for her love, including a slew of devastating insults. But at the core, there’s a love and concern for this person that lingers, particularly in lines where she implies she knows her charismatic celebrity ex might be anxious on the drive home from a big party. The very concept of the song, a frustration at not being able to express her feelings about this person when he isn’t around anymore.
But perhaps the standout track on this vault, at least as far as fan discussion is concerned, is the spiraling breakup song “Is It Over Now?” The song takes terrible offense at her ex moving on, at the same time the singer admits she too is moving on while harboring the same intense passion. The return of the slut-shaming theme, when she points out that her ex’s new relationships get to be far more comfortably in the open than hers.
In a deeply 1989 move, the song is punctuated by a shrill autotuned scream, betraying the frustration that the song’s polished pop feel hides.
In all, the vault punctuates so many of the themes of the original 1989 with a taste of the tumultuous feelings that were broiling beneath the surface. 1989 isn’t changed. Not really. It’s the same pop bible it always was. It sounds just as good at a party, or driving fast down a highway. But now, it’s broader. It feels more complete.
That’s one of the beautiful things about how the rerecording process has evolved. At the beginning, it was a project of total recreation, of perfect replacement of the original. But now, it feels like it’s evolved into something more – an interest in giving insight to the original albums with the benefit of hindsight and the confidence of maturity.
For the final week of our themed October, I thought I’d return to a topic I often find myself covering here on this blog. My favorite blonde superstar, Miss Taylor Alison Swift. (What? There’s another week of October left? Nah, I don’t think I see that. We’ve got something else coming next week, anyway.)
Taylor is a fun popstar to track the style of because she has had such a catalogue of diverse styles. This is partly due to the longevity of her career, the way she grew up throughout, and because of her penchant of hopping from genre to genre and concept to concept. So, I thought she’d be a perfect candidate for a wide-ranging style review.
I chose one outfit from each “era” of Taylor’s career, roughly defined as the time Taylor is actively promoting an album. This is of course a bit murky, but in general I am including music videos, award show appearances, and performances from that period of time, roughly. There’s a bit of overlap here and there but say it with me now – this is my list. I get to do what I want.
So, let’s explore 17 years of style with my emotional support blonde woman.
“Picture to Burn” Music Video (2006)
Perhaps knowledgeable swifties are confused as to why I would choose this outfit, of all outfits, to represent Taylor’s self-titled debut album era. That’s fair enough – it was an era far more exemplified by its flowy sundresses, cowboy boots, and youthful curls than this vampy, dark look from the “Picture to Burn” music video.
But, counterpoint, I get to make my own list, and this outfit has always struck me in a particular way. Sporting a skintight black tank with leather details and skintight black leather pants, it’s an outfit that seems wholly opposite of everything else Taylor wore during this time in her career. Now of course, this outfit is meant to fit in with the angry, vengeful spirit of the music video, but I have also found it so interesting how mature her looks overall tended to be during this era.
Perhaps this is just memory, imagining the 16-year-old Taylor as the child she was, but I do think it’s interesting how looks in this era tended toward heavier makeup that seemed to age her. Not in a bad way – I do think she looks beautiful here – but it feels to me like they were trying to de-emphasize her youth in some ways. That would make sense in a genre that had never before seen a teenage girl experience the type of success Taylor would – I could see the image wanting to reach for something more similar to what adult women in her industry would be wearing instead.
Anyway, I love her curls, and I love the confidence of this look – it’s definitely meant to evoke a sort of spy suit as she sneaks in and trashes the place of her scummy ex. It’s just fun. But I do think it’s interesting to see how these more mature aspects of her style will fade in the next couple of eras.
“You Belong with Me” Fearless Tour (2009)
Case in point – this marching-band inspired opening outfit for Taylor’s Fearless Tour. In direct contrast to the heavy makeup of the self-titled era, Taylor’s style in the Fearless era started to trend more youthful, I would suspect because her stylists began to realize how much her teenage image connected her to her fans.
I’ll be honest, I picked this outfit for very personal reasons. This outfit is the one she wore for the opening number of the tour, “You Belong with Me.” I was a marching band kid back in high school, and I wish I could have worn an outfit this cute and flirty while embarking on my first romantic experiences. (Not that I didn’t love our marching band uniforms, but this is definitely way cuter). I love the shako (i.e., marching hat), and I think it really emphasizes the “girl-next-door” vibes of the song when she gets to take it off and reveal her pretty blonde tresses.
Is it a little stereotypical? Sure. But it is fun, and relatable for a kid like me who had to sweep her own hair up into a shako on a regular basis.
Now if I must nitpick, I do think the detailing on the jacket reads a little cheap. This was her first tour, so some shortcuts are probably reasonable, but I don’t love how Party City the sequins read. I think I would have preferred a version with a bit more straightforward tailoring and maybe a more sparkly reveal dress underneath, or something. I love the yellow panels on the skirt, though, so fun.
“Dear John” Speak Now Tour (2011)
I dearly love the Speak Now era, as you would no doubt know already if you’ve done any following of my posts about Taylor Swift. It was extremely difficult to pick just one outfit that exemplifies the era… except, no, it kind of wasn’t. I had to pick this dress.
Tracking the youthfulness of Taylor’s style, I’d love you to scroll back and compare this outfit to her “Picture to Burn” outfit, and now you’ll see what I mean when I say Taylor’s style in the first few years of her career actually grew more youthful. This could also be a changing of style trends between 2006 and 2011, but I also just think Taylor’s image evolved and become more of her own thing as she continued and Speak Now is I think where the youthfulness hit its peak (ironic, considering she had just turned 21 when this tour began).
It has a retro silhouette, but I’ve always felt that the straps and detailing on the bodice push it out of 50s nostalgia and into something very sweet and distinctive. I also love the almost multidimensional feel of the fabric – it’s purple, but also blue, with almost some blush coming in in the skirt.
