Latest / gasp! the pod / performance artlor: the engagement era feat. sabrina fleetwood

Transcript

performance artlor: the engagement era feat. sabrina fleetwood · gasp! the pod

• 0:00
  I'm honestly trying here to not feel like they're in a fake
• 0:04
  relationship. Sometimes I'm like, let me
• 0:07
  believe. I want to believe.
• 0:08
  And I just welcome back guys to gasp, the
• 0:22
  pod, the podcast for the gays, the girls, and especially the
• 0:26
  gay girls today. What are we talking about?
• 0:29
  It's the engagement heard around the world and I quote from
• 0:32
  people.com. Taylor Swift is engaged to tight
• 0:36
  end Travis Kelsey. Taylor Swift has been on a hot
• 0:39
  streak lately in the music department and now she is even
• 0:42
  more to celebrate because she's found love with Kansas City
• 0:46
  Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey. Here's hoping Taylor turns out
• 0:50
  to be a good luck charm for Kelsey.
• 0:52
  That big diamond on her finger has sure got to feel like a good
• 0:56
  luck charm for her. That actually wasn't taken from
• 0:59
  People Mag, that was taken from the Seven Husbands of Evelyn
• 1:03
  Hugo. And I just changed the names,
• 1:05
  but I just think I needed to add that to show everyone the
• 1:09
  similarities between this that's happening and Seven Husbands of
• 1:13
  Evelyn Hugo. Anyways, Taylor Swift and Travis
• 1:16
  Kelsey are engaged to be married.
• 1:18
  I'm sure everyone and their mothers has heard now with fans
• 1:22
  rejoicing that Taylor has finally been chosen and
• 1:25
  celebrating that it's never too late to find love, even if
• 1:29
  you're, God forbid, 35 years old.
• 1:31
  We know there may be more to the story or performance.
• 1:34
  Rather, this episode, I'm joined by performance Artler expert
• 1:38
  Sabrina Fleetwood. Hello to discuss the theory that
• 1:42
  Taylor Swift is not just a performer on stage, but in the
• 1:45
  public eye as well. Today we're doing a deep dive
• 1:48
  into this theory, dissecting the public's reaction to this huge
• 1:53
  engagement and examining this new era of Taylor Swift
• 1:57
  performance with her anticipated new album TS12, The life of a
• 2:02
  showgirl. Before we hear from Sabrina and
• 2:05
  get into the juice that is everything that's going on with
• 2:09
  the engagement, upcoming Super Bowl performance by Taylor
• 2:13
  Swift, probably her new album, Everything.
• 2:17
  Just a few updates. Reminder to subscribe on YouTube
• 2:20
  if you haven't, if you're listening to this on Spotify or
• 2:23
  Apple. I'm also on video right now.
• 2:26
  We are on video. So and if you subscribe, that
• 2:29
  means that I can monetize from those ads.
• 2:32
  That would be a slay. I also have new bonus content on
• 2:35
  Patreon. Right now.
• 2:37
  I have a whole video of my like 30 seconds after the engagement,
• 2:40
  my reactions to that, that's on Patreon and that won't be posted
• 2:45
  anywhere else. It's only for subscribers.
• 2:48
  I also have a new Gaylord Song of the Month analysis up there.
• 2:52
  So if you need bonus content, head to Patreon, and that's also
• 2:55
  on Spotify if you're a subscriber on Spotify.
• 2:58
  Finally, I'm going live for the TS12 release, obviously on
• 3:02
  YouTube. So that's another reason why you
• 3:03
  should subscribe to my YouTube. And if you're a Patreon
• 3:07
  subscriber, I do shout outs every week.
• 3:10
  I forgot the last two episodes, so sorry, but I'm back.
• 3:13
  And thank you so much to subscriber Beverly B Thank you
• 3:17
  for subscribing. OK, let's talk about Sabrina.
• 3:22
  Thank you so much for joining. I'm so happy you're on because
• 3:25
  we needed this. Like I don't know, you're just
• 3:27
  so smart and we need your insight.
• 3:32
  Thank you. I want to introduce yourself and
• 3:34
  like plug your account so people can follow you.
• 3:37
  Yeah, so my name is Sabrina and I mainly focus on performance
• 3:42
  art and pop culture, mostly around Taylor Swift, but I also
• 3:46
  have a few other artists I like to follow as well.
• 3:50
  You can find me mostly on Tiktok or also on Blue Sky as well.
• 3:54
  And I'm at Sabrina Fleetwood 54 on both accounts.
• 3:57
  I think on Tiktok it's Sabrina under Score Fleetwood.
• 4:01
  But yeah, you can find me there. And I really enjoy talking about
• 4:06
  the aspects of performance art and bringing in the
• 4:10
  technicalities of the performing industry in the theatre world.
• 4:15
  And my experiences with my close crossing paths with some of the
• 4:21
  areas of the performing world that have helped give me some
• 4:24
  insight on it all. And I try to take that into the
• 4:27
  performance art lens. Love.
• 4:30
  How did you like first get introduced to Gaylord
• 4:33
  specifically? Or I guess like when did you
• 4:36
  start listening to Taylor Swift? When did it hit you that there
• 4:38
  could be like more to her music and art?
• 4:42
  So it's funny because I have been a huge, huge Taylor Swift
• 4:46
  fan since debut album. Like I was obsessed with her
• 4:50
  music to the point that like my family and the people in my life
• 4:55
  would like pick on me for how much I really liked Taylor.
• 4:59
  And I'm neurodivergent and like I, I get hyper fixated like real
• 5:04
  bad. And so she's always been this
• 5:07
  like huge hyper fixation of mine, especially because I am
• 5:11
  also very musically inclined. Like my background is in
• 5:15
  theater, specifically musical theater.
• 5:18
  And so I just loved her music specifically.
• 5:21
  Something about it really always resonated with me.
• 5:24
  I was always kind of embarrassed to talk about how much I
• 5:29
  actually enjoyed her because of the stigma that surrounded
• 5:34
  Taylor Swift, the brand, whether it be in any direction, you
• 5:38
  know, until going throughout my own very big like transitions in
• 5:43
  my life. And I was realizing my
• 5:46
  neurodivergence and unpacking my own queerness and unpacking some
• 5:51
  of the ways in which I've been impacted by compet in my own
• 5:55
  life. And I just started to really
• 5:57
  unpack that after coming from a pretty conservative background,
• 6:03
  conservative discussion as mid, mid, middle of the road.
• 6:08
  Yeah. But I started to unpack that and
• 6:12
  saw a new light in it myself and was like, Oh my God, wait, she's
• 6:16
  singing about a woman? And like, how honestly, how dare
• 6:20
  I have assumed this whole time. Like I kind of had a crash out
• 6:25
  about it. I was like, why did I do that?
• 6:27
  Like, that's crazy that I once you see it, I mean, everybody
• 6:31
  knows. Like once you see it, it's kind
• 6:32
  of like, Oh my God, like I have to completely re evaluate the
• 6:38
  way I see everything, right? And so I just started to talk
• 6:42
  about it. And then I found the Gaylors and
• 6:45
  the performance Artler community.
• 6:47
  And then once I found out there were other people who thought of
• 6:50
  it this way, my mind was blown when I learned about the lore
• 6:54
  because I had never really like subscribed to being like a fan
• 6:59
  and more really like I only appreciated the music.
• 7:02
  I never paid any attention to like Taylor the brand because
• 7:06
  that was what made it hard for me to enjoy her and like I had,
• 7:11
  I've still never seen her live. Oh my God, isn't that?
• 7:16
  Crazy. Yeah, I know it.
• 7:18
  Is fascinating how she has such a draw when she's just on stage
• 7:25
  and just kind of stomping around.
• 7:27
  It is like next level. I'm so excited for you to like
• 7:30
  go one day I. Know, I know well this, whatever
• 7:32
  she does next, I'm like, I can't miss it for the whole world.
• 7:36
  What album did you start getting into Gaylord.
• 7:40
  Midnight's was the big one for me and I had decided because of
• 7:45
  how much I loved Midnight's to go back and like re evaluate
• 7:49
  Lover. And it was like putting Lover
• 7:52
  and Midnight's side by side. Actually, it was kind of the
• 7:56
  moment that I was like, holy shit.
• 7:59
  Like she's talking. She's been talking about a woman
• 8:01
  the whole time. Gaylors always talk about like,
• 8:04
  OK, yeah, once you see it, you can't Unsee it.
• 8:06
  We were all viewing her in a certain way before we saw this
• 8:11
  other interpretation. And I think it's like most
• 8:14
  Swifties because I'm assuming most don't think that she's
• 8:18
  queer. I would love to do a poll but I
• 8:22
  think there's a lot of people that don't identify as being a
• 8:24
  gaylor but think that she could probably be by.
• 8:26
  But I think most people are still viewing her in a lens.
