The most precarious problem for Swift – for any pop star, really – is when musical tastes change and you’re left in the wake.
Right now, a new generation of female singers are shunning the polished perfection of Swift’s music, revelling instead in imperfection and uncertainty.
Ms Cirisano suggests that there is a new mood of apathy and nihilism – one that British singer Charlie XCX successfully tapped into with last year’s album Brat, which she described as “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.
“It fit perfectly with that post-pandemic [sense of] people want to get dirty again, they want to smoke, they want to party and get people’s sweat all over them,” says Ms Cirisano. “This feeling of nothing matters.”
Take Olivia Rodrigo, 22, who writes about meeting up with her ex-boyfriends even though she knows it’s a bad idea. Or Lola Young, 24, who sings in her track, Messy: “I smoke like a chimney… and I pull a Britney every other week.”