I would kill to wear a dress like this. It absolutely captures all of the fantastical energy and joy of the era, but also the vulnerability and confusion in some ways. This is a dress she actually wears for quite a few of the songs on this tour, but I will always consider it the “Dear John” dress. As Taylor sings “the girl in the dress wrote you a song,” it absolutely makes sense for this to be the dress.
“State of Grace” Red Tour (2013)
Another tour opener outfit, but this one I chose less because I dearly love it and more because it is just so painfully 2013. The bowler hat. The peter pan collar. The red oxfords. The lace detailing on the shirt. Like, good god, she was browsing Tumblr and taking notes.
All jokes aside, I rib this outfit with total love and affection in my heart. I’d be a hypocrite not to. I was 15 at the time and absolutely inspired by the same things.
One of the trends Taylor would absolutely love both on stage and off during this time was vintage callbacks, in particular to the 1950s. While we did see some of that in the previous Speak Now dress, I strongly associate it with this era and I often find it an interesting and somewhat ironic detail. 2013 is where a lot of the hatred and ire for Taylor and her dating life was starting to reach a fever pitch, and I often wonder if Taylor’s conservative choices throughout these years, even in her early 20s, was an intentional move to counter slut-shamers.
Anyway, this outfit is cute as a button. Would I wear it now? No. But I do hold an affection for the style that was popular when I was a teenager, and it brings a smile to my face to see Taylor rock it.
Grammy Awards (2016)
This look is fairly late in the 1989 era, but I still do find it to be a fascinating and iconic look of the era. Affectionally dubbed “coconut head” by fans, this was a look that came after Taylor cut her long hair into a sideswept bob for the first part of the era, signifying her new life as a city-dwelling pop artist. Then, she cut it even shorter for this saturated red carpet look.
Taylor would end up taking home 7 Grammys, including album of the year for 1989, and in a strange precursor to the drama that would nearly sink her, used her speech to call out Kanye West for taking credit for her fame and accomplishments. Later, in her Miss Americana documentary, she would seem to imply that this moment was bittersweet for her – she had finally proven herself to be an artist capable of sticking around, finally proven those in her record company who doubted her switch to pop wrong, but felt a loneliness at the top.
Anyway, none of that really matters much for the exact details of this dress, which I feel sort of mixed on. I love the color, and I love the striking simplicity of it, but I just think there’s something off in the accessorizing. I definitely feel the need to go simple, here, but I’m not sure I like the length of the necklace or the color of the shoe with the overall ensemble. However, as much as we joke around about it, I actually do like her hair this way, especially with this look.
“Look What You Made Me Do” Music Video (2017)
For the reputation era, I definitely wanted to highlight one of the many amazing looks from the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video – but the question was, which one? I went back and forth, wanting to choose one that was unique to the video, not one of the callback looks to past Taylor Swift outfits, and finally decided on this one – for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, the context of the video. “Look What You Made Me Do” was Taylor’s dramatic comeback after a year of silence following the mass backlash she faced when Kanye West and Kim Kardashian accused her of lying about the circumstances of his song, “Famous.” I’m not going to retread the whole drama here, but suffice it to say this controversy snowballed with a lot of lingering criticisms of Taylor, including her “girl squad.” This was the collection of model friends she surrounded herself with during the 1989 era, something she would later state she came to regret but at the time was definitely her attempt to escape the criticism that her life revolved too much around romance.
In the scene, she dons this shiny black dominatrix getup, complete with a cape, red latex cloves, a huge black collar, and a harsh one-sided slicked hairdo. She brandishes a whip as she addresses an army of identical “fembots.” The entire music video was meant to be a skewering of her public image at the time, and this look is obviously meant to poke fun at the public perception of her as a scheming, power mad villain, commanding an army of identical beautiful women.
However, and I say this genuinely, as silly as this look is, I love it. It is the perfect mix of camp and straight-up music video glam, and it was genuinely daring for her to wear, I think. It perfectly encapsulated the outer feel of this era and album, with a tough girl exterior that betrayed a self-aware sense of humor beneath. Iconic.
American Music Awards (2019)
I think the Lover era is one of my favorites when it comes to Taylor Swift looks, so this was another I struggled to find a good representative outfit for that I really had things to say about. I finally settled on this look from the American Music Awards, which I think encompasses a lot of the style of this era.
This was a pretty outwardly joyous era for Taylor in a way that feels very intentional. Similar to how the 1989 era projected freedom and independence and the reputation era projected rebellion and resistance, the Lover era projected joy, romance, and confidence. Obviously, that brought about a lot of colorful, soft outfits in pinks and purples and blues.
But there’s this other streak in the Lover era, costuming I would call Wonder Woman-inspired. Feminine looks that nonetheless projected confidence and power. This look is a pretty good roundup of both Lover style inspirations, with its gauzy pink cape over the glittery gold leotard. I think this look is so quintessentially Taylor Swift, and would represent a lot of the performance staples she continues to stick with to this day – so it’s clear it made her feel good.
Folklore Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020)
The pandemic meant most of Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore outfits were on screen or music video, and the two have very similar vibes, so I’ve chosen to highlight a documentary look and a music video look for the two.
Now, I’ve been overall pretty nice to Taylor’s outfits throughout. I like her style generally, and I tend to enjoy the way she lets her music color her fashion choices. But I’m a little baffled by this outfit, I’ll be honest.
I know this was meant to be a casual look, as in this scene she’s having an emotional discussion with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff about “this is me trying.” It’s a great discussion, with a ton of amazing context for a brilliant and tragic song. And yet…. I just do not like this outfit.
I think it’s the clashing colors and patterns that almost jive together in an autumnal, studious way, but don’t quite make it. Maybe if one of the three elements of this outfit were a bit more harmonious with the other two – like maybe if the pants were more of a reddish brown than an orangish brown, or maybe if the jacket was a tan pattern instead, or maybe if the hat was brown… but as it stands, each part of the outfit is saying something different. The fit is just a little odd, too. The jacket feels quite huge in an almost comical way.
I think I see what this outfit is trying for and I know the cozy autumn vibes it’s trying to achieve, but it just doesn’t get there for me.