• 8:30
  It's just their own straight normie lens unpacking how we
• 8:36
  already view our anyways and we're already just assuming who
• 8:41
  the muse is of every single song because of who we see her doing
• 8:44
  a pop walk with. Because what what she's playing
• 8:47
  with is the idea of the perspective that you view art
• 8:51
  from. And like she's kind of
• 8:53
  highlighting the fact that like we all view art from a
• 8:57
  perspective and until you recognize the perspective that
• 9:01
  you view art from, you can't fully understand it right We.
• 9:05
  All have a way that we're consuming something.
• 9:08
  We think it's just so obvious and plain and it means that she
• 9:12
  can hide in plain sight. She can just, she can.
• 9:15
  She can be as loud as she wants and people will still not pick
• 9:20
  up on it. Because most of the world thinks
• 9:24
  this blonde femme is straight. Because she's the straightest
• 9:29
  girl in the world. Because that's what like street
• 9:30
  people look like. Well, and I, I think there's
• 9:32
  something to be said too about what she's doing for people who
• 9:37
  are queer but still externally fit more like heteronormative
• 9:42
  appearances. You know, like, why do, why do
• 9:46
  we associate all of everything about her as like, not queer?
• 9:51
  If she was more masked or androgynous, I really don't
• 9:55
  think there would be this much a pushback against the idea that
• 9:59
  she could be queer because, like, she's held so highly in
• 10:03
  people's hearts as being this like, perfect America's
• 10:06
  sweetheart white. I mean, there's a whiteness to
• 10:10
  it too, obviously. Straight girl.
• 10:13
  And then also I think there'd be more people willing to be like,
• 10:16
  oh, maybe she is queer if she's saying lipso Scarlet, they were
• 10:19
  marooned. But she like presents a
• 10:21
  different way. Totally agree.
• 10:23
  And I think it's also interesting to think about the
• 10:25
  flip side of that, which is that she couldn't be as humongously
• 10:31
  massive, queen of the world, billionaire, everybody obsessed
• 10:36
  with her as she is. Were she more androgynous or
• 10:40
  more mask appearing? Were her various more evident
• 10:44
  externally? She could not reach the height
• 10:47
  that she has reached. So that's where you get into the
• 10:49
  idea of the blunder and like needing to kind of fit this role
• 10:54
  to reach the top because they don't allow anybody outside of
• 10:59
  this role to reach the top. Exactly.
• 11:03
  And that's the whole reason why this engagement, it has captured
• 11:06
  people's minds in a way that is fascinating.
• 11:11
  I need a book. I need a documentary.
• 11:13
  Like, I need full on like stats of it's bizarre that we've never
• 11:19
  seen in like America besides maybe the Kennedys and maybe
• 11:23
  like, I don't know, Meghan Markle except without the racism
• 11:27
  where people are just downright obsessed because it is the
• 11:32
  perfect American dream of white Barbie Princess, blonde Taylor
• 11:38
  Swift singer, emotional lover girl with football player, white
• 11:44
  guy from the Midwest, Travis Kelsey.
• 11:46
  If they were any other race or any other, don't know if they
• 11:50
  were not beautiful people. Right, objectively.
• 11:53
  Pretty that this would not be making people so happy, right?
• 11:58
  And Taylor has to, she has to maintain a certain degree of, I
• 12:02
  don't even know how to put it like lacking her own personality
• 12:06
  so that people can still project their personality onto her so
• 12:12
  that she can be this girl next door, that people can put
• 12:17
  themselves in her shoes. She's she's nailed the ability
• 12:22
  to be as famous and as huge as she is and and maintain this
• 12:26
  grandeur and this larger than life story that like you said,
• 12:30
  like the last, the thing that comes to mind for me is like the
• 12:33
  royal engagement of Diana, you know, right.
• 12:37
  Right. Yeah, and somehow she does that.
• 12:42
  She is that. And simultaneously everybody is
• 12:46
  saying, you know, I've my best personal closest friend, Taylor
• 12:49
  Swift is engaged. And there she maintains this
• 12:53
  degree of closeness with you by truthfully, by keeping herself
• 12:58
  out of it. Like that's really The thing is
• 13:00
  that she she keeps the persona hollow, just hollow enough for
• 13:06
  you to put yourself into it. And when people want her to give
• 13:11
  more of herself, they don't realize that she's she has to
• 13:15
  sacrifice some of her relatability.
• 13:17
  Yeah, it's really a delicate balance.
• 13:19
  We we are aware of it, we know it.
• 13:21
  We know that she's relatable yet provides such specific details,
• 13:25
  feels in her music. We can still see ourselves in
• 13:28
  her. We are aware of this dynamic,
• 13:31
  yet she still does it. And I think when she's
• 13:35
  acknowledged it sometimes and like Mirror Ball, we think, oh,
• 13:39
  she's escaped it. She's free of this because she
• 13:42
  tells us that she knows it. I think there is a naivete.
• 13:47
  That's how you pronounce that word.
• 13:48
  I need to go back to school in thinking that she would be this
• 13:53
  famous if she told us more real things about her.
• 13:57
  We have no idea what she really believes about politics.
• 14:01
  I would like to hope she's really progressive.
• 14:02
  I think she is, but I don't know for certain.
• 14:05
  The whole reason why she can be at this level of fame is because
• 14:09
  we don't know every single thought she has.
• 14:12
  She just got her music back, you know, like.
• 14:15
  Right, right it. Took it took this is what it
• 14:18
  took like just a perfect example of it and it's tiniest like most
• 14:22
  nothing thing. But I think about tattoos.
• 14:24
  I was a performer and I wanted to perform in Disney for a long
• 14:28
  time and I held off on getting tattoos for the vast majority of
• 14:32
  my life because you can't get cast as a Princess.
• 14:36
  You can't get cast as one of these characters, one of the
• 14:39
  face characters where you have your skin showing and you've
• 14:42
  got, you know, a tattoo of a lighter on you.
• 14:44
  That's not going to work for Disney.
• 14:46
  I always felt at odds with that because I always wanted tattoos,
• 14:50
  but I also really wanted to pursue performing and I really
• 14:54
  wanted to pursue that Ave. But in order to be able to fit
• 14:59
  into any role, you have to keep yourself blank.
• 15:04
  You know you have to keep yourself malleable.
• 15:07
  That is a really interesting metaphor with tattoos because I
• 15:09
  feel like you could extend that to like promiscuity and just
• 15:13
  like sexuality in general. And I know a lot of people are
• 15:16
  talking about, OK, you know, life of a showgirl visuals are a
• 15:21
  lot more like sexually revealing and like liberated than we've
• 15:25
  seen before. And I do think it's not a
• 15:28
  coincidence that all of a sudden she owns her music.
• 15:31
  And I wouldn't say it's Travis Kelce.
• 15:34
  There's only so much she can she can sway from the norm if she
• 15:38
  wants to get to the top. And I do think at the end of the
• 15:40
  day, she's trying to be as successful as she can and see
• 15:45
  how far she can take it. I think she's half curious.
• 15:49
  And I think that she's also aware of this like narcissism in
• 15:52
  herself. I think she's expressed that in
• 15:54
  her music. And I think that's a very
• 15:56
  interesting idea of like this woman like fully out to be
• 16:00
  successful. I think it's a little toxic, but
• 16:02
  I also think it's kind of iconic and feminist at the same time.
• 16:06
  I think she thinks that about herself.
• 16:09
  I agree, you know, and it's like somebody had to make it to the
• 16:13
  top the wrong way in order to to fix it so that you could get to
• 16:18
  the top the right way, if that. Yeah.
• 16:21
  Any sense? Should we got into the
• 16:23
  engagement and talk about like the media's reactions, people's
• 16:26
  reactions and how it's somehow flipped into gaylors getting
• 16:30
  just beat up upon Yeah. I mean, I do think it's just so
• 16:35
  interesting the fact that the engagement post on Instagram
• 16:38
  that both of them posted, Travis still does not follow Taylor
• 16:41
  Swift on Instagram, which doesn't make me lose sleep at
• 16:45
  night. I just think it's fascinating
• 16:47
  when. I bring that up, I always get
• 16:48
  people in my comments that are like, OK, so they're not.
• 16:52
  They don't follow each other on Instagram.
• 16:54
  So what, that's not a big deal. It's just social media.
• 16:56
  And I'm like, stop. Like don't just admit to
• 16:59
  yourself that that is strange. It's.
• 17:01
  Strange is. Strange.
• 17:03
  It's strange. I don't even know what it means,
• 17:05
  I'm just saying it's weird I'm. Just saying that's weird.
• 17:08
  It's. Weird.
• 17:09
  And I need. I just need one person to admit
• 17:11
  it. Why wouldn't you?
• 17:12
  You're gonna tag her and stuff. I don't follow you.
• 17:15
  Like at this point, like you're purposely not following her.
• 17:18
  You posted her on your Instagram, your future white and
• 17:22
  you don't. I don't get people.
• 17:24
  I just. I literally have people in my
• 17:25
  comments being like, well I don't follow my husband.
• 17:27
  I'm like, that's weird, why don't you?
• 17:30
  Why? What did you what?
• 17:32
  I don't get it. I don't even know if it even
• 17:34
  lines up with a PR relationship. I don't even know what it lines
• 17:37
  up with. I just think it's a huge fluke.
