Conversation with a Swiftie: Pretty Much Pop #58 Addresses the Taylor Swift Phenomenon

Prompt­ed by the release of new album Folk­lore and the 2020 doc­u­men­tary Miss Amer­i­cana, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt speak with guest Amber Pad­gett about her love of Tay­lor, rank­ing the albums/eras, Tay­lor as songwriter/puppetmaster, why the hate, weird lev­els of fan engage­ment, dou­ble stan­dards in expec­ta­tions for female artists, and more. Like all of our dis­cus­sions, this one is should be inter­est­ing to fans, haters, and folks who’re just curi­ous as to what all the fuss is about.

A few of the sources we scanned to pre­pare:

•  “Tay­lor Swift: Every Sin­gle Album Ranked and Rat­ed” by Han­nah Myr­lea
• “All of Tay­lor Swift’s Albums, Ranked from Least to Most Icon­ic” by Abi­gail Abesamis
• “Tay­lor Swift’s ‘Folk­lore’ Is The Fastest Album Of 2020 To Sell 1 Mil­lion Units In The U.S.” by Bryan Rol­li
• “Tay­lor Swift: I Was Lit­er­al­ly About to Break” by Lau­ra Snapes
• “The Rolling Stone Inter­view: Tay­lor Swift” by Erik Madi­gan Heck
• “Look­ing Back At Tay­lor Swift’s 10 Great­est Accom­plish­ments Of Her Career” by Paris Close
• “When Did the Media Turn Against Tay­lor Swift?” by Nate Jones

Amber rec­om­mends Tay­lor’s Tiny Desk Con­cert. Watch Eri­ca and Drew cov­er “Exile.” Here’s that album of Ryan Adams’ 1989 cov­ers that Eri­ca men­tions. And yes, we’re open to a com­pa­ra­ble Bey­on­cé episode if we can find a guest super-fan and lis­ten­ers want more of this kind of thing.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.