“willow” Music Video (2020)
Now this is more of the forest witch autumnal vibes I am looking for! There are once again a lot of great outfits in the “willow” music video, but I had to go for my favorite and the one that has sort of become evermore’s signature look – a rich green velvet cloak over a an orange-red skirt and brown corset.
Of course, it’s meant to evoke a fantastical past, which Taylor has stated on many occasions was the place she wanted to go with both albums. As an escape from the frightening, isolating present, both folklore and evermore escaped to fantasy, where isolation was beautiful and meaningful and not strange and scary. In this way, the figure of the lone, cloaked woman – beautiful and mysterious – is perfect for this album.
The song itself also calls for this sort of fantasy – meant to evoke an incantation, hoping that someone you admire from afar will fall for you. It’s whimsical, sure, but there’s something a bit sad about it, too. Rather than connecting personally with someone you love, this figure stands apart from it all and tries to manipulate and spellcast her way into a person’s heart.
Anyway, 10/10 I want a cloak now.
“Lavender Haze” Music Video (2023)
Biased choice, I know. This was the outfit I chose to model my costume for my Chicago eras tour off of, because I just love it. So allow me to go over just why I love it so.
Firstly, “Lavender Haze” is probably one of my favorite songs from Midnights, and it simply always will be. This outfit fits the vibe of that song so perfectly – it’s quiet and intimate, talking about a romance shut away from others. Thus, the nightgown – intimate, the sort of thing you only wear in front of someone you really feel close to. But, the fur jacket elevates it into something glamorous, something fantastical, which fits the hazy daydream vibes of the song so well.
The jacket is actually blue in real life, but the coloring of the video makes it look so very purple that I went ahead and got a purple shag jacket for my own rendition of the outfit. But I just love the sleepy, vintage inspired vibe of this outfit. It’s a little sloppy looking, it’s a little glamorous. It’s vulnerable and yet has a certain dazzle. It’s an underappreciated outfit, for sure.
I will admit – when coming up with ideas for things to talk about during this fashion-themed month, doing a roast of Torrid felt like low-hanging fruit.
It’s all inspired by one of my favorite YouTubers, nisipisa, and her ongoing window shopping series, where she scrolls through the websites of various fast fashion retailers and roasts the clothes she finds there. The very first episodes she ever did was on Torrid, and has reappeared twice more since then.
But even beyond one YouTuber, Torrid is a pretty frequent target of ire and disdain from the fashion community. It’s the sort of thing that a reasonable person might hesitate to participate in. After all, Torrid is a plus-size fashion company, carrying only sizes 10-30. I think it’s reasonable to assume, then, that anybody making fun of it is punching down at a humble brand just trying to serve an underserved and often vilified market.
However, I’ll be honest, as someone who has worn plus sized clothing since high school, I share a lot of negative feelings about Torrid. Yes, it is a rare store catering only to people of my size, but the way it caters to us tends to be somewhat… insulting, let’s say.
The usual criticism goes something like this. Plus size fashion is extremely hard to find in a lot of mainstream and accessible fashion retailers. When it does exist, it tends to be limited, as most brands continue to separate their plus sizes into a different section, and do not offer all of their straight size clothing in plus sizes. In addition, what is offered in plus sizes tends to be less trendy and more matronly.
That final criticism is what continues to hover over Torrid to this day. Taking a scroll of their website reveals a brand that doesn’t really offer anything particularly unique or trendy. Most of their clothing is modest and in dark, unnoticeable colors. It’s the sort of fashion that you’d maybe wear to an interview, but there’s nothing else at all available. Compared to the wide range of colors, styles, and occasions on display at other brands that don’t tailor to plus size consumers, there’s a real feeling of the kind of person Torrid imagines would wear plus sizes – someone modest, unassuming, who doesn’t want to draw attention to their bodies.
Even when Torrid does offer more trendy styles, this leaks in. The brand came under fire last year when their Y2K-inspired “Festi” line used straight size models for every clothing item. It is true that the brand does offer some sizes usually included in straight sizes (10-16), but it was curious that none of the models that wore anything larger were employed to model these fashions – the indication being that Torrid doesn’t imagine its larger customers wearing more trendy, less modest styles.
Looking at the Festi line’s page now, this appears to be something that the brand has addressed since then, but I think the initial move is somewhat telling of how little Torrid wishes to break the mold on what is available to plus size customers. Even when they’re offering unique, revealing, or trendy pieces, their first inclination is not to show them on larger bodies.
At the same time, though, I want to make my intentions for roasting Torrid clear in this post. I wear plus sized clothing myself and I know how hard it is to feel comfortable in my own body, especially in the vulnerable position of buying new clothing. I know that some people who shop at Torrid do so because of its modest stylings – and I don’t wish to talk down to these people at all. When I was younger I absolutely did reach for more modest clothing because it was what made me feel more comfortable, and there is no requirement to dress a certain way.
But I do also think there is something telling about how even plus sized people who would, in a perfect world, dress in more revealing ways are still shuffled into this modest style because that is simply what is most available. I think it’s also a little frustrating how the styles available to plus sizes have basically stayed exactly the same since I was in high school. I have my critiques of the speed of the trend cycle, but it’s certainly strange when the fashion flat-out doesn’t evolve with the times.
Still, Torrid is but one wheel in a much wider clock of fatphobia in the fashion world, so I roast with the full knowledge that if Torrid overnight decided to start actually following trends and providing an equivalent experience to straight size stores, there wouldn’t be that much of a change.
And if you like Torrid, or you like any of the pieces I make fun of today, please understand that taste is subjective and it’s all in good fun.
Anyway, with all that preamble out of the way, let’s roast some silly fashions.
Fleece Hooded Back Flap Lounge Onesie – $69.90
In many cases, a clothing item that would be perfectly reasonable and not ugly at all is done completely dirty by a baffling styling choice. Such is the case here. I have absolutely no problem with the idea of buying yourself a cozy little plaid onesie to curl up in, especially as the weather is getting cold outside.