• 17:40
  It's. Like a bad PR relationship,
• 17:42
  right? Which like that seems like what
• 17:44
  we're going for is like, right, the PR relationship that's bad
• 17:49
  at that, at hiding that it's PR. This post has.
• 17:53
  Now, I looked at a few days ago, 20 million more likes than her
• 17:58
  master's post. There are 20 million more people
• 18:02
  that are interested in Taylor and Travis being together as a
• 18:05
  couple and not her and her music, which is just really
• 18:10
  fascinating that there's this huge lump of people that are not
• 18:15
  even Taylor Swift fans that are just fans of them as a couple.
• 18:19
  Royal couple over America, right?
• 18:21
  People really want somebody to like a real person to cling hope
• 18:27
  too. So I'm fascinated by the royal
• 18:30
  family and like Princess Diana and all of that, all of that
• 18:33
  stuff and the media's effect in, in all of that too.
• 18:37
  People want a a Princess to look at and, and to, to idolize and
• 18:44
  like, they want that love story to be lived out because it's
• 18:48
  what continues to give them hope that that's real for anybody,
• 18:53
  you know, like there's some real vicarious living happening.
• 18:57
  Yeah. It's kind of sad, really.
• 18:59
  It is and well, and it just goes to show you that like, well,
• 19:02
  first of all, all that happened from the transfer from England
• 19:06
  to America is that it's just instead of a divine right to
• 19:12
  royalty, it's all just monetary right to royalty.
• 19:15
  Like who can who can have the most attention?
• 19:18
  Basically, you know, like America has kind of projected
• 19:23
  the American dream onto this couple who like, they really,
• 19:29
  they've only been dating for like 2 years and it's like no
• 19:33
  tea, no shade, no like do whatever you want, live your own
• 19:37
  life. But to act like this is some
• 19:40
  incredible feat of like true love.
• 19:45
  It just, it's, there's not really anything spectacular or
• 19:49
  fantastical about it. You know, like if they're just
• 19:52
  I'm. Like where is this like spark of
• 19:56
  getting people excited that I'm missing?
• 19:58
  I think in this like love story, because I think there's a lot of
• 20:02
  other love stories that like they beat all these odds or the
• 20:06
  two unlikely people are together or they grew up a town away from
• 20:10
  each other and didn't know. Like there's I'm not against
• 20:14
  romantic stories. I I'm actually not.
• 20:17
  Love a good mom, you know, like I do.
• 20:20
  I'm missing the appeal. Besides, out of nowhere, I want
• 20:25
  her and now you got her. That's really what it is.
• 20:30
  And I think that like we already kind of hit the nail on the
• 20:32
  head. I'm acting like I'm confused,
• 20:34
  but we know why it there's so much appeal.
• 20:36
  And it's like because making people feel like there is still
• 20:40
  hope for them, like there's this romantic story out there for
• 20:42
  them. But I also think there's a huge
• 20:45
  population of like American women that have also this like
• 20:50
  doofus husband I. Was just going to say.
• 20:54
  With a hairy back that drinks too much beer and is loud and
• 20:58
  you kind of cringe at him, but at the end of the day, you love
• 21:01
  him. And if Taylor Swift can be with
• 21:02
  a man like that, I can be with a man like that.
• 21:05
  And actually, there's no need to like hate on men, because
• 21:09
  really, there are good men out there.
• 21:11
  And, you know, I think there's also something to be said about
• 21:15
  strange, as it kind of sounds like Travis is kind of setting a
• 21:17
  good example for men who are even worse than him.
• 21:23
  You know, like that's. Very true.
• 21:25
  Some. Of the responses that I've seen
• 21:27
  were of women talking about how their husbands thought it was
• 21:32
  really sweet, how how much Travis cared about what Taylor
• 21:37
  was doing and like how much he cared about Taylor's masters and
• 21:40
  because they were important to Taylor.
• 21:42
  As Corey and cringy as that sounds to me, as someone who
• 21:47
  watches it from more of an observer perspective and isn't
• 21:51
  buying into the fairy tale of it all, I can still appreciate the
• 21:54
  places where it is actually doing a little bit of good on
• 21:59
  that side of things too. By me, I don't know, I kind of
• 22:03
  just, I think that does a lot. That goes a long way for a group
• 22:07
  group of people who probably do avoid shedding in tear at all
• 22:10
  costs. Yeah, I think it's interesting
• 22:12
  where they are in the, I don't even want to say like wokeness,
• 22:16
  but just in terms of like politics and how you view like
• 22:19
  gender relations. They're bringing some people up.
• 22:23
  They're going to be below what, like, feminism is reaching for,
• 22:28
  but they're also going to be above what a lot of men think is
• 22:33
  normal in a relationship. So it's like that's going to be
• 22:35
  bringing some men up to be like, OK, this is how men should be
• 22:40
  treating women. And I don't think that they're a
• 22:42
  horrible example. No, I just think it's like an
• 22:47
  interesting social study for our society.
• 22:50
  I. Totally agree.
• 22:51
  And like I, I think it's so interesting.
• 22:53
  You're, you're 100% right that they're like, they are below
• 22:57
  what those of us who are ahead of the curve and are like, hey,
• 23:00
  could you like get with the times?
• 23:02
  But at the same time, I think that what they're they're kind
• 23:04
  of serving the purpose as like decoy Barbie and Ken for those
• 23:09
  further behind to still offer them all the way up something a
• 23:13
  middle ground because when you try to go from where they are to
• 23:17
  where we are, it's a lot. And they're deep in the
• 23:21
  indoctrination in the all of the nonsense of the the world that
• 23:25
  we live in. And so when they when Taylor and
• 23:28
  Travis put this exterior of exactly what that is looking for
• 23:33
  on that lower and then in allow and like weave in little things
• 23:38
  here and there that help bring them up towards a higher level
• 23:42
  of awareness and, you know, compassion towards each other in
• 23:45
  the world in general. Yeah, it's like Dean.
• 23:48
  Taylor yeah, they can move up along and bring them with them,
• 23:53
  you know. Right.
• 23:54
  It is like sneaking in these like little lessons when you
• 23:59
  don't think that that's what you're going to get.
• 24:02
  And I do think there's a reason for it.
• 24:04
  I don't think it's all for money.
• 24:07
  I also think that there's like a political reason.
• 24:10
  I mean, I did think he was going to endorse Kamala and I was
• 24:13
  like, Oh my God, wouldn't that be awesome?
• 24:15
  I mean, I think that that was helpful that she endorsed Kamala
• 24:18
  when she was in a relationship with him.
• 24:22
  I don't know. There's, there's good lessons
• 24:24
  and then how quickly people can like take the bad thing from it
• 24:27
  too. And I just like, can't help but
• 24:29
  like focus on how many women are drawing the conclusion from this
• 24:34
  engagement as like, it's never too late to find someone, even
• 24:37
  if you're 35 and like lonely, like Taylor Swift.
• 24:41
  I'm seeing that everywhere. This idea that like she really
• 24:46
  was not at a bookend of success of her life if she didn't have a
• 24:51
  ring on her finger, well. And it's crazy because it's
• 24:54
  like, glad we're all on the same page now, you know?
• 24:58
  Yeah. And that's more of more of what
• 25:00
  exactly what we're talking about of that idea of like part of
• 25:04
  what she does on purpose with, with her career and her her
• 25:09
  performance art that she puts on is she purposely brings up
• 25:12
  conversation that the public avoids having and, or has in
• 25:17
  private spaces or doesn't pay attention to.
• 25:20
  She will bring them to the, to the mainstream surface of the
• 25:23
  conversation so that the conversation can be had and so
• 25:27
  that it can be hashed out as just like part of public
• 25:32
  knowledge at that point. And so men, you can be emotional
• 25:37
  for your wife and like women don't aren't wasted when they're
• 25:41
  35 years old and still single. And even the whole conversation
• 25:45
  about the Gaylor hate that has happened and like all of the
• 25:49
  influx of homophobia that has come right up to the surface
• 25:54
  with this engagement, I think that's actually a good bit of
• 25:58
  what it was intended to do. Like, as uncomfortable as it was
• 26:04
  for us to have to go through that as creators and as part of
• 26:08
  the Gayler and Performance Artler community, the
• 26:10
  conversation, we've been ready to have the conversation right
• 26:14
  the homophobia for a long time. Right.
• 26:17
  But no one else was. And yeah, like the homophobic
• 26:22
  Swifties were never going to have that conversation with us.
• 26:25
  But once it becomes part of the attention of the mainstream
• 26:29
  media, it's a third party content, and they have to look
• 26:32
  at the conversation and say, what's a gayler?
• 26:35
  What are they? I think what is the situation?
• 26:37
  And when you look at it from a third party non homophobic
• 26:42
  perspective, it actually makes a lot of sense.
• 26:45
  Like it actually clarifies so much information and it
• 26:49
  highlights and almost like puts a freaking spotlight on just how
• 26:55
  homophobic it is to A, to a certain degree, her engagement
• 26:59
  has forced a certain rooting out of homophobia within the fandom.
