Contained in the Fan Madness Unleashed by The Lifetime of a Showgirl

Once I labored as a Digital Tradition Reporter at Enterprise Insider, we had an expression for the way we’d cowl the buzziest new tales: Flood the zone. Like a defective hearth hydrant, or a vacuum cleaner whizzing up and down with the uncontrollable hysteria of a feral raccoon, our directive was to suck up as many clicks as doable by means of each angle possible. I recall this taking place in the course of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Titan submersible implosion in 2023, when social media was utterly engulfed by updates each minute. Even when your beat wasn’t geopolitics or the financial construction behind deep-sea tourism, you had been speculated to drop every thing and assist perpetuate the flood, or discover a approach to work it into your protection, nevertheless contrived. I wrote a narrative about how individuals had been making Zelenskyy fancams and dissected the way in which TikTokers had been spreading misinfo in regards to the battle by utilizing pretend violent audios.

Taylor Swift is the Titan submersible implosion of music journalism—or a collection of them, or one countless sustained ultrabuzz spectacle—driving a rapturous surge of media protection by churning out a lot materials. It’s an more and more uncommon type of cultural domination—even on the peak of the Beatles or Michael Jackson, there was all the time a pantheon of different deities. Swift has a monopoly on monoculture, she’s the Elon Musk super-entrepreneur of music. It’s why Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, employed a devoted Taylor Swift reporter.

There have been lots of of optimistic and punitive articles printed about her on-line since The Lifetime of a Showgirl was launched on Friday. Individuals alone has written dozens within the final week, from particular person items cataloging each music to a narrative written a few single remark Travis Kelce left on an Instagram submit made by Kameron Saunders, a backup dancer within the the video for Swift’s music “Destiny of Ophelia.” (“You killed it as all the time Kam!!” he wrote. That’s the story.) Different article ideas embody ELLE Australia’s “213 Actually Chaotic Ideas I Had Whereas Listening to The Lifetime of a Showgirl for the First Time” and Parade Journal’s “Massive Phrases in Taylor Swift Songs and What They Imply.” Rolling Stone caught immense flak on launch day for touting their first ever “homepage takeover” and turning the positioning into an elaborate “immersive expertise” in honor of Swift’s transcendent magnificence. Whenever you visited the positioning, it was mint inexperienced—the palette for Showgirl—and each seen article was one thing in regards to the report (which they instantly scored a 5 out of 5) or the way it slotted into Swift’s ongoing and ever-accumulating legacy.

Throughout our catch-up name final week, my editor made an uncommon request: “So, uh, and that is the one time I’ll ask this,” he mentioned with a touch of agitation in his voice. “Is there a Taylor Swift Rabbit Holed angle?”