But why, god, why did they decide to style the model like she’s going out? Does Torrid actually think someone’s going to go on a little winter walk when they have a flap on their butt that could accidentally fly open any minute? Other model photos show the model just wearing the onesie on its own, as I would assume is the usual use case, and it looks perfectly complete and normal. But for whatever reason, Miss Girl here needed the snug scarf and jacket to really sell the “my dog begged to go outside in the freezing cold after I had just settled down to watch TV before bed” look.
At The Knee Sweater Gromet Dress – $74.98
Ah, the little black dress. A closet staple – versatile, flattering, and easy to match with just about anything for a night on the town, an interview, or a formal dinner. The keyhole neckline is also a classic – a subtle way to show a little skin.
However, I don’t think anyone ever looked at a dress with a keyhole neckline and went “I think this needs more holes.” Especially when those holes are grommets (and yes, that’s “grommet” with two m’s. Torrid spelled it wrong.) While the keyhole neckline to me reads as elegant, grommets are punk, industrial. When they exist, they should usually do so with a purpose. But this? This is purposeless.
(Also, not to get on the styling again, but what is with the shapeless booties she’s wearing with this dress?)
Madison Sequin Button-Front Long Sleeve Shirt – $75.90
In the interest of representing Torrid’s stock of clothing as much as I could, I found myself with a bit of a creative struggle. As I mentioned, one of the main criticisms of Torrid is how boring and uninteresting most of its clothing is – very conventional, very uninterested in breaking the mold. However, the purpose of this post is for me to find clothing items I can poke a little fun at, necessarily requiring me to sort through mounds of sensible gray slacks and cream button-ups to find things that make me go, “Huh?”
But I cannot stress to you how much of this website is just button-ups. Collared shirts with buttons down the front must account for at least 40% of Torrid’s stock, and while I understand button-ups to be a sensible, professional choice, I can’t fathom why Torrid couldn’t condense some of these shirts down to just one with some different color options?
Anyway, I chose this sequin version in “Gunmetal” not because I think it’s that hideous – sure, it certainly isn’t something I’d wear – but rather, I think it does exemplify a tendency of Torrid to go the most conventional route possible. A sequin shirt? Fun! In the form of a button-up in gunmetal grey? Classic Torrid.
Washable Challis Smocked Cold Shoulder Top – $55.90
The most important thing a piece of art can do is elicit an emotion in its beholder. Fashion is absolutely an art that sticks to this principle. And I put this top on this list not because it is particularly remarkable amongst Torrid’s shelves. Nor because it is particularly ugly. But because it evoked an emotion in me so strong I couldn’t help but talk about it.
I am writing to you now from my desk in my room. If I were to stand up right now and go to my closet, I guarantee you I could produce four or five tops which, combined, could aesthetically equivocate this one top. The pink floral on the black background. The bell sleeves. And, of course, the cold shoulder.
Growing up in plus size fashion, you find yourself making concessions. After all, it’s hard to develop a sense of style when your options are so limited. So I know other plus size people reading this will understand what I mean when I say – in high school, floral cold shoulder tops were the one commonly modeled way I saw to express my femininity. The exposed shoulder was the one concession to modesty plus size girls were allowed (just not in school), and the floral pattern was the one common pattern of the numerous hideous patterns designed to hide my body I could stand. I liked these things, but in the way someone parched and stranded in the desert might like a diet Mr. Pibb.
And the remnants of that remain in my closet to this day. Maybe this indicates that none of the elements in this top are really all that bad, if I’ve kept them this long. Or maybe habits just die hard.
For the aspiring deep sea diver who wants to camouflage themselves from sharks.
Remember how I said earlier that plus size fashion is obsessed with the ugliest patterns known to mankind, I guess to hide the horrible folds of your treacherous body?
This pattern, one of 21 available in this style, is entitled “Aqua Marble” on the website. Maybe the strangest thing about it is every one of the other 20 patterns are basically normal – plaids or solids or florals… except this one. I’d like to imagine they worked out the first 20 patterns and then went “OK guys, let’s pack it up for the night.” Then, a mischievous elf snuck in and slipped the 21st pattern in, and the folks who didn’t bother to send “gromet” through spell-check decided to just leave it in.
Babydoll Satin Lace Trim Cami – $45.90
This poor model. Why do they keep putting her in these awful tops? She deserves an apology from Torrid. This is a case where I think this stop is both horrible and the styling they chose for it is horrible. I’ll begin with the styling.
Maybe this is just me, but the monochrome thing is so not easy to pull off, and in this case it is not pulled off. Why would anyone want their stomach and legs to be a shifting void of brown? I would absolutely have paired this with a lighter pant and some darker brown boots for a bit of a break. Or, god forbid, some jeans? Can we have, like, one more color? As a treat?
But the shirt itself. I’m sorry if it seems like I’m projecting, but this top just so much reads to me like Torrid’s response to the lacy lingerie trend – but in the Torrid way. Little lacy crop tops are definitely still in from the Y2K days, but Torrid couldn’t do that trend, because then you’d have to put a plus sized model in a – gasp – crop top? Oh my god, what if we see her horrible, horrible stomach and are reminded of the imperfection of our own bodies in the eyes of the hypercritical, consumerist media? Better hang a curtain around that, hide it away.
Outlander Sassenach Mini Challis Lace Nightgown – $69.90
Something you might not know is that the company that owns Torrid is the same company that owns Hot Topic. And not to sound like a hypocrite, but I do hold a special affection for Hot Topic. So anyway, for whatever reason, instead of just letting Hot Topic be the brand that does the fandom stuff, Torrid occasionally likes to get in on the game.
Except, of course, it’s Torrid, and they can’t ever do anything interesting or fun. So the fandom section is mostly t-shirts and hoodies and the occasional patterned dress, and then these weird as hell lines that I think are meant to be normal fashion inspired by a fandom, or maybe really subtle fandom merch?
I get the concept of subtle fandom merch – people are sometime embarrassed to represent themselves with the things they’re a fan of, so they opt for pieces that could be read as something normal that secretly has a little something that only other fans would understand. The only thing is that Torrid doesn’t tend to understand the kind of subtle merch I think would actually be appealing.