• 27:04
  And like, obviously it'll never be able to, you know, we're not
• 27:08
  going to completely eradicate it or anything.
• 27:10
  But the conversation is being had in a way that it's never
• 27:14
  ever been had before, as if she like brings it to the surface,
• 27:18
  let's herself be the butt of the Flack that comes from the
• 27:23
  conversation being had. And to a certain degree, her
• 27:26
  fandoms too. And like, there's something to
• 27:28
  be said about we get sacrificed with her and it it definitely is
• 27:34
  part of being her fandom. Yeah, it is true.
• 27:36
  I think that's so interesting that like the engagement has put
• 27:41
  like a spotlight on on the Gaylord hate because it's also
• 27:45
  put a spotlight on Swifties that are just almost so focused on
• 27:50
  protecting her that they will do anything and say anything they
• 27:56
  need in order to protect her. And why are they so focused on
• 28:01
  Gaylors when this should be such a celebratory moment if you love
• 28:05
  them as a couple? And I think that's highlighted
• 28:08
  for sure to show how fragile this idea of like how what they
• 28:14
  hold her to be and that like another opinion would just like
• 28:19
  ruin this joy for them. Right, especially when on the
• 28:23
  podcast, like she literally said like we don't care what people
• 28:27
  say about us online. They'll they'll hold on to the
• 28:30
  whole we don't Easter egg about our personal life, but but they
• 28:33
  won't hold on to the part where she's like, I don't care what
• 28:37
  people say about me online. So interesting this community of
• 28:40
  like that are so ready to go to bat to defend her even against
• 28:45
  things that are very fair criticisms from her own fans.
• 28:52
  It's giving Colt because you can be a fan.
• 28:55
  I know if we know this, you can be a fan and be like, I don't
• 28:58
  love that you're hanging out with a guy who donated millions
• 29:02
  of dollars to Trump. I still like love her art.
• 29:06
  I still really love Taylor Swift, but it's a new wave of
• 29:10
  some celebrities getting the like, Oh, no one cares about
• 29:13
  celebrity treatment like the the Kardashians and and then other
• 29:17
  celebrities being held to a certain level of like God, like,
• 29:21
  like you were saying like royalty of how dare you say that
• 29:26
  you can't get the the prize of being able to call yourself a
• 29:30
  fan if you question or say anything that is not exactly
• 29:35
  what she wants us to say. And I, I think it's so
• 29:38
  interesting too, because it's also highlighting how they see
• 29:43
  queerness as a criticism. And there are a lot of my videos
• 29:47
  where I don't even talk about queerness and I just talk about
• 29:50
  the performative aspects of it. And people will comment and be
• 29:54
  like, do you, why do you hate her?
• 29:56
  Do you hate her if if you think she lies so much and it's like
• 30:00
  you're just further indicating how little you're able to
• 30:05
  separate your emotions from her actions?
• 30:09
  Because I don't I don't I find what she's doing to be pretty
• 30:15
  average and normal for the industry as a whole.
• 30:17
  Like me pointing out her performance, performative
• 30:21
  behavior is not a criticism. It it actually is that I, I do
• 30:26
  it in admiration because I think it's cool the way that she does
• 30:29
  it. And like me pointing out her
• 30:32
  queerness, especially like people think that that's like a
• 30:35
  criticism of some kind. And it's like they're like, why
• 30:38
  don't you just want her to be happy?
• 30:39
  And I'm like, what about being queer means that you're not
• 30:44
  happy? Like I don't?
• 30:47
  It is. You're conflating things.
• 30:50
  It is really fascinating and I also find that when they don't
• 30:54
  know how Swifties but rather like people that are just very
• 30:58
  hell bent on like destroying gaylors, which I don't even
• 31:01
  think is like most Swifties when they can't come back with any
• 31:05
  other argument. The classic thing.
• 31:08
  And I did a whole episode on this, like really digging into
• 31:11
  this idea of like outing someone.
• 31:14
  They're so, so worried that Taylor Swift, if she was gay,
• 31:18
  which they don't fucking think so she's the straightest girl
• 31:22
  alive, but if she was gay, that we're outing her.
• 31:24
  And I find this idea so fascinating of straight people,
• 31:30
  mostly straight people trying to protect a queer person from
• 31:35
  queer people, that queer people are going to be the danger that
• 31:39
  ends this queer person. And us as straight people, we're
• 31:42
  trying to protect her from you evil people.
• 31:45
  And that's never going to exist in the current structure we have
• 31:50
  as a society. Maybe in 1000 years when?
• 31:53
  Or 100 years when homophobia doesn't exist but like.
• 31:58
  Yeah. It's so bizarre.
• 32:01
  They do it with they try to defend by Ness to me all the
• 32:05
  time. They're like she could be bi and
• 32:08
  I'm like, where did I say she couldn't?
• 32:10
  I'm bi like I, I don't know why, like you're telling me what bi
• 32:18
  people are worried about, you know, like right.
• 32:21
  As if right, an engagement is a stamp of approval.
• 32:25
  Of she chose, she chose, she picked a side.
• 32:28
  That's her past now. How dare you bring that up,
• 32:32
  right? Which is interesting in so many
• 32:34
  ways because let's say she is by let's say she is in this legit
• 32:37
  relationship with Travis Kelce. Why is the engagement changing?
• 32:41
  Analysis Any analysis of her of her work in Art I.
• 32:45
  Don't know and it's crazy. And as a by person married to a
• 32:48
  man, I, I feel some of that like erasure that happens.
• 32:54
  And it's just interesting to see that like in real time, they ask
• 33:00
  like, well, what happens when she gets married?
• 33:03
  That was always one of the things that they would ask what
• 33:06
  happens when she gets married and I always would say like
• 33:10
  nothing. It's exactly the same.
• 33:13
  What do you mean? What happens when she gets
• 33:16
  married? I'm so confused by that
• 33:18
  question. Then she gets gets engaged and
• 33:20
  they all like see what now? And I'm like, right, like I've
• 33:24
  been saying still. The same if there was a
• 33:27
  performance before an engagement, why would the
• 33:29
  performance stop? Like engagement is really this
• 33:33
  arbitrary line of where we say no more lying to the people.
• 33:37
  If there is. Performance in Hollywood.
• 33:40
  Why would engagement and marriage be like, well, we're
• 33:43
  not going to cross this sacred line like, like.
• 33:46
  She don't care that far right. Like I really don't think she
• 33:51
  cares if she's really lying to us and kissing this man and
• 33:54
  she's not actually with him, which I don't know, Could be a
• 33:58
  lie, could not be a lie. I don't, I don't know what the
• 34:02
  truth is, but all I know is that what we're seeing is not it like
• 34:07
  what we are seeing is a, is a fabrication.
• 34:10
  We're saying is we don't. We don't know their
• 34:12
  relationship. PR is not just them being in a
• 34:16
  fake relationship, but it's also just like the centering of
• 34:19
  business and money and incorporating that in your
• 34:23
  so-called personal relationship. And I made a TikTok, a lot of
• 34:27
  people pointing this out, but the fact that both Taylor and
• 34:30
  Travis were Ralph Lauren at their engagement and they had a
• 34:34
  Ralph Lauren book in the back of the New Heights podcast, the
• 34:37
  firm resistance to accept that they would be using their
• 34:43
  engagement as a way to promote a brand or like make money off of
• 34:47
  it is also just plainly naive. Absolutely.
• 34:50
  And I think that what happens is a lot of people underestimate
• 34:54
  the industry and they like, they really just approach it from
• 34:58
  much more of like a consumer or a viewer perspective than like
• 35:03
  trying to see it as as like from the perspective of the people
• 35:07
  who are making the decisions. Because it's like, all right, if
• 35:10
  you think like back it up for two seconds and think about it
• 35:13
  like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, the most popular couple
• 35:16
  in the whole world are going to post their engagement photos on
• 35:19
  Instagram. Some company will be willing to
• 35:24
  pay a lot of money to put their product on them for those
• 35:31
  engagement photos. So there's no way in hell that
• 35:35
  they don't somebody doesn't capitalize on that opportunity.
• 35:40
  You know, whether it's Taylor and Travis or whether it's their
• 35:44
  management, whoever it is, is making a decision to say, yeah,
• 35:47
  who are we putting them in for the engagement?
• 35:49
  And then they again, it's like they're playing this role of
• 35:52
  like the PR couple that's bad at hiding.
• 35:54
  It's PR because they're both in the same brand, you know, like
• 35:58
  that's so. Right.
• 36:00
  Oh, it was a surprise engagement.
• 36:02
  One of the odds. We both wore Ralph Lauren like
• 36:05
  she has all these different brands in the closet.
• 36:06
  Ralph. Lauren so much that we were both
• 36:09
  matching Ralph Lauren today. And I mean, we could even do a
• 36:14
  whole look into Ralph Lauren as a brand and how this works so
• 36:18
  well for American, like royalty and this like classic Country
• 36:23
  Club chic. I mean, that is so intentional.
• 36:27
  But I think you bring up a good point of like, it really has to
• 36:30
  do with your perspective. Like if you're someone that
• 36:33
  doesn't think that it's interesting to think about the
• 36:36
  industry and unpack the money in it and unpack like the marketing
• 36:41
  of this kind of stuff. I get that.
• 36:44
  Like you're just being like, OK, cute, love her music.
• 36:47
  You're doing your thing. And I think that that's
• 36:50
  completely fair. And if this is not your
• 36:52
  conversation, you don't need to be a part of it.
• 36:54
  Like I'm not trying to convince every single person out there to
• 36:58
  like be a gaylor and to believe in this.
• 37:01
  And like I'm mad at everyone who doesn't believe that.
• 37:03
  I think it's more like let us do our thing.
• 37:06
  Right. It's like they are, they're
• 37:09
  constantly being fed a narrative, like we are
• 37:13
  constantly being fed a narrative.
• 37:15
  It's just a matter of whether or not you are blindly consuming
• 37:18
  the narrative and believe the narrative to be truth, or if
• 37:23
  you're aware of the fact that you're being fed a narrative and
• 37:26
  you consume it from the perspective of being aware of
• 37:29
  the fact that you're being fed something you know, right?
• 37:32
  Do you want to do like a just like performance Artler one O 1
• 37:36
  for people that don't really understand the theory or maybe
• 37:38
  have like consumed some videos about it but don't really
• 37:41
  understand the larger picture? Yeah, definitely performance
• 37:44
  startler. I'm not I am not the originator
• 37:47
  of the theory. And I really like similar to
• 37:51
  Gaylor. I stumbled into it by just
• 37:54
  realizing things about her performative behaviors myself
• 37:58
  and then found out there was a whole community of people who
• 38:01
  also thought that she was doing performance art as well.
• 38:04
  But what's cool about performance art specifically is
• 38:07
  it holds a rich history in politics.
• 38:10
  And our modern idea of performance art stems from World
• 38:15
  War One, which was it was used to combat what was called
• 38:20
  futurism at the time, which is very similar to a lot of our
• 38:25
  modern ideas of, of like headed toward the future with
• 38:29
  everything that looks the same and everything's motorized and
• 38:31
  industrialized. And, you know, and performance
• 38:35
  art was a way of putting performing and theater back into
• 38:40
  the hands of the lower classes because theater and performances
• 38:45
  started to become inaccessible to those who didn't have money.
• 38:49
  It became more of only available to the bourgeoisie.
• 38:52
  They started to come up with a lot of strict ideas and ideals
• 38:56
  about what was classified as art.
• 38:59
  It's always about pulling of a narrative and maintaining A
• 39:04
  heteronormative, but also, you know, just just like a
• 39:07
  neurotypical world, like the what we live in now, you know,
• 39:11
  capitalism and all of that. And so the idea behind
• 39:17
  performance art as a whole is that it's not, it is the
• 39:21
  antithesis to like snobby theater performances.
• 39:25
  And it's meant to be something that's more of a moment in time
• 39:31
  that you have to understand the context of what's happening at
• 39:34
  the time to understand fully what the piece is in itself.
• 39:40
  And unless you are there witnessing a piece of
• 39:44
  performance art, like part of experiencing performance art is
• 39:48
  being there while it's happening.
• 39:50
  Performance art, it's different. It's, it's like in a theater
• 39:53
  performance, like if I were to go see a musical, I could see a
• 39:57
  musical 50 years ago and see that same musical put on now.
• 40:00
  And it would be the same musical and it would contain the same
• 40:04
  story, but it would be a different production.
• 40:06
  So you could talk about the difference between those two,
• 40:08
  right? Where as performance art I could
• 40:12
  learn about a piece of performance art that happened in
• 40:15
  the. Past but you can't be there to
• 40:19
  witness a piece of performance art that's already happened and
• 40:24
  that's part of the performance art in itself, which makes it
• 40:27
  something that's a little bit tricky to understand and hard to
• 40:30
  explain and enigmatic in in nature and political in nature.
• 40:37
  So that's kind of just like a gist of what performance art is
• 40:41
  in general. Performance Artler stems from
• 40:43
  the idea that because of the way the Hollywood industry works and
• 40:48
  the system works, that we live in both the government and
• 40:52
  again, Hollywood and the the movie industry, the music
• 40:55
  industry and all of that. There's a strong push to
• 40:58
  maintain heteronormativity on the outside.
• 41:02
  And so a lot of artists are forced to separate their public
• 41:07
  life from their private life. And it ends up becoming some
• 41:12
  sort of performative persona. And then these brands and these
• 41:17
  these record labels will find artists who fit their
• 41:24
  demographics that they're trying to reach.
• 41:26
  So they'll say, oh, there's a gap in the 15 to, you know, 35
• 41:32
  year old queer female market. Let's go find a young talented
• 41:38
  performer to put and plant in that position.
• 41:43
  And that's why you have all of these people, like, calling
• 41:46
  people like plants because everybody in the industry is
• 41:51
  basically a plant, you know, like it.
• 41:53
  Everybody gets plucked from choke.
• 41:56
  Yeah. That's what having a break is.
• 41:58
  You know, like, that's when you get pulled from obscurity and
• 42:02
  then shoved with a bunch of money behind you and now you're
• 42:05
  a production like, right. It's never it's never you.
• 42:08
  You can't really bootstrap your way into the industry like that.
• 42:13
  You know, these artists, particularly Taylor as well as
• 42:16
  many others, have decided to you do a piece of performance art
• 42:23
  about the way in which the Hollywood industry forces them
• 42:26
  to perform. Heteronormativity, amongst many
• 42:30
  other things, turned their public personas into actors in
• 42:35
  this large scale piece of performance art.
• 42:39
  And is, you know, using the story of Taylor Swift, TM Taylor
• 42:44
  Swift, the brand to to teach an impactful lesson about the way
• 42:50
  that we consume media and the way that the industry works.
• 42:55
  And to bring awareness to the mistreatment of creative people
• 42:59
  in the industry and how their creativity and a lot of times
• 43:03
  their queerness gets taken advantage of and gets monetized
• 43:09
  and commodified. And they want the, the, the
• 43:13
  shiny parts of their queerness. And Taylor touches on this a lot
• 43:16
  in her music. This persona isn't real.
• 43:19
  It's not a real person, but she has to throw pieces of herself
• 43:23
  into it to give it some sense of dimension or depth.
• 43:28
  And those are the things that she has to keep finding pieces
• 43:31
  of herself to be shiny to put to put on display for the public.
• 43:36
  And so she and others have turned their lives into a piece
• 43:41
  about this and and how impactful and damaging that is to have to
• 43:47
  go through as an artist. A play within a play, right?
• 43:50
  So interesting, great description.
• 43:52
  What do you say for people who say there's no performance art
• 43:57
  anymore because the industry has changed?
• 44:02
  For example, we already have out, you know, artists like
• 44:06
  Billy Eilish and Troye Sivan. What do you say to that?
• 44:11
  So to that I would first of first of all talk about the
• 44:15
  difference between being entering into the industry in
• 44:20
  the past and entering into the industry in more recent years.
• 44:26
  And a large part of that is because of Taylor and it's
• 44:30
  because of what Taylor Swift has done to make it everybody's
• 44:36
  problem, how abusive and how much it takes the industry takes
• 44:40
  advantage of people because, you know, our artists are are who we
• 44:44
  should be looking to and they shouldn't be forced to live
• 44:49
  anything other than their, you know, genuine lives.
• 44:53
  So a lot of these newer artists, like with Billy and Chapel, like
• 44:56
  they enter into the industry with their queerness at either a
• 45:01
  parent or semi a parent, you know, and I imagine their their
• 45:06
  contracts are not as you know, they're not having as strict of
• 45:10
  like lifestyle clauses. And you wouldn't, you know, I
• 45:13
  don't know, but you can just you can.
• 45:16
  It's clear to see the ways that there has been progression in
• 45:19
  the industry, although it's not all fixed.
• 45:22
  There's progress. And then you look at the the
• 45:24
  past and then you realize that despite the fact that we've had
• 45:28
  this shift over time, those people who were from the past
• 45:33
  kind of get stuck in these glass closets, in these boxes of
• 45:37
  heteronormativity that we put on them back in 2002 when, you
• 45:44
  know, everybody was wearing low rise jeans.
• 45:46
  We don't ever, we can't Unsee that.
• 45:48
  It's really hard for them to shift those personas from what
• 45:52
  we the public have flung to and identified them as as well.
• 45:59
  So Taylor can be the loudest woman this town has ever seen.
• 46:02
  She can walk across stage draped in a in the lesbian flag.
• 46:06
  She should not have to come out and say I am gay.
• 46:11
  But she entered in the industry at a time when everybody got
• 46:16
  labeled as straight 100% of the time, you know?
• 46:20
  Especially when you look like her.
• 46:22
  Right, right. Yeah, it's so interesting too,
• 46:25
  when she's talked about how as a female artist, you have to
• 46:28
  change up your style and your sound in order to, like, get
• 46:34
  continued interest. Even though she has changed up
• 46:38
  her character, it still hasn't pushed boundaries enough to make
• 46:44
  the general public uncomfortable.