Now, I don’t know anything about Outlander, so forgive me, as this nightgown is meant to be Outlander merch, but subtle. So what it is is a white nightgown with the word “Sassenach” written on the hem. Like it got signed? Or something? Is this a reference I’m not getting? In the show does somebody wear a dress with that word on the hem?
A cursory google has revealed that “Sassenach” is a derogatory term used to refer to English people by Scottish or Irish people, which I suppose may be relevant to the show, but it’s so weird out of context I cannot fathom anyone actually buying this and wearing it. I guess since it’s sleepwear maybe that’s fine, but still? Huh???
Star Wars Darth Vader Lightweight Ponte Skireted Pant Romper – $89.90
“But Gillian,” you might be saying. “That last one was sleepwear. It’s ugly, but it’s not meant to be worn out of the house, so it’s not so bad, right?”
Well, don’t worry, reader. I’ve got something that seems to be meant to be worn out of the house that is that bad! Imagine paying nearly $100 (plus shipping and handling) for something this cheap looking. It looks like Spirit Halloween phoned it in on its Darth Vader costume. It looks like a lovingly homemade costume by a mom for her fifth grader performing an interpretive dance to the Imperial March. It looks like the off-brand “Dark Father” costume made to skirt Disney’s copyright lawyers.
And yes, this is one garment. The weird half skirt cape thing, the flat-ass shirt, the leggings – these are all one continuous piece of clothing. You cannot have your choice of what parts of this to keep unless you want to get out the scissors and make it permanent.
Who wants this? Who is a fan of Darth Vader and also wants to look this cheap? I’m going home. Goodbye.
After a day-long rainstorm, fall weather has finally finally descended where I live. Fall is my favorite season, and I’m so thankful to have left the 80 degree days behind… knock on wood, of course.
Once the weather starts to get like this (and, truthfully, before) I’m always reaching for my favorite cozy fall media, and for whatever reason, the 2000-2007 coming-of-age comedy drama show about mother and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory. Is this show good? Eh, usually. But is it the kind of indulgent, cozy fare that’s perfect for a chilly fall day? Of course.
But throughout the popular discussion about which characters are beloved and which are insufferable, the charming holidays celebrated constantly in Stars Hollow, and the downright unhealthy amount of coffee Lorelai consumes, one element of the show sometimes goes a bit unnoticed – the outfits.
Because of the years this show was produced, some of the outfits are… let’s say, eye-wateringly of their time. An interesting element at play is the differing characterization of the show’s two main characters. Lorelai had her daughter at age 16, making her much closer generationally to her daughter than perhaps is common. There’s also an obvious attempt to emphasize how much more mature Rory can sometimes appear than her mother – Rory is a studious, no-nonsense kid with conventional-if-ambitious dreams compared to her mother, who ran away from her wealthy upbringing to raise her daughter on her own on a maid’s salary.
This element means young Rory is often dressed primly, with cute sweaters and preppy skirts. And Lorelai… well, let’s just say her outfits can sometimes get a little out of hand.
In line with this month’s theme of fashion, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a handful of outfits worn by both of the main characters throughout the run of the show. There’s some good outfits in here, some wild outfits, and everything in between. I thought I’d examine them not only for how I think they look, but also what they say about the character and the situation.
Let’s begin with the more conventional dresser of the two.
Rory
The Pilot Sweater
The introduction to Rory’s character in the pilot episode sees her in a truly remarkable oversized chunky cream sweater and a brown choker. To me, the sweater’s huge size is meant to emphasize Rory’s smallness – she is, after all, the emotional core of the first part of the show. Her youth and innocence is meant to be charmingly in contest with her maturity (as compared to her mother). I also love the choker – it’s a bit of its time, I suppose, but in a charming way more than an embarrassing one.
This is the kind of outfit that really sells the show’s reputation as cozy and autumnal – and is truly iconic.
The Chilton Uniform
The inciting incident of the show sees Lorelai going to her estranged-yet-wealthy parents to ask for a loan to cover the costs of Rory’s admission to stuffy private school Chilton. This is all part of Rory’s lifelong goal to get accepted into Harvard – and also leads to the weekly dinners with the parents that form a continuous source of conflict in Lorelai and Rory’s lives.
The uniform is worn in a lot of different ways across the episodes, but the most default to me is this one – the crest cardigan worn over the shirt and skirt. I’ve always loved this uniform – it’s cute and preppy and smart, and fits the eager, good-student vibe Rory has during this part of the show really well. It’s also a pretty key visual class reminder, especially when Rory wears it around her friends from Stars Hollow, which I think is an interesting nod toward Rory’s eventual choices bringing her closer to her wealthy grandparents than perhaps Lorelai would have preferred.
The Chilton Dance Dress
One of the first conflicts Rory and Lorelai face is when she accidentally falls asleep in the Stars Hollow dance studio with her new boyfriend, Dean, after being persuaded to attend Chilton’s dance with him. A sort of underlying tension between Lorelai and Rory is her worst fear that one day Rory might also end up pregnant as a teenager, just like she did, and in response she completely flips out on this honest, childish mistake. Despite Rory’s honest protestations that nothing actually happened between her and Dean, it’s a pretty major blowup, and Rory correctly identifies that the true reason for it is the fact that Lorelai’s mother Emily was there to witness it all, stirring up a bunch of bad memories of her past.
The dress Rory wears to the dance is handmade for her by Lorelai – in a humorous moment, Emily insists that Lorelai buy a dress instead, but when she sees it she states “I’m glad you decided to buy the dress!” It is a really beautiful dress for Rory – the blue is such a pretty color and I also love the princessy twist and little ornamentation in her hair. I also think the layering in the skirt is an underappreciated part of what makes this outfit so distinctly pretty. I was a little older when I saw this episode for the first time, but I know if it had hit me at a younger age I would have been dying to wear a dress like this to the school dance.