• 46:46
  And so I think there's a lot of people that point to, well, she
• 46:50
  could come out. She's said that she's a Democrat
• 46:53
  and she did the reputation era. But what happened right after
• 46:56
  the reputation era, she went back to love her where she's
• 46:58
  this palatable happy go lucky. It's not like she went into
• 47:03
  reputation and and started doing grungy music.
• 47:06
  If she completely switched who she was, she wouldn't be Taylor
• 47:10
  Swift today. She has to always come back to
• 47:13
  Barbie after folklore. She couldn't just, like, stay
• 47:17
  folklore. She wouldn't be famous Taylor
• 47:19
  Swift right now if she kept releasing indie albums.
• 47:22
  You always have to pull back to what people think you are true
• 47:26
  at heart, which is, yeah, she had the season of, like,
• 47:29
  wearing, you know, woodsy dresses.
• 47:32
  But at the end of the day, she wears her schoolgirl skirts and
• 47:35
  she's with Travis Kelce, so. Like, it's so funny you mention
• 47:38
  that too, because like when I was growing up, reputation came
• 47:43
  out when I was in, I think like in college.
• 47:47
  I, yeah, 2017 I was in college. I, my family was like, oh,
• 47:54
  Taylor Swift has gone bad. And I remember being like, she's
• 48:00
  so not. Yeah.
• 48:03
  Did she go back? Like.
• 48:05
  He's really like so still but. I also came from family that was
• 48:09
  like so critical of Miley Cyrus when Miley did her whole
• 48:13
  Wrecking Ball and yeah, they work very critical of Britney
• 48:16
  and like that's The thing is like that that type of person.
• 48:20
  They will Buddha pop star out so so fast.
• 48:25
  It's nobody's business how quickly they that is.
• 48:28
  That is what Taylor has had to avoid her whole career, right?
• 48:33
  And like you said, like reputation, it was still.
• 48:36
  In the, like, you're able to be in the industry.
• 48:38
  So, yeah, she's moving away from what she has done.
• 48:41
  There is like some obviously revenge and like, you know,
• 48:46
  there's some newness that she added.
• 48:48
  She's being a little bit more, I mean, maybe truthful about her
• 48:52
  feelings about stuff and same with like folklore, but not
• 48:56
  enough to make people be fully uncomfortable when they listen
• 49:00
  to her. Like you can still listen to all
• 49:03
  of her music right now, even her queer songs, and not feel like
• 49:07
  that's fate. Like you're facing her gayness
• 49:10
  head on. And I think there's a lot of
• 49:13
  people that say, OK, why couldn't she come out?
• 49:15
  I don't think that there is something that is, and feel free
• 49:18
  to like agree or disagree with me, but like, I don't think
• 49:21
  anymore there's something that is like fully contractually,
• 49:24
  like you can't come out. I think people forget that her
• 49:29
  dad is on her team and these other like old white men are on
• 49:36
  her team. I think there's strong advice of
• 49:39
  like, what is this going to do for your career?
• 49:42
  And I think that like, she knows what's going to happen if she
• 49:46
  makes it so obvious that people can't deny it anymore, right?
• 49:50
  There's such a difference between being out and, again,
• 49:54
  what is being out. Like I've come out so many
• 49:57
  times. I come out to this day because
• 50:00
  it's not like one thing you do. And it's also not stating your
• 50:04
  sexuality for people. Like it's just also aligning
• 50:07
  yourself with the queer community.
• 50:09
  But there's also a difference between like being out and being
• 50:11
  like closeted, which I feel like this binary that people hold on
• 50:17
  to. As if like just because she
• 50:18
  hasn't told you her exact identity doesn't mean she is in
• 50:22
  fear of being outed. No, I, I completely agree.
• 50:26
  I think that there was probably a period of her career in the
• 50:30
  early part where it was like, if the news comes out, you're done.
• 50:35
  You know, I think so too. We're talking about there's 2°
• 50:38
  of more than two, but breaking it down simply, there's 2° of
• 50:42
  like what controls whether or not you can be a famous artist,
• 50:46
  One of which is the fans and if they're willing to watch or
• 50:49
  listen to or engage with your music and content.
• 50:52
  And the other is the people who pull the strings behind the
• 50:55
  behind the scenes, the people who have the money, the people
• 50:57
  who run things. And like, I think that's the
• 51:00
  other thing is people don't realize blackballing happens.
• 51:03
  Like I can, I'll even tell like just a very quick personal story
• 51:08
  that it like gave me perspective on the industry and that like I
• 51:12
  had a professor in college who was known for being touchy with
• 51:18
  the women. And it was always like toeing
• 51:21
  this line of like never illegal, but like, and he had connections
• 51:30
  and if he liked you, you ended up successful right out the
• 51:34
  gate. Like this is the example.
• 51:36
  Like one time I was wearing jeans with a hole in them and I
• 51:41
  sat next to him on a, on like a field trip or something.
• 51:44
  And I like sat next to him and he was, he like made a joke
• 51:48
  about the hole in my jeans and stuck his finger in the hole in
• 51:52
  my jeans and like brushed against my thigh in the hole of
• 51:56
  my jeans. And I, I was like, excuse,
• 52:00
  excuse you. We all put together and filed
• 52:03
  this Title 9 case, a bunch of like 20 year old women and.
• 52:08
  There. There was a bunch of us and he
• 52:11
  got put on a sabbatical and he still works there.
• 52:14
  He took a semester off. And it's just if you don't cozy
• 52:20
  up to that and if you're not comfortable and you get kept
• 52:24
  from the good opportunities, right, you get, you get booted.
• 52:29
  Away. Yeah, yeah, no, it's so true.
• 52:31
  It's a good example. Just accepting that you are just
• 52:34
  going to have to be felt continually uncomfortable in
• 52:38
  order to access what other people get access to.
• 52:42
  And that's it. Like there it's it's a barrier
• 52:45
  to entry. Yeah.
• 52:46
  The system is really effed. Even if these people don't have
• 52:51
  that degree of control, they could say, I'll ruin you.
• 52:54
  I will. I'll put it out all over the
• 52:56
  news. They'll be a front page story of
• 52:59
  this if you and so like that. That's the other thing is
• 53:02
  there's like media backlash that happens and that's a big thing
• 53:06
  that Blake Lively's the whole case has been talking about.
• 53:10
  And if anything, recognizing that people can't be their true
• 53:14
  authentic selves, whether that's their queerness or just like
• 53:17
  expressing who they really are and like their own opinions
• 53:21
  about things, that's not a reflection of them.
• 53:24
  It's more so a reflection of the industry and what the industry
• 53:27
  does to people. I agree that like now, I do
• 53:31
  personally think that she has a lot more control, especially
• 53:33
  since she has ownership of her master's, which is why I think
• 53:37
  we're going to see things drastically change within the
• 53:40
  near future. In some way or another.
• 53:44
  The lesson will be taught, the story will be told.
• 53:47
  I also do think about the idea that like, in order to get her
• 53:51
  master's back, she needed to tour around the world for two
• 53:54
  years and be the biggest pop star in the world in order to be
• 53:59
  able to make that master's deal. Absolutely.
• 54:03
  And to have the leverage that she had and to have the finances
• 54:06
  that she had and it. Was $350 million.
• 54:13
  It's not 10 million, it's 3. 150.
• 54:17
  Million, yeah. And that's why I think we see
• 54:19
  the performance art of her and Travis Kelsey on stage, of her
• 54:23
  being picked up and forced to perform because she needs to do
• 54:25
  this, like, right, it's not for fun.
• 54:28
  And how at the end of the tour, she's like, all right, bye,
• 54:31
  guys. Like I'm so tired, yeah.
• 54:35
  And so if she had been any less palatable or any less of the
• 54:41
  most blank slate, relatable, classic straight white woman
• 54:48
  there, there's odds she would have never been able to acquire
• 54:52
  enough money to make her masters back.
• 54:54
  That that's part of it, too. Is that like, she's had to play
• 54:58
  along. She's had to hide.
• 55:00
  Yeah, she's had something to lose by coming out, because if
• 55:03
  she comes out and everybody and loses half of her fan base, then
• 55:08
  it's going to take her twice as long to be able to own her work
• 55:11
  back, right? That brings us to the future.
• 55:15
  Now that she owns her masters, do you think there's that's
• 55:18
  going to be reflected in the music?
• 55:20
  And what do you think for TS12, if this is, you know, Taylor
• 55:24
  being a performer, Is this part of this double version of
• 55:29
  herself? Hannah Montana versus Miley
• 55:31
  Cyrus, if you will. Right, sorry, that was a no.
• 55:35
  That's a good question. And I, I try to to avoid getting
• 55:40
  too predictive because she's so she constantly like blows me
• 55:45
  away with with the way that she pivots things in a way that I
• 55:48
  didn't expect. But just based off of everything
• 55:52
  so far and what what I've seen so far, I expect there to be a
• 55:56
  lot of contradiction within this album.
• 55:59
  I think that this album is going to contradict what we've been
• 56:03
  fed on the outside, and I think it's going to have a lot of
• 56:06
  contradictions within itself. The technique that she uses to
• 56:11
  kind of like jolt people awake and and make them ask the
• 56:15
  important questions is she causes contradictions, she
• 56:18
  causes dissonance and she makes because she's been forced to
• 56:23
  split herself, like you mentioned, like that Hannah
• 56:25
  Montana idea. She makes you realize the
• 56:30
  difference, the stark difference between her persona and who she
• 56:35
  is internally. She wouldn't be able to portray
• 56:40
  such a Stark difference between them if she didn't have such a
• 56:45
  Stark. Difference between them.
• 56:47
  That's a very good point to draw you to, you know, see the
• 56:50
  contrast. There would be no contrast to
• 56:52
  see. There would be no contrast.
• 56:54
  So it's so the very fact that it's even possible for her to
• 56:58
  convince this many people of one of the contrasting views says to
• 57:04
  me that she's she's got a further level of awareness than
• 57:08
  those who are listening on the surface to otherwise there
• 57:11
  wouldn't be more than the surface, you know.
• 57:13
  Right. We you can't you can't dig into
• 57:15
  something that doesn't have any ground deeper than where it is.
• 57:20
  Yeah. I was like, you know, I know,
• 57:21
  maybe I'm still in this boat that Sabrina Carpenter is queer
• 57:25
  at some level. I honestly stop was stopped in
• 57:28
  my tracks with this album I love.
• 57:31
  I think a lot of them are bops, but there's really no ground for
• 57:36
  me to dig into. And that's fine.
• 57:38
  Not everything needs to be diggable, but you can't dig into
• 57:41
  something that just doesn't have anything to.
• 57:44
  Get into and and I completely agree.
• 57:47
  And I think that Taylor takes advantage of that and like she
• 57:51
  hides things and like that's kind of the idea of the Easter
• 57:53
  eggs, right? It's that like they're there.
• 57:56
  If you want to dig into it, if you're going to assume that
• 58:00
  there only is a surface level to it, you're not going to find
• 58:04
  anything deeper. But if you dare to assume
• 58:07
  there's more depth than there, you're going to find a lot more
• 58:12
  depth there. Do you think that there are
• 58:14
  going to be softballs thrown to Tavis stands in this album?
• 58:20
  I expected before I saw the track list and like, we don't
• 58:24
  know how those are going to sound.
• 58:26
  I did kind of expect this to be less of a hard album and
• 58:31
  obviously still have depth to it, but meet be more of a Lover
• 58:34
  esque album. What do you think?
• 58:38
  Do you think there's going to be love songs?
• 58:40
  If you think about the album of Lover, it's not a romantic.
• 58:44
  That's actually so true, album. That's actually so true.
• 58:49
  The title track of Lover is I forgot that you existed, right?
• 58:53
  Reputation is actually more of a of a lover girl album.
• 58:56
  It is. Reputation is way more of a love
• 58:59
  album and so again, she that's what she does is she plays with
• 59:03
  contradiction of the the book by its cover kind of deal where
• 59:09
  she'll put the cover of reputation as this like big hard
• 59:13
  breakup album and and then make it this like huge, queer sapphic
• 59:17
  love, gorgeous dress, all of that, you know, like it's it's
• 59:23
  the antithesis. They they they truly are
• 59:26
  opposing sides. And that's when she sings like
• 59:29
  look what you made me do in rap. That's what I think she's make
• 59:32
  they made her do is like push those boundaries so far that you
• 59:38
  have to recognize them. If you look past the surface of
• 59:42
  it, right? It there is more to to it as
• 59:46
  well like. So High School, where I'm still
• 59:50
  truly bewildered at the attachment to this song, which
• 59:55
  really is the only song that could be pointed to Travis on
• 59:58
  the entire album of TTPD, which was announced nine months after
• 1:00:03
  they started dating. I think you could squeeze in
• 1:00:06
  some more songs. This was the love of your Life.
• 1:00:11
  But if So High School is that is that song she's throwing to them
• 1:00:14
  and then she uses it for the engagement post.
• 1:00:17
  She goes marry, kiss or kill me and then the echo goes kill me
• 1:00:23
  and the whole song is about bitter.
• 1:00:25
  It's bittersweet. There's no one that wants to
• 1:00:28
  explain why it's bitter and not entirely sweet.
• 1:00:31
  I truly don't understand why it would be bittersweet.
• 1:00:34
  And it is a surface level so high school relationship.
• 1:00:39
  And this is Taylor Swift, who wrote some of the most romantic
• 1:00:43
  songs that I've ever heard, like the one or Ivy, like throwing
• 1:00:47
  your life away and like just feeling like you're just lost in
• 1:00:50
  a person. And then we get so high school
• 1:00:53
  as your engagement post, right? It makes you ponder.
• 1:00:57
  And, and again, like, you can almost see the way in which,
• 1:01:00
  like, the bones that she throws have gotten increasingly more
• 1:01:04
  obvious that they are like the things that they cling to don't
• 1:01:09
  make sense. Because when you compare like
• 1:01:12
  London boy to Seoul High School, you really see the frogs boil
• 1:01:17
  there where it's like London boy is more believable.
• 1:01:21
  I, I, you know, I, I blame people less for believing in the
• 1:01:25
  love story in London, boy, but then so high school where it's
• 1:01:29
  like, if that's what you're listening to, it's more obvious
• 1:01:32
  from an outsider perspective. It's again, it's like putting
• 1:01:35
  that highlight, that spotlight on it where it's like, guys,
• 1:01:39
  you're the song you're obsessed with literally says marry, kiss
• 1:01:42
  or kill. I'm betting on all three.
• 1:01:45
  It's beyond. No, just like you said in the
• 1:01:47
  beginning of this episode where the PR is so thinly veiled and
• 1:01:52
  it's getting more and more obvious, it is getting to a
• 1:01:56
  boiling point. I I'm just very curious of what
• 1:01:58
  these songs are going to be like lyrical wise.
• 1:02:02
  I haven't been this so excited for an album in so long.
• 1:02:05
  I even think they were in TTPD 'cause I felt like I knew that
• 1:02:09
  we what we were gonna gonna get in TTPD like.
• 1:02:12
  Right. This is like a a huge like, I
• 1:02:14
  don't know for sure. There's a lot of ways it could
• 1:02:17
  go. I do think that we'll probably
• 1:02:18
  get a a song or two that is meant to be the like, you know,
• 1:02:23
  the bone that gets thrown. But I think it will be even if
• 1:02:27
  that's the case, it will be even more obvious than so high
• 1:02:32
  school. How ridiculous that being the
• 1:02:36
  song that you going to. I mean, we got how many songs in
• 1:02:40
  TTPD, like 303031 or something and you had one song.
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, I know. I just hope it's not wood.
• 1:02:51
  I just really hope it's not wood, but.
• 1:02:54
  Oh gosh, I it's just going to be so I can't wait to even she I at
• 1:03:00
  this point, I trust her. I do too.
• 1:03:04
  I I like I really feel like she's setting them up for a trap
• 1:03:07
  in so many ways. And like in the past few times,
• 1:03:10
  like the past few events that have happened then like and I
• 1:03:14
  don't, and I don't even want to say like a trap, like they
• 1:03:17
  deserve to be trapped in any way or anything.
• 1:03:19
  But like, if you think about like the whole thing with like
• 1:03:22
  the countdowns of Taylor Nation listening parties that ended
• 1:03:26
  with the engagement or not the engagement post, the first
• 1:03:29
  Instagram official post, yes, of Travis.
• 1:03:34
  And then that happened. And of course the gaylors and
• 1:03:37
  the performance art later started to have the conversation
• 1:03:39
  of like, OK, yeah. So it's it's for the brand.
• 1:03:42
  Like that's what the countdown LED up to.
• 1:03:44
  And it like like she does like it opened the conversation and
• 1:03:48
  the arguments started to be had. And then the next day, she kind
• 1:03:53
  of proved us right by posting about Happy Gilmore.
• 1:03:58
  Right. And then like, same thing with
• 1:04:02
  the countdown of countdowns and the vinyls.
• 1:04:04
  And like it's all the vinyl releases that lead up to
• 1:04:08
  rainbow, a rainbow vinyl. And then the next day we have
• 1:04:12
  the engagement and it all like, it's like the last two vinyls
• 1:04:18
  you release are champagne and tiny bubbles.
• 1:04:20
  And that's not a part of your whole thing that's happening
• 1:04:25
  here, you know? And so again, the argument gets
• 1:04:29
  had, the conversation gets had, and then the next day, Travis
• 1:04:34
  associates himself with an American Eagle campaign.
• 1:04:38
  And it's like, again, proving us right.
• 1:04:41
  Like right at you. They like start the conversation
• 1:04:44
  and then they prove it. Is really scary actually,
• 1:04:47
  because I don't, I don't know what is actually happening in
• 1:04:52
  Taylor Swift's personal life, but there's been many times
• 1:04:55
  throughout their relationship where I'm like, oh, OK, maybe
• 1:04:59
  they are in this genuine relationship.