The Best Man Suit
In my rewatch of the show, I’ve found an underrated favorite relationship is the one between Rory and her grandfather, Richard. At the start of the show, Richard lives up to the way Lorelai speaks of him – a disconnected, uninvolved businessman who has been raised to believe his only duty to his family is to make enough money to put food on the table, with no emotional involvement whatsoever. However, when Rory first starts to form a relationship with her grandfather, it becomes obvious just how similar the two are. Namely, they’re both perfectionist bookworms with a sly sense of humor and a dedication to doing what’s right.
That’s why it’s so adorable when, during his vow renewal after a spot of relationship trouble with his wife, Richard decides to name Rory his “best man.” I think a lesser show would have taken the opportunity to emphasize the feminine beauty of their leading lady in a situation like this, maybe only paying lip service to the traditionally masculine role she’s playing in the wedding. But I really appreciate how very masculine they style Rory for this occasion. She, of course, still looks adorable, but it’s obvious that she’s playing the role of best man relatively straight, which I think is a perfect nod to the tradition that is a key part of her relationship to not just Richard but Emily as well.
Plus, I just love the loosened necktie and cute little sidebraid – she almost comes off as a child playing dress-up in just the most endearing way. I also think it’s really interesting how this is the outfit Rory is wearing when she has her first very romantic encounter with Logan Huntsberger – again, a lesser show would have wanted her pretty and feminine for such a scene, but it’s kind of cool they went for something different.
The Business Bangs
Compared to Lorelai, Rory has a lot more variation in her hairstyles over the seasons of the show, starting with a simple long style and alternating through phases of bangs and bobs and waves and back again. This is a pretty realistic thing for a girl going through high school, graduating, and going into college to do, and it’s fun to watch Rory seemingly experiment with her style and settle into different looks as she gets older.
This is kind of the only major experimentation we see with Rory’s style, though. Throughout the show she is remarkably consistent with her preppy, office-appropriate wardrobe. While yes, it definitely does match her personality, work-ethic, and goals to be constantly ready to take a business call, it does make her fashion looks, particularly later in the show, a little less fun for me to review.
In this case, this look feels like something interesting but doesn’t quite capture me. I love the hair, as I’ve discussed, but I think it’s something about the cut of this jacket that doesn’t sit right with me. I understand it to be a designer callout, but I’m not all that interested in designer fashion so… y’know, to me it just looks like her midriff is gonna get cold.
I wonder if maybe I’d like it more with a bit more going on with her bottoms – a skirt maybe? Perhaps in that same cranberry red as the turtleneck below? Let’s have a bit more fun with it.
Lorelai
The Birthday Fit
While not in the pilot episode, one of the very first Lorelai outfits we get to witness is the one she wears for Rory’s 16th birthday, and it’s always baffled me. Lorelai is supposed to be a mature, single, 32-year-old woman. Yes, one of the early conflicts of her character is her getting over her hangups regarding dating as a single mom, but her characterization does not at all suggest she wants to cover herself up or present modestly. So why does she choose this high-necked, abstractly patterned vest over a long-sleeved black shirt for her daughter’s birthday?
Look, I’m not asking for booty shorts, I’m not asking for anything risque at all, but this outfit features prominently in a lot of the promotional material for the show (including its opening, which doesn’t change much over the course of it, using a lot of shots from this episode). Am I wrong to imagine Lorelai in something, I don’t know, a little cuter? A little flirtier? A little more refined and adult? I just find this outfit hideous. Was this truly on trend in 2000? Were women clamoring for strange, abstract sweater vests? I just don’t get it at all.
The Birthday Fit (2)
Okay, so, technically Lorelai wears this outfit first. See, for Rory’s 16th birthday her grandmother insists on throwing her a fancy rich person party and inviting all of her non-friends from Chilton. However, I have decided to place this dress second on the list because I think it provides some interesting context to the first outfit. Does it save the ugly sweater vest from ugliness? No, but I do think it may explain it somewhat.
This sheer blue nightgown-esque dress is actually really beautiful, and exactly the sort of thing I would picture a young, hot, ambitious single mom like Lorelai to wear. Interestingly, though, it’s the way she chooses to present herself in front of her parents and their world, in direct contrast to the frumpy dowdiness of the outfit she chooses to wear for the Stars Hollow celebration. Perhaps it speaks to Lorelai’s relative comfort in Stars Hollow, or her own type of rebellion (or even the ways she feels she must conform in the presence of her parents).
No matter what it is, though, I actually really like this dress. I like all the see-through layers and how they sit on top of each other. I again like the color – it reminds me a lot of Rory’s Chilton dance dress, actually, and I can’t help but connect the two.
The Fridge Fixer
I’ve picked out this outfit from season 1 to point out a few reoccurring themes in Lorelai’s outfits.
For one, she loves a bandana. I wonder if this is an attempt to vary her hairstyles in a more subtle way than Rory’s frequent chops. It is usually a pretty big miss for me, though, as they tend to stick out like a sore thumb against her outfits. Another pretty common Lorelai fit moment is one we saw with her first outfit – weird shirts. I have a feeling this is meant to make Lorelai seem youthful and a little immature, but the types of shirts she wears usually come off to me just downright weird.
However, I point out both of these usual Lorelai outfit pitfalls to actually argue something entirely different about this outfit – I actually like it a lot. In this scene, Lorelai is on the phone arguing with someone coming to fix her fridge, and is obviously frazzled and annoyed, in a sort of home chores mode. I think this is exactly the sort of situation that calls for the silly bandana and odd shirt combo (though the tie-dye isn’t that weird compared to some of Lorelai’s other shirts). Plus, the color coordination is a weirdly rare moment of harmony for Lorelai, who can sometimes seem off the rails color-wise in a lot of her outfits.
This is a case where playing up Lorelai’s youthful and quirky style actually really works meaningfully, too, as the point of the scene is that Rory has just had her first kiss but isn’t able to find a good moment to tell her mother about it because she’s so caught up in her fridge tantrum.
The Funereal Bucket
Besides confusing bandanas, Lorelai also loves a confusing bucket hat, but this time I’m not going to be nice. I know bucket hats recently came back into style and I know they can be done well, but Lorelai literally chose this outfit to attend a funeral in. A funeral of an older woman whose home she wants to buy in order to build her dream bed and breakfast. You’d think she’d want to impress, want to pay her respects, but no, she chose this absolute insult.
This is an occasion where I can absolutely pinpoint the exact moment this outfit went wrong. Without the hat, this is just a pretty average 2000s woman outfit – perhaps even a little on the stylish side when it comes to Lorelai. This is something current teens would even be into right up until you hit her head and you’re like, “What?”
I guess I could say that the show is trying to make her look silly in this episode, as much of the comedy of this episode comes from her and her best friend/business partner Sookie trying and failing to respectfully seek the home of a dead woman, but still. This feels a little on the nose.
The Flower Girl
Okay, I know I’ve been a bit harsh on Lorelai, so I wanted to end on an outfit from her I actually truly love. If you can believe it, I actually think Lorelai is one of the most consistently well-written characters in the show. She’s flawed, yes, but in a way that usually doesn’t get too wildly out-of-hand, and I think it’s usually fairly easy to root for her happiness. And when I imagine my favorite Lorelai moments, I always think about this silly little pink dress and flower crown combo she wears for Luke’s sister’s wedding.
The idea here is that Luke’s sister met her fiancé through a Renaissance Faire, so the two have a Renaissance-themed wedding. The joke is, of course, that Lorelai and everyone around her don’t understand the whole Renaissance faire thing and spend a lot of time rolling their eyes at it. This outfit absolutely feels like someone who didn’t quite get the Renaissance Faire thing trying to do it anyway, with the obviously non-historical dress and the flower crown.
Still, despite the sort of failure to achieve the Renaissance aesthetic, I love this outfit on Lorelai. I think the pink suits her really nicely, but the 70s-ish floral pattern of her dress doesn’t stray so far into the sweet zone that it no longer feels like something Lorelai would choose to wear. I think this is probably my favorite of her outfits, because it suits the situation, her personality, and is something kind of distinctive and uniquely Gilmore Girls.
Welcome one and all to this year’s themed month – Frocktober! Yes, even though my schedule for writing this blog has changed, this yearly tradition has not. Each October, I center my content around a certain theme and for the entire month stick to that theme with determination!
I won’t lie, part of what drew me to this year’s theme was the pun. No shade to previous months, but I’ve just never really done a great pun for a monthly theme, and I wanted this one to stand out from the rest. But, in addition, the theme allows me to explore a topic I enjoy but don’t necessarily talk much about here – fashion.
Now, let me set the record straight. I am not a fashion expert. I have friends who are much more well-versed on designers and clothes construction. But I do consider myself an admirer of fashion, and someone with her own unique sense of style. Is it a great sense of style? Well, I like it. But the point is that you shouldn’t consider me the be-all end-all of fashion advice.
That being said, I’ve done some thinking lately about what it means to cultivate your own sense of style. When I was a kid, this felt like something I would just know how to do as I grew up. After all, I was exposed to plenty of girly media where every character focused on her own individual style, so I thought that was just par for the course. I thought one day I’d wake up and know exactly which top went with which pair of pants, and that would come to form my own special style.
However, as I got older, the world changed (and so did I). I came to find that what I thought was some innate part of my personality I would some day develop turned out to be something a little more complicated. I came to understand the ubiquity and power of the fashion trend, which seemed to supersede all individual senses of style. Sure, everyone has preferences, but most people are at least a little susceptible to the changing whims of the companies selling clothes to us, the tastemakers, and the social media influencers (myself included).
There’s also something more than a little alienating about it all. Certainly, many people take to cultivating their own style of point of view for their wardrobe easily. But I think there’s a lot of people out there who struggle for a variety of reasons. Cost, sizing, and these changing styles. I can’t claim that today I’m going to provide the insight that will fix it all – but I can provide some insight on the things I’ve learned as I’ve tried to tackle it.
Why should I care?
The very word “style” has a lot riding on it. I think it conjures up images of expensive designers, perfectly tailored lines, always staying ahead of trends. But I don’t think style ends up looking like this for most people. If you’re not extremely wealthy and extremely willing to turn a blind eye to waste, you’re likely buying clothes you need and like every so often, and every so often purging clothes from your closet that you don’t wear or don’t fit you anymore. Maybe if you’re a little more invested, you’re paying attention to trends, maybe even buying things if a trend strikes your fancy.
But this probably doesn’t come off as “style”. It comes off as being a person who needs clothes. And if that’s all you feel you need, then it might not make sense why you would need or want to think about style at all.
That makes sense, but allow me to argue my point: style, at least to me, is about figuring out the kind of clothes that make you feel the best.
Figuring this out is helpful because it allows you to know what to look for when buying clothing. With as fast as fashion trends can speed by, having a sure idea of what you like and what you feel best wearing can allow you to tell at a glance if a trend is worth investing in. It will make you resilient to the whims of clothing companies trying to sell you something you ultimately won’t like and won’t wear. It will reduce waste and ultimately save you money on clothes you thought you’d like but end up not liking.
Getting Started
Your style should be what clothes make you feel your best. This can mean so many things to so many people. For me, I spent a lot of time in high school wearing clothes I felt like I was supposed to, clothes that fit me too tightly or hurt my feet or made me feel constantly uncomfortable. As I’ve grown older, I’ve figured out how to find clothes that make me feel my best – that look good to me and fit me comfortably. For me, comfort is important, but so is brightness. I have a colorful, maybe a little odd style, but it’s filled with things that make me smile. I love wearing themed outfits – a heart patterned shirt with heart shaped earrings. A little star decal on my shorts aligning with the sparkles and stars on my shirt. I love bright colors and pastels and I don’t much care for black. These are the things I’ve learned make me feel my best when I wear them. Your list of things might look very different.