• 1:05:01
  Like I see something and I'm like, OK, I don't know, maybe.
• 1:05:06
  And then something else happened, like right when you
• 1:05:09
  start to fall into it. And the two biggest things for
• 1:05:13
  me was the Happy Gilmore post and right after we are focusing
• 1:05:19
  on Taylor and Travis and they, they did their first Instagram
• 1:05:23
  official post and then the engagement.
• 1:05:26
  This is interesting timing coming the day after.
• 1:05:29
  I mean, Taylor Nation had literally the vinyl on their
• 1:05:32
  story and the next story was her engagement post and the next the
• 1:05:36
  same night like 11:45 PM, there's an American Eagle ad.
• 1:05:42
  I'm honestly trying here to not feel like there is a fake
• 1:05:47
  relationship. Sometimes I'm like, let me
• 1:05:49
  believe. I want to believe and I just.
• 1:05:52
  I think that with TS12I, I see it following a similar pattern
• 1:05:56
  where like even if there's a lot of like conversation and
• 1:06:00
  dialogue that gets opened with the album release and with the
• 1:06:04
  lyrics on the album, whatever is going to happen shortly
• 1:06:08
  thereafter will further, you know, she kind of, it kind of
• 1:06:12
  feels like she's bollying to to the performance artlers and the
• 1:06:15
  Gaylors at this point for us to spike it, you know, to like
• 1:06:18
  prove right right afterwards. Yeah.
• 1:06:22
  Like a. Perfect set, I totally agree.
• 1:06:25
  Last question, do you feel like Travis is doing his own
• 1:06:30
  performance art? Do you think he's taking all the
• 1:06:33
  lead from Taylor or do you think there's like part of him that's
• 1:06:36
  like, I'll get into this, too? So yes, I definitely think
• 1:06:41
  Travis is doing some sort of performance art.
• 1:06:43
  I think that Travis is actually doing a lot of really important
• 1:06:48
  work on the male side of things as well in a similar way to what
• 1:06:54
  Taylor is doing. And that we just like, don't
• 1:06:56
  really listen to or engage in those conversations because I'm
• 1:07:00
  not in those spaces. Yeah.
• 1:07:03
  But I like like I said earlier, with like the Travis being a
• 1:07:06
  kind of a good example for men, despite the exterior being
• 1:07:10
  exactly what trope is just like Taylor has kind of allows women
• 1:07:15
  to be not that trope, even though she's that trope on the
• 1:07:19
  outside. Like together they kind of are
• 1:07:23
  offering an out for those people.
• 1:07:25
  Stuff is where like my performance art theories get a
• 1:07:28
  little bit like I know I even go further in my ideas of
• 1:07:31
  performance art than most people.
• 1:07:33
  This is bigger than even just Taylor and Travis and that
• 1:07:38
  although I think what we are seeing now was written by Taylor
• 1:07:42
  and like is a story that she has cast people in her Taylor Swift
• 1:07:46
  cinematic universe to play roles for her.
• 1:07:51
  I do think that she's been taught what how she does what
• 1:07:55
  she does by others in the industry who have been doing
• 1:07:59
  this for a long time and have a lot of practice doing it.
• 1:08:04
  And I think her, her whole purpose and her whole personas
• 1:08:10
  deal has been to kind of help peel back the curtain.
• 1:08:15
  Like her whole career has almost been used as a vehicle to bring
• 1:08:20
  that to light. And so I agreed very much that
• 1:08:23
  Travis is a part of it. Just like I I think I personally
• 1:08:27
  think almost all, if not all of her muses have been
• 1:08:31
  intentionally included as a part of the story that she's been
• 1:08:34
  telling all along as well. I absolutely agree.
• 1:08:38
  And I think that some people be like, that's such a crazy
• 1:08:41
  conspiracy theory. I think it's a beautiful hopeful
• 1:08:45
  thought and I fully agree. I think there's so much
• 1:08:49
  potential to not to sound crazy like change the world and like
• 1:08:54
  change people's assumptions of people.
• 1:08:56
  And it's under this perfect vehicle of America's
• 1:09:01
  sweethearts. And I think that's also a reason
• 1:09:03
  why she has so many influences that's so clear in her art of
• 1:09:08
  old showgirls like the classics, Elizabeth Taylor, Clara Boe,
• 1:09:12
  like I think This is why she works so much with.
• 1:09:16
  I mean, she has had dinner with every single like big name, but
• 1:09:19
  like across industries. And I think she's just like
• 1:09:22
  gathering information and stories.
• 1:09:25
  Like, I do think she's like deeply inspired by this.
• 1:09:28
  I don't think she's randomly really into Clara Bo's life.
• 1:09:32
  And I think, you know, like, like she's got lyrics, like one
• 1:09:35
  of one of my favorite lyrics that she has is all the wisest
• 1:09:40
  women had to do it this way. And about that all the time
• 1:09:44
  because we were born to be the pawns in every lover's game.
• 1:09:48
  Forgive me for getting a bit big here, but if we live in a world
• 1:09:52
  where I have nobody that I can have any faith in.
• 1:09:55
  Like if all of the people that I've been told to look to my
• 1:09:59
  whole life have proven to be not that actually helpful or good at
• 1:10:04
  guiding me or the country, I had to kind of pull myself back and
• 1:10:09
  ask myself like who? Who can I look to then?
• 1:10:13
  Like, who do I genuinely respect and genuinely admire in some
• 1:10:18
  way, even if I, you know, I have to take the separate the art
• 1:10:23
  from the artist and to a certain degree, and yeah, that's part of
• 1:10:26
  what helped me become aware of the persona of the artists,
• 1:10:29
  right? But I think about these women
• 1:10:31
  and like, regardless of whatever persona or whatever drama or
• 1:10:35
  whatever the hell, they are powerful and they are incredible
• 1:10:40
  at what they do. And they are talented and they
• 1:10:45
  are you have to be brilliant to write the lyrics you do.
• 1:10:48
  Like I'm, I'm sorry, but if I, if I read these, I read these
• 1:10:51
  lyrics and it's like, you can't be dumb and write this.
• 1:10:55
  And it's not your fault that people assume you're dumb.
• 1:11:01
  And it's also not your fault that you've taken advantage,
• 1:11:05
  taken advantage of that. And all the wisest women had to
• 1:11:09
  do that. Like how many women throughout
• 1:11:11
  history have played dumb? Because if you intimidate a man
• 1:11:17
  or anybody and make them feel like you're smarter than them,
• 1:11:21
  you will get shut out. You will get stepped on.
• 1:11:25
  And so like, to a certain degree, in order to get to the
• 1:11:29
  degree of power or position that they have, they've had to dumb
• 1:11:35
  themselves down for the public, for men, for the industry, for
• 1:11:39
  the consumer even. Like, that's the thing.
• 1:11:41
  If they showed us how smart and talented they really were, like,
• 1:11:47
  if they gave us the full brunt of it, people would get jealous.
• 1:11:51
  No, that's what would go. True.
• 1:11:53
  You. Need to feel like you.
• 1:11:54
  Are. You need to feel like that's
• 1:11:57
  accessible to you. If her outward persona was how
• 1:12:01
  she actually writes lyrics. I mean, the first half of her
• 1:12:04
  relationship with Travis Kelsey, we're seeing the same visuals we
• 1:12:08
  see now and she releases an album with the tortured poets
• 1:12:11
  department. It doesn't match with the
• 1:12:14
  outward persona at all. And if her outward persona was
• 1:12:18
  what her lyrics are, that would not be accept it.
• 1:12:23
  And I don't believe that. You just date Travis Kelsey and
• 1:12:26
  become dumb. I don't believe that.
• 1:12:30
  Right. So I completely agree.
• 1:12:32
  I feel like we should end on that.
• 1:12:35
  Yeah. I feel like.
• 1:12:37
  I think we've been talking for like hour 45.
• 1:12:40
  Two hours, yeah, I'll. I'll gab man.
• 1:12:42
  I'll never I. Love it.
• 1:12:44
  I what's so crazy as I could literally keep talking about
• 1:12:46
  this with you. Thank you so much for joining.
• 1:12:50
  That was a ball. It was everything I wanted and
• 1:12:53
  more. Thank you.
• 1:12:54
  So much for having me. Seriously.
• 1:12:56
  Of course, if you. Want to just, like, shout out
• 1:12:58
  your socials again so people can follow you?
• 1:13:00
  Yeah, You're welcome back anytime, anytime.
• 1:13:02
  You want to. Come on.
• 1:13:03
  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:13:04
  My socials are Sabrina Fleetwood on TikTok, Sabrina under score,
• 1:13:08
  Fleetwood 54 and then on Blue Sky I'm just Sabrina Fleetwood
• 1:13:12
  54 and it has truly been so fun to be here.
• 1:13:16
  Has. Been a blast.
• 1:13:17
  OK guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 1:13:19
  Subscribe to my YouTube for bonus content, let us know your
• 1:13:22
  theories, etcetera, etcetera, and I'll see you soon.
• 1:13:27
  Bye.