“Your style should be what clothes make you feel your best” is a vague statement on purpose. Clothes end up doing a lot and meaning a lot depending on the circumstances. Sometimes, they’re just there to keep you comfortable on a lazy Sunday. Sometimes they’re helping you put your best foot forward for a job interview. Sometimes they’re how you raise your confidence for a date. They’re how we show our allegiance to fandoms and sports teams and identities. That’s why I went for something vague – cultivating style starts with figuring out what makes your feel best.
I think this is a key thing to start with when cultivating a style. What do you want out of your clothes? You might try and imagine different pieces that could fulfill different needs – a cozy pair of sweats for comfort, a slick pair of heels for the job interview.
You might also want to imagine items of clothing that could never serve you – for example, no matter how soft and cozy, you may never feel comfortable with the way a turtleneck sweater sits on your neck. Even if it’s in your favorite color, you might never be able to relax wearing a skirt that’s too short. Or, this could be more superficial – sorry, you just don’t like wearing polka dots and there’s nothing anyone can say or do about it.
Once you have this list, you’ll want to begin by looking at what you already have. It’s super easy to forget the clothing you already own, as shirts get pushed to the back of drawers or end up in a crumpled pile on the closet floor. I know some people who try to photograph everything they own and keep it in an app – this feels like a lot of work for me personally, but the idea of it is sound.
For me, I like to regularly go through what I own in its entirety, in the vein of the Konmari method. Regular refreshers of the things I own – either through the dramatic “dumping everything in the center of the floor” or the more reasonable “purposefully browsing through your closet and drawers” – help remind me of what I have so I’m not tempted to go out and buy something exactly the same (or that serves exactly the same purpose for me). This also saves money and reduces waste – it’s always better to make an outfit out of something you already own than going out and buying something new, for your wallet and for the planet.
This is also a good chance to locate things that you just don’t wear or that don’t align with your purposes. I think sometimes people have an inclination to keep things just because you heard that pieces like that are “necessary”. There’s canned wisdom about “basics” that “everybody needs” that can often convince people to keep clothing they don’t wear, don’t feel comfortable in, or don’t enjoy wearing. This is why identifying those purposes is helpful – “because I’m supposed to” is not a good enough reason to keep something that doesn’t fulfill some sort of important purpose for you.
The final reason I encourage you to do this is to identify pieces you love but don’t wear very often – this is where cultivating a style can be useful. After all, you can have a sweater in your closet you love to pieces but if you can’t figure out which pants to wear with it, you won’t wear it, period. This is a good place to start when looking toward possibly adding new pieces to your wardrobe.
Adding New Pieces
So, you have your priorities and you know what you already have. Maybe you’ve given away or donated some pieces that don’t align with those priorities. Here’s the fun part – figuring out what to add.
Now, I have to pump the breaks here a little. When we talk about buying new clothes, we ultimately teeter on the edge of consumerism – buying for the sake of the thrill of buying. Ideally, by cultivating a style, we’re encouraging ourselves to buy thoughtfully, not just for the fun of it. But… I will admit, I love finding new things that I feel great in. It’s fun, and we can acknowledge that.
But that fun can be responsible if we first put some thought into the things we need. This is where you find inspiration for your style. Inspiration can come from lots of places, including people we see out and about, media and celebrities, and websites like Instagram and Pinterest. When it comes to the latter, I highly encourage keeping those priorities and the things you already own in mind.
For example, say you have that favorite lavender sweater in your closet. It’s soft and comfortable, but you don’t have a lot of ideas for ways to wear it. This is where Pinterest is helpful – you can type in “lavender sweater” and see the ways other people have styled a similar piece. If these stylings include other items of clothing you already own but never considered to pair – great! If not, the pairings might clue you in to the sort of clothes you might want to keep your eyes peeled for next time you go shopping.
This is a great place to start because it’s starting with what you already have. By doing this, you might start to notice patterns of outfits you like, especially if you’re keeping those priorities in mind. From there, you might start to find people in these searches who seem to have a compatible style – this is another great source. Again, it’s important to hold your personal priorities above the influence of others – even if you love someone’s style, always consider what you personally feel good wearing and don’t fall prey to buying something just because someone you admire did.
And then, of course, I don’t think there’s any shame in looking to celebrities, media, or even trends for inspiration, too. It’s just important, as always, to be realistic about whether something exciting and new will actually be something you’ll wear and feel good in in the long run.
The important thing is cultivating a list of outfits and clothing pieces you like, that you think will make you feel good. Then, looking for patterns – do many of the outfits include jeans? Perhaps you keep coming back to a cozy cardigan, or the color green, or big stompy black boots. These reoccurring themes are a big sign that, if you don’t already have those kinds of pieces, it may be smart to invest in some of them.
Now, it’s not a race. Cultivating a style is a lifelong process, and you don’t need to run out and buy everything immediately. In fact, it’s helpful to take your time and do your research. Of course, depending on the money you have, you may need to look toward cheaper fast fashion sources for clothing you need, and there isn’t shame in that. However, if you can afford to, I think it’s a good idea to invest in more well-made, ethical clothing. Firstly, because it’s better for the world. But again, better-made clothing is going to last you much longer, and that will have a ton of value for you, especially if it’s something you think you’ll wear a lot.
Maintaining Your Style
Once you have a good collection of clothes that serve the purposes you identified, that make you feel good… all there’s left to do is maintain. This is one of the hardest parts, funnily enough. It’s easy to slide off of being thoughtful about what you buy at this point, but this is why it’s useful to keep track of what you own, continue to look at inspiration, and prioritize what makes you feel your best.
I also want to speak to going easy on yourself. It’s easy for me to sit here and type out wise phrases like I always live by it, but I certainly have no shortage of poor buying decisions sitting in my closet gathering dust right now. Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes even a well-reasoned purchase can end up not working out.
Still, these failures can be useful in their own way. If something doesn’t get worn much, or it’s uncomfortable, it’s worthwhile to figure out exactly why – that can help you avoid making the same mistake again!
Either way, though, I want to emphasize the importance of thoughtfulness and taking pride in the things you wear. For me, it’s made me feel a lot better about myself – putting my genuine self forward and feeling my best.
I have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the rest of Frocktober, so stay tuned!
Absoludicrous 